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"What did it do in Green County?" this is the question voters are asking in counties across Wisconsin, and also in Michigan and Pennsylvania. These are states with lower number of minority voters and a higher number of white working class voters without college degrees. Even in rural areas around Madison voters remember their fathers and mothers voted for Kennedy, grandfathers and grandmothers voted for Roosevelt. The Washington Post looks at the white voters without college degrees in Wisconsin . How does one take the visionary actions in the Biden bipartisan Infrastructure laws and show what happens at the micro level? Lyrarc.com shows how the laws are changing America bit by bit every week in the Movement for Renewal of America as covered in NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, and other media.

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The British Energy Institute shows how countries are doing in fighting climate change by reducing fossil fuel use. 

Poland is poor at 88% fossil fuels in energy mix. Algeria, Singapore, Bangladesh, Oman at 98%.

In Europe Norway leads at 72% for renewqble energy in the mix. Brazil at 50% keads SOuth America, Nw Zealand 43% and Vietnam at 23% in Asia Pacific. 

Of 6525 coal fired power plants China has 3168, India 845 plants and US 408. Older plants are being retired.

Planned construction of new coal power plants 707 in China, 165 in India, 2 in the US, 23 in eastern Europe, 0 in Northern Europe and 4 in Southern Europe, 0 in Western Europe, Latin America is 6.

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See Ann Telnaes cartoon in the Washington Post on Aug 15, 2025 news conference by Donald Trump from the Bedminster New Jersey golf club and repetition of oldies, oldies and more oldies for a America fatigued from fact checking.

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Bridgeport, Connecticut, an old American manufacturing town that is getting back its manufacturing prowess. Bridgeport was home to Remington, to divisions of Westinghouse and General Electric, Bryan Electric. During the allied effort in WWII it made half a million Thompson submachine guns. After the deindustrialization of the 1980's and 1990's and the period of stagnation since, the city is now making a resurgence in manufacturing using a talented workforce and education system. A resolute effort to revive American manufacturing can be seen everywhere. Newer companies are different from the past using new technologies, highly trained employees, these businesses are smaller, cleaner and more expensive to operate, say city planners and new business owners.

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Jenny Medina looks at America's Biden 10 months into his presidency. Biden compared his presidency to that of FDR in his first years in office in 1933 with America in the depths of the Great Depression.  This report says FDR was better able to communicate how the New Deal would help families and workers in the face of distrust. Biden needs this today. During the ten months of the presidency Biden has already taken the tough decisions that are needed. For the vaccination drive, for the vaccine mandate on the coronavirus pandemic. On Afghanistan Biden took a similar tough decision to step away after learning the lessons of that conflict. He has quietly moved forward to build the alliance with Europe. On the infrastructure plan he has made the tough decision to make certain the essential components of spending on healthcare, education, childcare, support for mothers and older Americans are put in place, so that one bill for infrastructure is not passed without the bill for healthcare, childcare, mothers, elderly and education. Only this can provide the needed credibility for Republicans in states such as Tennessee who support community college open to all to come behind the overall Biden families and workers plan, and for working families throughout the whole country to support further spending for renewal of America.  ...

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When you compare the US to the European Union or India one can see how America is failing its people in offering basic public services that other countries do routinely. Jennifer Pahlka is the author of- Recoding America: How America is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. Pahlka points out the problem in the US where private companies obstruct the delivery of basic services that the government can provide, just for their own profit. They throw in a carrot so that there is an excuse for not doing anything about this. For example tax preparation companies tell the IRS not to develop a simple tool available to all taxpayers to file their own taxes easily which is already filled with basic details. The carrot so that no one complains is that they will offer free tax preparation services to low income people. In the EU and many other countries tax preparation is done using tools offered by the tax agencies for easy preparation. In India it was possible to make it through the pandemic for large parts of a population of 1.4 billion because checks could be deposited directly into people's bank accounts. Digitization is used in India to make certain there is delivery of public services directly to each person. ...

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The progress of efforts to be inclusive as seen in the UC University of California system of colleges over 25 years has increased the representation of Hispanics to 36%, blacks marginally to 2.5%, and reduced the presence of white Americans to about 18%, while allowing Asians to increase representation to above 40%. As white communities declined with the outshoring of manufacturing the loss of income opportunities was accompanied with less access to education. In this sense it has created problems of negatively impacting non-minority access as it worked to solve a problem of minority representation. The other problem the Supreme Court noted in its decision to stop race based admission or affirmative action was its stereotyping students into groups not treating them with respect for individual character. The bigger problem that has emerged that now overshadows others in its effect on America is the poor access to college for white people particularly white men, over three decades in which manufacturing shipped overseas has destroyed the middle class incomes in manufacturing with whole manufacturing  based communities erased off the map of America. Restoring college opportunity for all Americans, including black people, and including the sons and daughters of generations of white Americans and settlers who built America is the task of this generation, so badly has it been eroded. ...

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The experience of Michael Winston, a former executive of Countrywide Financial. Winston acted as a whistleblower at Countrywide warning of the actions that led to crazy lending at the peak of the subprime mortgage boom. He was fired when Bank of America acquired Countrywide. He recently won a lawsuit for wrongful temination, the jury awarding him $3.8 million in damages.

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Russia invades Ukraine on multiple fronts, across Belarus, across its western border with Ukraine, on the pre dawn hours of February 24, 2022. Russian foreign minister Lavrov says "tense and detailed discussions" with US and NATO are still taking place. In talks with the US, president Putin of Russia had demanded that Ukraine commit to not joining NATO. The US insisted that this was upto Ukraine and that the territorial integrity of Ukraine had to be respected. Interventions by Macron of France and other leaders failed to bring the two sides closer. The US and Europe with a reluctant Germany looked at sanctions as a deterrent. This proved to be wrong. Mr. Putin has a passionate view of Ukraine and Kviv's historical role in the formation of the Russian state, evident in his televised address only 48 hours before the actual invasion. Ukraine has shifted between Poland and the Baltic states, Germany on one side and Russia on the other in its thousand year old history. The shift away from Bolsheviks and Communists under the Soviet Union after 1990 changed the relationship of Ukraine with its neighbors once again as Ukraine became closer to Poland and the Baltics, and Germany. Germany remains reluctant to revert to the relationship with Russia that led to 2 World Wars. During the leadership of Willy Brandt and successive German SPD leaders, as well as with Konrad Adenauer and CDU leaders, the goal was to build a good relationship with Russia. Merkel of the CDU went as far as accepting dependence on Russia for 40% of its gas supplies, after shifted out of nuclear energy and supporting a new Nordstream undersea pipeline for gas supplies.  The early reaction on DW.com and German television was one of shock as no one really expected that this would lead to a full scale invasion. Scholz of the SPD the new chancellor in 2022 was not active in forging anew consensus allowing NATO's Stoltenberg who is a former Norwegian prime minister 2005-2013 to frame the response of Europe. Norway's role in European security was marginal for most of the twentieth century. Other events had detracted from bringing active German and American participation in coming up with a framework of dialogue to address concerns of both sides and still build a common ground for peace- Afghanistan, the pandemic in its third year, China's deteriorating one sided trade relationship with America that hurt American workers and manufacturing. As a result China and Germany were essentially absent in building the framework for peace. Afghanistan hasty withdrawal made it harder for president Biden to come up with new approaches to build a common framework. President Macron made some faltering efforts on the fringes even as president Putin focused on the US response and its intentions with NATO on European soil, and declared that it was directly US Russia negotiations that needed to work. With this the whole framework of relations since the presidency of Reagan and the relations with Russia and China come to a close. And a new framework needs to be constructed that draws in India already or soon to be the most populous nation in the world, in an effort to build an enduring new framework. The voices of Eastern Europe need to be heard, yet balanced with the voices from India, China, Germany, Russia, and other countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa that are affected by world events. ...

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Germany's DW.com says in this report- "However, economists have pointed out that the US benefits from having large trade imbalances with the rest of the world, as the dollar is used in most trade, and offers major tailwind effects to the US economy." Which economists one must ask? Most of these economists had turned their back on the working people in factories in America, on their wages turned into a downward spiral, on their jobs, their factories lost for three decades. Today the American people have a sense of the true cost of this colossal failure to protect American workers and small towns across America depending on manufacturing. The pandemic exposed the risks of supply chain shocks and inflation by overly concentrating manufacturing in China.  The US has 1 trillion in trade deficits each year and it is completing the destruction of manufacturing in the US. Half of this is with China as China exports through Vietnam and Mexico, third countries, in addition to 295 billion dollars of trade imbalance the US has with China. China, Mexico, Canada and Vietnam are the largest offenders. No country can long endure with such a loss of its manufacturing base. The US Navy itself is in danger without the manufacturing to compete with China that has taken up over 50% of shipbuilding, and soon will not be able to protect the free world if these types of economists and self serving German or other foreign interests drive a false narrative. Without the US Navy in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans no one is safe, not Germany, not the EU, not India or the rest of the world. ...

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The difficulties the new U.S. Treasury Secretary faces as she tries to navigate the politics in Congress and the tries to reach out to moderates and progressives within the Democratic party. All have different views on spending, and where stimulus money should go in a second stimulus. Her long experience with the Fed is seen as not preparing her for the political role of evaluating different opinions that are described by some experts as ten times more political than anything going on in Fed meetings. As a student of Prof. Tobin Yellen sees government intervention as needed in times of economic crises. Twice in ten years the U.S. and the rest of the world has been struck by economic crises- the bank leveraging behaviours and poor lending practices that induced the 2009 financial crisis and in 2020 the coronavirus pandemic. Lessons learned Yellen says about the 2009 recession are that not enough stimulus was provided after the initial stimulus to get a strong enough recovery. Democrats are eager to spend over $2 trillion in a second stimulus. Republicans much less so particularly with a new president. Even under Mr. Trump spending was set at under $700 billion by Republicans for a second stimulus. Another economic crises is one of the U.S. strategic economic position in the world. On this issue of trade Yellen's husband George Akerloff, also a economist is more skeptical of the value of free trade. The failure of the World Trade Organization to ensure a level playing field as China subsidized key industries, and the loss of America's manufacturing advantage over three decades is now the defining issue in American politics. It takes the shape of manufacturing communities that were once a part of Democratic party support shifting away after devastated local economies from the loss of manufacturing plants to China. It takes the shape of a Republican party that is committed to bring back American manufacturing, and a Democratic party that under Biden is seeking the same result. How much each party will invest in terms of making things happen to get this done is one of the issues facing all parties, Congress, the administration, Ms. Yellen, and the new president. Economics does not have the answers. As economists could not have predicted the increase in women participation in the workforce, the drop in Black and Hispanic unemployment rates under the Trump administration. The lack of moral will to get trade to work for the American worker was more of an issue under Democratic and Republican administrations for the last 2 decades, so that issues of growing inequality were never better addressed by any party. It depended more on focus of the president elected to help American workers, and to avoid the cost and distraction of foreign wars when American interests could be protected in other ways. Yellen was not able to make a difference at the Fed because of these reasons and low interest rates have both helped and hurt the middle class, as low interest rates meant Americans were less able to accumulate savings for retirement since 2000. Determination and action counts for more than ideology or policy is the lesson learned in building strong economies and manufacturing.   ...

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Mills and Ottino point out that as in 1912 the U.S. is on the cusp of a revolution induced by new technologies on the horizon. Then it was electrification, automobiles, the telephone and radio. Now it is cloud computing (big data), smart manufacturing and wireless. Ottino is Dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University, Illinois. He describes the changes that smart manufacturing and new metal alloys can bring in manufacturing. America's unique advantages- its educational system, its open and youthful culture and better demographics, that position it to realize serious gains through technological change. Similiar advantages exist with educational systems and the spirit of innovation in Europe. On another dimension the huge increases in connectivity, cloud computing, and precise instantaneous language translation have the potential to bring closer the peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America, creating a sociological revolution on how people think and act across regional boundaries....

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The failures in Argentina's management of the economy recurring decade after decade for the last 50 years and with an historical trend, relate to the breakdown in the political process in the country, the failure of society to come to grips with the problems as one community with common interests when fighting inflation as we see in most nations including in the US, Europe and modernizing nations of Asia. As well as countries such as Brazil that have overcome their issues with inflation since the 1970's. The lack of industrialization in Argentina and Chile leaves the countries vulnerable to commodity exports. A bad harvest year can ruin the economy as no rainy day fund exists as was done in Russia after economic crises. Borrowing from the IMF leads to a cycle of repeat crises followed by IMF borrowings, austerity budgets such as Milei's when budgets can be corruption free, disciplined and efficient to begin with for a startand kept that way by the whole of society acting together under responsible political leaders. Asian nations learned from Europe and drafted their economic path, Latin America which is largely populated by emigrants from Europe has failed to do this. The differences are stark. Much of Asia experienced war and strife since the 1930's and the suffering created a dire need for good leadership and programs for modernization and infrastructure by all of society pulling together. In Latin America the failures of political parties across the spectrum has led to drugs entering the economic framework, leading to failed states in other ways, and large parts of Latin America are now affected by this problem. The results are that this affects the people of Europe and the US with illegal flows, a problem unprecedented in the history of the US since 1787.  ...

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When shortages of wheat following the war in Ukraine are causing a crisis in some countries such as Egypt and Africa, there are other unusual changes  as emerging market currencies such as the Brazilian Real and the Chilean Peso, South African Rand are increasing in value. Even with the strengthening of the US dollar the supply chain disruptions are benefiting exporters of soyabeans such as Brazil and Argentina, and copper such as Chile with strengthening of their currencies. The Brazilian Real has strengthened by 13%. The WSJ calls it the sharpest commodities rally in modern trading history. One analyst says this is unusual how emerging market currencies could rally in the first quarter of 2022 with war in Ukraine, supply chain disruption, strengthening dollar reaching almost parity with the euro.  Today this is a positive sign for the Free World in Latin America. Currencies weakening are ones in countries exposed to a sharply slowing Chinese economy and rising energy costs such as Thai Baht and South Korean Won.  Brazil's central bank is also increasing its lending rate to the highest level in 5 years. Other American allies in Eastern Europe such as Poland which has taken in 3 million Ukraine refugees are also seeing a strengthening currency in this new situation. The National Bank of Poland increased its key lending rate by three quarters of a point to 5.25% which has attracted investors to the Polish currency the Zloty. ...

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Controversy surrounding the $55.8 billion pay package for Elon Musk that was disapproved by a judge, and the behaviour of the Board of Directors at Tesla, is the subject of this exclusive report in the WSJ. A series of WSJ articles in recent months have shown that Musk is not the role model for American business or for the younger generation.  A parallel with can be seen in the contrast between Sergio Marchionne of Fiat Chrysler and Carlos Tavares, current CEO of Stellantis, which includes Chrysler and Peugeot, Fiat. WSJ coverage of Tavares as head of Stellantis, and running the company from his home in Lisbon, shows a respect for the dignity of workers, their health and worklife balance with very productive work turning out as many as 75  new electric car models by 2030 that was absent under the CEO Marchionne. Marchionne's constant travel and long hours, reported continuous smoking with unhealthy work and health habits took its toll. It set the wrong role model at the time for workers of Stellantis Chrysler and for business and the younger generation even as it received favorable reporting in the Harvard Business Review and other places. The same can be seen with Elon Musk with such reporting giving a glamorous image and much hype, yet as the Wall Street Journal in its reporting shows setting the wrong role model for business and the younger generation and the renewed future of America. ...

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Sidney Poitier accomplished a great deal for the cultural changes that happened since the fifties in race and attitudes in America and Europe, by portraying black people in brave and interesting roles. Here Germany's DW.com looks at Bahamian-American actor, film director, and civil rights activist Poitier in a European perspective. Poitier was born to parents from the Bahamas where he grew up, and lived with his brother in Miami at age 15. There he could barely read and learned reading from a Jewish waiter while doing dishes at a restaurant. DW.com says "In the Heat of the Night" remains one of the best films to deal with the issue of racism. Other Poitier films also took up the issue of racism from different angles to defuse prejudice. Critics said the black characters in his movies are always good hearted, strong, proud, but not showing human flaws. DW.com points out that Poitier would have preferred to also play different roles, but he wanted to contribute to the black community through his acting. Poitier had depth of talent and character. A quote on Arizona State University website for the film school named after Poitier shows his thirst for knowledge: "No one knows all there is to know. The task is to learn as much as you can about as much as you can."  Both Poitier and Belafonte who had backgrounds growing up in the West Indies in families struggling to make a living, never stopped learning. ...

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Overall America's Infrastructure gets only a C grade- but that is the best grade since 1998 so badly has the Nation's infrastructure been neglected under Clinton-Bush-Obama.  Bridges, broadband, drinking water systems, hazardous waste treatment, inland waterways, public parks and solid waste received grades of C+, C or C–, mediocre condition needs attention. Dams, levees, roads, schools and infrastructure for aviation, energy, storm water, transit and wastewater get grades of D+ or D, poor condition. Ports get a B, Rail gets a B- dropping a notch, and Energy get a D grade in this report on US infrastructure by the US Society of Civil Engineers. It comes out every four years. The shortfall in infrastructure spending- $3.7 trillion. This after the $1.2 trillion Biden Infrastructure bill made a real difference since 2021. Grades have improved on half of the 18 categories this report tracks. “Better infrastructure is an efficient investment of taxpayer dollars that results in a stronger economy and prioritizes American jobs.” Darren Olson, chair of the committee on infrastructure of the Society of Civil Engineers. "The investment levels that we saw under the last administration have really started to move the needle, and we’re looking forward to advancing that conversation as we move into this administration.”- Kristina Swallow, president of the Society of Civil Engineers ...

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Microsoft leaders for reasons of climate change action and aid to poor African and Latin American nations see the positives in Harris-Walz focus on investment in the future. A similar situation exists with JP Morgan Chase bank leaders. Intel and Ford Motor Company leaders see the Biden administration investment in American companies for stronger competition with Chinese or Taiwanese companies, and for climate change action by investing in EV industry technologies, in the same way. Overall cutting corporate taxes is not as big a priority for American business as government assistance and support to match the hidden subsidies Taiwan and China, South Korean governments give to their companies in Chips and EV's, other advanced technologies industries.

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Trade tensions and struggle for tech leadership with U.S. actions to prevent flow of sensitive technology to China affect Chinese investment in Silicon Valley. American companies are required to comply with new American laws preventing such flows to China of American technology. The Trump administration takes action in 2019 to restrict such flows in its trade dispute with China over trade surpluses China accumulated over 2 decades, and over China's plans in the document "Made in China 2025" for tech leadership based on continued access to American and European technologies. Trump does a U turn from the initial efforts of Clinton and later Obama to maintain such flows to a developing country that has brought hundreds of millions out of poverty through favorable trade with Europe and the U.S. "Made in China 2025" was seen as a loss of American leadership in key areas beginning with the current loss of leadership in 5G to Huawei. Chinese investments in Silicon Valley face higher regulatory scrutiny in this new environment and American companies shy away from Chinese capital. ...