We need to say some things about Donald Trump and his obedience to Vladimir Putin. We don’t know why he appears to be under Putin’s control. We don’t know if Putin has “kompromat” on Trump. We don’t know why Trump regularly calls Putin on the phone. We don’t know why he rolled out a real red carpet on the tarmac of an American Air Force base in Alaska last year and met him personally at his plane. We don’t know why their subsequent meeting lasted only three hours, when Trump’s flight to Alaska took six hours and Putin’s flight from Moscow took 12 hours with a stop to refuel. We still don’t know why Trump met with Putin at Helsinki with no note takers or even a U.S. translator present.

We most especially do not have any idea why Trump made an about face in his support for Ukraine this week and announced that he was relaxing sanctions that had been passed in the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act. Yesterday, Trump called helping Russia make money for its war on Ukraine “a very good decision.” We don’t know why Trump made a deal with Putin to release sanctions on Russian oil in exchange for a phony shipment of Russian diesel fuel that has not happened and probably will not happen and will have absolutely no effect on the price of diesel on world markets or at the pump in the U.S.

Donald Trump has access to the best intelligence in the world on Russia and Iran. Every time Iran launched a missile during Trump’s war, the U.S. knew the location from which it had been launched and what its trajectory was. Trump was told at the time Iran destroyed several billion-dollar radar installations and a U.S. intelligence surveillance aircraft on the ground in Saudi Arabia that the coordinates Iran was using for those targets had been supplied by Russia. Twelve American service members were seriously injured by the Iranian missiles.

Donald Trump knew exactly what would happen when Ukrainian access to the Starshield satellite network was slowed last week and in some cases along the front lines cut completely. He authorized the cut in access anyway. The resulting loss in satellite coverage caused significant Ukrainian military and civilian losses.

Trump knew when he sent his envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, to have a private, closed-door meeting with Putin on September 5 that they would discuss potential business deals that would involve the Trump Organization.

Let’s see what else Trump knows. He knows that in February of 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered a massive army of Russian soldiers to cross the border from Russia, Belarus, and Crimea into Ukraine in the largest military assault by one country on another since World War II. Trump knows that this was a violation of international law. Trump knows that at this moment, Russia occupies about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory.

What we don’t know is why Trump blames the war in Ukraine on Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russian soldiers occupy a huge swath of Eastern and Southeastern Ukraine, not to mention all of Crimea, which until 2014 was part of Ukraine.

Trump said last week that Putin “wants to make a deal” to end the war in Ukraine. He has said this over and over and over again. We do not know what he even means by a “deal” to end the war. If Putin wants to make a deal to end the war, why is he pounding Kyiv and Odessa and Kharkiv every night with hundreds of missiles and drones, killing dozens of Ukrainian civilians every time he does it?

Here is what we do know: Putin could pull his forces out of Ukraine. He could order his army to stand down and stop firing their weapons and get in their vehicles and drive east and north across the Russian border, and south into Crimea, and that would end the war. A similar act by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy would not end the war. If the Ukrainian military stood down and abandoned its defenses along the front lines, Russia’s military would move forward and take more Ukrainian territory until Russia occupies the entire country. That is not an end to a war. It is a capitulation to the dictator who started the war in the first place.

After nearly four years of war in Ukraine, why is Putin continuing to prosecute this war? According to figures from western military sources, Putin’s army suffered 50,000 casualties in September. 28,000 soldiers were killed. Russia lost 68 tanks that month; 207 armored personnel carriers; 12,000 military wheeled vehicles including fuel trucks. Putin’s draft and mandatory conscription can replace only 30,000 newly trained soldiers per month. His ability to replace tanks and other military vehicles is unknown, but as losses mount, it must be getting harder.

September was the worse month in the war for Putin and the Russian army. Is Trump signaling to him that he will stand by Putin and Russia in their war on Ukraine? From the outside, it certainly seems so. Why is Trump doing this for Putin when he knows that Russia has long been allied with Iran including during the war Trump started on Iran? Trump is including Russia in the Group of 20 meeting that will take place at his Doral Golf Club in Miami. That is how friendly Trump and Putin are.

Why is this happening? Despite the fact that Ukraine is not a member of NATO, Zelenskyy and his country have the support of every country in the Atlantic alliance. It is known that Russia has conducted cyber attacks on European nations and sent drones into airspace near airports in Eastern Europe. All these actions by Russia are considered acts of aggression by European nations.

Why doesn’t any of this matter to the President of the United States? Is his friendship with the Russian dictator more important to him than the U.S. defensive alliance with the friendly countries of Europe that are some of our largest trading partners? Is he afraid of Vladimir Putin for some reason that we do not know?

Trump’s friend Vladimir Putin, whom he will personally welcome to his Doral Golf Club in December, probably with another red carpet, helped Iran destroy 81 U.S. aircraft and drones during Trump’s war, according to the Congressional Research Service. Has Donald Trump lost his mind, or is he finally showing himself to be a traitor to the country he was elected to lead? Why are Republicans in the House and Senate, with very few exceptions, continuing to stand by this man who is clearly a threat to our economy and national security?

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I am resting up for next week, assisted by Tracy and various cats and Ruby.

This week was a tough one. Beating Trump and his enablers in two weeks became ten times as important, with him turning his back on Ukraine, embracing Putin, and repeating what has to be his biggest lie yet — that Ukraine is responsible for high gas and diesel prices, not his utterly senseless war on Iran.

He is beneath contempt. Vote. Pound them on Tuesday November 3.

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Moving towards November is affecting more than the elections. The seasonal changeover from gasoline refining to home heating will be transferring the high cost of oil fuel to home heating.

Already, the prospective rise – massive in some areas of the Northeast – has emerged as an elections issue in the Maine senatorial race with harsh words for Sen. Susan Collins from Democratic opponent Troy Jackson.

An Axios analysis finds prices jumping at least $2 per gallon for home heating oil over this time in 2025 from around $2.50 to $4.63 now, and projected to cross the $6 per gallon price by deep winter.  Families that heat with oil could pay about 50% more this winter than last, according to  from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), up from its 31.3% projection in mid-September.

The average cost of heating a home with oil is expected to rise by about $878, costing over $2,600 this winter.

The reasons are the same as those for price hikes for  gasoline at the pump – wars in the Middle East, and to a lesser extent, between Ukraine and Russia, which has depressed global output.

By comparison, the Energy Information Administration’s Winter Fuels Outlook  projects electricity bills will rise 4% nationally, while natural gas bills will fall 9% and propane spending will drop 3%. EIA expects a smaller increase on heating oil than NEADA, projecting a 21% increase in household expenditures.

Hitting the Northeast

More than 80 percent of home heating oil is consumed in the Northeast, where some states lack robust natural gas pipelines, according to NEADA data. Overall, about  3% of U.S. households use oil as their primary heat source, compared to about 45% using natural gas and 43% using electricity, EIA’s report says.

Global oil markets have been struck by the distribution patterns through the Strait of Hormuz and now through the Red Sea, where Houthis are battling with Saudis. Refinery activity has declined in Iran, the result of U.S. embargoes on Iranian oil export.

As a practical matter, some families will cut back on other expenses or turn the heat down to potentially unsafe levels to cover their bills. There will be pressure on states to offer aid for heating oil or look at requiring utilities to offer discounts, affordability programs or winter shutoff protections. Those generally have not applied to independent heating-oil dealers.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey declared a State of Energy Emergency over rising winter energy costs, unlocking nearly $150 million in relief and expanding assistance to middle-class households that heat with oil. Rhode Island has also declared an energy affordability emergency and directed $28 million in reserves toward winter electric-bill relief, and Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced $40 million in automatically applied electricity discounts for low-income residents.

Of course, the  energy affordability issues are compounded by the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.  The administration fired LIHEAP’s federal staff at the Department of Health and Human Services in April 2025 and proposed eliminating funding for the program.

LIHEAP is still running, but state administrators are operating without dedicated federal staff.

The White House has  HHS, which said it “will carry out its responsibilities for funding Congress has made available” and that “HHS has the staff and capacity to distribute these funds in a timely manner.”

Photo: Kelly via Pexels

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The post Next Hurdle: Home Heating Oil appeared first on DCReport.org.

See if you can follow this one: What does Katie Zacharia’s husband Tyler have to do with the CIA guy who was arrested with 303 gold bars under his bed and $2 million in cash and 35 gold Rolexes and Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg and Jeffrey Epstein?

Poor Tyler would have retained the relative obscurity of being just another guy in “the entertainment business” out in Los Angeles if his wife hadn’t tanked so badly on her first day of being Trump’s latest blonde press secretary. He didn’t have that luck, however. Almost immediately, it emerged that while Tyler and Katie were over in China, he was working for Schulze Global Investments, which it turned out had made a series of loans to North Korean companies during Tyler’s tenure at the firm, although “published reporting does not connect Zacharia personally to those transactions,” as Newsweek put it gently in a story that came out yesterday. Tyler is now working for something called 2521 Entertainment, where his bio notes that he “helped build teams” in North Korea while working in China.

Man, that’s something to have on your CV, isn’t it? Helping to fund mining in North Korea? It gets better. In 2018, Cerberus Capital Management, founded by the aforementioned Steve Feinberg, acquired SGI Frontier Capital, the firm that Schulze Global turned itself into. Readers with sharp memories for scandal will recall Feinberg from his multiple appearances in the Epstein files, along with his firm Cerberus, which appears in no less than 360 Epstein files in relation to helping to fund Epstein enterprises with guarantees by Deutsche Bank, which of course was Donald Trump’s lender of last resort before he ran for president in 2016. Elizabeth Warren is currently involved in probing the connections between Epstein’s money movements and major banks, including Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase.

Nice group of thieves to get mentioned with, huh? JP Morgan Chase paid $290 million to a group of Epstein survivors who alleged that the bank had ignored multiple red flags in Epstein money transfers that may have been linked to his sex trafficking activities.

Feinberg, veteran of the Epstein files, was on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in Trump’s first term, where he apparently met the 303 gold bar guy, David Rush, who was a CIA agent involved in the agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology, which Feinberg allegedly took a “special interest” in.

When Feinberg moved into his Pentagon office, one of the first things he did was recommend old Gold Bar Rush as a liaison between the Pentagon and the CIA for “sensitive maritime programs including those involving nuclear submarines,” according to NBC News. Feinberg sought to include 303 gold bar Rush in “an even broader collaboration” between the CIA and the Pentagon, according to sources “familiar with the investigation” into Rush.

Because of course Rush and his 303 gold bars and Rolexes and two million dollars and what he did to acquire all that is now the subject of an FBI investigation. Among those interviewed by the FBI is our friend Deputy Secretary Feinberg, he of the Epstein files appearances and connections to North Korea through the investment firm he took over and made part of Cerberus. Which he of course divested himself of and put into a trust that is run by his two sons. If that sounds like a carbon copy of Trump’s relationship to his “former” firm, the Trump Organization, that is because it is.

Feinberg is the Deputy Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon whose job put him in charge of maintaining our stocks of all kinds of weapons that we wasted in Trump’s war on Iran, which has now sputtered out because we don’t have enough bombs and missiles left to wage war on Iran.

Except, breaking news! Feinberg is off the hook for not keeping track of our weapons stockpile! It was revealed today that Trump is considering using the Mother of All Bombs on Iran after the midterm elections are over, meaning that we apparently still have a few of the big, big bombs. The MOAB, which actually stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, weighs about 30,000 pounds and contains 20,000 pounds of high explosive materials. The thing has a blast radius of about a mile. Trump told Newsmax yesterday that he is considering using the weapon, which he described as “like a tiny nuclear bomb.” “I wouldn’t use nuclear,” Trump explained. “We don’t have to.”

Meanwhile, more scandals percolated. Alina Habba – remember her? She was Trump’s personal lawyer in a slew of lawsuits, some of which she got sanctioned and fined for. Trump tried to appoint her as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey and was shot down by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Habba recently got married to Turhan Mildon, who is described as “a Turkish investor.” This week, Habba “stormed into the Oval Office,” according to the New York Times, and told Trump that his former director of national intelligence and former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, had absconded with about $6 million that her husband had given to Grenell for the Kennedy Center, of which he was executive director. That wasn’t all. Grenell and Habba’s new husband, Mildon, had been at each other’s throats over carving up the goodies in Venezuela left behind after Trump kidnapped President Maduro and declared that all the oil in the country was now “controlled by” the United States, which apparently included Grenell and somehow, Turkish investor and Habba husband Mildon, who was thinking that he wasn’t getting his share.

Trump, who assigned the White House counsel, Will Scharf, to sort out the dispute between Grenell and Habba husband Mildon, was kept busy today denying that it was him who ordered Starshield to be slowed down in Ukraine, causing the country’s defenses against Russian drones to be crippled. Trump said it was Musk who did it. Musk said it was Trump. Then Trump said neither of them did it.

Oh, almost forgot. Paolo Zampolli, the so-called “model agent” who was said to have introduced Melania to Donald Trump, but was allegedly bearding their mutual pal, Jeffrey Epstein in that regard, was fired this week by the State Department from his job as U.S. Representative for Global Partnerships, which allegedly had to do with “cultural diplomacy,” whatever the hell that is, because of his corrupt deals in the Balkans, including with the one Balkan country left that is allied with — you guessed it — Russia.

So, Russia and money and North Korea and money and bank connections to sex trafficking and Epstein…will they never stop? With the grifting? The lying? Isn’t there anyone that Donald Trump could hire who isn’t dirty up to his eyeballs with thievery and bank scams and gold bars and gold Rolexes?

They had better start warming up the Autopen at the White House. Trump isn’t even going to be able to see over the top of the stack of pardons that lands on his desk come 2028, when everybody is headed for their Gulfstreams and beach condos in the Bahamas.

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If you’ve been following the news AT ALL these past several months, you should be aware that the Democratic Socialists of America are the new Most Dangerous And Evil Threat To Ever Exist.™

They’re the new Antifa. The new Muslim sleeper cells. The new immigrant caravan. The new CRT and DEI and groomers all rolled into one.

They’re…SOCIALISTS! It’s right there in the name! And everyone knows that socialism is the same thing as communism! And communism means Transgender surgery for everyone! And abortion up to six months after a baby is born! And men enslaved by women! Cats and dogs living together and then being eaten by Those People! Or…something. It’s not really clear what the right thinks socialism actually is, but they’re scared of it, goshdarnit!

Out in Los Angeles, the local DSA chapter decided to lean into this mass hysteria and have some fun at the expense of the pearl-clutching MAGA nitwits. They cut what has to be one of the most brilliant ads I’ve ever seen for Angela Gonzales-Torres, the DSA candidate running for California’s 34th congressional district. The ad features comedian Anna Garcia and, well, you just have to see it for yourself. Take special note of the books on the bookshelf (and the book our hapless victim is reading in bed). Chef’s kiss for attention to detail. 😆😆😆

If that sent a spooooky tingle down your spine, or you’re too busy giggling to be terrified of the dreaded socialism, now is probably a good time to interrupt this article and tell you about my month-long 50% off Spooky Season Sale! For just $50 $25, you can support this newsletter and the work I put into it for an entire year!

If subscriptions aren’t your thing, you can leave a one-time PayPal or Venmo tip instead! Now, back to the unceasing terror of the article. BOO!

Gonzales-Torres is, unfortunately, not running against a Republican in California. They have what is known as a “jungle primary,” meaning the top two vote-getters square off, even if they’re from the same party. That means Gonzales-Torres is running against incumbent Jimmy Gomez. It’s a tight race, with AGT (I can’t keep typing that out, sorry 😉) ahead by about three points as of this writing. So…good luck? Whoever wins, it won’t be a Republican, so it’s a net positive for California.

Aside from being entertaining, what really grabbed my attention about this ad is how spot-on it is. The fearmongering by the right and the legacy press has been impressive. And by “impressive” I mean “completely over-the-top batshit insane.” Seriously, look at this shit from Newsweek:

This is not a rational reaction to people asking for affordable housing and healthcare. School breakfast and lunches so kids don’t go hungry. A living wage in the richest nation in the world. Safe food and water and medicine. Taxing billionaires. Let me know when I get to the radical extreme stuff here.

Literally nothing I’ve listed is outside of the mainstream. Even a majority of Republicans support this stuff if you present it in any way that doesn’t connect it to Democrats. Republicans love the Affordable Care Act. They HATE HATE HATE Obamacare.1

I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say the right has been trying to fearmonger on wild, crazy, extreme positions like, “people shouldn’t be homeless.” There is a thing among the more warped Republicans where they talk about how empathy is a sickness to be eliminated. So much for the party of Jesus, right?

Let me drive this point home. This is an actual graphic they showed and insisted the agenda on display was pure lunacy:

My god…the horror…the horror! What would people do if solar power lowered their energy bill? What would they do if the rich paid the same tax rates they paid in the 1950s? How will America survive if we worked eight hours less every week but were still paid the same salary by companies posting record profits every year?! It would be the end of life as we know it!

Which, of course, is the point AND the problem.

It would end life as we know it. A life where a single accident or illness can leave you bankrupt and homeless. Where the rich accumulate an ever-increasing amount of our wealth while telling us we have to work longer hours to feed their endless greed. Where our utilities get more expensive by the month so Silicon Valley can power the data centers they promise will either take our jobs or simply end all human life.

All of these are policy choices, and no one has to live like this. We can choose not to. It would be very easy to change it all, and that is what terrifies Republicans and their billionaire masters and their media puppets more than anything else. It’s why they went to war against Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who made simple but far-reaching changes in NYC that have vastly improved lives for millions of average New Yorkers. Why they burned Joe Biden to the ground after his economic policies pulled us out of the Covid recession and built the strongest economy in the world, expanded unions, and threatened to return power to the workers.

It’s why they view Democratic Socialism with exactly the kind of mind-numbing fear the ad pokes fun at. Not because it will lead to COMMUNISM!!!,2 but because it can and will lead to the future Republicans are afraid of. A future where the rich are not special. Where white men have no special privileges. Not because they are oppressed, but because no one else is. No one is crushed under poverty or systemic racism or deprived of opportunity. A future where everyone can thrive regardless of what zip code they were born in. A future where even the least of us can be safe because life is not a zero-sum contest, requiring my success to come at the expense of yours.

Imagine seeing that kind of future and being so afraid of it that you would rather burn the entire country to ashes. That says a lot about who you are as a person, and all of it is bad. But for the rest of us? Sounds pretty fucking good.

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Global population is expected to keep rising for the next 50-60 years, because it will take awhile for the demographic force of declining birthrates to overcome the life expectancies. In addition, the world still has lots of very poor people: for example, about 800 million people around the world live below the World Bank extreme poverty line of $3/day, and of course hundreds of millions more are not far above that line. With a rising world population, and one where we hope the standard of living for the poorest will be rising, more food production will be needed. So how is the world doing in this area?

The Global Agricultural Productivity initiative at Virgina Tech University,tackles the big questions of global agricultural productivity in the 2026 GAP Report, Restarting Growth: The Role of Regenerative Agriculture in Productivity Growth and Profitability, with a team effort led by Chellie Maples. Here’s a picture to set the stage:

Growth in total agricultural output can come from several sources: more land, more irrigation, more intensive use of inputs (labor, materials, and capital), and increased productivity given the same amounts of land, irrigation, and inputs (say, from improved farming practices, better weather information, improved seeds, and so on). To do these calculations, gains in agricultural output that cannot be attributed to measurable factors like land, irrigation, and inputs are then ascribed to productivity gains.

In the 1960s, most growth of agriculture came from more intensive use of inputs. By the 1990s and early 2000s, most of the growth of agricultural output was coming from producitvity gains, with very little coming from land expansion or additional inputs. But since about 2011, growth of agricultural output has slumped. Productivity gains are way down, although expansion of land and inputs have made up some of the difference. In a nutshell, this is global challenge of finding ecologically-sound ways of increasing agricultural output.

Of course, these factors vary by region. But even in the areas with relatively rapid growth in agricultural output, that growth is being driven by additional inputs (like South Asia) or by additional land (sub-Saharan Africa).

Part of the answer here is to improve productivity growth in agriculture, especially in the regions where economic and population growth are creating stresses on the food supply. I’ve argued in the past for a rise in global R&D spending in agriculture, especially focused on lower-income areas of the world. (Also, here’s a look at the long-term prospects for agricultural productivity growth from about 25 years back by Vernon Ruttan, a preeminent agricultural economist.)

The particular focus of this year’s GAP report is on “regenerative agriculture,” defined as “a set of contextually appropriate farming and management practices and tools oriented toward improving soil and ecosystem health as a primary goal, with enhanced biodiversity, watershed function, and resilience as downstream benefits. Which practices qualify depends on local soil, climate, and production system conditions. This definition aligns practices, principles, and outcomes, centering ecosystem health as the mechanism through which broader gains are achieved.” In my own mind, this focus starts from the hard fact that additional inputs and land are driving growth of total agricultural output, recognizes that expanding agriculture to marginal and heavily fertilized land will have environmental tradeoffs, and then uses this lens to think about productivity gains that could minimize these environmental consequences. The possibilities in this area seem real, but the report is forthright in noting:

Regenerative agriculture (RA) has drawn growing attention, in part because its practices target the input use and natural capital depletion that the current output growth model largely depends on. Yet the potential contribution of RA practices to TFP [total factor productivity] growth has, thus far, only been a conceptual claim rather than an empirical finding. No study in the current literature directly measures changes in TFP growth attributable to RA. attention, in part because its practices target the input use and natural capital depletion that the current output growth model largely depends on. Yet the potential contribution of RA practices to TFP growth has, thus far, only been a conceptual claim rather than an empirical finding. No study in the current literature directly measures changes in TFP growth attributable to RA.

The post How to Keep Global Agricultural Output Rising first appeared on Conversable Economist.