October 15 2024

1. Illegal Immigrant Labor Keeps Many Food Costs Down, Like Milk
2. Google Backs First U.S. Small Nuclear Reactors to Power AI Expansion
3. Senate Likely to Flip From Democrat to Republican
4. Wildlife Populations Plummet by “Catastrophic” 73% Over 50 Years: WWF
5. Israel Plans Limited Strike on Iranian Military Sites Amid Rising Tensions
October 15 1914: Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act

See the new Ad Astra Podcast! Released on Apple and Spotify around 10a CST.

Editors note: We’re still waiting on Israel’s retaliatory strike on Iran. It will come and when it does, we’ll cover it.

1. Illegal Immigrant Labor Keeps Many Food Costs Down, Like Milk

the price of everything in America has gone up except the price of milk. In the 1980s, a tractor cost him roughly $60,000, the federal minimum wage was $3.35 and his first hundred pounds of Class III milk — the kind used in making yogurt and cheese — sold to a processing plant for $12.24. Since then, many of his expenses have doubled or tripled. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Peter says, his costs soared, and they still haven’t come down. Fuel-tank fittings that cost him about $2,000 in 2014 now run $13,000. Mechanics who once charged $60 an hour now charge $95. Yet the farm value of milk has been dropping since the 1970s, if you adjust for inflation. For consumers picking up a gallon at the supermarket, this is a blessing. It’s the reason long-term inflation for store-bought milk is roughly half that of other foods in America. But for Peter, it’s a tragedy. When we talked this past spring, the selling price for a hundred pounds of Class III milk hovered around $15.50 — roughly $3 above where it was 40 years ago and a 55 percent drop in real value. Over the years, Peter and his family have found ways to manage the declining value of milk. They’ve built fences out of recycled oil pipes, used brewers waste for cow feed, rented fields to grow their own alfalfa. They hedge the price of milk in futures markets and purchase revenue insurance. But the biggest cost that they can control is the cost of labor. And the productivity of his dairy — and of almost every successful dairy in America — now depends overwhelmingly on immigrants. The Idaho Dairymen’s Association estimates that 89 percent of the state’s on-site dairy workers are foreign-born. Nationally the number may be closer to 51 percent, according to a survey published in 2015 by Texas A&M. And research by academics in New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont suggests that the majority of these immigrants are undocumented. Americans are understandably reluctant to perform dirty, dangerous and demanding work — what economists call 3-D jobs — as long as they have better alternatives. Unemployment in southern Idaho has averaged 3.4 percent for a decade; wages for entry-level workers on Peter’s farm are competitive with those for cashiers at fast-food franchises. He can’t pay much more, he insists, and still break even.

Article Source: NYT

2. Google Backs First U.S. Small Nuclear Reactors to Power AI Expansion

Google will back the construction of seven small nuclear-power reactors in the U.S., a first-of-its-kind deal that aims to help feed the tech company’s growing appetite for electricity to power AI and jump-start a U.S. nuclear revival. Under the deal’s terms, Google committed to buying power generated by seven reactors to be built by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power. The agreement targets adding 500 megawatts of nuclear power starting at the end of the decade, the companies said Monday.  The arrangement is the first that would underpin the commercial construction in the U.S. of small modular nuclear reactors. Many say the technology is the future of the domestic nuclear-power industry, potentially enabling faster and less costly construction by building smaller reactors instead of behemoth bespoke plants.

Article Source: WSJ

3. Senate Likely to Flip From Democrat to Republican

Control of the Senate appears likely to flip from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party this fall, as one of the nation’s most endangered Democrats, Senator Jon Tester of Montana, trails his Republican challenger in his bid for re-election, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College. Mr. Tester, who first won election to the Senate in 2006, is winning over moderate and independent voters and running far ahead of the Democrat at the top of the ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris. But as of now, that does not appear to be enough to survive in Montana, a conservative state where former President Donald J. Trump is ahead by 17 percentage points and where control of the Senate hangs in the balance. Tim Sheehy, a wealthy Republican businessman and a former Navy SEAL who has never held public office, leads Mr. Tester 52 percent to 44 percent, the poll shows. Mr. Sheehy’s lead is a seven-point advantage without rounding. Democrats currently hold a 51-seat Senate majority. But with Republicans already set to pick up a seat after the retirement of Senator Joe Manchin III, an independent from West Virginia who caucuses with Democrats, the party cannot afford to lose additional seats.

Article Source: NYT

4. Wildlife Populations Plummet by “Catastrophic” 73% Over 50 Years: WWF

Earth’s wildlife populations have fallen on average by a “catastrophic” rate of 73 percent in the past half-century, according to a new analysis the World Wildlife Fund released Wednesday. The WWF and the Zoological Society of London track 5,495 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles around the world through the Living Planet Index, and the database shows the extent to which human activity is decimating them. Freshwater populations fell by an average of 85 percent, according to the new Living Planet report, while terrestrial populations by 69 percent and marine populations by 56 percent in the five decades between 1970 and 2020.

Article Source: WaPo

5. Israel Plans Limited Strike on Iranian Military Sites Amid Rising Tensions

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Biden administration he is willing to strike military rather than oil or nuclear facilities in Iran, according to two officials familiar with the matter, suggesting a more limited counterstrike aimed at preventing a full-scale war.  In the two weeks since Iran’s latest missile barrage on Israel, its second direct attack in six months, the Middle East has braced for Israel’s promised response, fearing the two countries’ decades-long shadow war could explode into a head-on military confrontation. It comes at a politically fraught time for Washington, less than a month before the election; President Joe Biden has said publicly he would not support an Israeli strike on nuclear-related sites.  When Biden and Netanyahu spoke Wednesday — their first call in more than seven weeks after months of rising tensions between the two men — the prime minister said he was planning to target military infrastructure in Iran, according to a U.S. official and an official familiar with the matter. Like others in this story, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. The White House had no immediate comment. The Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement that “we listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest.” The retaliatory action would be calibrated to avoid the perception of “political interference in the U.S. elections,” the official familiar with the matter said, signaling Netanyahu’s understanding that the scope of the Israeli strike has the potential to reshape the presidential race. An Israeli strike on Iranian oil facilities could send energy prices soaring, analysts say, while an attack on the country’s nuclear research program could erase any remaining red lines governing Israel’s conflict with Tehran, triggering further escalation and risking a more direct U.S. military role. Netanyahu’s stated plan to go after military sites instead, as Israel did after Iran’s attack in April, was met with relief in Washington.  

Editors note: I am always skeptical of anonymous sourcing from the Washington Post, the newspaper of a capital city filled with many political agendas. Still, it might be true and is noteworthy.

Article Source: WaPo

October 15 1914: Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act

which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls “labor’s charter of freedom.” The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices which would effect a monopoly.

Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/magazine/milk-industry-undocumented-immigrants.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2. https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/google-nuclear-power-artificial-intelligence-87966624?st=wBTAiM&reflink=article_copyURL_share

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/us/politics/senate-polls-montana-florida-texas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/10/09/wildlife-populations-decline-wwf-report/

5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/14/israel-iran-strike-nuclear-oil-military/