October 16 2024

1. Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Record Low
2. Shale Revolution Propels U.S. to Global Energy Leader
3. Stellantis to Build Ram Pickups in Mexico
4. Trump Opens 20-Point Lead Over Harris in 2024 Betting Markets
5. U.S. Nuclear Revamp: $1.7 Trillion for Submarines, Bombers, and Warheads Amid Global Tensions
October 16 1859: John Brown’s insurrection at Harpers Ferry

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. Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Record Low

Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” similar to last year’s 32%. Americans’ trust in the media – such as newspapers, television and radio – first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year. For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.  

Article Source: Gallup

2. Shale Revolution Propels U.S. to Global Energy Leader

The Marcellus is just one of several such [shale] rock formations around America, from the oil-rich Bakken shale in Montana and North Dakota to the Permian basin, endowed with both oil and gas, in Texas and New Mexico. The revolution in tapping their hard-to-reach hydrocarbons got under way in the latter half of the 20th century as companies and government researchers worked to combine hydraulic fracturing, or fracking (the injection of specialised liquids to open cracks in rocks), and horizontal drilling. As they honed these techniques in the early 2000s, production surged. Now, America produces some 13m barrels per day of crude oil and 3bn cubic metres per day of natural gas, making it the world’s biggest producer of both. The economic effects have been far-reaching. Most obviously it has changed America’s trading relationship with the world. Long a major importer of oil, America’s need for foreign crude started to decline in 2008—just when its oil-shale fields really took off. By 2019 it was, for the first time in more than half a century, exporting more energy than it imported (although it produces more than it consumes domestically, it still imports vast quantities of oil because it needs some varieties only produced overseas). Last year America recorded a net energy surplus of about $65bn.  

Article Source: Economist

3. Stellantis to Build Ram Pickups in Mexico

Ram’s parent company is taking steps to build its bestselling truck in Mexico, a move that threatens to inflame the automaker’s frayed relationship with its workers’ union. Stellantis, which also houses Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler brands, is expanding its factory complex in northern Mexico to build Ram 1500 pickup trucks, according to people familiar with the matter. The company in recent years has made nearly all of its light-duty Ram pickups at a factory near Detroit.  The Mexico plans come about a year after Stellantis signed a landmark labor agreement with the United Auto Workers, granting union members a substantial pay hike and promising billions in U.S.-based investment. Analysts have said the contract, which the union called the richest in its history, would increase labor costs for Stellantis and its rivals, and could compel the companies to shift some factory work outside the country.  

Editor's Note: The trend of firms offshoring manufacturing to Mexico is increasingly replacing the previous pattern of relocating manufacturing to Asia, particularly China.

Article Source: WSJ

4. Trump Opens 20-Point Lead Over Harris in 2024 Betting Markets

Article Source: Polymarket

5. U.S. Nuclear Revamp: $1.7 Trillion for Submarines, Bombers, and Warheads Amid Global Tensions

To understand how America is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee’s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics. “Does anyone know why we’re here?” a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. “Um, because you’re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older,” she ventures. Adalie is correct. The U.S. Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards. The coursework — on this particular day, welding crackers together with Easy Cheese to create mini-submarines — is one small facet of the much bigger preparations America is making for a historic struggle with its nuclear rivals. With Russia at war, China escalating regional disputes and nations like North Korea and Iran expanding their nuclear programs, the United States is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years to revamp its own arsenal. The spending spree, which the government began planning in 2010, is underway in at least 23 states — nearly 50 if you include subcontractors. It follows a decades-long freeze on designing, building or testing new nuclear weapons. Along with the subs, the military is paying for a new fleet of bomber jets, land-based missiles and thermonuclear warheads. Tally all that spending, and the bill comes to almost $57 billion a year, or $108,000 per minute for three decades. Times Opinion spent six months traveling to cities and towns around the nation to discover how this modern Manhattan Project is coming together, interviewing more than 100 residents, workers, community leaders and federal officials. The portrait that emerged is a country that is being transformed — physically, financially and philosophically — by an unprecedented wave of nuclear revitalization. The effort is as flush with cash as it is rife with problems and delays: At least 20 major projects are already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. 

Article Source: NYT

October 16 1859 John Brown’s insurrection at Harpers Ferry

Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people and destroy the institution of slavery. In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against the proslavery forces in the contest over that territory. On May 21, 1856, proslavery men raided the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and Brown personally sought revenge. On May 25, Brown and his sons attacked three cabins along Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five men with broad swords and triggered a summer of guerrilla warfare in the troubled territory. One of Brown’s sons was killed in the fighting….On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and his band overran the arsenal. Some of his men rounded up a handful of hostages, including a few enslaved people. Word of the raid spread, and by morning Brown and his men were surrounded. A company of U.S. marines arrived on October 17, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart. On the morning of October 19, the soldiers overran Brown and his followers. Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons. The wounded Brown was tried by the state of Virginia for treason and murder, and he was found guilty on November 2. The 59-year-old abolitionist went to the gallows on December 2, 1859. Before his execution, he handed his guard a slip of paper that read, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

Sources

1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx

2. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2024/10/14/the-shale-revolution-helped-make-americas-economy-great

3. https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/stellantis-planning-to-make-ram-pickups-in-mexico-5f8b84ef?st=k27yKn&reflink=article_copyURL_share

4. https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024?tid=1729076434033

5. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/10/opinion/nuclear-weapons-us-price.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare