EnviroPolitics Blog

Philly area law firms rake in millions in PPP cash

By Erin Arvedlund, Jacob Adelman and Chris A. Williams Philadelphia Inquirer

Law firms are the Philadelphia region’s biggest recipients of cash from the Paycheck Protection Program, which is aimed at helping small businesses through the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 2,100 of the loans in the region went to law offices in Philadelphia and surrounding Pennsylvania and South Jersey counties, comprising at least $228 million, according to an Inquirer analysis of data released this week by the Trump administration. Of the total, 426 law firms borrowed more than $150,000 each.

Among business sectors, the legal profession was followed by about 2,600 restaurant firms that borrowed $220 million across the eight-county region .

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The gap between the legal business and others was most pronounced in Philadelphia, where law firms took in $110 million, compared with $75 million for the restaurant sector.

Although there is some dispute about the accuracy of the job-retention figures, the numbers released by the Trump administration for the $660 billion national program suggest that taxpayer funding saved far more jobs in the Philadelphia area by helping restaurants than law firms.

Marcus Stanley, policy director for Americans for Financial Reform, a left-leaning nonprofit based in Washington, said he was not surprised to see restaurants as big recipients because of how badly they were affected by the pandemic.

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Unlike cooks and waiters, however, many employees at law offices can work remotely, so those businesses wouldn’t seem to have needed as much public support to stay afloat, said Stanley, whose group advocates for tighter financial regulations.

“This money is intended for businesses to maintain the wages of their workers, so we need oversight and information from the people handing out that money,” he said.

Paycheck Protection Program loans can be forgiven if at least 60% of the money is used on payroll. Even if a firm chooses to spend the money on other than job retention, the loans remain a very good deal: Interest was set at only 1 percent.

Under the rules, only businesses with as many as 500 employees could apply. Moreover, the rules specified that a maximum of $100,000 of program money could be used to pay any one employee.

Two firms applied for the maximum amount, between $5 million and $10 million. (The Treasury Department provided only ranges, and not specific amounts for recipients it named). They were White and Williams, based in Philadelphia; and Archer, headquartered in Haddonfield.

The White and Williams firm said the loan money helped it retain more than 400 jobs, while Archer said it kept 330 jobs.

Andrea Malone, chief marketing officer at White and Williams, said in an e-mail that the money permitted the firm to “work seamlessly and without interruption in the service of our clients.”

“White and Williams, like many businesses across the country, has been negatively impacted by COVID-19. In the face of such economic uncertainty, the PPP loan enabled us to retain and pay employees as well as rent and utilities,” she said.

Community Legal Services, the nonprofit that helps those too poor to afford a lawyer, received a loan, borrowing an amount between $1 million and $2 million.

Another nonprofit recipient was the Law School Admission Council, which received a loan of between $5 million and $10 million. The company administers the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT, for admission to law school. The Newtown company left blank the number of jobs retained.

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Stradley Ronon chairman William Sasso said the firm is using its loan money on “exactly what it’s meant for, to keep our employees employed. We used it mostly for payroll, and that’s all I can say right now. We’re pretty good about keeping all our people.”

The Center City law firm listed itself as retaining 268 jobs after applying for a loan of between $2 million and $5 million.

Among other law firms that received loans of between $2 million and $5 million were Bennett Bricklin & Saltzburg; Chartwell Law Offices; Cohen Seglias Pallas Greenhall; Dilworth Paxson; Flaster Greenberg; Klehr Harrison; and Kline & Specter.

Also, KML Law Group; Marks O’Neill; Margolis Edelstein; Mid-Atlantic Solutions; Mintzer Sarowitz; Obermayer Rebmann; Post and Schell; Rawle & Henderson; Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis; and Weber Gallagher Simpson Stapleton Fires & Newby.

Philadelphia follows the national trend of law firms applying for PPP money. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that 45 top law firms in the United States got at least $210 million in PPP loans, including the firms of David Boies; Marc Kasowitz, a longtime Trump lawyer; class-action firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein; and securities law firm Labaton Sucharow.

The data weren’t perfect, and some lawyers disputed the figures.

At least one Philadelphia law firm, Zarwin Baum, said the government shared inaccurate data about its loan. Zarwin Baum was listed as receiving between $1 million to $2 million while retaining no jobs. In fact, the firm kept nearly all of its employees through the crisis, Zarwin Baum marketing director Valerie Burns said.

The data, released on Monday, provided the most detailed picture to date on the businesses and industries that received funding from the program, which lawmakers passed in haste this spring to help companies survive the pandemic.

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The lives upended around a $20 cheeseburger

A cash-strapped rancher, a virus-stricken meatpacker, an underpaid chef, a hungry engineer: The journey of a single burger during a pandemic

Maximiliano Solano grills burgers at Le Diplomate. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)

By Jessica Contrera The Washington Post

Before the pandemic, the most popular French bistro in the nation’s capital didn’t offer to-go orders. Le Diplomate was the kind of place where reservations were bragging rights, special occasions were nightly occurrences and a double-patty cheeseburger was a $20 menu item, the Burger Américain. Since April, the restaurant has gone through more than 3,500 pounds of beef to meet the demand for the burger, sometimes selling 450 of them in a day — the equivalent of almost a burger a minute. When the mayor declared in late May that Le Diplomate could serve diners again, first at tables six feet apart outside and then, in June, at a reduced capacity inside, the to-go burger orders kept coming.

The burger met Maximiliano Solano in the middle of its journey. Solano plucked it from a chilled drawer and plunked it onto a griddle. He breathed in its greasy smoke through his now-mandated mask. He sprinkled it with salt using a gloved hand. He had made dozens of burgers already on a Friday evening and had hundreds more to go. This part of the burger’s story hadn’t changed. Fat bubbled. Edges crisped. It was going to be delicious.

But for months, the burger had been traveling through a complex supply chain crippled by the novel coronavirus. Now it was about to end up in a takeout box.

Solano pressed the patty with the back of his spatula and watched it ooze. This particular burger was on its way to an engineer who’d just finished another day of working from home — an option Solano and his nearly 200 laid-off co-workers never had. Instead, the 26-year-old took a pay cut and a demotion from sous chef to line cook just to be one of the few dozen employees able to return to Le Diplomate’s kitchen.

On the burger’s journey from a Kansas farm to the engineer’s dinner plate, every person had a story like Solano’s. A rancher with five children who lost thousands every week. A factory worker who brought the virus home to her son. A courier who calculated the true cost of every delivery not in profit, but in the risk it required her to take.

To follow the burger is to glimpse the lasting toll of this pandemic: on the beef supply chain, on the restaurant industry, on the people who were struggling before this catastrophe began, kept going to work throughout it and are still waiting to see what their lives will become when it ends.

Solano tucked the spatula under the patty. It spiraled into the air, one moment closer to a destiny that was set in motion two years ago.Cattle commingle at Tiffany Cattle Co. in Herington, Kan. (Christopher Smith for The Washington Post)

Before the burger was a burger, or a slab of beef, or an animal that mooed, there was a frozen plastic straw of sperm on a sprawling pasture outside of Eureka, Kan. Matt Perrier thawed it in a water bath for 45 seconds and examined the cow that would become a mother.

His great-grandfather bred cattle starting in 1904, then his grandfather and his father took over the ranch, and in the spring of 2018, Perrier was carrying on the family business. Science had transformed the breeding process, but the result was just the same:

The arrival nine months later of a Black Angus calf, weighing as much as an 8-year-old child.

The calf grew fast, but not fast enough to become one of the bulls (a father, in cattle-speak) that Perrier, 46, sells to other ranchers who are breeding their own herds. Instead, the calf would become a steer, and then, dinner. And though the supply chain leading to Le Diplomate is really more of a supply web, with each burger composed of multiple cuts of meat from multiple parts of the country, one thread leads back to the place where Perrier’s steers often ended up: Tiffany Cattle Co.

Tiffany Cattle Co. co-owners Shane, left, and Shawn Tiffany. ABOVE: Travis Burns and Seth Bieler move Tiffany cattle to a truck to be transported for processing at National Beef. (Photos by Christopher Smith for The Washington Post)

Some 60,000 cattle come to the Tiffany ranch every year to “finish,” to eat and drink and grow for four to six months until they are ready for their grisly end. This particular hoofed purgatory is for what co-owner Shawn Tiffany calls “white tablecloth” cattle — beef that ends up with pricey stickers on grocery store shelves, or on plates at expensive restaurants like Le Diplomate.

The steer arrived in the fall of 2019, riding on a truck with around 60 of his 700-pound-and-growing brethren. The ranch, built on a World War II-era base for Army Air Corps bombers, was a destination for top-dollar cattle from across the country.

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Air Quality Health Advisory Issued for NYC and Long Island

In Effect for Sunday, July 5, 2020

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos and State Department of Health (DOH) Commissioner Howard Zucker, M.D., J.D. issued an Air Quality Health Advisory for the areas of Long Island and New York City Metro for Sunday, July 5, 2020.

The pollutant of concern is: Ozone

The advisory will be in effect 11 a.m. through 11 p.m.

DEC and DOH issue Air Quality Health Advisories when DEC meteorologists predict levels of pollution, either ozone or fine particulate matter are expected to exceed an Air Quality Index (AQI) value of 100. The AQI was created as an easy way to correlate levels of different pollutants to one scale, with a higher AQI value indicating a greater health concern.

Summer heat can lead to the formation of ground-level ozone, a major component of photochemical smog. Automobile exhaust and out-of-state emission sources are the primary sources of ground-level ozone and are the most serious air pollution problems in the northeast. This surface pollutant should not be confused with the protective layer of ozone in the upper atmosphere.

People, especially young children, those who exercise outdoors, those involved in vigorous outdoor work and those who have respiratory disease (such as asthma) should consider limiting strenuous outdoor physical activity when ozone levels are the highest (generally afternoon to early evening). When outdoor levels of ozone are elevated, going indoors will usually reduce your exposure. Individuals experiencing symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest pain or coughing should consider consulting their doctor.

Ozone levels generally decrease at night and can be minimized during daylight hours by curtailment of automobile travel and the use of public transportation where available.

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Chesapeake Energy’s Mighty Fall

Chesapeake Energy was a fracking pioneer on a meteoric rise. Last week, it fell to Earth.

Peter Dykstra reports for Environmental Health News

Historians generally place the invention of fracking in a gas field in southwestern Kansas in 1947.

It remained largely a novelty until the late 1980’s, when a petroleum geologist named George Mitchell found a cost-efficient way to shatter shale rock with a high-pressure mix of water, sand, and chemicals, collecting the oil or gas released in the “fracturing.”

Aubrey McClendon co-founded Chesapeake Energy in 1989, just in time to see natural gas prices begin a steady growth pattern.

They fracked shale patches from Texas to Pennsylvania. By the early 2010’s, McClendon was a billionaire, and Chesapeake had cracked the Fortune 500.

Big Oil titans and small operators alike loved fracking. It changed the face of the oil and gas industry. Power plants run on fracked natural gas ran cheaper than coal or nuclear plants. This dealt what may turn out to be mortal blows to both coal and nuke energy in the U.S.

But who else loved fracking? Many environmentalists embraced fracked natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to cleaner energy—far from ideal, but better than dirty coal or petroleum. The Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign took $25 million from fracking companies and executives, much of it from McClendon and Chesapeake, who were happy to have the venerable environmental group as an unwitting wing man in kneecapping a competing industry.

When the donations were exposed, Sierra cut ties with McLendon et al., but they kept the $25 million.

The “bridge fuel” increasingly was infested with trolls: Shady land deals, the environmental harm, an alarming increase in earthquakes in faultless Oklahoma, and more.

But oh, how the money rolled in. Fracking, in a word, flourished. The U.S. arguably achieved its coveted status as a net energy exporter. The industry was worth trillions.

Already a high-roller, Aubrey McClendon was made for the part of tycoon. He led a team of investors who bought the Seattle SuperSonics and moved the team to Oklahoma City in 2008, where the newly-named Thunder play in Chesapeake Energy Arena.

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Hotter summers, milder winters hitting northeast states

Connecticut is one of the fastest-warming states in the contiguous United States. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images — Connecticut is one of the fastest-warming states in the contiguous United States.

Rhode Island was the first state in the lower 48 whose average annual temperature warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius since 1895. Then New Jersey hit that threshold, which global leaders aim to keep the planet’s warming from exceeding. Next was Connecticut, then Maine and Massachusetts. But why is the Northeastern United States warming faster than the rest of the country? Climate scientists don’t fully understand this trend, but they offer an array of explanations.

Abby Weiss reports for Inside Climate News

As a kid growing up in Watertown, Connecticut, Daniel Esty would create his own backyard ice skating rink and flood it with a garden hose. Now, when Esty tries to create an ice rink with his own children in their backyard in nearby Cheshire, the water rarely freezes.

Only a few days in recent winters have been cold enough to produce ice adequate for skating, said Esty, a Yale University environmental law professor. Having lived in Connecticut his whole life, he has witnessed the growing impact of global warming in the Northeast.

“I think all of us who’ve been living in New England see changes that suggest that we’re in a warming cycle, and that of course, is worrisome,” said Esty, who served as commissioner of the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2011 to 2014.

Connecticut is one of the fastest-warming states, in the fastest warming region, in the contiguous United States. An analysis last year by The Washington Post found that neighboring Rhode Island was the first state among the lower 48 whose average annual temperature had warmed more than 2 degrees Celsius since 1895. New Jersey was second, the Post found, followed by Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts.

The Post analysis also found that the New York City area, including Long Island and suburban counties in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, was among about half a dozen hot spots nationally where warming has already exceeded 2 degrees. The others are the greater Los Angeles area, the high desert in Oregon, the Western Rocky Mountains, an area from Montana to Minnesota along the Canadian border and the Northeast Shore of Lake Michigan.

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Climate scientists don’t fully understand why Connecticut and the other Northeast states have warmed so dramatically, but they offer an array of explanations, from warm winters that produce less snow and ice (and thus reflect less heat back into space) to warming ocean temperatures and changes in both the jet stream and the Gulf Stream.

Two degrees Celsius serves as a prominent threshold for international leaders, who in the 2015 Paris Agreement committed to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius…,recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported that even a 1.5 degree increase in the global average temperature will result in the death of coral reefs, severe droughts, dangerous heat waves and massive sea level rise.

The perilous warming trend in the Northeast continued this spring, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information’s climate report for May, which found warmer than normal temperatures for all 12 Northeastern states. Spring temperatures were 0.1 degrees Celsius above normal in Connecticut, the report said. The state’s nearly 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise since 1895 is double the average for the Lower 48 states.

Across the planet, temperatures have warmed 1 degree Celsius since the late 19th century. But globally, warming has been far from uniform. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and Alaska is the fastest warming state in the U.S.

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Across the country, the Post found that 71 of 3,107 counties have already surpassed 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Fairfield County and much of southwestern Connecticut are among that group.

New York, New Jersey and New England are not typically associated with the dramatic signs of a warming planet, such as raging wildfires or catastrophic flooding. But the Northeast is warming faster than the rest of the contiguous U.S.

“If you look at the spatial pattern of warming, then what you find is that you see much higher warming in the coastal areas in New England,” said Ambarish Karmalkar, a postdoctoral fellow with the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.

The climate patterns Connecticut exhibits are similar to the rest of the Northeastern states. If current trends continue, by 2035, the average temperature of the entire Northeast region will have risen 2 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

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Blood stains on golf cart in Florida’s ‘friendliest’ retirement community

Some seniors are packing mace and stun guns in their golf bags as the national political divide plays out in The Villages

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. Washington Post July 4, 2020

THE VILLAGES, Fla. — Sharon Sandler was already irritated as she walked toward the growing line of golf carts preparing to parade around one of her retirement community’s town squares for President Trump’s birthday.

Sandler, who is in her 60s, had spent the early afternoon of June 14 at an anti-racism vigil that sought to honor the memory of people killed by police, but whoever controlled the Villages’ sound system wouldn’t lower the volume, she said, so a solemn moment was pierced with a hydrant of Fox News.

Within minutes, Sandler’s silent protest devolved into a profanity-laced screaming match, with Sandler at the center. The confrontation would later draw international outrage when Trump, last Sunday morning, shared a video showing one of his supporters at the parade pumping his fist and screaming, “White power!”

The tweet was deleted hours later and the White House said Trump had not heard what the man had said. But to Sandler, who settled here a decade ago, the episode showed what Trump’s presidency has done to political discourse in a community that bills itself as a friendly, laid-back place where people 55 and older can live like millionaires on a retiree’s budget.

“I thought it was ‘America’s friendliest hometown’ like it says in all the brochures,” she said. “But I’m here, and it’s not.

“Even a lot of the Democrats down here were not supportive of me as they said, ‘they go low, we go high,’ and all that other crap. I just think it’s time for all of us to open our mouths and say enough is enough.”

Trump ‘white power’ tweet set off a scramble inside the White House — but no clear condemnation

The Villages, an hour’s drive northwest of Orlando, is one of the nation’s largest retirement developments, a place where residents can be seen golfing on executive courses and inline-skating down sunny streets. Almost everyone who lives there is white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and the community has long been a reliable bucket of Republican votes in a pivotal place, with residents routinely courted by state and national politicians.

Although Republican numerical advantages have persisted for years, locals say tensions began to escalate, much as they did across the country, in 2016, the first time Sandler slapped a “Dump Trump” sticker on her golf cart.

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Some Republican villagers decided that the community’s Republican club wasn’t supportive enough of the president and started clubs like Villagers for Trump and Veterans for Trump, where they could meet with like-minded neighbors, bring in outside speakers and organize the occasional golf cart parade.

Now, political fights lead at times to physical fights, prompting some septuagenarians to pack pepper spray and stun guns into the golf carts residents use to dart around the 35-square mile community,according to some locals.

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Blood stains on golf cart in Florida’s ‘friendliest’ retirement community Read More »

Philly area law firms rake in millions in PPP cash

The lives upended around a $20 cheeseburger

Air Quality Health Advisory Issued for NYC and Long Island

In Effect for Sunday, July 5, 2020

Chesapeake Energy’s Mighty Fall

Chesapeake Energy was a fracking pioneer on a meteoric rise. Last week, it fell to Earth.

Hotter summers, milder winters hitting northeast states

Blood stains on golf cart in Florida’s ‘friendliest’ retirement community

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