Sara Danner Dukic has assembled a meticulously documented timeline on Donald Trump starting in 1984, when a Russian mobster bought apartments in Trump Tower. Yes, Trump – Russia ties go back at least that far. In my view, Trump has always lived way beyond his means, and thus was and is easily corrupted. Not that he needed any encouragement or had any qualms about being so. Nor is he a crime boss. Rather, he’s a conduit for making dirty money sparkly fresh.

Some observations. Trump expressed interest in running for president in 1988. He (and presumably others) have been planning this for decades. This Trump timeline shows that a curious number of folks around Trump and the Russian mob died in tragic accidents, were found dead, or murdered. Imagine that.

Kusher is up to his eyeballs in Russia collusion and corruption. Because, as with Trump, it’s all about money and power. They have no ideology or ethics.

(Semion Mogilevich is the head of Russia organized crime. He is above the oligarchs.)

Trump timeline excerpts follow. Read the whole thing.

1980’s

1984: Russian émigré David Bogatin pays cash for five apartments in Trump Tower. Bogatin’s brother ran a $150 million stock scam with Russian mafia boss Semion Mogilevich.

Autumn, 1986: Trump meets Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin. And per Trump’s own account in Art of the Deal, “One thing led to another, and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.”

March 16, 1987: Bogatin (who had purchased multiple apartments in Trump Tower for cash) pleads guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. The government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, because he’d used them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York.

July 4, 1987: Trump flies to the USSR for the first time after being personally invited – the trip is arranged by the Soviet government.

1988: Trump starts talking about running for president on Oprah

1990’s

1991: Trump declares bankruptcy, sells his yacht to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, Trump declares bankruptcy an additional 3 times stemming from various properties he’s over-leveraged.

1994: Trump allegedly rapes and beats a 13-year-old girl at a party with Jeffrey Epstein, multiple times. In the filed complaint, the 13-year-old was threatened to be “disappeared” like another young girl had been if she told anyone.

1998: Trump Taj Mahal fined for currency transaction reporting violations.

1999: Trump’s first run for president.

2000-present

2002 – 2011: The Bayrock Group partners with the Trump Organization on developments including the Trump SoHo hotel. Principals in the group include Felix Sater – believed to be connected with Semion Mogilevich – and Tevfik Arif.

2005: at the same time Trump is unable to get a 25 million pound loan from Bank of Scotland due to being a credit risk, Deutsche Bank (who later is hit with massive fines for money laundering) loans Trump nearly one billion dollars. Trump’s banker at Deutsche Bank is Justice Kennedy’s son.

2007 – 2016: Buyers tied to Russia make 86 cash purchases at Trump properties.

2008: Junior brags that they’re getting a lot of money from Russia. Russian oligarch buys a Palm Beach mansion from Trump, paying twice the value

2011 – 2015: Deutsche Bank, who 5 years previous had given Donald Trump nearly 1 billion dollars when Bank of Scotland wouldn’t loan him 25 million pounds, is laundering billions of dollars with the help of Russians. 2011: Eric Trump brags that they have access to millions of dollars from Russians.

April 16, 2013: Preet Bharara, then US attorney for SDNY, announces charges against massive Russian organized crime ring operating out of Trump Tower.

March 6, 2015: Trump Taj Mahal fined for money laundering.

November 3, 2015: Felix Sater, who is believed to work for Semion Mogilevich writes Michael Cohen stating that he’ll get buy-in from Putin and that they’ll engineer Trump’s presidency.

April – May 2016: George Papadopoulos in communication with “high ranking Russian official” in an attempt to set up meetings between Trump team and Russian reps, w/the promise “that the Kremlin had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails…

June 9, 2016: Trump Tower meeting with Russians, Manafort, Kushner, Don Jr. Present at the meeting was Nataliya Veselnitskaya, who at the time was representing Prevezon, a company implicated in a money-laundering case at SDNY

October 31, 2016: Mother Jones reports “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump.

November 7, 2016 (one day before election day): Connie Watton, maid of Stephen Schwarzman – a Trump AND Kremlin friend – is pushed in front of a subway. The woman who pushed her is assigned defense attorney Mathew Mari, known for his legal work for the Bonanno crime family. More on Schwarzman’s relationship with Trump, and Saudi Arabia here. More on Schwarzman’s links to Russia and Rosneft here. Schwarzman had also financed Kushner projects and gave Jared Kushner a loan.

December 2016: Jared Kushner instructs Michael Flynn to sabotage US foreign policy. Kushner tries to set up secret back channel with Russians using Russians’ secure facilities. Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn meet with Sergei Kislyak at Trump Tower. Jared Kushner meets with Sergey Gorkov, “a graduate of the academy of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic intelligence arm of the former Soviet KGB, who was appointed by Putin to the post less than a year before his encounter with Kushner.” KT McFarland sends email stating that “If there is a tit-for-tat escalation Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him.”

March 11, 2017: Trump fires Preet Bharara, who as US Attorney of SDNY had led the breakup of a massive Russian organized crime ring operating out of Trump Tower.

January 10, 2017: Buzzfeed publishes Steele Dossier.

March 21, 2017: A lawyer for a Putin-foe, Nikolai Gorokhov, reportedly thrown from a window in Moscow. Gorokhov was set to testify as a U.S. government witness in a money laundering case initiated by SDNY (led by Preet Bahrara). (source) “The alleged vehicle by which these dirty assets were washed clean was a Cyprus-registered company called Prevezon Holdings Ltd.” (source) Prevezon is represented by Nataliya Veselnitskaya at the time that she attends the Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016.

December 16, 2017: Trump learns that Mueller has in his possession all of their transition emails on the .gov domain, obtained via the GSA.

June 27, 2018: Justice Kennedy, whose son was Donald Trump’s banker, unexpectedly announces retirement. Trump and Kennedy reportedly had a special relationship.

October 3, 2018: The Russian deputy attorney general (Saak Karapetyan) who reportedly directed Natalya Veselnitskaya (the lawyer who met with the Trump campaign in Trump Tower) dies in a helicopter crash. It was later reported that the pilot of the helicopter had been shot.

Renewable energy is ramping up fast in the US. Coal continues its historic and irreversible decline. It’s done, and not ever coming back. Natural gas is replacing coal. Right now, natural gas is cheap, so new plants are being built. No, it’s not clean. However it’s way cleaner than coal. Happily, new wind and solar power facilities are coming online, increasingly being combined with battery backup which is now grid-scale. These wind and solar plants are often cheaper than coal or natural gas to build and maintain. Yes, cheaper.

Hydropower is still the biggest source of renewable energy, and is a bit controversial because big hydro can have seriously adverse environmental effects. Lakes silt up. Local ecology gets disrupted. Some dams are so huge that their weight and the weight of the water can cause earthquakes. Wind, not solar, is the second biggest form of renewable energy. And, offshore wind in the Northeast is finally at long last happening at grid scale.

All data from Business Council for Sustainable Energy Factbook

Natural gas boomed. The most new gas-fired power-generating capacity was added in 14 years propelling it to a record 35% of the country’s power generation.

Renewables grew in volume and importance. Installations of new mostly wind and solar capacity in 2018 hit 19.5GW.

Wind is the largest single source of zero-carbon power-generating capacity in the U.S. Total wind installations are essentially level with nuclear in terms of capacity.

Coal’s decline continued. Its contribution to overall power generation fell to 27%, the lowest in the post-WWII era. Meanwhile, another 13GW of existing plants announced or completed retirement, the second most in U.S. history.

The power sector continued to de-carbonize. Renewables + natural gas growth – coal = a less carbon-intensive U.S. power sector. Total electricity consumed in the U.S. rose 2.2% in 2018 while CO2 emissions from power plants rose just 0.6%.

The U.S. retains a competitive advantage on industrial power prices. The U.S. is second only to Canada with the lowest industrial electricity prices among the G7 nations.

Battery storage costs fell further. Lithium-ion battery prices dropped another 18% year- on-year, boosting both EVs and stationary storage applications and encouraging electric utilities to sign power purchase agreements pairing storage with solar and wind.

Corporates continued to drive demand for sustainable energy. Retailers, major technology firms, and even an oil major contracted record

The House Judiciary Committee today requested documents from 81 people and entities. Many of the requests are directly related to Russia collusion, Russia interference with the 2016 election, financial involvement, emoluments, and other such stinky stuff. And, of course, these are not just requests. Anyone refusing to comply will find themselves in serious legal trouble.

The requests are meticulously documented and have full text of what is being requested. Russia is a central focus. Excerpts from the House Judiciary Committee requests follow and include Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump, Jared Kushner, Erik Prince, Julian Assange, and the NRA.

Donald Trump Jr.

a) any foreign government discussing, offering, or providing, or being solicited to discuss, offer, or provide, any present or emolument of any kind whatever on or after November 8, 2016 to (a) Donald Trump or his Business Interests; (b) Trump Organization; (c) Jared Kushner or his Business Interests; (d) Ivanka Trump or her Business Interests; or (e) the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee.

b) any U.S. federal, state, or local domestic government discussing, offering, or providing, or being solicited to discuss, offer, or provide, any emolument on or after November 8, 2016 to (a) Donald Trump or his Business Interests; (b) Trump Organization; (c) Jared Kushner or his Business Interests; (d) Ivanka Trump or her Business Interests; or (e) the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee.

c) Any loan, financing transaction, or capital investment by the Russian Federation, any Russian national, any Russian business, or any other Russian entity to the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, or any of their Business Interests. This request shall include the period from January 1, 2015 to the present and shall exclude documents relating to the purchase of individual condominium, cooperative, or apartment units.

d) Trump Tower Moscow (also known as the “Moscow Project”) or any other proposed or possible real estate development in the Russian Federation by Donald Trump or the Trump Organization from January 1, 2015 to the present.

Eric Trump

i) The June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Kushner, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Rob Goldstone, and Rinat Akhmetshin (the “Trump Tower meeting”), including but not limited to all documents relating to the July 8, 2017 statement released in the name of Donald Trump Jr.

and the same as for Don Jr. listed above.

Jared Kushner

a) Any foreign government discussing, offering, or providing, or being solicited to discuss, offer, or provide, any present or emolument of any kind whatever on or after November 8, 2016 to (a) Donald Trump or his Business Interests; (b) Trump Organization; (c) you or your Business Interests; (d) Ivanka Trump or her Business Interests; or (e) the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee.

b) Any U.S. federal, state, or local domestic government discussing, offering, or providing, or being solicited to discuss, offer, or provide, any emolument on or after November 8, 2016 to (a) Donald Trump or his Business Interests; (b) Trump Organization; (c) you or your Business Interests; (d) Ivanka Trump or her Business Interests; or (e) the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee.

c) Any loan, financing transaction, or capital investment by the Russian Federation, any Russian national, any Russian business, or any other Russian entity to you, the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, or any of their Business Interests or yours. This request shall include the period from January 1, 2015 to the present and shall exclude documents relating to the purchase of individual condominium, cooperative, or apartment units.

Erik Prince

d) Discussions of United States imposed sanctions or potential sanctions against the Russian Federation from June 16, 2015 to January 20, 2017 (including but not limited to the sanctions imposed pursuant to the Magnitsky Act) involving one or more of the following individuals: you, Donald Trump, the Trump Campaign, the Trump Organization, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Thomas Bossert, Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Konstantin Kilimnik, and/or K.T. McFarland. e) Any contacts, direct or indirect, from January 1, 2015 to January 20, 2017 between or involving the Russian Federation and its officials, agents, intermediaries, and/or instrumentalities and any of the following: you, Donald Trump, the Trump Campaign, Erik Prince, the Trump Organization, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Thomas Bossert, Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Konstantin Kilimnik, and/or K.T. McFarland.

f) Any contacts, direct or indirect, from January 1, 2016 to the present between or involving Wikileaks and its officials, agents, intermediaries, and/or instrumentalities.

Julian Assange

(a) The June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting, including but not limited to contacts or communications about the meeting involving one or more of the following individuals:? Donald Trump Jr., Natalia Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, Emin Agalarov, Aras Agalarov, Rob Goldstone, and/or Rinat Akhmetshin.

(b) Discussions or attempts to provide or receive election information, campaign data, or campaign communications with, to, or from foreign entities or individuals in connection with the 2016 U.S. Presidential primary or general elections. This includes, but is not limited to, voter data, polling information, political ad targeting, voter registration rolls, social media data, and campaign or party e-mails.

(c) Any contacts, direct or indirect, from January 1, 2015 to January 20, 2017 between or involving the Russian Federation and its officials, agents, intermediaries, and/or instrumentalities and any of the following: Donald Trump, the Trump Campaign, the Trump Organization, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Thomas Bossert, Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Konstantin Kilimnik, K.T. McFarland, and/or Erik Prince.

(d) Any contacts, direct or indirect, from January 1, 2016 to the present between or involving yourself and the Trump Campaign, its officials, agents, and/or intermediaries.

NRA

(e) Any contacts, direct or indirect, from January 1, 2015 to January 20, 2017 between or involving the Russian Federation and its officials, agents, intermediaries, and/or instrumentalities and any of the following: Donald Trump, the Trump Campaign, the National Rifle Association, Trump Organization, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Thomas Bossert, Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Konstantin Kilimnik, K.T. McFarland, and/or Erik Prince.

The Southwest drought is definitely lessening. However, the area needs a few more years of precipitation like in the past few months to get back to anything near normal. The current conditions are indeed wet where it needs to be wet, yet will not be enough to stop a Lake Mead Drought Declaration. Southwest Colorado, which is crucial to water for the Southwest and southern California, is still in drought but not nearly as severe as just a few months ago. California is almost completely out of drought with some areas at 150% of normal now. However, problems remain.

If Lake Mead drops below a certain level, automatic shortages are mandated. The degree and amounts of those shortages can be worked out by the various states involved by March 19 or the feds will do it for them. The current disagreements are in 1) Arizona, between ranchers and Native Americans. The tribe says they have claim to water rights that expired because the previous water rights holder didn’t use them. If so, then the ranchers would get less water. 2) California, the Imperial Irrigation District wants $200 million in outside money to save the Salton Sea. If the sea dries up, toxic clouds of dust will blow everywhere. Yes, it’s kind of apocalyptic.

Cities like Vegas, Tucson, and Phoenix have made huge advances in cutting water usage and will continue to do so. They all use less water than twenty years ago despite having many more people. Vegas has been toilet-to-tap for years. Phoenix recycles all waste water and says if it has to, it could survive without Colorado River water.

“We’ve decoupled growth from water,” she said. “We use the same amount of water that we did 20 years ago, but have added 400,000 more people.” In 2000, Some 80 percent of Phoenix had lush green lawns; now only 14 percent does. The city has done this by charging more for water in the summer. Per capita usage has declined 30 percent over the last 20 years. “That’s a huge culture change”

Selover is the Arizona state climatologist. She is interviewed by Brodie.

BRODIE: On a philosophical level, you know, we’ve just gone through all this debate at the state Capitol over the Drought Contingency Plan. We’ve heard so much about how it’s likely that a drought declaration or a shortage declaration is going to be declared next year in Lake Mead. When you have a storm system like this, is it hard to remind people that, hey, Arizona is still in a drought when they see record breaking snowfall in Flagstaff, snow in the Phoenix area, lots of rain in the Phoenix area over a couple of days?

SELOVER: Yes, it is. The moment we get this kind of precipitation, everyone thinks that the drought’s over. It’s very much not. For things like Lake Mead and the drought declaration, that’s kind of dependent on the Colorado snow. So what’s going on up there. Which they’ve also had quite a bit. And that’s good. Part of the issue though, is that the drought declaration tends to be something that the Bureau of Reclamation will do as a forecast, and they do that well ahead of tim. So even if we have a really good snow year this year, they will probably still declare a shortage, because of the mechanics of the way the system works. But Lake Mead is very low. I mean, we’re at 40 to 50 percent of capacity, and we need to try and get it back up into the 80 to 90 percent range. And that’s going to take a number of really wet years.

Reinvent the Toilet, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, asked designers and engineers to develop self-contained toilets. They do not need sewers yet dispose of waste cleanly and efficiently. This is crucial in areas where sanitation can be a problem. Many of these new toilets turn poop and urine into fertilizer and water for more flushing and washing hands.

There are also major social benefits, especially for women.

Melinda Gates explains:

They’ll also improve lives—especially for women and girls. Life without a toilet is hard for anyone, but it tends to be women and girls who suffer most.

Bill and I have both met women who have suffered kidney damage from holding in urine all night to avoid a risky trip to dangerous public facilities. We’ve met others whose only place to defecate is in an open field, so they restrict their food intake all day and wait for cover of darkness to relieve themselves in relative privacy. There’s also some qualitative evidence that suggests that girls are more likely to miss school during their periods when their school doesn’t have a decent toilet. (When you learn just how entrenched stigma around periods still is in many places, you can start to understand why someone would rather fall behind on her studies or miss wages than risk humiliation.)

Bill Gates discusses the Reinvent The Toilet Expo:

The toilets at the expo aren’t just fascinating gadgets—they have the potential to save millions of lives. More than half of the world’s population uses unsafe sanitation facilities. Even in places where people have access to toilets or pit latrines, their waste isn’t disposed of safely. The pathogens from the waste find their way into the local water supply and makes people sick.