Stephan: Something worth close attention is going on with Idaho, a sort of next step for the White Supremacist christofascists. They are trying to turn Idaho into a White Supremacy MAGA world state. And it is attracting the attention of counties in both Eastern Oregon and Washington. Three Washington and seven Oregon counties all want to have their state's borders altered so that they can become part of Idaho. To be clear states have changed their borders, although it is rare, and almost always race-based. Eight non-slave owning Counties of slave-owning Virginia hived off and became West Virginia in 1861. We don't tell ourselves the truth about racism in the United States. Did you have a course in racism when you went to high school, or college? All of this is part of what I have been calling The Great Schism Trend.
And not the anti-masker aspect of this report.
Just as I am not sure democracy will survive in the U.S., each year I see ever greater open White supremacy. This trend is going to be a real problem for the next 30 years. In my opinion, however, it will be gone by 2050. Climate change will compel equality. You can already see it happening in the 18-34 demographic.
Janice McGeachin, the lieutenant governor who had ordered cities and counties to revoke mask orders. Photograph: John Roark/AP
BOISE, IDAHO – Last month, the Republican governor revoked his lieutenant governor’s ban on mask mandates – and observers say the fight is symptomatic of a larger problem
Idaho’s rightward political lurch has immersed the state’s Republicans in a political civil war that now extends all the way from the grassroots to the executive mansion.
In late May, the state’s Republican governor, Brad Little, angrily revoked an executive order banning mask mandates in the state, which had been put in place by his own militia-supporting lieutenant governor during a period when she was deputizing for him.
Janice McGeachin had ordered that Idaho cities and counties revoke mask orders, playing into a widespread fear among the far right that basic health measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic are a sign of an over-reaching government. Little then called McGeachin’s action “tyranny” and a “stunt” and scuppered it after it had been in place for just a day.
But observers say the bizarre fight is symptomatic of a much […]
Stephan: The American illness profit system has failed miserably in handling this pandemic. The social outcome data makes that obvious. The system is not designed to produce wellbeing as its first priority, as is the case in other democratic nations and thus, stressed by Covid-19 it has produced miserable outcome data. So I have been watching for what Biden would do once that realization became irrefutable. Here's what he is doing. The scientists realize that with climate change we are going to see a series of ongoing pandemics brought on by the mutation of viruses and bacteria in response to climate change. 2020 is going to happen again, and this is an attempt to stay ahead of what is coming.
Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), speaks during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. The hearing is titled “NIH’s FY22 Budget and the State of Medical Research.” Credit: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg/Getty
Those closely following President Joe Biden’s plan to create a huge agency to fund cutting-edge, transformative health projects welcomed the release this week of new details about the ambitious proposal. But for some research advocates, worries remain that the new agency won’t be significantly different from the rest of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where it would be housed.
The proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) “will need to be audacious, nimble, and have unique authorities,” says Ellen Sigal, chair and founder of Friends of Cancer Research. “It’s an incredible opportunity, but at the moment there are many unknowns that will need to be discussed and debated in the near future.”
First proposed by Biden early this year, ARPA-H would be modeled after the similarly named Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has a […]
Stephan: It is my belief that this trend will grow and that by 2060 cities and towns will look very different than they do today. To deal with climate change we are going to have to plant trees and rethink our agriculture. This story is an early report on this trend, and very good news it is.
Children in Leicester, UK, plant a tiny forest in their school. Leicester City Council
In 2014 eco-entrepreneur Shubhendu Sharma gave a TED Talk about the value of the mini-woodland ecosystems he was planting across India. He described how they grow 10 times faster, are 30 times denser, and 100 times more biodiverse than a conventional forest.
His tiny forests were inspired by Japanese ecologist Akira Miyawaki’s technique of creating small, condensed urban forests on degraded soils.
He had created them near houses, schools and even factories. Some covered the space of only six parked cars and were so dense you couldn’t walk into them. “If you see a barren piece of land, remember that it can be a potential forest,” urged Sharma.
His company Afforestt has planted 138 forests in 10 countries around the world.
Tiny Forests Thriving in Europe?
Tiny forests have been springing up across Europe. Advocates say they are key to boosting declining flora and fauna like birds and insects in cities, and to help reach climate goals by storing carbon.
Stephan: The Republican MAGA world, as this report describes, is a danger to the future of humanity and human civilization, as well as earth's matrix of life because they do not take climate change seriously, nor believe that it is caused by human activity. Greed and willful ignorance dominate their thinking.
New Yorkers take action in Albany for an economic recovery and infrastructure package prioritizing climate, care, jobs and justice, call on their legislators to pass the Climate and Community Investment Act (CCIA) on April 7, 2021, in Albany, New York. Credit: Dave Kotinsky/Getty/ for Greann New Deal Network
As Republicans in Washington propose to further strip an already pared-down jobs and infrastructure package that activists warn is not bold enough to deliver Biden’s promises of “real change,” lawmakers with ties to oil and gas interests are obstructing action at the state level by misrepresenting regional climate bills as gas taxes.
In April, GOP lawmakers in Connecticut launched a “Stop the Gas and Food Tax” campaign, which characterizes an effort by 13 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a plan to “punish” the middle class. The effort their ire was directed at, the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program (TCI-P), contains provisions to cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.
“I think one sign of the desperation of the [GOP] opposition is that they’re really resorting now to things that […]
Stephan: How much clearer o the Republicans have to make it that they will do anything to rig an election to stay in power? I am amazed at how explicit all this is playing out. And have you noticed that non of the Trump orcs have been prosecuted? Why is Bill Barr still a licensed attorney? For that matter why isn't he in prison? How about Michael Flynn? How is it possible Louis DeJoyiw still postmaster? I just think we don't have a critical mass of Americans who recognize what is going on to transform American democracy into a White supremacist christofascist autocracy.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told Steve Bannon that Donald Trump would have lost the Lone Star State in the 2020 presidential election if Texans had been allowed to vote by mail.
Ken Paxton on Facebook.
“Yeah, I think it’s certainly critical to my state and that’s why we fought off these twelve lawsuits,” Paxton said. “We had them in Houston, we had them in San Antonio, we had them in Austin — we had them in the counties where you have the most liberal judges. And it was a concerted effort, nationally, with lots of money going into it.”
“And just knowing that we had twelve lawsuits that we had to win. And if we had lost one of them, if we’d lost Harris County — Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them,” he explained.
“Had we not done that, we would have been in the very same situation — we would’ve been […]
