Stephan: Because America is a nation with only one social priority, profit, the fact that carbon energy is destroying the planet's matrix of life is of no consequence to the carbon energy corporate greed scum. They are going to do everything they can to keep their profits flowing, and this is an example of what they attempting.
This image is from a recent Facebook ad. Credit: Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future
American energy corporation the Williams Companies was facing yet another setback in its attempts to build a natural gas pipeline in New York.
After a years-long battle, state regulators and pushback from protesters had forced the company to cancel its previously proposed Constitution pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York. And in May 2020, another major Williams project – a nearly $1bn gas pipeline that would run underwater from New Jersey to the Rockaway peninsula in Queens – was rejected for a second time.
Williams, which handles about 30% of the natural gas in the US, needed a dramatic turnaround. So in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election the company, along with at least sixother fossil fuel pipeline and utility companies, invested in a strategy torebrand natural gas through a new industry group they named Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future.
Its focus: convince younger, liberal and non-white audiences that gas is a “clean” energy solution.
“If we replace coal with renewables partnered with natural gas,” a Black actor in […]
Stephan: As I said the other day, although few seem to realize it, we are now experiencing a second christofascist coup. The first, by Trump, because of his personality defects was not successful, but the second one, by the christofascist cabal that now controls the Supreme Court, is working. As Thom Hartmann, lays out they are pre-rigging the 2024 election to assure that the MAGAt cult wins no matter what the popular vote totals say.
The MAGAt Court
Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just announced—a story that has largely flown under the nation’s political radar—that they’ll consider pre-rigging the presidential election of 2024.
Republican strategists are gaming out which states have Republican legislatures willing to override the votes of their people to win the White House for the Republican candidate.
Here’s how one aspect of it could work out, if they go along with the GOP’s arguments that will be before the Court this October:
It’s November, 2024, and the presidential race between Biden and DeSantis has been tabulated by the states and called by the networks. Biden won 84,355,740 votes to DeSantis’ 77,366,412, clearly carrying the popular vote.
But the popular vote isn’t enough: George W. Bush lost to Al Gore by a half-million votes and Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes but both ended up in the White House. What matters is the Electoral College vote, and that looks good for Biden, too. As CNN is reporting, the outcome is a virtual clone of the 2020 election: Biden carries the same […]
Stephan: Yesterday I posted a paper I had written, "The Weaponization of Lies". A number of you wrote to tell me you could not access the total article. That has now been fixed by Beth Alexander, the woman who makes SR function. You can now click through and see the entirety of the piece. Let me know what you think.
Click here for the article pdf
Stephan: The christofascists support charter/voucher schools, because they want taxpayer dollars from all of us to support their christofascist schools, so that they can indoctrinate their children into their White supremacy, male dominant chistofascist movement. That's what the Supreme Court is supporting, and in Arizona, it is playing out. Now the legislation that makes this possible in Arizona will be copied all over the Red states, just as the Texas anti-abortion legislation has been copied. This is going to be a major part of the Great Schism Trend.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey speaks during a rally for President Donald Trump at the International Air Response facility. Credit: Ralph Freso / Getty
In his January State of the State address, Ducey called on Arizona lawmakers to send him bills that would “expand school choice any way we can,” and the Republican-dominated legislature obliged, delivering last Friday’s bill, which will open a preexisting program for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) up to the entire state. In practice, the law will now give parents who opt out of public schools a debit card for roughly $7,000 per child that can be used to pay for private school tuition, but also for much more: for religious schools, homeschool expenses, tutoring, online classes, […]
Stephan: The second, Supreme Court coup continues. Behind the morons and crazies of the MAGAt christofascist movement are the oligarchs who plot and finance the strategy and tactics they are using to end democracy in the United States and replace it with a christofascist anocracy. Here is one of their stories.
Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries. Credit: David Zalubowski / AP
Today’s Supreme Court decision restricting the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions will benefit power plants and fossil fuel companies throughout the U.S. and profoundly hobble the government’s ability to address the worsening climate catastrophe.
The decision, written by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, finds that the EPA does not have the authority to impose caps on carbon emissions by mandating a shift to cleaner energy sources. The ruling means that Congress, rather than the EPA and its staff of scientific experts, will handle the critical task of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Today, the Court strips the EPA of the power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,’” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer. “Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address […]
