Jake Johnson, Staff Writer - AlterNet / Common Dreams
Stephan: As I watch the various television channel news operations and listen to the interviews with ordinary Americans talking about how they will vote, I am stunned at how little people seem to understand about what is going on. beneath the surface. There seems to be no real conception of how corrupt the government is, and how big an influence the corporate and uber-rich dark money manipulates the electoral process, although there is a sense the government is not to be trusted. This article describes some of the factual reality that most of the media never covers, or covers adequately.
MAGAT Republican Mitch McConnell, personally corrupt and the leader of Republican corruption. Credit: Creative Commons
Shadowy organizations that are legally allowed to hide their donors have pumped nearly $1 billion into the Republican Party’s effort to retake the U.S. Senate, according to an NPR analysis released Saturday.
The finding comes a month after Senate Republicans tanked a bill that would have required dark money groups to disclose their donors and funding sources.
In total, NPR found that “more than $1.6 billion has been spent or booked on TV ads in a dozen Senate races, with $3 out of every $4 being spent in six states—Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Ohio.”
“Most of that money is coming from dark money outside groups with little-to-no donor transparency—and Republicans are getting a huge boost from them,” the outlet reported.
Nearly 90% of the money spent on pro-Republican television ads this midterm cycle has been from dark money groups, according to NPR‘s analysis of ad data. By comparison, 55% of spending on ads boosting Democrats has come from dark money organizations, which have exploded in number and influence since […]
Stephan: Watching the BBC I listened to their report on how Sweden now ruled by a far-right populist party, has just scrapped its environmental agency working to prepare the country for climate change. In one stroke Sweden has gone from an environmental leader to a near climate denier, and this same process is going on all over the world, wherever right-wing politicians have come to power. And it is primed to happen here as well if Republicans become the majority in Congress. They will try to sabotage what Biden and the Democrats are trying to do, and cause America to revert to Trumpist climate change denial. How any ordinary American can vote Republican given the damage it will do to their wellbeing is gobsmacking, and yet millions will.
Trump supporters protest the Paris climate agreement. Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty
From Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Donald Trump in the U.S., the past five years have offered prominent examples of right-wing leaders who set back collective action against the climate crisis.
Now, a study published in Global Environmental Politics this month shows that the issue is much larger than a few high-profile leaders. The researchers, from the Universities of Sussex and Warwick in the UK, found that the influence of a right-wing populist party can reduce a country’s climate policy score by nearly 25 percent.
“Conventional centre-right political parties have always been more reluctant to adopt strong climate policies, but the rise of right-wing populist parties and movements represents a threat of a different order,” study co-author Dr. Matthew Lockwood, senior lecturer in Energy Policy in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School and co-director of the Sussex Energy Group, said in a press release.
The study authors focused on the climate and renewable energy policies of more than 25 countries, The Guardian […]
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, Distinguished Pprofessor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: Paul Krugman lays out the facts on a trend that is tearing America apart. The shift to the far-far-right on the part of aging rural Americans.
Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; photograph by Ed Freeman
The hard-right turn of rural America has become a key factor in our nation’s troubled politics. Rural voters are a declining share of the electorate, but their turn to the MAGAfied Republican Party has been so sharp that, combined with the way our political system underweights urban voters, the radicalization of small towns and the countryside may determine the future course of American democracy — indeed, may lead to its demise.
And yes, I mean radicalization. We aren’t just talking about an ordinary shift in voting behavior. Much of rural America seems to be turning into a one-party region in which people are actually afraid to express dissent from their Biden-hating neighbors.
What’s causing this radicalization? Political scientists have found that rural Americans believe that they aren’t receiving their fair share of resources, that they are neglected by politicians and that they don’t receive enough respect. So it seems worth noting that the first two beliefs are demonstrably false — although I’m […]
Keith L. Alexander, Steven Rich and Hannah Thacker , Reporter | Database Editor | Copy Aide - The Washington Post
Stephan: I keep seeing story after story about police violence and misconduct. It is the defining characteristic of American law enforcement, no other developed democracy in the world has anything like this problem. Not even close. I began to wonder what does this cost us, that is we the taxpayers. I went searching for some research fact-based research that was up to date. The Washington Post provided it, and it is a horrifying story.
The violence and misconduct of American law enforcement is its defining characteristic. Here is what just one Detroit cop cost tax payers.
About 8:30 one Thursday evening in Detroit, Tony Murray was getting ready for bed ahead of his 6 a.m. shift at a potato chip factory. As he turned off the final light in the living room, he glanced out of his window and saw a half-dozen uniformed police officers with guns drawn approach his home.
As the officers banged on the door, Murray ordered Keno, his black Labrador retriever, to the basement. As Murray let the officers in, one quickly pushed him to the floor and at least two others ran to the cellar, he said. “Don’t kill my dog. He won’t bite you,” Murray pleaded. The sound of gunshots filled the house. Keno’s barking, the 56-year-oldrecalled, morphed into the sound of “a girl screaming.”
Officers searched Murray’s home for nearly an hour, flipping his sofa and emptying drawers. Outside, Murray approached the officers standing by their vehicles. One handed him a copy of the […]
Stephan: The changes that are being wrought by climate change are going to be far more complicated to deal with than governments around the world, and certainly, in the United States realize. This article describes just one aspect of the problems humanity will face, and you can see how that has worked out.
More than 9,000 people in Leh, India planted more than 50,000 tree saplings in under an hour on October 10, 2010. Credit: Drukpa Publications / Wikipedia
It was perhaps the most spectacular failed tree planting project ever. Certainly the fastest. On March 8, 2012, teams of village volunteers in Camarines Sur province on the Filipino island of Luzon sunk over a million mangrove seedlings into coastal mud in just an hour of frenzied activity. The governor declared it a resounding success for his continuing efforts to green the province. At a hasty ceremony on dry land, an official adjudicator from Guinness World Records declared that nobody had ever planted so many trees in such a short time and handed the governor a certificate proclaiming the world record. Plenty of headlines followed.
But look today at the coastline where most of the trees were planted. There is no sign of the mangroves that, after a decade of growth, should be close to maturity. An on-the-ground study published in 2020 by British mangrove restoration researcher Dominic Wodehouse, then of Bangor […]
