Christopher Ketcham, Contributing Editor - truthdig
Stephan:
This, in contrast to the earlier story, is exactly the wrong way to go into the future. This is the corporate greed led by greedy individuals, that is destroying the earth’s ecosystems and threatening the very existence of human society.
The pipeline takes aim at the camp. Credit: Christopher Ketcham
On a stormy day in June, a wildlife biologist named Katie Fite stopped to visit the Indigenous Women’s Camp in a remote valley called Thacker Pass, in northwestern Nevada. She had traveled several hours from her home in Idaho and was hoping to meet the leaders of the camp. These were known as the Grandmas. Mostly Paiute and Shoshone women in their 70s and 80s, the Grandmas held vigil at the sacred fire in the central teepee and cooked for the warriors who maintained the camp and guarded it at night. Their goal, shared by the dozen men, women and children who had gathered at their side, was to halt construction of a massive open-pit mine.
Fite arrived to find the camp abandoned, tents empty, flapping in the wind. The sacred fire, kept burning for weeks by the occupiers, had turned to ash. The teepee that contained the firepit lay smashed to the ground, its cedar poles scattered in the dirt.
Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and Former US Secretary of Labor - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
Robert Reich is correct. The oligarchs who increasingly control the United States recognize criminal Trump as their path to power and their goal of turning the country into a racist christofascist anocracy, and you into a powerless peasant whose vote will mean nothing. If you don’t vote, and vote only for Democrats, forget about partisan politics in that sense, Trump will destroy America. He says it almost daily, and he means to do it with the help of the MAGAt Republicans.
Criminal Trump pledged to ‘root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country’.’ Credit: Carlos Barría/Reuters
The more disturbing Trump’s public proclamations become, the more US plutocrats seem to want him to win.
As an ever-greater portion of the nation’s total wealth goes to the top, it’s hardly surprising that ever more of that wealth is corrupting US politics.
In the 2020 presidential election cycle, more than $14bn went to federal candidates, party committees, and Super Pacs – double the $7bn doled out in the 2016 cycle. Total giving in 2024 is bound to be much higher.
That money is not supporting US democracy. If anything, that money is contributing to rising Trumpism and neofascism.
There is a certain logic to this.
As more and more wealth concentrates at the top, the moneyed interests rationally fear that democratic majorities will take it away through higher taxes, stricter regulations (on everything from trade to climate change), enforcement of anti-monopoly laws, pro-union initiatives and price controls.
Alexandra Marquez, Political Researcher - NBC News
Stephan:
Forty percent of Americans are afraid to walk down a dark street alone. The main cause of childhood death in the United States is a bullet in the child’s body. And we have a gun psychosis as this article describes. For God’s sake what kind of country are we becoming?
More than half of American voters — 52% — say they or someone in their household owns a gun, per the latest NBC News national poll.
That’s the highest share of voters who say that they or someone in their household owns a gun in the history of the NBC News poll, on a question dating back to 1999.
In 2019, 46% of Americans said that they or someone in their household owned a gun, per an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. And in February 2013, that share was 42%.
“In the last ten years, we’ve grown [10 points] in gun ownership. That’s a very stunning number,” said Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm that co-conducted the poll with members of the Democratic polling firm Hart Research.
“By and large, things don’t change that dramatically that quickly when it comes to something as fundamental as whether you own a gun,” Roberts added.
Gun ownership does fall along partisan lines, as it has for years, the poll finds.
This month, 66% of Republican voters surveyed say that […]
Trump appointed judges have just gutted the Voting Rights Act, and what I see is yet another breakdown of American democracy. What is standing out for me is that it is not the political leaders like Trump it is Americans themselves. Look at the polls I think a large number of Americans are not just willing, they want the United States to become a racist male dominance christofascist state, and this includes judges, Congress members, ministers, and media figures. They want a modern Hitler, and see Trump as that figure.
People protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Feb. 27, 2013. Credit: AP Photo / Evan Vucci
A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that only the U.S. Department of Justice can bring lawsuits under Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a decision that—if upheld—would deprive private citizens and advocacy groups of the ability to file legal challenges to fight discriminatory election practices.
In a 2-1 decision, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there is no “private right of action” under that part of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits “any voting standard, practice, or procedure that results in the denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.”
Judge David Stras, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the majority opinion that “the who-gets-to-sue question is the centerpiece of today’s case.”
“The Voting Rights Act lists only one plaintiff who can enforce § 2: the attorney general,” Stras added, […]
Although it is not great news, on balance I think this should be seen as good news. The world is waking up to the damage of carbon emissions and most countries are trying to bring the use of carbon energy to and end. Not fast enough, but at least they are trying, wand we should all be grateful this is happening.
Carbon-free electricity has never been more plentiful. Wind and solar power have taken off over the past two decades, faster than experts ever expected. But it hasn’t yet been enough to halt the rise of coal- and gas-burning generation.
That’s because global demand for electricity has grown even faster than clean energy, leaving fossil fuels to fill the gap.
The dynamic has pushed up carbon emissions from the power sector at a time when scientists say they need to be falling — and fast — to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.
Much of the rising power demand has come from rapidly-developing countries like China and India, where new coal plants are still coming online alongside wind and solar farms to power meteoric economic growth. But many industrialized nations are also not moving away from fossil fuels fast enough to meet their stated climate change goals.
Even on today’s trajectory, many experts expect that fossil-fueled power will peak globally in the next few years. It’s already falling in major economies like the United States and Europe, and analysts expect China, […]
