California Free Press

We Asked Texas Republicans About Harvey and Climate Change.

Only one answered!

by Dino Grandoni, August 30, 2017, the Washington Post

A Texas flag flies over floodwaters caused by Hurricane Harvey in La Grange, Texas. (Ralph Barrera/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

When members of Congress from Texas return to work next week, the fallout from Harvey, likely the worst disaster to ever hit the state, will follow them back to Washington.

Unless it is reauthorized by the end of September, the National Flood Insurance Program, which is nearly $25 billion in debt, will lose most of its borrowing power at a time when it will begin making payouts on claims on the Texas Gulf Coast. And President Trump has promised to work with Congress on a federal aid package for affected communities in Texas.

But that aid request puts many Texas Republicans in Congress in a bind four years in the making. In 2013, all but one Texas Republican who was serving in Congress then and is still in office now voted against an aid package for New York and New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy.

"The congressional members in Texas are hypocrites,"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a Trump ally, said this week. "I said back in 2012, they’d be proven to be hypocrites. It was just a matter of time." See a clip below:

Christie took direct aim at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who voted against Sandy help four years ago, today on "Morning Joe:"

Continue reading ...

Everyone’s a Socialist After a Natural Disaster

Ted Cruz’s hypocrisy won’t stop government from helping in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, but Texas will be needing help for a long time.

By Joan Walsh AUGUST 29, 2017 from The Nation

Ted Cruz defends his 2013 decision to vote against Sandy aid amid Harvey’s destruction on August 28, 2017. (MSNBC)

You know the old saying: There are no atheists in foxholes. I’ve got a new one: We’re all socialists after a natural disaster. Even Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The hypocrite who tried to block Hurricane Sandy aid to the East Coast in 2012 is now demanding the federal government expedite emergency funds for the survivors of Hurricane Harvey along the Gulf Coast of Texas, and in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city. East Coast Democrats are happy to help, though New Jersey Governor Chris Christie tried to renew his relevance by beefing with his party mate over his Sandy selfishness. The Washington Post gave Cruz three Pinocchios for claiming on Monday that he blocked Sandy aid only because it was larded with pork. It was not. But even in a disaster, Cruz can’t help lying.

Driving to Austin in March, I saw the way Houston emerges from the bayou—and then goes on and on, for what feels like forever. So much building, and so much water, even in dry times. This petrochemical-industry capital is built on land that is almost guaranteed to flood with regularity. With its lack of zoning laws and bias toward development, Houston is a monument to unfettered capitalism. Unfettered capitalism backed by government-backed flood insurance, that is—privatizing profit, socializing risk. But it’s also a multiracial metropolis led by a black mayor and a Latino police chief, with an insurgent progressive movement that elected a progressive Harris County district attorney just last year. We can see the best and the worst of the country in microcosm, and so far, the best is winning. With or without the “leadership” of President Trump.

As Melania Trump’s snakeskin stiletto heels clicked across the White House driveway Tuesday morning, it was obvious this Texas visit was about image over substance. (By the time she touched down in Corpus Christi, it should be noted, she’d changed into sneakers.) Accompanying the president and first lady, Ben Carson wore a HUD Emergency Team jacket (I wondered: Is there any such thing?), while Small Business Administration director Linda McMahon was decked out in an SBA Assistance jacket. Melania Trump wore a black hat emblazoned FLOTUS, so nobody would mistake her for anybody else, while Trump wore his trademark USA hat—you can buy it for $40 at his campaign website, by the way—to show he meant business. He didn’t bother to talk to any victims, or comfort any families. It’s hard to imagine a presidential visit accomplishing less.

“What a crowd, what a turnout,” said the narcissist who just fired his long-time advance man because the turnout at his Phoenix rally last week wasn’t big enough. “We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished,” he promised Texas Governor Greg Abbott at their FEMA briefing. That seemed like a rare case of Trump’s telling the straightforward truth—when does he not congratulate himself?

We Need to Love and Respect Our Mother Earth

Dear friends,

     Disasters bring out the best and the worst in humans.  So does everyday life.  It is just magnified during times of the catastrophes that affect multitudes. We react and/or respond to any situation according to our deepest beliefs about ourselves, others and our common ground. If we do not realize our unity with all people, we will seek out those most like ourselves and we will assist then first. 

     The God (or lack of it) we believe in colors every choice we make. If we know the Source is immediate, inexhaustible and forever pouring out blessings, we will give without fear of loss, love unconditionally, share what we have.  Most of all we will do it with the sense that a higher good for all is inherent in the experience.

     What good could possibly come from Hurricane Harvey?  Other than the experience of our fellow humans reaching out to one another with love and respect, which is huge, it might also bring us to a shared understanding of the effects of climate change.  Masses of folks have been denying its existence, and doing so at our peril.  We must act now, listen to the scientists and change how we live. We know what to do. The problem is so many do not want to do it! If life is worth living, then let’s make sure our planet will support us. It cannot give us what we really need if we continue to interfere with Nature. She knows what to do, how to do it, and when. She will eventually put the planet back in balance with or without us. If we want to live here, we need to love and respect our Mother.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes

www.carolcarnes.com

www.mvcsl.org   watch our TV show on You Tube “Living Consciously”

Off the Top of My Head

Trump's Tax "Reform" is Actually a Tax Perversion

by John Lawrence

The word "reform" usually means that you take something that is imperfect and you make some changes in order to make it better. To ameliorate. That's what reform means. But in this case, in the Trump meaning of the word, reform is actually an Orwellian euphemism. In Republican hands It means just the opposite of what the word traditionally meant.

The Republican and Trump tax "reform" means cutting taxes for the rich a huge amount and paying for it by cutting government programs that benefit the poor, the middle class and the environment. An actual reform package would mean increasing taxes on the rich while supplementing the incomes of the poor, bringing the incomes of the poor above the poverty level. The Earned Income Tax Credit, for instance, a potent anti-poverty tool especially for families with children, could be expanded. Better yet a Universal Basic Income, means tested and paid for by a Financial Transactions Tax, could decrease the economic divide.

As an example of how Trump's "tax reform" benefits the rich, consider this: With a 10% across the board break on taxes, a person paying $1000. in taxes would get $100. back. A person paying a million dollars in taxes would get $100,000. back. That $100,000 would impact the government's ability to fund programs for the poor and middle class much more than the $100. that the person paying $1000 in taxes would.

Economic inequality is getting worse, my friends. The major way to correct it is to tax the rich and supplement the incomes of the poor and middle class.

We All Have the Means to Help Others

Dear friends,

     Anything worth learning creates greater independence and self-responsibility. In turn, those qualities enliven our desire to help others in need. If we are grasping for our good, with no sense of how it comes to us, we will be anything but magnanimous with what we have. Those who reach out to their fellow humans do so because they can. It is that simple.

     If we see someone holding up a sign asking for help, we give, not because we are superior or out of any sense of guilt, but simply because we can. We have learned that circulation is key to prosperity.   We may ask for help ourselves, knowing that our self-responsibility is not in peril, but leading the way.  We must take care of ourselves as best we can, knowing that we are involved in the field of potential all the time. We are necessary to the system of give and receive.

  For most of us it is easier to give than receive. In western culture, money has become the measure of one’s self-worth. We mistakenly think there must be something wrong with us if we are financially insecure. But no, it means nothing in truth. If we can hold to our self-respect we will be able to receive blessings as they come but also to remember that it is temporary. We are in a holding pattern of our own making and it will all change quickly. Supply comes from many avenues but it all originates in the deeper realms of self-awareness.

Try this: I have gifts to give. I am supplied with what is necessary to my greater self-expression.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes

www.carolcarnes.com

www.mvcsl.org please make a donation via pay pal

watch our tv show on you tube

www.californiafreepress.net

Precipitation Totals for Harvey

'A Class of Its Own': No Storm in US History Has Unleashed More Rain Than Hurricane Harvey

Published on

Tuesday, August 29, 2017 

by

Common Dreams

 

"The 3-to-4 day rainfall totals are simply mind-blowing."

 

 

 

by 

Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

 17 Comments

People walk down a flooded street as they evacuate their homes after the area was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey on August 28, 2017 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Having dropped more than 50 inches of rain in an area east of Houston, Hurricane Harvey was officially declared "the most extreme rain event in U.S. history" on Tuesday.

The National Weather Service sent out notice Tuesday morning that Mary's Creek at Winding Road in Southeast Houston reported 49.2 inches of rain, but that number had been eclipsed by mid-afternoon, when Nielsen-Gammon recorded the new high mark at 50.4 inches.

"The 3-to-4 day rainfall totals...are simply mind-blowing," declared a National Weather Service office in Houston.

 "All rainfall totals from this storm are still preliminary and require review. But, if verified, this amount breaks not only the Texas state rainfall record but also the record for the remaining Lower 48 states," observes the Washington Post's Jason Samenow. "Hawaii has logged isolated reports of greater amounts at high elevations from tropical systems, but the footprint from Harvey in Southeast Texas is much larger. It has produced at least three feet of rain over most of the Houston region, affecting more than 5 million people."

The astonishing numbers—which Samenow says puts Hurricane Harvey "in a class of its own"—come as many continue to either evacuate Texas or seek shelter within the state. Some estimates put the number of people who could be left displaced by Harvey at around 30,000. By Tuesday afternoon, the estimated death toll from the storm had reached 15.

As Common Dreams reported on Monday, scientists have argued that extreme weather events like Hurricane Harvey—as well as the monsoon flooding that is currently ravaging Bangladesh, India, and Nepal—represent "the new reality" as the planet warms and sea levels rise.

In an appearance on "CBS This Morning" Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that the destruction wrought by Hurricane Harvey—and the extreme events that are sure to be worsened by human-caused climate change—makes mutual aid and solidarity as essential as ever.

"If there's any silver lining in the terrible suffering that's going on in Houston, it is to remember that we are all one country, and I am sure whether you're white or black or Latino, people are coming together to help each other all over the country," Sanders said. "We are one nation and we have got to stop the type of divisions that Trump and others are bringing about trying to divide us up."

Watch the full interview:

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Houston, We Have a Climate Problem

Published on

Tuesday, August 29, 2017 

by

Oil Change International

by 

Andy Rowell

 15 Comments

A man waves down a rescue crew as he tries to leave the area after it was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey on August 28, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Harvey, which made landfall north of Corpus Christi late Friday evening, is expected to dump upwards to 40 inches of rain in Texas over the next couple of days. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Texas has never seen rain like it. Some forty to sixty inches of rain in some places. Over 9 trillion gallons of water or maybe even more. There has been so much rain that the National Weather Service had to add extra colours to its rainfall map.

Anyone watching the unfolding catastrophe in Texas caused by superstorm Harvey cannot but offer thoughts and solidarity to those affected communities in their hour of need.

"The US may never have experienced a storm with so much water as Harvey before, but it will again."

You hope everyone reaches safety and stays safe as the waters continue to rise. If you are looking for ways to help, there are simple ways to do so.

But the best response to a disaster is to learn lessons to prevent the next one. No one who has witnessed the horror of losing their home to the ever increasing flood waters and who is now effectively homeless and who will spend months, if not years, rebuilding their lives, would wish the same on anyone else.

So what are the lessons?

We know that Trump’s visit later today will be a political charade for the news networks. This is a climate denying President who just a couple of weeks before the disaster announced a new Executive Order, which would have unrolled a previous Order by President Obama, which had been designed to improve “climate resilience” and protect critical infrastructure threatened by climate change.

At the time, Sierra Club Executive Director, Michael Brune, said: “This is climate science denial at its most dangerous, as Trump is putting vulnerable communities, federal employees, and families at risk by throwing out any guarantee that our infrastructure will be safe.”

Don’t forget Trump has form on this: apart from removing references to climate change on websites and disbanding scientific committees, he had previously told his Administration that the federal government did not need to treat climate change as a national security threat, despite nearly 130 military bases being considered at risk from climate change.

 

Off the Top of My Head

80% of Harvey Homeowners Are Uninsured

by John Lawrence

Houston, you have a problem. Insurance companies will not pay on homeowner's insurance policies for flood damage. You need a separate special flood insurance policy for that. And they will argue that almost all of the damage is from flooding and not from wind which is covered under homeowner's insurance policies. To make matters even worse, the Trump administration has deregulated insurance companies making it even harder for victims to collect.

After Super Storm Sandy, “60 Minutes” did a segment titled “The Storm After The Storm” that reported “wide scale fraud where original damage reports were later changed to make it look like the damage wasn’t as bad.” Similar reports were released following Hurricane Katrina documenting wind vs. water cases. Wind vs. water cases consist of engineering reports that intentionally misidentify damage as caused by water rather than the true cause, wind.

This is from Bloomberg News, August 23, 2017:

President Donald Trump’s emergency management director said he’s pushing for an overhaul of disaster relief so that states, cities and homeowners bear more of the costs, and less of the risk falls on the federal government.

Brock Long, who was confirmed in June as the administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for homes that keep flooding, and the threshold for triggering federal public assistance after a disaster might be too low. He also expressed support for an Obama administration idea to make local governments pay more when a hurricane or flood hits.

Yes, why should we taxpayers have to pay for losses to people stupid enough to build on a flood plain? Problem is that a lot of those impacted by the flooding are Trump supporters. However, as Huffington Post points out, the areas most impacted by the flooding are poor black neighborhoods who also have to deal with the polluted waters coming from the oil refineries:

“It’s very predictable as to which areas are going to get hit the hardest, because of how money gets allocated in terms of flood protection and flood control,” [Texas Southern University sociologist Robert] Bullard, often called the father of environmental justice, told HuffPost by phone on Sunday. “East side neighborhoods are the least protected.” ...

Petrochemical plants are expected to release more than 1 million pounds of air pollution as a result of Harvey, according to the nonprofit Air Alliance Houston. ...

“They not only have to deal with flooding in their homes, but pollution in water that’s contaminated when water floods refineries and plants,” Bullard said. “You’re talking about a perfect storm of pollution, environmental racism, and health risks that are probably not going to be measured and assessed until decades later. The fact is that laissez-faire, unrestrained capitalism and lack of zoning means people with money can put protections up, and people without can’t.”

Net result: Hedge funds will buy up flooded, uninsured homes for pennies on the dollar as they did in Katrina, fix them up and rent them back to their former owners at rates 2 or 3 times what they paid for their mortgage. Owners will become renters and Wall Street will come out the winner. Trump voters will still be happy as their homes will be the least impacted by the flooding, and they will be happier to know that they won't have to pay taxes for those stupid enough to live in areas most impacted by flooding.

 

What Do Democrats Stand For?

 by Robert Reich

Monday, August 28, 2017

The Democratic Party can lead the country in a new direction, but will it?

Millions of Americans who are politically engaged for the first time in their lives are crying out for a bold alternative to bigoted and destructive policies.

But Democrats can’t just be anti-Trump or move to the middle.

To be successful Democrats must address the forces that created Trump: The toxic combination of widening inequality and racism.

The richest one percent now own more than the bottom 90 percent. Corporations and the rich are running our politics.

The resulting economic stresses have made many people vulnerable to Trump’s politics of hate and bigotry.

If Democrats stand for one thing, it must be overcoming this unprecedented economic imbalance and creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of the bottom 90 percent, to take back our economy and politics.

This requires, at the least:

1. Public investments in world-class schools and infrastructure for all.

2. Free public universities and first-class technical training for all;

3. Single-payer Medicare-for-All;

4. Higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for this;

5. Using antitrust to break up powerful monopolies on Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Agriculture.

6. Getting big money out of our politics.

Together, these steps form an agenda to reclaim our economy and democracy for all. Will Democrats lead the way?

What It Means to Be a Man

Dear friends,

     In 1849 at age 46, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about what it means to be a man. I offer it here today as a statement of the evolved masculine, which is so desperately missing in our world leaders.

“It is a vulgar error to suppose that a gentleman must be ready to fight. 

The utmost that can be demanded of the gentleman is that he be incapable of a lie.

There is a man who has good sense, is well informed, well read, obliging, cultivated, capable, and has an absolute devotion to truth.

He always means what he says and says what he means, however courteously.

You may spit upon him.  Nothing could induce him to spit upon you, no praises and no possessions, no compulsion of public opinion.

You may kick him----he will think it the kick of a brute, but he is not a brute and will not kick you in return.

But neither your knife and pistol, nor your gifts and courting will ever make the smallest impression on his vote or his word, for he is the truth’s man, and will speak and act the truth until he dies.”

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes

www.carolcarnes.com

www.mvcsl.org  donations can be made via pay pal

watch our tv show on You Tube  search my name or Living Consciously

Off the Top of My Head

Think Houston is Bad? Floods Kill Over 1,200 in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

by John Lawrence

While the US media focuses on the flooding in Houston, nary a word is spoken about the far worse tragedy in south Asia. Millions of people are stranded by the worst such disaster in years. Thousands of villages are cut off and people have been deprived of food and clean water for days. Thousands are sheltered in relief camps away from their inundated homes.

"This year farming has collapsed due to floods and we will witness a sharp rise in unemployment," said Anirudh Kumar, a disaster management official in Patna - the capital of poor Bihar state known for mass migration to cities in search of jobs.

In Nepal, 150 people have been killed and 90,000 homes destroyed in what the United Nations is calling the worst flooding there in a decade.

In Bangladesh, at least 134 people have died and more than 5.7 million were affected directly as monsoon flooding submerged more than a third of the low-lying and densely populated country.

Crops on 10,583 hectares of land have been washed away while another 600,587 hectares of farmland have been partially damaged, according to the disaster ministry, in a big blow to the farm-dependent country which lost around one million tonnes of rice in flash floods in April.

"I could not find a single dry patch of land," said Matthew Marek, the head of disaster response in Bangladesh for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, who made an aerial assessment of the worst affected parts of the country.

"Farmers are left with nothing, not even with clean drinking water."

It's global warming, my friends, and people in other parts of the world are suffering far more than people in the US. When will there be a globalization of thinking that will let people see that we're all in this together. We have one planet to live on, and, if we don't figure out a way to live together and help each other, we will surely die or our children or grandchildren will. We must stop all the trillions of dollars spent on the military and concentrate on providing the basics of life - clean drinking water, food, shelter, adequate sewage and waste disposal, renewable energy - or the human race will ultimately, if a history of the universe were to be written, be thought of as foolish and stupid.

The Constitution Project: Germany

by John Lawrence

From operationworld.org

The Constitution of Germany is called the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany and went into effect in 1949 after World War II. When Germany became reunited a series of amendments went into effect and the result was the Unification Treaty that became the Constitution of the reunited Germany.

The authors of the Basic Law sought to ensure that a potential dictator would never again have the chance to come into power in the country. Although some of the Basic Law is based on the Weimar republic constitution, the authors also ensured that human rights and human dignity were made central and core parts of the Basic Law. The principles of democracy, republicanism, social responsibility, and federalism are key components of the Basic Law; the principles underlying these articles are constitutionally entrenched; and, although several of these articles have since been reworded, extended or refined, they are barred from being removed or repealed by the normal amendment process.

The Basic Law established Germany as a parliamentary democracy with separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

The executive branch consists of the largely ceremonial Federal President as head of state and the Federal Chancellor, the head of government, normally (but not necessarily) the leader of the largest grouping in the Bundestag.

The legislative branch is represented by the Bundestag, elected directly through a mixture of proportional representation and direct mandates, with the German Länder (the 16 federal subdivisions of Germany) participating in legislation through the Bundesrat (a Federal Council representing the 16 German states at the national level), reflecting Germany's federal structure.

The judicial branch is headed by the Federal Constitutional Court, which oversees the constitutionality of laws.

The Chancellor is the head of the cabinet and oversees the operations of the  ministers of the cabinet.

The main body of the legislative branch is Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, which enacts federal legislation, including the budget. Each member of the Bundestag has the right to initiate legislation, as do the cabinet and the Bundesrat. The Bundestag also elects the Chancellor, the head of government, usually (but not necessarily) the leader of the majority party or the party with a plurality of seats in the Bundestag, and takes part in the election of the Federal President.

Hitler exploited deficiencies in the Weimar Constitution in order to take power and form the Third Reich. The present Constitution takes great pains to prevent anything like this happening again.

Article 79 states the Basic Law may be amended by an absolute two-thirds majority of the Bundestag along with a simple two-thirds majority of the Bundesrat. Such a vote may not remove any of the principles underlying articles 1 to 20, as defined by the eternity clause, but may clarify, extend or refine those principles.

The German Federal Election System regulates the election of the members of the national parliament, called Bundestag. According to the principles governing the elections laws, set down in Art. 38 of German Basic Law, elections are to be universal, direct, free, equal, and secret. Furthermore, the German Basic Law stipulates that Bundestag elections are to take place every four years and that one can vote, and be elected, upon reaching the age of 18. All other stipulations for the federal elections are regulated by the Federal Electoral Act. Elections always take place on a Sunday. Mail votes are possible upon application.

Germans elect their members of parliament with two votes. One vote is for a direct candidate, who ought to receive a plurality vote in their election district. The second vote (considered as more important) is to elect a party list in each province as established by its respective party caucus. Half of the Bundestag is then filled with candidates that won their electoral districts by the first votes and the other half by candidates from the party lists according roughly to the proportion the parties receive from the second votes according to a complex mathematical formula. Common practice is that direct candidates are also placed on the electoral lists at higher rankings as a fall-back if they do not win their districts.

German voting goes district by district. Voters do not vote for candidates outside their district. There are 299 constituencies or districts at the present time. So 299 seats in the Bundestag go to whomever wins according to majority rule in each district. The second vote is for a party list compiled on a regional basis. Proportional representation is used to allocate the remaining 598 seats according to the percentage of the votes that each party received.

The Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, is elected according to the principle of proportional representation. In some cases, this system is also referred to as mixed member proportional representation. This, however, is incorrect considering the fact that the mandates gained directly in each federal state are compared to the number of second vote mandates and any differences are compensated with candidates from the party’s list at the state level, if, according to the principle of proportional representation, a party gains more second vote mandates than direct mandates. Therefore, it is more accurate to call it additional member system. However, the so-called mixing election system can be described as parallel voting whereas a certain number of representatives is elected through one of the systems and the other independent representatives are elected through the other system without any mandates being taken over by both of the systems.

Voting for the Bundestag is complicated. In particular, the importance of the second vote is sometimes underestimated. However, the voting system combines many of the advantages of both the plurality and the proportional voting system. Time has proven that this voting system mainly allows for a proportional distribution of seats, stable governments, change of governments, the possibility of new parties joining the parliament, and in comparison to the Reichstag, the precursor parliament of the Bundestag in the Weimar Republic, it allows for a parliament capable of acting. Presently, the big parties are not considering introducing a majority voting system like they did at the beginning of the first grand coalition in 1966.

Extreme Storms Like Harvey and Climate Change: 'This Is the New Reality'

Published on

Monday, August 28, 2017 

by

Common Dreams

 

 

 

"This is the new reality. And the challenge is how we address it. How rapidly we're going to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy."

by  Andrea Germanos, staff writer

 

 2 Comments

Shardea Harrison looks on at her 3 week old baby Sarai Harrison being held by Dean Mize as he and Jason Legnon used his airboat to rescue them from their home after the area was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey on August 28, 2017 in Houston, Texas.  (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

As Hurricane Harvey continues to batter Texas—and as the death toll from monsoon flooding in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh surpasses 1,200—experts are putting a spotlight on how climate change is linked to the "unprecedented" storm's devastation.

Trying to attribute Harvey to climate change "is an ill-posed question," argues Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. "While we cannot say climate change 'caused' Hurricane Harvey," writes Mann at the Guardian, "we can say is that it exacerbated several characteristics of the storm in a way that greatly increased the risk of damage and loss of life."

One way, he explains, is because of sea level rise, which contributed to a higher storm surge. In addition, warmer than average sea surface temperatures led to more moisture in the air. "That large amount of moisture," writes Mann, "creates the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding. The combination of coastal flooding and heavy rainfall is responsible for the devastating flooding that Houston is experiencing."

Indeed, meteorologist Jeff Masters notes:

Here we are, in the midst of a mega-disaster on the scale only surpassed by Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina in recent decades, from a hurricane hazard we've never seen on such a large and destructive scale—torrential rain. The damages from Harvey will undoubtedly run into the tens of billions of dollars, making Harvey's rains the most destructive ever experienced from a hurricane.

In addition, Mann writes, "Harvey was able to feed upon" warmer waters deeper within the Gulf "when it intensified at near record pace as it neared the coast." Another potential link to climate change is how the storm is stalling near the coast, allowing it to continue to wreak havoc, in a pattern "associated with a greatly expanded subtropical high pressure system over much of the U.S. at the moment, with the jet stream pushed well to the north."

Climate journalist David Roberts also explores how climate change is "a huge part of the story" of Harvey, and explains why "without mitigation, adaptation [to climate change] is a cruel joke."

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or mitigation, he writes,

generates benefits that are unavoidably egalitarian (distributed across the globe, to everyone who lives in the atmosphere) and progressive (the poor are most vulnerable, so they benefit first and most from harm prevention).

Adaption, in contrast, like erecting higher sea walls, is necessarily local and "regressive (wealthy people and places will adapt first, best, and most)."

Putting adaptation in the context of Harvey's "mind-boggling rainfall amounts," he writes:

What is good or adequate adaptation to 40 to 50 inches of rain falling on your head in 72 hours?

There's just no way to prepare for that and no painless way to respond to it. There's no adapting. There's destruction and suffering, followed by slow rebuilding.

According to David Helvarg, executive director of ocean conservation organization Blue Frontier, with Harvey, "we're seeing the impacts of climate change."

There was "a flooding event right there in Houston last year that the Houston flood control district said was a one in 10,000-year rain event. Well, it's a year later, and you're having another one," he said to Democracy Now! Monday.

In 2000, he added, he was speaking with a scientist from the NASA Ames laboratory at Columbia who was "explaining the big 1993 nor'easter. And she said that yeah, one-in-a-century storms like that are now going to become decadal, happen every decade or more frequently. And since then, I was down at Katrina. We had Sandy. Now we have this hurricane. We are seeing the impacts."

Referring to the historic flooding unleashed by Harvey, he said, "this is the new normal. This is the new reality. And the challenge is how we address it. How rapidly we're going to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy."

Linking the dots between the hurricane, the devastation in Asia, and climate change, economist Dean Baker writes: "The monsoon rains and cyclones [Bangladesh experiences] are likely to get worse in the years ahead, as one of the effects of global warming." And, given that the country is lacking vast resources, "many more people are likely to be dying from floods." As such, it behooves the U.S to take urgent climate action. He continues:

Emissions of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming is often treated as a natural market outcome, whereas efforts to restrict emissions are viewed as government intervention. This is nonsense.

Allowing people to emit greenhouse gases without paying for the damage done is like allowing them to dump their sewage on their neighbor's lawn. Everyone understands that we are responsible for dealing with our own sewage and not imposing a cost on our neighbor. It's the same story with greenhouse gases.

It is understandable that a rich jerk like Donald Trump might not want to pay for the damage he does to the world, especially when the people most affected are dark-skinned, but it is not a serious position. The emissions from the United States and other wealthy countries will result in a lot of Harvey-like disasters in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the developing world. We have to take responsibility for this human catastrophe.

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Taking the Road Less Traveled

Dear friends,

    At age 56, after many years of writing and speaking, Emerson good-naturedly noted that he had not even one disciple.   He commented that his intent was always to bring people to themselves, not to him. To me, that is the purpose of New Thought spirituality as well.  To bring students to the realization that everything we seek, including God, is within the Self.  It all exists in that vast field of potentialities that produces form and experience.

     While we have set New Thought in the form of Centers that hold regular gatherings, we are more a teaching than a preaching.  Nothing can be gained from it unless what is learned is put into practice.  It is a way of living and seeing life that profoundly changes our experience.  We move from superstitious, dogmatic thinking to an ongoing relationship with our higher mind.  We discover that what we think about tends to come about.  Of course, what we think about is directly linked to who we know ourselves to be.

     The big shift comes when we realize we are not products of experience, but the constant open possibility that moves through experience.  We are the Whole which is producing the fraction.  We are the projector of our personal reality. The quality of our life is the visible result of the quality of our self-awareness.  This is way too much power for some folks.  They would rather believe in luck or a God that is making all the decisions for them.  It is possible to live from either perspective.  As Robert Frost wrote, taking the road less travelled makes all the difference.

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes

www.carolcarnes.com

www.mvcsl.org you can make a donation via pay pal on our website.

www.californiafreepress.net a resource for new ideas about everything.

PUBLIC BANK OF LOS ANGELES

This is from the Public Bank LA website:

Public banking is an idea whose time has come. Innovators and forward thinking visionaries are promoting a radical idea- that the circulatory system of the economy should be in public rather than private hands, serving, to use the words of Rousseau, the General Will- what’s best for everyone, instead of the Particular Will, what’s best for a faction of people at the expense of everyone else- the way private banking works today.

Banking is at the heart of the entire economy, it determines where the money flows- for better or for worse, and with such a vital public service in the hands of an oligarchic and extractive financial elite, pernicious abuse of this power is the norm.

The public bank solution has the potential to fundamentally transform the nature of the economy and even the very notion of economics, to make it once and for all in the service for and by the people instead of for and by private financial elites.
Make no mistake, what we're advocating fo is nothing short of a revolution. Imagine if this idea caught fire, went viral, and spread to all 50 States?

Let no one allow us to sell ourselves short, we must strive for nothing less than a radical system overhaul that definitively and decisively transfers the levers of control from oligarchs to the people, from Wall St. to Main St. Too much is at stake for the human race in too little a time frame to settle for anything less.

What we need is an expansion on the notion of a social economy through public banking- to introduce some new ideas into the discussion.

The public bank revolution can sweep the nation state by state. But there is a key element to consider for socially and environmentally responsible economics- the notion of scale.

Public banking advocates have eloquently discussed all the incredible benefits of a state public bank. However, in addition, there is an even smaller economic and civic unit than a state, one might say the most fundamental economic and civic unit of them all- the CITY.

What if, in addition to a California state bank, and public banks in other states, we also saw the proliferation of Municipal Public Banks sweep the nation? Banks owned and operated by and for local communities.

Trump’s Labor Day

by Robert Reich

Sunday, August 27, 2017

This will be the first Labor Day of the presidency of Donald J. Trump, who came to office riding a wave of anti-establishment anger from average working people. No one can say they didn’t see it coming.

By the time Trump was elected, the typical American household had a net worth 14 percent lower than the typical household in 1984. The richest 1 percent owned more than the bottom 90 percent.

Last year’s annual Wall Street bonus pool alone was larger than the annual year-round earnings of all 3.3 million Americans working full time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

While 90 percent of US adults born in the early 1940s were earning more than their parents by the time they reached their prime earning years, only half of adults born in the mid-1980s are earning more than their parents in their prime earning years.

Most also have less economic security than their parents.  Nearly one out of every five American workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck.

Most are working more hours than they worked decades ago and taking fewer sick days or vacations.

The gap in life expectancy between the nation’s most affluent and everyone else is also widening.

Increasing numbers of Americans on the downward economic escalator are succumbing to opiods, chronic liver cirrhosis, and poisonings that include drug overdoses.

The standard explanation for why all this has occurred is that most American workers are no longer “worth” as much as they were before digital technologies and globalization. So they must now settle for lower wages and less security.

Rubbish. 

This doesn’t explain why workers in other advanced economies facing similar forces haven’t succumbed to them nearly as dramatically as have workers in the United States.

Or why the pay of top executives at big companies has soared from an average of 20 times that of the typical worker 40 years ago to almost 300 times now.

Or why the denizens of Wall Street, who in the 1950s and 1960s earned comparatively modest sums, are now paid tens or hundreds of millions annually.

And it can’t account for the decline in the starting wages of recent college graduates. A college education is now a prerequisite for joining the middle class but no longer a sure means for gaining ground once admitted to it.

To attribute all this to the impersonal workings of the market, and assume it’s because most workers aren’t “worth” as much as before, is to ignore the increasing ability of moneyed interests to alter the system for their own benefit – demolishing trade unions, turning full-time employees into contract workers, and monopolizing industry.

America’s economic and political elites could have used their growing political and economic clout to help workers get ahead – through better schools and more affordable college, comprehensive job retraining, wage insurance, better public transportation, and expanded unemployment insurance.

They could have pushed for universal health insurance.

They could have paid for all this by accepting, even lobbying for, higher taxes on themselves.

They could have sought to reduce their own political clout by demanding limits on campaign spending.

But they did the reverse: They spent more and more of their ever-growing wealth and power to rig the game to their own advantage.

As a result, trust in all the major institutions of our society has plummeted.

In 1964 more than 60 percent of Americans thought government was “run for the benefit of all the people” while just 29 percent said government was “pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.”

Nowadays the numbers are almost reversed, with 76 percent believing government is run “by a few big interest” and just 19 percent saying government is run “for the benefit of all.”

In the early 1960s most Americans said they had a “great deal of confidence” in the nation’s major companies, banks, and financial institutions.

Now just one in ten has a great deal of confidence in them.

In his first seven months as president, Trump has done nothing for American workers. In fact, his attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act, his retreat from Labor Department regulations boosting overtime pay, and his proposed tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations will make most workers worse off.  

But he is in office because of their anger and distrust, and he’s still feeding off it. “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs.”

Tragically, Trump was right.

Now all of us are paying the price.

Off the Top of My Head

Rain of Biblical Proportions, But Mum is the Word on Global Warming

by John Lawrence

Hey, newscasters, what we want is for people to say, "I have never seen anything like this." If they mention global warming, get them off the air. And you weather people can talk about this being a 100 year weather event, or a 1000 year weather event, but don't dare mention it could be a 10 day weather event.

50 inches of rain in Houston and people might just start considering the building of an ark. The fake news is that it's all about Hurricane Harvey. The actual news is that it's all about the rain. Forget the hurricane. Torrential rain produces massive flash flooding. No food, no power, no water, but the Houston Mayor told people to shelter in place. What was he thinking? Or what was he smoking? Poor old ladies in nursing homes were sitting in water up to their wheelchairs.

The Gulf of Mexico is very warm, as warm as 86° Fahrenheit is some places.. Sea surface temperatures have been as much as 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit above average in the Gulf of Mexico in the last two weeks, according to the Climate Prediction Center. Tropical storms and hurricanes can tap into this heat energy, which can help them to intensify. The warmer the water and the deeper the warm water layer goes, the ocean becomes more supportive for thunderstorm production in the atmosphere.

But we must continue to glorify the internal combustion engine. NASCAR reigns supreme. We must fill 'er up with Supreme. The President of the United States doesn't even believe in global warming or science or anything else except the glorification and enrichment of Donald Trump. Hush now, y'all southerners. Not a word about global warming. As for those protesters, talk like the Donald. "Get them the hell out of here!" If Hillary spiced up her language with a few expletives like the Donald did, she might be President right now. But she was too sensible and rational. People voted for someone who talked just like they did with a few F words here and there. A little S to boot. That's what made the Donald seem "authentic."

Trump and Pruitt, Making America Polluted Again

by Paul Krugman AUG. 25, 2017 from the New York Times

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Steam rising from the coal-fired Jim Bridger power plant outside Rock Springs, Wyo.CreditJim Urquhart/Reuters

Efforts to kill Obamacare have failed, at least for now. Tax “reform” — which really means big tax cuts for the rich — faces doubtful prospects. Indeed, these prospects may have become even more doubtful thanks to Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin: Her now infamous Instagram rant may open at least a few voters’ eyes to the contempt “populist” Donald Trump’s inner circle really feels for the little people.

So many observers are asking whether Trump can restart his stalled agenda. But that turns out to be a bad question, in a couple of ways.

First, Trump doesn’t really have an agenda beyond “winning.” He has instincts and prejudices, but no interest in the details, or even the broad outlines, of policy. For example, it’s obvious that he never had any idea what was in his own party’s health care plan. And he has definitely shown no interest in turning his populist rhetoric into anything concrete.

As a result, whatever personal feuds Trump may have with the Republican establishment, that establishment — the same interest groups and ideologues who’ve been driving G.O.P. positions for decades — is setting his administration’s policy agenda.

Which brings me to my second point: While the legislative agenda does indeed appear stalled, a lot of what those interest groups want doesn’t require legislation, and is anything but stalled. This is especially true for environmental policy, where decisions about how to interpret and enforce laws already on the books can have a huge impact.

continue reading ...

'Time to Redistribute Wealth': 1% Thriving While 78% Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Published on Friday, August 25, 2017 by Common Dreams

As President Trump flaunts booming stock market, most U.S. workers as vulnerable as ever

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

72 Comments

Responding to the CareerBuilder report on Twitter, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, argued the results show the urgent need for "strong unions" and "an economy that works for us," not merely the wealthiest. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/Flickr/cc)

Top CEOs may be thriving, but most American workers are drowning in debt, saving little, and living paycheck to paycheck.

That's according to a new report by CareerBuilder, which found that:

• 78 percent of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 75 percent last year;
• 71 percent of workers are in debt, up from 68 percent last year;
• 56 percent believe their debt is unmanageable;
• 54 percent of minimum-wage workers say they have to work more than one job to make ends meet.

The report's findings—based on a survey of more than 3,400 full-time workers across various industries and income levels—suggest that the stock market boom President Donald Trump has so frequently flaunted has done little to help the workers he claims to support.

As Michelle Styczynski pointed out in an analysis for the People Policy Project, "the stock market tells us about the prospects of capital owners, but it certainly doesn't tell us much about the average worker."

David Hildebrand, a democratic socialist challenging Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for her Senate seat in 2018, observed that the numbers found in the CareerBuilder survey are "nothing new," and that they show "it's time to redistribute wealth."

As Common Dreams reported last month, wages for most workers have remained flat for decades. Meanwhile, CEO compensation continues to soar: a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that the pay of top CEOs rose by an "outrageous" 937 percent between 1978 and 2016.

Judging by his tax proposals—and by his claim during his presidential campaign that wages are "too high"—Trump appears unlikely to reverse these decades-long trends.

Responding to the CareerBuilder report on Twitter, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, argued the results show the urgent need for "strong unions" and "an economy that works for us," not merely the wealthiest.

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Off the Top of My Head

With Liberty and Inequality For All

by John Lawrence

It's no secret that Americans are becoming more unequal. Over the past four decades, the US economy has doubled in size, but the bottom half of US households has seen no income gains. In 1970, the bottom half of wage earners made an average of $16,000 a year in current dollars. By 2014, this group’s earnings had risen to only $16,200. During those same years, the top 1 percent of workers saw their annual income grow from an average of $400,000 to $1.3 million. Almost half of US workers earn under $15 an hour. One in three earns less than $12 an hour.

Since the Great Recession of 2008, over 85 percent of income gains have gone to the top 1 percent of households, and most to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. Technological change is also displacing a growing segment of jobs. According to one Oxford study, about 47 percent of US occupations are at risk of elimination due to technological change and automation. Only highly professional level jobs, those requiring a PhD, will remain combined with very low level jobs requiring a basic speaking knowledge of the English (and perhaps Spanish) language will remain.

The top one-tenth of 1 percent (an estimated 160,000 households with net worth that starts at $20 million) now own more than 22 percent of all US household wealth in 2012, up from 7 percent in 1978. This tiny subgroup—the true American elite—now owns as much as the bottom 90 percent of US households combined. According to the Pew Research Center, the median wealth of white households in 2013 was a stunning thirteen times that of Black households—up from eight times greater in 2010. White households had ten times more wealth than Latino households. African-American households have six cents—Latinos, seven—for every dollar in wealth a white household owns.

At the very pinnacle of US wealth is the Forbes 400, billionaires whose combined net worth totals $2.3 trillion. Together, this small group has more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the US population combined. The richest 100 have more wealth than the entire Black population, over 14 million households. The net worth of the wealthiest 20 billionaires—all of whom could sit in one Gulfsteam 650 luxury jet— exceeds that of the bottom half of the US population combined.

More and more Americans have negative net worth - that is their debts exceed their assets. As good paying jobs disappear, Americans try to keep their heads above water by credit card debt (to make ends meet), student loan debt (the promise of a higher paying job) and payday loans at exorbitant  interest rates.

A new political party which serves the interests of the vast majority of non wealthy Americans is called for. The Democratic party no longer serves their interests because it's beholden to Wall Street and the status quo which includes the military-industrial complex. The Republican party flaunts the fact that they are the party of the rich while patronizing the lower middle class. Trump's outspokenness and use of expletives supposedly mirrors their forthrightness and authenticity. His dalliance with far flung tall tales mimics their ignorance. He says in effect, "Hey folks, I'm just as dumb as you are. Vote for me!"

Power to the People (Solar Power, That Is)

From the San Diego Free Press, August 24, 2017

(Source: Sullivan Solar Power)

By Mark Hughes

You may have heard the news: San Diego leads the country in kilowatts of solar panels installed, beating out LA and Honolulu — and by a lot. What’s going on? It’s like cell phones all over again. At first, just a few wealthy cranks have them, but before you know it, everyone and their kid has one. Was there a memo?

Maybe this is you now: driving home from work, you can’t resist flicking a glance at the solar panel array on your neighbor’s roof and wonder yet again if they pay SDG&E anything. Or, you’re out for a walk and see that trim, shipshape house you’ve always admired now sports the increasingly fashionable blue/black panels. You put on a brave face, but it’s starting to eat at you: panel envy. The good news is that it’s nothing to be ashamed of and you’re far from alone. Pull up a seat, lie back, and let’s talk.

Sure, you know all the valiant reasons for putting panels on your roof: a heroic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, doing your part to make America energy-independent, and that little thing about helping save the world from the worst ravages of climate change. Yeah, yada, yada, yada. Let’s get real here. After years of paying the highest rates in California — heck, higher than almost anywhere in the country — you long for payback time!

Good. Now that you’ve spit those words out, how about we really let our guard down? Is this thought stirring inside you too: there’s maybe nothing quite so uplifting and airy as that pious feeling you’d get from admiring your very own solar panel array? You’re pulling your weight now, buddy, a CO₂ footprint no bigger than a ballerina’s toe-point.

Let that sink in, relax into it like a warm bath on a winter’s afternoon. Don’t let that pesky voice, for a minute at least, kill the joy. Picture getting a bill from SDG&E just once a year—and smiling because they owe you money. Oh yeah, that’s payback.

Okay, drift down from the fantasy and let that other voice have its say now. The one that says you can’t have your own array because 1) it costs too much; 2) you live in an association with a common roof; 3) your roof faces the wrong way/or you’re an apartment dweller; 4) the project is complicated and daunting; 5) you’re probably not going to live in the house for more than 3 or 4 years; 6) your electric bill is small, meaning long or no payback; 7) other objections here.

Whew, what a list! How many wet blankets does it take to smother a warm, happy feeling? But maybe, just maybe, there are ways to dry those blankets out, fold them nicely, and put them on the shelf. Let’s go through them one by one.

Only Solution, Says McKibben, 100% Renewables 'As Fast as Humanly Possible'

Published on

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

by

Common Dreams

"No more half-measures," warns prominent climate author and activist

by

 Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

 61 Comments

"It's important news that the environmental movement seems to be rallying round a new flag. That standard bears a number: 100 percent," McKibben writes. (Photo: Clark Maxwell/Flickr/cc)

"Given the state of the planet," writes 350.org founder Bill McKibben in his new feature piece for In These Times, it would have been ideal for the world to have fully transitioned its energy systems away from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable sources "25 years ago." But we can still push for the "second best" option, McKibben concludes. To do so, we must move toward wind, solar, and water "as fast as humanly possible."

The transition to 100 percent renewable energy is a goal that has gained significant appeal over the past decade—and particularly over the past several months, as President Donald Trump has moved rapidly at the behest of Big Oil to dismantle even the limited environmental protections put in place by the Obama administration. Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, a move McKibben denounced as "stupid and reckless."

"What Medicare for All is to the healthcare debate, or Fight for $15 is to the battle against inequality, 100 percent renewable is to the struggle for the planet's future." 
—Bill McKibben"Environmental groups from the Climate Mobilization to Greenpeace to Food and Water Watch are backing the 100 percent target," McKibben writes, as are many lawmakers, U.S. states, and countries throughout the world.

Given the climate stance of both the dominant party in Congress and the current occupant of the Oval Office, McKibben notes that we shouldn't be looking toward either for leadership.

Rather, we should look to states like California and countries like China, both of which have made significant commitments to aggressively alter their energy systems in recent months.

Off the Top of My Head

Taliban Rope-A-Dopes US in Afghanistan

by John Lawrence

As US sends in more troops for its 16 year war in Afghanistan, the Taliban will just fade into the woodwork. Then when the troops leave the Taliban will come out to play. The Taliban are indigenous to Afghanistan and Pakistan and will always be there ready to take over again when the US leaves. This rope-a-dope strategy has served then very well.

The US is just wasting its money and blood in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban. It's now becoming a generational war. War is the US method of keeping the economy humming, but the money could be spent in more productive ways to keep the economy humming , and the US and the world would be better off.

If the US really wanted to get back at the country responsible for 9/11, it would attack Saudi Arabia, a country that birthed Osama bin Laden, is the major funder of terrorism in the world and supplied 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. The irony of the situation is that Saudi Arabia is the US' major ally in the middle east, because of oil, no doubt. Oil will lose its relevance, however, as the world converts to solar and other renewables. Since oil must be purchased from the Saudis and OPEC with US dollars, we can't let go of Saudi Arabia as an ally or they would start accepting payment in yen, euros and other currencies.

So the US and Saudi Arabia are locked in an embrace similar to that of Count Ugolino, who gnaws on the neck of Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, in Dante's Inferno. What an apt metaphor for the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia! Despite Saudi Arabia's virulent form of Islam know as Wahhabism, which preaches death to the West and the utmost suppression of women, the US can't disassociate themselves from Saudi or else the dollar would go down and the 20 trillion dollar national debt would come due.

Harvard Study Confirms: #ExxonKnew and Misled Public About Climate Threat for Decades

Published on Wednesday, August 23, 2017 by Common Dreams

"ExxonMobil contributed quietly to the science and loudly to raising doubts about it," researchers conclude

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

 

10 Comments

Researchers from Harvard studied nearly 200 ExxonMobil communications and concluded that the company actively misled the public about climate change, contradicting findings by even their own scientists. (Photo: Edward Kimmel/Flickr/cc)

A peer-reviewed study published on Wednesday confirmed "a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil's scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public."

"Even while ExxonMobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale."
—Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, Harvard researchers

"ExxonMobil contributed quietly to the science and loudly to raising doubts about it," wrote Harvard researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes in their study, published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters.

"Even while ExxonMobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale," they concluded in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday.

"Exxon has officially run out of excuses," said Greenpeace USA climate liability campaigner Naomi Ages. "This peer-reviewed study from Harvard is just the latest piece of evidence indicating that the largest oil company in the world knew about the risks of climate change, but concealed them from the public and shareholders."

The study confirmed findings from 2015 reports by InsideClimate News and The Los Angeles Times, which claimed the company had long known about the risks of climate change but publicly denied them, and triggered probes by the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In their New York Times op-ed, the researchers note that they were pushed to undertake their study by ExxonMobil's response to the 2015 reports:

The company responded that the allegations were false and "deliberately cherry-picked," and that anyone who looked into the matter would see that. "Read the documents," the company said, "and make up your own mind." A year ago we took up this challenge. We have read all of the documents, analyzed them according to established social science methods, and made up our minds.... Our findings are clear: Exxon Mobil misled the public about the state of climate science and its implications.

Supran and Oreskes examined 187 climate change-related communications from ExxonMobil between 1977 and 2014, including peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal communications, as well as paid, editorial-style advertisements, or "advertorials," published by the New York Times.

They observed that ExxonMobil's Times advertorials "included several instances of explicit factual misrepresentation," and "overwhelmingly emphasized only the uncertainties, promoting a narrative inconsistent with the views of most climate scientists, including ExxonMobil's own."

After Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote about the study, ExxonMobil emailed him comment, calling its findings "inaccurate and preposterous."

"ExxonMobil acknowledges the risk of climate change is clear and warrants action," the statement said, asserting that the study "was paid for, written and published by activists leading a five-year campaign against the company."

Supran and Oreskes note in the study's acknowledgments their research was paid for by the Harvard University Faculty Development Funds and the Rockefeller Family Fund, and state they "have no other relevant financial ties and declare no conflicts of interest."

Oreskes further told Mother Jones that ExxonMobil's messaging adapts as its past positions become discredited, but that the company still sticks to its old habits of sowing doubt among members of the public.

"They are promoting a different kind of doubt," she said. "It's a doubt that says, 'There's climate change, but we have to still use fossil fuels because there's no alternative,'" Oreskes explained, stressing that there are alternatives (as outlined in Bill McKibben's recent In These Times cover story).

Climate activists, politicians, and journalists praised the study online, and called for the company—and its former CEO, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—to be held accountable.

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Every Day Shold Be Worth Our Gratitude and Cheerful Expectation

Dear friends,

     What are you celebrating today?  A birthday, an anniversary, a wedding, sobriety, a new job, retirement, a completion, a new beginning? If nothing else, every day ought to be worth our gratitude and our cheerful expectation.  Something wonderful is happening today and it is you!  You are the gift you are seeking. You are conscious; you can imagine; you are able to forgive and move on; you can keep precious memories alive if you choose. You can decide what to think, what to believe, what to allow into your personal reality.

      As the vehicle for Life, you are the way in for infinite possibility to be seen and known. There is no other avenue for the expression of Spirit on Earth. It comes through the very life that you are. Let’s celebrate today that Spirit is coming in as renewed love, greater health, increased prosperity, deeper joy, perfect vision. Let’s welcome the Presence as our next great idea; an insight; a revelation; a healing; an opportunity. Emerson said: “God comes to us without bell.” In other words, it is always present. We must play our part with a constant expectation of good.

      Emerson also advised “God will not be made manifest by cowards.” Bravery is not overcoming obstacles or danger. Bravery in this sense is seeing through the current scene as evidence of our own limited ideas. Spiritual courage is simply to stand in the chaos and see the emergent order. It is to know and know that we know. God never fails to supply us with what we are willing to accept. Celebration is acceptance of the highest kind. Raise a symbolic glass today in a toast to the joy of living. Shout out “this is my life and I love being me!”

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes

www.carolcarnes.com

www.mvcsl.org   please support this work via pay pal donations. Thank you!

www.californiafreepress.net  an avenue for intelligent comments on our world

Off the Top of My Head

Einstein's Love of Music Facilitated His Work in Science

by John Lawrence

Einstein's mother gave him a gift that would last his entire life. She bought him a violin and arranged for him to have lessons. The following is from Walter Isaacson's book, Einstein: His Life and Universe:

... after being exposed to Mozart's sonatas, music became both magical and emotional for him. "I believe that love is a better teacher then a sense of duty," [Einstein] said, "at least for me."

Soon he was playing Mozart duets, with his mother accompanying him on the piano. "Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe itself," he later told a friend. Of course," he added in a remark that reflected his view of math and physics as well as of Mozart, "like all great beauty, his music was pure simplicity."

Music was no mere diversion. On the contrary, it helped him think. "Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or faced a difficult challenge in his work," said his son Hans Albert, "he would take refuge in music and that would solve all his difficulties." The violin thus proved useful during the years he lived alone in Berlin, wrestling with general relativity. "He would often play his violin in his kitchen late at night, improvising melodies while he pondered complicated problems," a friend recalled. "Then suddenly, in the middle of playing, he would announce excitedly, 'I've got it!' As if by inspiration, the answer to the problem would have come to him in the midst of the music."

His appreciation for music, and especially for Mozart, may have reflected his feel for the harmony of the universe. As Alexander Moszkowski, who wrote a biography of Einstein in 1920 based on conversations with him, noted, "Music, Nature, and God became intermingled in him in a complex of feeling, a moral unity, the trace of which never vanished."

Trump Energy Dept's Pro-Coal, Pro-Nuclear Report 'Not Worth Paper It's Written On'

Published on Thursday, August 24, 2017 by Common Dreams

Critics say agency report is little more than "propaganda" and "talking points memo for coal and nuclear subsidies"

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

8 Comments

U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry speaks during a White House daily briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House June 27, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump's Department of Energy (DOE), headed by climate-denier Rick Perry, released a report on Wednesday that green groups and environmentalists are denouncing as an attempt to "justify bailing out dirty" coal and nuclear plants.

"There's no reason in the world to keep coal plants open."
—David Roberts, Vox

Perry commissioned the study in April, and just three months later a draft of the findings, which contradicted Perry's claim that wind and solar energy are harming the U.S. energy grid, was leaked. At the time, many expressed concern that Trump administration officials would suppress or alter any results that contradicted their adamantly pro-coal, pro-nuclear stance.

The release of the official report shows that the DOE chose not to fully suppress unwelcome findings. Rather, as Vox's David Roberts notes, "Perry and his staff took a perfectly solid report on the grid and added a (surprisingly light, to my eye) coating of political propaganda."

Maintaining a Sense of Humor Goes a Long Way

Dear friends,

     Marcus Aurelius (circa 131 BC) made the bold statement that even the best of people are hard to put up with!  That is not cynical, but refreshingly honest. It is a comment, I feel, on the fact that others do not always agree with us or support our perception of anything. They have their own ideas and moral compass.  If everyone agreed with everything we say or do, they would be easy to love, but to what result? There would be no energy, no evolution in the relationship.  Don’t you really prefer those who challenge you a bit?  Not in a belittling way, but simply taking a stand themselves and stating it?

     Which means, of course, that everybody is right all the time, simply because we only listen to our own thoughts, anyway.  Even when someone is giving us a good argument against our point, we are mentally reframing our original stance in order to try and convince them of the error in their thinking. There once was a TV show called People are Funny and it really applies to us all.

     Maintaining a sense of the humor about adult behavior goes a long way towards peace.  Peace first in our own mind, and by extension, in our surroundings.  Not that peace at any price is good in a relationship, but there must be a balance between acceptance and challenge.  Aurelius might advise us: Say your peace and let it land where it will.  Do not be attached to agreement.  Listen and be civil.  If you can improve anything because of what you hear, accept it. Otherwise, nod and be silent.  You are going to do what you want to anyway, why pretend otherwise?

Stay tuned in,

Carol Carnes 

www.carolcarnes.com

www.mvcsl.org  donations accepted with pay pal.

www.californiafreepress.net.  Good Ideas on our shared reality.

Off the Top of My Head

Addiction: Positive, Negative or a Combination of Both

by John Lawrence

There are both highly functioning and dysfunctional addicts. Most people are addicted to something and in many cases it helps them function better. Take coffee, for instance. It's addictive; it's active agent, caffeine, is a drug, but it is not contributing in a negative way to my life. I drink two cups a day, and it gets me going in the morning. I'm an addict.

I've been watching a YouTube video by Gary Bartz. about the heroin addiction of a lot of the jazz musicians in the Golden Age - the 50s and 60s. He mentioned that drummer Philly Joe Jones' heroin habit would start off costing $10 a day. Then he would be needing $50 a day, and finally he'd have a $200 a day habit which he couldn't afford so he'd kick, he'd detox and then, when he was clean again, he'd start over with just a $10 a day habit.

This is the phenomenon of tolerance where the addict needs more and more of the drug to get the same high as time goes on. This is what the drug dealers are counting on. This is how they make their money. What is happening in my opinion, or my thesis whichever the case might be, is that the drug induces an increased flow of dopamine in the brain. That part is a scientific fact as reported in the September issue of National Geographic magazine in an article, The Science of Addiction. The brain can only put out a certain amount of dopamine so that, when the drug opens the floodgates, the addict gets high, but for the next drug use, there is less dopamine in the reservoir so it takes more of the drug to induce the same high. The body needs more time to replenish the supply of dopamine and addicts are impatient.

That's where positive addiction, according to my thesis, gets the same results without depleting the reservoir of dopamine so it is a more sustainable addiction. In addition to my coffee habit I have an exercise addiction. I found in my teenage years that exercise would pull me out of depression and I have been using it my entire life to keep me out of depression. It is the antidote to my depression. One of the byproducts of this positive addiction is that, I believe, I'm generally healthier than the average person because of it. Another of the byproducts of good health is that, again according to my thesis, dopamine is not depleted except temporarily (think runner's high) but then it is built back up quicker and more robustly than it is for those using chemical substances to increase the flow of dopamine. Ergo facto, the phenomenon of tolerance, in which the addict needs more and more each day, does not set in. Just the opposite occurs. There is a balance between dopamine depletion and dopamine replenishment.

ALASKA’S PERMAFROST IS THAWING

From the New York Times:

by Henry Fountain

August 23, 2017

The loss of frozen ground in Arctic regions is a striking result of climate change.

And it is also a cause of more warming to come.

 

 Max Holmes, deputy director and senior scientist of the Woods Hole Research Center. Stash Wislocki

YUKON DELTA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska — The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages.

But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state.

Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter — plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.

Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities.

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Police Tear-Gas Demonstrators at Huge Anti-Trump Protests in Phoenix

Published on Wednesday, August 23, 2017 by Common Dreams

Contrary to Trump's claims that protests were small, many thousands showed up to peacefully condemn the president

by Julia Conley, staff writer

 

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Thousands demonstrated peacefully against Trump in Phoenix on Tuesday night, before the rallies turned violent. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

Tensions soared and police ultimately dispersed crowds with tear gas at the huge anti-Trump protest outside the Phoenix Convention Center on Tuesday night, where Trump was inside raging about the news media's coverage of his administration and dog-whistling his defense of white supremacy at a campaign-style rally. Contrary to Trump's lie that only a few protesters were outside, many thousands of people had shown up to demonstrate peacefully and condemn the president's rhetoric and agenda.

Mayor Greg Stanton said officials would examine whether excessive force was used by the city's police.

The police said they only responded with force after protesters threw water bottles and other objects at them, an account that was disputed by witnesses. The Los Angeles Times along with several demonstrators reported that officers first fired tear gas after protesters tried to move police barricades as the president finished speaking.

One protester told the New York Times, "The handling by the police of this peaceful protest was reprehensible. I was gassed tonight for exercising my right to express my views."

Tensions also rose between anti-Trump and pro-Trump demonstrators toward the end of the rallies. The Times reported that the driver of a pickup truck performed the Nazi salute in the direction of the protesters, prompting them to approach the vehicle before the driver started to speed away. At least one Trump supporter also demanded to see a Latino demonstrator's "papers."

Police helicopters circled downtown Phoenix, ordering protesters to leave the area for about 45 minutes before the demonstrators dispersed.

According to the local news website AZCentral, "it was a chaotic ending to hours of protests that had generated tension but little violence."

Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), urged protesters to contact the group if they felt their rights had been violated by the Phoenix police, and summed up the evening's events on Twitter.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

DEAR TRUMP VOTER

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

If you voted for Donald Trump, I get it. Maybe you feel you’ve been so badly shafted by the system that you didn’t want to go back to politics as usual, and Trump seemed like he’d topple that corrupt system. 

You voted to change our country’s power base – to get rid of crony capitalism and give our government back to the people who are working, paying taxes, and spending more just to survive. Lots of Americans agree with you. 

But now, the president is turning his back on that idea and the many changes he promised.

He did not drain the swamp. After telling voters how he would take control away from special interests, he has surrounded himself with the very Wall Street players he decried. Now, those who gamed politicians for tax loopholes and laws that reward the rich don’t even have to sneak around with backroom deals. 

Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell and others from Wall Street, as well as corporate lobbyists by the dozens, are now inside the Trump administration rigging the system for the extremely wealthy from the inside. 

They want to make it easier for banks to once again gamble with your money and repeat our financial crisis. They want to cut health care for millions of you. They want to lower taxes on corporations and the rich. They want to get rid of rules that stop corporations from harming your health or safety. 

That’s not the change you were promised.

Make America Great Again? The Trump administration wants to expand on policies that have kept American wages stagnant for almost four decades. Huge corporations and billionaires get the breaks, and hard working Americans once again get left waiting for the crumbs. That’s not the change you were promised.

Bringing back fiscal responsibility? The Secret Service budget is skyrocketing to protect his family on international business trips, ski vacations, and separate New York City living quarters. 

At the same time, the president still refuses to untangle himself from his businesses and prove he’s not leveraging our government for his financial gain. You’re paying for his lifestyle while he’s doing nothing to help yours. 

That’s not the change you were promised.

Off the Top of My Head

Persistence Pays Off for One Lyft Driver

by John Lawrence

I'm a Lyft driver. So is my daughter. Lyft and Uber are ride sharing services that have plunged the value of taxi medallions. You can get from A to B for half the cost of a taxi ride or less. Lyft has always had a more friendly reputation than Uber. Many of my passengers have said so or words to that effect. Uber has been mired in corporate scandal. Nevertheless, they both work in about the same way. A passenger requests a ride from their phone app and the closest driver who is online at the time gets a ping and then is navigated to the passenger by GPS. Pretty nifty, huh?

From time to time Lyft offers bonuses to certain drivers. For instance, they wanted more drivers working the weekend of the ComicCon convention in San Diego so they offered my daughter, who lives in Palm Springs, a bonus if she would drive to San Diego and work the convention. If she did at least 10 rides a day she would get a $50. bonus. If she did the 10 rides a day for all four days, she would get an extra $100. She qualified for the extra $300. bonus.

Time went on and the $300. did not show up in her bank account. Lyft deposits your earnings automatically in your checking account every week. So she texted Lyft about her bonus. After some equivocating, someone texted her that she did not qualify because she was not "opted in." This set my daughter to wondering if she forgot to push some button or tap somewhere. I told her, "No, the fact that you got the text about the bonus meant that you were automatically opted in. I didn't get one."

She got more and more frustrated and mad at Lyft saying that it was a scam, that they never intended to pay some drivers their bonuses. One guy texted her that he had checked the records three times, and she did not qualify. I told her to keep sending one text a day telling them that she did qualify because she had received the text about the bonus. She didn't have to "opt in."

After receiving some warm compliments in the app from one of her passengers, my daughter said, "You know, Dad, if it wasn't for this bonus thing, I'd actually like this job."

Finally, she got so mad at Lyft that she texted them that she was going to quit Lyft and start driving for Uber. The next day she got a text from some other person at Lyft corporate headquarters that said that she had checked the records again and that my daughter was opted in after all and that she would be receiving her bonus within the next couple of days. So ends the saga. Moral of the story: Persistence pays off.

Capitalism Run Amok: The Housing Crisis

by John Lawrence

Real estate is one of the central areas of the FIRE economy. That's what the last two letters of FIRE stand for. It's one of the central pillars of capitalism. You don't want the government to build your house for you, do you? That's the sector for private enterprise. Then why are rents so damn high? They're so damn high that people are evicted on a daily basis for non-payment of rent. The homeless population grows. And why is the price of the median house over $500,000? Average people can't afford to buy and they can't afford to rent. So government gingerly steps in to "solve" the housing crisis in California. In other parts of the country rents and housing are more affordable.

So now the state government gingerly steps in, being careful not to say that the housing crisis is the fault of the capitalist system running amok, with baby steps so that it can claim that it is doing something about affordable housing. Their real view, that they won't mention, is that the solution is for people who can't afford housing in California to move to some other state where they can. Half measures and half steps is what government's both state and local are proposing so it looks like they are doing something while not really doing much of anything.

So now the state government gingerly steps in to solve the housing crisis

California state bills SB-2 and SB-3 are just token measures to ameliorate the affordable housing crisis. In effect state and local lawmakers don't consider it a crisis. These bills make it seem like lawmakers are doing something about affordable housing while being careful not to impact the "free market." In fact you can't have government subsidized housing except on a token basis without impacting the free market.

So what does San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer propose? Reducing developers' fees, streamlining red tape and letting people build "granny flats." A free market approach, if I ever saw one, guaranteed to help mainly developers and homeowners with enough money to actually construct a granny flat on their own property. Lisa Halverstadt has run down the various developer incentives in her article Areas of Consensus Emerge Among the Crush of Housing Plans.

While the free market is failing to provide affordable housing in California and state and local governments are providing token measures, the only real albeit unspoken solution is for those who can't afford California real estate to leave the state and go to other states where housing is affordable. So only the rich will be able to afford a really nice climate with plenty of sunshine, no tornadoes and no flash floods. Watch out for those sea level rises though.

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

Man Made Famine in Yemen Caused by War

by John Lawrence

Mankind's propensity for fighting leads to suffering for children and other vulnerable people. 20 million people are at imminent risk of famine in four countries, including millions of children the United Nations says are “acutely malnourished.” Shame on the human race for perpetuating this kind of screwed up foolishness. I'm ashamed of the homo sapiens species. Supposedly, we're more intelligent than animals, but in actuality we're much more cruel. We inflict suffering on small children and have been doing it for thousands of years. It doesn't ever get better.

What the US ally Saudi Arabia is doing in Yemen amounts to a war crime, but then that's not saying very much since war crimes are being perpetrated on a daily basis. There has never been a time or an era in which war crimes didn't occur. In Yemen nearly 7 million people are in danger of starvation, half a million children already are malnourished, and a cholera epidemic is ravishing the country, with half a million cases and nearly 2,000 deaths reported in fewer than four months.

Meanwhile the US media focuses almost exclusively on Trump's tweets. The President it seems is Entertainer in Chief. When they aren't focusing on Trump's egregious statements and mouthings, they focus on the latest mass murder or violent demonstration. There is no call to stop selling arms to countries like Saudi Arabia who are using them to kill children. Life is cheap, I guess. Especially the lives of innocent victims.

High court ruling forces Tucson to stop destroying confiscated, turned-in guns

By Joe Ferguson Arizona Daily Star and Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services

• Aug 17, 2017 Updated Aug 17, 2017

TPD has destroyed 4,820 guns since 2013 but is now required by law to sell them to licensed firearms dealers. Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star 2009

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled the city of Tucson can no longer destroy firearms that have been confiscated by police or turned in by citizens.

In an extensive ruling issued Thursday, the justices voided a 2005 Tucson ordinance that says the Police Department, after it seizes a gun, “shall dispose of such firearm by destroying the firearm.” The court said the local ordinance runs afoul of several state laws.

One law that predates the Tucson ordinance limits local governments from enacting any ordinance dealing with acquisition, licensing, registration or use of firearms. And in 2013, state lawmakers spelled out that if police seize or acquire guns, they must sell them to licensed firearms dealers.

The ruling also upholds the legality of SB 1487, a 2016 law that allows individual lawmakers to direct the Attorney General’s Office to investigate claims that a local law conflicts state statutes. That triggers an automatic investigation that can lead to a city losing half of its state shared revenues. In this case, it was a complaint about the city’s gun destruction program filed by state Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, that prompted the investigation.

On Thursday afternoon, city officials said they will abide by the ruling and will rescind the ordinance.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who sued Tucson, called the ruling “a monumental victory for the state of Arizona.”

“Whether you like it or not, it’s a huge victory for the rule of law,” he said. The bottom line, said Brnovich, is that the high court has made it clear that, with only narrow exceptions, if there is a conflict between state law and local ordinances, the local law has to fall.

Rick Rollman, Tucson’s lead attorney in the case, said SB 1487 amounts to illegal coercion.

A Wake Up Call to Students

August 19th, 2017

by Alan Collinge, StudentLoanJustice.Org

If you are in college, and you’re looking for something worthy to fight for, you should strongly consider the student loan issue.  This problem is quickly becoming the national economic injustice of our time, and has reached nationally threatening proportions. While at first glance, the problem appears complicated and confusing, it is actually quite simple, and its genesis hearkens back to the creation of this country.   Interestingly, this problem transcends partisan and cultural divides, and actually could serve to bring together those on the left and right on campus.

Founding fathers like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others were in debt up to their eyeballs to British banks and merchants.  They came to understand the hard way how a lending system could be used against the citizens. Of course it wasn’t just the Founders who were being exploited, it was many if not most early American settlers. John Adams famously remarked, “There are two ways to enslave and conquer a country.  One is by the sword.  The other is by debt”.

So when these men created the Constitution, they made it a point to require bankruptcy rights very prominently.  Few people realize that a uniform bankruptcy system is, in fact,  called for ahead of the power to raise an army, ahead of the power to coin currency, and even ahead of the power to declare war in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.  Obviously, bankruptcy rights were very important to these men. Even Adam Smith, the founder of western economic theory, was compelled to advocate strongly for bankruptcy protections as a means to encourage entrepreneurship, risk taking, and also as a means to compel good faith in a lending relationship.

Student loans, however,  violate these longstanding economic principles, and the wishes of the Founders. Congress has placed conditions on bankruptcy for student loans so severe, that of 169,000 people with student loans who filed for bankruptcy in 2014, fewer than 20 got any sort of relief.  When our legislators first restricted this right in the 70’s, some members warned that such a move had dire constitutional implications, but their concerns went unheeded.  Today, student loan are the only type of loan in this country from which bankruptcy rights have been removed, the consequences have been severe.

The student loan industry has become obscenely predatory and profitable for the banks who lobbied for the removal of bankruptcy protections, but it isn’t just the banks that are cashing in. In 2012, the federal government booked over $50 billion in profit from student loans, and this has certainly increased since then. What is more disturbing is that years of White House Budget data show that the government is now actually making a profit on defaults.  This is a defining hallmark of a predatory lending system, and unfortunately for the students, the Department of Education sits on top of it all, and their lawyers fight tooth-and-nail behind the scenes to keep bankruptcy gone.

L.A. jury hits Johnson & Johnson with $417-million verdict over cancer link to its talc

From the LA Times

August 21, 2017

by Richard Winton

A bottle of Johnson's Baby Powder is displayed in San Francisco. (Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

A Los Angeles jury today issued a $417-million verdict against Johnson & Johnson, finding the company liable for failing to warn a 63-year-old woman diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer about the risks of using its talcum products.

The verdict marks the largest award yet in a number of suits claiming that the company’s talc powder causes ovarian cancer. More than 300 lawsuits are pending in California and more than 4,500 claims in the rest of the country, alleging that the healthcare giant ignored studies linking its Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower products to cancer.

read more ...

How Trump is enabling famine

by Jackson Diehl from the Washington Post

August 20, 2017

While you're distracted by Trump news, the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II is getting worse. Here's something you can do about it. (Gillian Brockell, Kate Woodsome, Karen Attiah, Malcolm Cook/The Washington Post)

Last month, eight large private U.S. relief organizations formed an unprecedented alliance to call Americans’ attention to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II: 20 million people at imminent risk of famine in four countries, including millions of children the United Nations says are “acutely malnourished.” Thinking of the popular anti-famine movements of the 1980s and ’90s, the groups enlisted support from big corporations and rock stars; the hope was to get through to the 85 percent of Americanswhom polling showed were unaware of the crisis, and make a dent in the more than $2 billion deficit in funding needed to head off mass starvation.

For the most part, the two-week campaign didn’t work. Officials from the groups say they raised about $3.7 million and got more coverage than they would have working separately. But there was no eruption of public interest; news stories about the famine remain few and far between. The reason is fairly obvious: The continuing Trump circus sucks up so much media oxygen that issues that otherwise would be urgent — such as millions of people starving — are asphyxiated.

The U.N. tried to call attention to the looming hunger crisis in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria in March. Nearly six months later, the grim facts are these: Just 54 percent of the $4.9 billion the U.N. said was needed to head off a catastrophe has been raised. Though aid deliveries have pulled a state in South Sudan formally out of famine, more than half the population there and in Somalia need emergency food assistance, along with 5.2 million people in northeastern Nigeria.

In Yemen, the situation is even more dire: Nearly 7 million people are in danger of starvation, half a million children already are malnourished, and a cholera epidemic is ravishing the country, with half a million cases and nearly 2,000 deaths reported in fewer than four months.

Last month, the U.N. World Food Program fed a record 6 million people in Yemen — but only half got the full ration they needed. “The conditions on the ground are not getting better,” says David Beasley, the program’s executive director. “They are compounding and getting worse.” Meanwhile, he says, “we can’t break through all the noise in the media.”

More Banking Follies

Published on Saturday, August 19, 2017

by Common Dreams

 

by

Christopher Brauchli

 

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"Wells Fargo was just beginning to recover from the reputational losses it suffered from what, in Trumpian terms would be described as “fake” bank accounts, when it was disclosed that its employees had discovered a new way of bilking customers-insurance sales connected with car loans," Brauchli writes. (Photo: Alex Proimos/Flickr/cc)

A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests . . . and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.
—John Calhoun, May 27, 1836 Speech

It was a sad coincidence. It occurred within a couple days after the public was apprised of Wells Fargo’s new foray into discovering ways to make more money by bilking its customers.

It was not, of course, a first for that venerable institution. Last year it was learned that millions of customers of the bank had bank accounts and credit cards opened for them by employees of the bank, without being authorized to do so by the customer. If the employee had not only opened the account, but had caused the bank to deposit, for example, $1000 into the account in order to give it life, the practice would not have upset the unsuspecting customers. Instead, the employees simply opened the accounts and, instead of depositing money into them, charged the account holders fees for creating the accounts and associated fees for services that accompanied the new accounts.

That, of course, did not please the customers and, when the practice was discovered, caused the bank to pay a $185 million dollar fine and $142 million to the millions of its customers who were victims of the bank’s practices. Wells Fargo was just beginning to recover from the reputational losses it suffered from what, in Trumpian terms would be described as “fake” bank accounts, when it was disclosed that its employees had discovered a new way of bilking customers-insurance sales connected with car loans.

In late July 2017, we learned that approximately 500,000 bank clients were sold car insurance when taking out car loans with the bank, even though they already had car insurance. According to reports, the bank will pay $80 million to clients who were bilked. Whether fines will be imposed on the banks will not be known until some time in the future. (In fairness to Wells Fargo it should be noted that in 2013 JPMorgan Chase paid $13 billion in fines and penalties for some of its activities. It makes Wells Fargo’s recent activities seem trivial.) The other event of note that happened at the end of July was purely coincidental.

How to Remove Trump

by Robert Reich

Sunday, August 20, 2017

With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, it’s unlikely Trump will be impeached or thrown out of office on grounds of mental impairment. At least any time soon.    

Yet there’s another way Trump can be effectively removed. He can be made irrelevant.

It’s already starting to happen. The howling manchild who occupies the Oval Office is being cut off and contained.

Trump no longer has a working majority in the Senate because several Senate Republicans have decided the hell with him.

Three Republican Senators voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act, dooming his effort. Almost all voted to restrict his authority over Russian sanctions.

They’re also pushing forward with their own inquiry into Trump’s Russian connections. Republican senators Thom Tillis and Lindsay Graham have even joined Democrats in introducing legislation to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired.

Republicans in the House won’t fund his wall. Many refuse to increase the national debt in order to pay for his promised tax cuts.

After Charlottesville, many more are willing to criticize him publicly. Last week Tennessee’s Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, even questioned Trump’s  “stability” and “competence,” saying Trump hasn’t shown he understands “the character of this nation” and that without that understanding, “Our nation is going to go through great peril.”

The Washington Post’s Dan Balz reports that GOP leaders are “personally wrestling with the trade-offs of making a cleaner separation with the president.”

It helps that Republican patrons in big business are deserting Trump in droves. Last week, CEOs bolted his advisory councils. Many issued sharp rebukes of Trump.

These are the people who raise big bucks for the GOP. Their dumping Trump makes it easier for elected Republicans to do so, too.

Even James Murdoch, the 21st Century Fox CEO whose media outlets include Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post – among the loudest mouthpieces for Trump – is ditching him.

Last Thursday Murdoch wrote “what we watched last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the president of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people,” and pledged $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League.

This doesn’t mean Fox News or the Wall Street Journal will call for Trump’s ouster. It does mean their commentators and editorial writers now have clear license to criticize him.

Hey, America as a whole is abandoning him. Trump’s approval hit an all-time low of 34 percent last week.

Even parts of his base are dropping him. A new News/Marist poll shows his approvals have fallen below 40 percent in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – three states that were key to his election, which he won by a whisker.

Inside the administration, there are moves to contain and isolate the manchild.

On foreign policy, the Axis of Adults – Chief of staff General John Kelly, national security advisor General H.R. McMaster, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – are asserting tighter control, especially after Trump’s tweetstorm over North Korea.

Reportedly, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner are stepping up attempts to constrain him as well.

“You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill,” another White House aide told Axios’s Mike Allen.

Plus, Stephen Bannon is gone.

All this means that, although Trump will still hold the title of President, he’s on the way to being effectively removed from the presidency. Neutered. Defanged.

We’re not out of danger. Trump will continue to rant and fume. He’ll insult. He’ll stoke racial tensions. He could still start a nuclear war.

But, hopefully, he won’t be able to exercise much presidential power from here on. He’s being ostracized like an obnoxious adolescent who’s been grounded.  

When the media stop reporting his tweets, his isolation and irrelevance will be complete.

Off the Top of My Head

Sympathy for the Devil?

by John Lawrence

Trump has gotten himself in a lot of trouble for not condemning and excoriated the alt right, neo-Nazis and Ku Kux Klanners after the Charlottesville debacle. But what if he had said something like this:

"Most of the issues we are dealing with now are related to poverty. But we still want to put everything in a racial context. The problem with the ... and the reason I feel uncomfortable condemning the Klan types is they're almost the poorest of the poor. They're the forgotten Americans. They have been used, abused and neglected. Instead of giving them affordable health care, they give them black lung jobs. ... And it just doesn't make sense in today's world. And they see progress in the black community and on television and everywhere else and they don't share it."

Would Trump have been universally censured if he had said it? The person who I have exactly quoted above is Andrew Young, former civil rights leader, Ambassador to the United Nations, Congressman and Mayor of Atlanta. He said it on Meet the Press on Sunday, August 20, 2017. So he and Trump have something in common. They didn't universally declare their hatred for the "Klan types," but afforded them a measure of sympathy. Trump said "there were good people on both sides." Perhaps he didn't say it as eloquently as Andrew Young, but nobody in the media or elsewhere as far as I know condemned Andrew Young for not condemning the "Klan types."

Perhaps it boils down to poverty. Perhaps it boils down to economics. Donald Trump in a backhand sort of manner promised them jobs - redoing NAFTA, an infrastructure program, full steam ahead with oil, gas and coal production. As misguided a jobs program as Trump promised, where was the promise of jobs from Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton promised the status quo. The Democratic Party needs to get with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and lay out a jobs program, not just a free college education and Medicare for all. Those two issues are very important but what the poorest of the poor want is good paying jobs and not minimum wage jobs at WalMart and Carls Jr.

Poor whites are the "forgotten Americans"? Trump could never have said it without being condemned. Andrew Young just did.

Intro to Jazz: Jazz 102

by John Lawrence

Intro to Jazz:101 can be found here. The next 5 most important and/or best selling jazz albums are the following.

 

#6 Dave Brubeck: Time Out

Like many or the greatest jazz albums, this one was also released in 1959. One of the best selling jazz albums, this album featured compositions based on unusual time signatures for jazz such as 9/8. Take Five, a tune by saxophonist Paul Desmond, became a popular hit and part of the basic jazz repertoire. Take Five was in 5/4 time signature. According to Desmond, "[Take Five] was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo."

Paul Desmond's real last name was Breitenfeld. Like composer Jimmy Van Heusen (Here's That Rainy Day), he picked a name out of a phone book he liked better. The Brubeck group exemplified the cool, west coast sound.

Dave Brubeck was the composer of In Your Own Sweet Way, a beautiful ballad that has become a jazz standard. Some of his other great albums are Dave Digs Disney and Gone With the Wind.

Dave was one of the first jazz artists to sense the potential of getting gigs at college and universities. His wife, Iola, was his booking agent, and together they made a great and successful team.

In 2005, Time Out was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. It was also listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Brubeck attended the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Later, Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read music on sight. Several of his professors came forward, arguing that his ability to write counterpoint and harmony more than compensated, and demonstrated his familiarity with music notation. The college was still afraid that it would cause a scandal, and agreed to let Brubeck graduate only after he had promised never to teach piano.

According to Wikipedia, Brubeck organized the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951, with Paul Desmond on alto saxophone. They took up a long residency at San Francisco's Black Hawk nightclub and gained great popularity touring college campuses, recording a series of albums with such titles as Jazz at Oberlin (1953), Jazz at the College of the Pacific (1953), and Brubeck's debut on Columbia Records, Jazz Goes to College (1954).

In 1954, he was featured on the cover of Time, the second jazz musician to be so honored (the first was Louis Armstrong on February 21, 1949). Brubeck personally found this accolade embarrassing, since he considered Duke Ellington more deserving of it and was convinced that he had been favored for being Caucasian.

In 1958 African-American bassist Eugene Wright joined for the group's U.S. Department of State tour of Europe and Asia. Wright became a permanent member in 1959, making the "classic" Quartet's personnel complete. During the late 1950s and early 1960s Brubeck canceled several concerts because the club owners or hall managers continued to resist the idea of an integrated band on their stages. He also canceled a television appearance when he found out that the producers intended to keep Wright off-camera.

 

#7 Charles Mingus: Tijuana Moods

Charles Mingus was one of the major innovators of jazz. He was a bassist, composer and band leader. He played with many of the innovators of bebop including Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. A famous recording, Jazz at Massey Hall, included them, Bud Powell and Max Roach. There are several Mingus recordings that might have been included in the top ten. I chose Tijuana Moods because it's my favorite. Frequently mentioned also is the Mingus album, Mingus Ah Um, also recorded in the vintage year 1959, which includes the famous tunes Goodbye Pork Pie Hat and Fables of Faubus.

Another album from this period, The Clown, the title track of which features narration by humorist Jean Shepherd, was the first to feature drummer Dannie Richmond, who remained his preferred drummer until Mingus's death in 1979. The two men formed one of the most impressive and versatile rhythm sections in jazz. Both were accomplished performers seeking to stretch the boundaries of their music while staying true to its roots. When joined by pianist Jaki Byard, they were dubbed "The Almighty Three". The Clown is one of my favorite albums and is much underrated in my opinion. It includes one of Mingus' most beautiful compositions, Reincarnation of a Lovebird, dedicated to Charlie Parker.

Mingus was a controversial figure know for his temperamental outbursts. He often worked with a mid-sized ensemble (around 8–10 members) of rotating musicians known as the Jazz Workshop. Mingus broke new ground, constantly demanding that his musicians be able to explore and develop their perceptions on the spot. Those who joined the Workshop (or Sweatshops as they were colorfully dubbed by the musicians) included Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Booker Ervin, John Handy, Jimmy Knepper, Charles McPherson and Horace Parlan. Mingus shaped these musicians into a cohesive improvisational machine that in many ways anticipated free jazz. Some musicians dubbed the workshop a "university" for jazz.

In 1993 the Library of Congress acquired Mingus's collected papers—including scores, sound recordings, correspondence and photos—in what they described as "the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jazz in the Library's history".

Mingus wrote his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, in which he recounted many, sometimes lurid, details of his life.

 

 

California SB 2 Building Homes and Jobs Act

This bill before the California Legislature is too vague and diluted to do any good.

by John Lawrence

Here's how it starts:

"Under existing law, there are programs providing assistance for, among other things, emergency housing, multifamily housing, farmworker housing, home ownership for very low and low-income households, and downpayment assistance for first-time home buyers."

Well, existing law is so diffuse and vague I wonder how many people are actually being helped. Moreover, the proposed bill is still sufficiently diffuse and vague that I wonder how much of an improvement it represents.

Here's the next sentence:

"Existing law also authorizes the issuance of bonds in specified amounts pursuant to the State General Obligation Bond Law. Existing law requires that proceeds from the sale of these bonds be used to finance various existing housing programs, capital outlay related to infill development, brownfield cleanup that promotes infill development, and housing-related parks."

So they can issue bonds for a whole bunch of vague programs which may or may not help actual people. So what?

OK. Now they get to what this bill is about. Basically it authorizes raising more money for affordable housing. Again it's vague. Exactly how is this money going to be spent and what do you mean by affordable housing? And by the way the only thing this has to do with jobs is that the construction workers doing the actual building will have jobs. Big Deal.

"This bill would enact the Building Homes and Jobs Act. The bill would make legislative findings and declarations relating to the need for establishing permanent, ongoing sources of funding dedicated to affordable housing development. The bill would impose a fee, except as provided, of $75 to be paid at the time of the recording of every real estate instrument, paper, or notice required or permitted by law to be recorded, per each single transaction per single parcel of real property, not to exceed $225."

Then the bill gets a little more specific about how the money is to be spent but not much.

"The bill would, upon appropriation by the Legislature, require that 20% of the moneys in the fund be expended for affordable owner-occupied workforce housing and 10% of the moneys for housing purposes related to agricultural workers and their families, and would authorize the remainder of the moneys in the fund to be expended to support affordable housing, home ownership opportunities, and other housing-related programs, as specified."

So what exactly is owner-occupied workforce housing? Is that as opposed to housing for people not in the workforce? Is it for owners that need help paying their mortgages? Is it for building new housing for new owners? Again the wording is so vague that this could be twisted six ways to Sunday. And why are agricultural workers singled out for help? As opposed to workers in other industries? What's the hook here? If I grow vegetables, am I an agricultural worker? These legislators need to get their heads straight about what affordable housing actually is, how this impinges on market rate housing and what are the criteria for people they actually want help. Otherwise, it will just be another giveaway to developers who are happy to take government money.

The rest of the bill is just a bunch of bureaucratic gobbledygook not worth mentioning here. I really think the government, in this case the California state government, needs to take full responsibility for housing those who cannot afford to house themselves, and this includes homeless people first. As long as developers and other private corporations take their cut, the money raised will not go as far as it would with full fledged public housing, a concept that state legislators need to wrap their heads around.

Trump 'Wave of Destruction' Continues With Decision to Disband Key Climate Panel

Published on Sunday, August 20, 2017 by Common Dreams

"Any organization that disagrees with Trump, gets cut. Business committees, arts, and now science."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

6 Comments

People march near the White House during the People's Climate Movement in Washington, D.C., April 29, 2017, to protest President Donald Trump's attack on the climate and the Environmental Protection Agency. (Photo: Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)

Even as reports from federal agencies demonstrate that the global climate scenario is becoming increasingly alarming, President Donald Trump has decided to continue the "wave of destruction" his administration is inflicting on the environment—and on the agencies tasked with studying climate change—by disbanding the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, which was tasked with helping government translate climate findings into plans for action.

As the Washington Post reported, the "charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment—which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate representatives—expires Sunday," and the Trump administration has decided the panel will not be renewed.

The Post continued: 

The National Climate Assessment is supposed to be issued every four years but has come out only three times since passage of the 1990 law calling for such analysis. The next one, due for release in 2018, already has become a contentious issue for the Trump administration.

Administration officials are currently reviewing a scientific report that is key to the final document. Known as the Climate Science Special Report, it was produced by scientists from 13 different federal agencies and estimates that human activities were responsible for an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010.

Recent reports have indicated that the Trump administration—more specifically Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—is taking direction from Big Oil, so the move to disband a key climate advisory board was not met with surprise by scientists and commentators.

Still, many expressed alarm at the speed with which the Trump administration is moving to dismantle what is left of Obama-era rules designed to protect the water and the air from dangerous pollutants.

The administration's decision to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment is just part of this broader deregulatory agenda, which will have both immediate and long-term effects, scientists warn.

"I think it's going to be a serious handicap for us that the advisory committee is not functional,"  Richard Wright, former chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers' Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, told the Post. 

For Ed Murray, the Democratic mayor of Seattle, the move is just another example of Trump "stepping away from reality."

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Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance - In 1798

From Forbes:

by Rick Ungar

John Adams Image from Wikipedia

The ink was barely dry on the PPACA when the first of many lawsuits to block the mandated health insurance provisions of the law was filed in a Florida District Court.

The pleadings, in part, read -

The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage.

State of Florida, et al. vs. HHS

It turns out, the Founding Fathers would beg to disagree.

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed - “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

And when the Bill came to the desk of President John Adams for signature, I think it’s safe to assume that the man in that chair had a pretty good grasp on what the framers had in mind.

Here’s how it happened.

During the early years of our union, the nation's leaders realized that foreign trade would be essential to the young country's ability to create a viable economy. To make it work, they relied on the nation’s private merchant ships - and the sailors that made them go - to be the instruments of this trade.

The problem was that a merchant mariner’s job was a difficult and dangerous undertaking in those days. Sailors were constantly hurting themselves, picking up weird tropical diseases, etc.

The troublesome reductions in manpower caused by back strains, twisted ankles and strange diseases often left a ship’s captain without enough sailors to get underway - a problem both bad for business and a strain on the nation’s economy.

But those were the days when members of Congress still used their collective heads to solve problems - not create them.

Realizing that a healthy maritime workforce was essential to the ability of our private merchant ships to engage in foreign trade, Congress and the President resolved to do something about it.

Enter “An Act for The Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen”.

I encourage you to read the law as, in those days, legislation was short, to the point and fairly easy to understand.

Remove Him Now

by Robert Reich

Friday, August 18, 2017

We have endured Donald Trump for 7 months. Although he has had few legislative victories, he has almost single-handedly destroyed the moral authority of the presidency of the United States at home and abroad, brought us to the brink of a nuclear war without consulting anyone, and sown division and hatred.

He has given encouragement and legitimacy to the ugliest in America.

How can this nation endure another 41 months of this man?

We can’t wait for Robert Mueller’s evidence of Russian collusion. Even if Mueller finds that some of Trump’s aides colluded, Mueller might well find that Trump had “plausible deniability.” Top guns often arrange wrongdoing so the they can plausibly deny they knew it was occurring. That’s the art of the deal.

Let’s be clear. There is already enough evidence to impeach Trump on grounds of abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

A principled right-winger is better for America and the world than an unhinged sociopath.

There is already enough evidence of mental impairment to invoke the 25th amendment.

I know, Republicans are in control of Congress. But this is no license for Trump to destroy the nation we love.

I know, removing Trump would mean having Mike Pence as president. But a principled right-winger is better for America and the world than an unhinged sociopath.  

Republican as well as Democratic members of the House and Senate must commit themselves to removing this president.

Those of you represented by Democrats in the House or Senate must get their commitment to remove him, as soon as possible.

Those of you represented by Republicans in the House or Senate must let them know that you will campaign vigorously against them in 2018 unless they commit to removing Trump as well.

It is time to end this disgrace.

Off the Top of My Head

Monuments, Statues, Flags: The American Infatuation With Symbols

by John Lawrence

In the final analysis symbols are superficialities. Why should we spend our time and energy arguing about whether Robert E Lee on a horse should come down, whether Stonewall Jackson should bite the dust or whether Confederate Generals in general would cease to exist, monumentally speaking? Perhaps even those slaveowners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson should be repudiated and exorcised. Well then, you wouldn't have much of a country or a narrative about the pure and noble US of A, would you? You'd still have Ben Franklin and John Adams though. They weren't slave owners. We'd have to rewrite the story of America.

Rather than consume all our time and energy talking about superficial symbols, let us get down to the real meat of what's going on in the world today. Let's talk about living within our means - on an individual basis and on a planetary basis as well. Individual credit card, student loan and mortgage debt has never been greater. We're heading for another economic collapse in which the banks will probably get bailed out and individual debtors will get screwed ... again.

The planet cannot support 12 billion people living like Americans and not properly disposing of their waste products. We need to get on the bandwagon of renewable energy and leave fossil fuels in the dust. Everyone on the planet needs to be brought up to a decent standard of living even if it means billionaires might have to sacrifice a bit. People have to learn how not to be just consumers. Consumption needs to level out over all the planet's peoples. We need a college level course in proper waste disposal and recycling so shit just doesn't pile up in the oceans and despoil the lands.

Finally, guns need to be gotten off the street before the openly carrying congregation of the right carries off a putsch or a coup or takes power the way right wingers have done throughout history. Think it can't happen here? It just almost did with the election of Trump. Trump supporters would welcome a right wing takeover so they can make America white again.

Off the Top of My Head

Even Republican Congressmen Weren't Stupid Enough to "Repeal and Replace"

by John Lawrence

Obamacare, while flawed, still worked well for millions of people. In the final analysis 'repeal and replace' was only a rallying cry, a slogan, something that has finally been thrown into the waste can of history. Republicans and Democrats are now working together to make improvements to Obamacare on behalf of the American people instead of shit canning Obamacare altogether. They are now working together to fix the flaws in Obamacare. This is what they should have been aiming for all along. To make the imperfect more perfect. Working together. Nice concept, huh?

No one ever said Obamacare was perfect, but it did make life better for a lot of people. One reason it wasn't perfect was that Obama, nice guy that he was, tried to accommodate everyone, including all the lobbyists for the pharmaceutical and medical insurance corporations. Thanks to them there were no cost containment features in Obamacare. What did they expect to happen? Costs rose dramatically as drug companies jacked up their prices by staggering amounts. Martin Shkreli jacked up the price of Daraprim, a life saving drug, 5000%!

Premium costs and co-pays went through the roof. This is what was wrong with Obamacare from the beginning. They caved in to profit making corporations who were not interested in helping people. They were only interested in making a profit. People suffered as they couldn't afford medical insurance or drugs.

Well now, all the energy expended on hating Obamacare by Fox news, Rush Limbaugh and hate talk news in general has come to a big fat nothingburger. They'll have to invent another slogan to get people to hate some other well-meaning, although flawed effort. If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, it most definitely is paved with bad and hateful intentions. On second thought that road isn't paved at all.