California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

A Winning Strategy for Democrats in 2024

by John Lawrence

Democrats should add one item to their already impressive list of campaign strategies such as reproductive freedom, lowering drug prices, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act and more! They should take the wind out of the only Republican economic sail that they can offer: tax cuts. Dems should run on a tax break for the middle class paid for by a tax increase on billionaires and multimillionaires. They could also throw in a financial transactions tax but that would not be well understood by most voters. However a tax cut for the middle class would be well understood, and taxing billionaires more to pay for it would be equally well understood. All the arcane computations to achieve this scenario need not even be mentioned. That would be getting down in the weeds and too wonky for the average state of ignorance of the American public.

Biden is still at work on his Build Back Better agenda. Witness:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden touted the potential cost savings of Medicare’s first-ever price negotiations for widely used prescription drugs on Tuesday as he struggles to convince Americans that he’s improved their lives as he runs for reelection.

The drugs include the blood thinner Eliquis, diabetes treatment Jardiance and eight other medications. The negotiation process was authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed last year, capping decades of debate over whether the federal government should be allowed to haggle with pharmaceutical companies.

Any lower prices won’t take effect for three years, and the path forward could be further complicated by litigation from drugmakers and heavy criticism from Republicans.

But the effort is a centerpiece of Biden’s reelection pitch as the Democrat tries to show Americans he’s deserving of a second term because of the work he’s doing to lower costs while the country is struggling with inflation. The drug negotiations, like many of Biden’s biggest policy moves, will take time to play out, and his challenge is to persuade the public to be patient.

So as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare gained the right to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. This is huge. Other countries have been doing this for years. Prices are substantially higher compared with European countries. One explanation for this price differential is that, unlike in the US, national health authorities in Europe negotiate new drug prices with manufacturers. Until now, that is. For the first time the government will be able to negotiate drug prices down at least for Medicare. This is still not the case for the general public however. For them they will still have to pay through the nose unlike any other civilized country. Unlike almost every other "democracy", the US does not have universal health care. Predatory drug corporations can still sock it to the American people. Democrats need to keep hammering away at making universal health care a right and a reality for the American people.

Bernie's Take on Democratic Politics

by Bernie Sanders

The Republican Party, which wants more tax breaks for the rich and cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, opposes pro-union legislation, and denies the reality of climate change, now has more support from the working class of this country than Democrats.

How does that happen? What do we do about it? That’s what I discuss in this attached recent speech I gave in New Hampshire. Please read it below, or watch at this link on YouTube.

It has always been my view that good policy is good politics. If you deliver for the American people, if you address their needs, they will respond accordingly.

It has also been my view that being honest with the American people, even when speaking the truth is uncomfortable and painful, is not only the right and responsible thing to do – but it’s also good politics.

The American people are tired of press releases, they’re tired of photo ops, they are tired of tweets and snappy one-liners. They want an honest analysis of what is going on in our society now and leadership which provides answers to the many crises that we face. They want to understand why we are where we are today, and how we can move to a better place.

Make no mistake about it. Today, all across our country there are deep feelings of anger, unease, discontent and foreboding. That is true for those who define themselves as progressive, as I do, or those who see themselves as conservative or moderate. It is true for Democrats, Republicans and independents. It is true whether you live here in New England, or in California, the Midwest, the South, or the Rocky Mountains.

In a world which is changing rapidly in so many respects, many of our people are anxious, they feel left behind and they are uncertain about what the future will bring for them and their kids. Perhaps most importantly, they feel powerless to alter the course of events and believe their elected officials are not only failing them but have little understanding of the pain they are experiencing. Many are even questioning whether our current form of government is capable of addressing their needs or responding effectively to the crises we face.

It is no secret that I want Joe Biden to be re-elected president, and that he and I share the goal of beating back right-wing extremism. We also want Democrats to have majority control over the Senate and the House – and Governor’s mansions and state houses all across the country.

In my view, if that is going to happen, if we are going to defeat creeping authoritarianism and right-wing extremism, there has got to be an ideological change of course. Democrats, up and down the line, are going to have to be much clearer to the American people as to what they stand for and, most importantly, which side they are on in the great struggles that we now face.

As a U.S. Senator, I am more than aware that most Democrats are prepared to take on a reactionary Republican Party which wants more tax breaks for billionaires, cuts to Social Security, cuts to Medicare, cuts to Medicaid, cuts to education and nutrition programs - and a party which largely ignores the existential threat of climate change. Almost every Democrat I know stands with the women of this country in their fundamental right to control their own bodies. And Democrats are united in their opposition to racism and discrimination against the LGBT community.

But, if Democrats are serious about winning elections and addressing the major crises that we face, they must go further. They must embrace the working class of this country in a way which hasn’t been done in almost 60 years. It is absolutely absurd that, given the anti-worker ideology and policies of the Republican Party, that party now has more working class support than Democrats.

It should be deeply worrying that, according to recent polls, Democrats are losing more and more support within the Latino community and even among Black men. That has got to change - not just for the well-being of the Democratic Party but for the future of our country.

The Democrats, once and for all, must reject the corporate wing of the party and empower those who are prepared to create a grassroots, multi-racial, multi-generational working class party in every state in this country. Democrats, through words and action, must make it clear that they stand with a struggling working class, a disappearing middle class, and millions of low income Americans who are barely surviving. They must make it clear that they are prepared to boldly take on the powerful corporate interests who have so much power and influence in Washington and in state capitals throughout the country; that they will protect the needs of young people who, everything being equal, will end up with a lower standard of living in their parents; and that they will vigorously fight for the seniors of our country and the disabled who so often face difficult and expensive health care decisions.

Perhaps most importantly Democrats must reject austerity economics and understand that, with the new and innovative technologies being developed, we now have the capability, as never before in world history, to provide a decent standard of living for every man, woman and child in this country - and create an incredibly bright future. Democrats must make clear that these new technologies and the artificial intelligence now being created must work to benefit all of our people, and not just the corporations that own that technology.

In my view, if Democrats are prepared to do that, they will win this election comfortably. If not, I’m not quite sure what the election outcome will be or, for that matter, what the future of the country holds.

If we’re going to be honest with the American people, we have got to acknowledge the realities of today, with the understanding that many of these crises have existed for decades.

And within that context, let me say a few words, about the achievements of the Biden Administration in its first 3 years.

President Biden and those of us who have worked with him have every right to be proud of what we have accomplished – especially given the fact that the work was done in a very divided and contentious Congress.

Yes. We should take pride in the American Rescue Plan which, at one of the lowest moments in modern American history - when we were dealing with the worst public health crisis in 100 years and the worst economic downturn since the great depression - helped revive our economy far faster than anyone could have imagined.

Yes. We should take pride in finally making significant investments in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure - roads, bridges, waste water plants, broadband and creating hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs in the process.

Yes. We should take pride in the unprecedented investments we have made in renewable energy.

Yes. We should take pride in that we have finally begun to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry.

Yes. We should take pride in the fact that we are rebuilding manufacturing in the United States.

Yes. We should take pride in the fact that unemployment today is extremely low. Here in New Hampshire it is all of 1.7 percent. We should take pride in the fact that inflation, which not so long ago stood at 9%, has been reduced to almost 3%.

Yes, we should take pride in the fact that President Biden, more than any president in history, has created an administration that actually looks like America in its diversity.

Yes. We should take pride in what we’ve accomplished but, at the same time, this 2024 campaign, at the presidential level and on down, must be honest with the American people and acknowledge the very real challenges that persist for working families and the middle-class.

So, while we take pride in our accomplishments, we must also acknowledge the reality that tens of millions of our fellow Americans continue to live in pain and despair.

Interestingly, this is exactly what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose portrait hangs in President Biden’s Oval Office, managed to do when he ran for a second term.

FDR, perhaps the most popular and effective president in American history, governed during the extremely difficult periods of the Great Depression and World War II. On January 20, 1937, Roosevelt gave an extraordinary speech at his second inaugural, in which, he took the opportunity not only to focus on his accomplishments but rather on the unfinished business he was determined to complete.

And this is what he said:

“In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

“I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

“I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago."

He continued:

“I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

“I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

“It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope--because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

That speech by Roosevelt is extraordinary for its candor and honesty in describing the gravity of the problems confronting America in his time - even though he was the sitting president. In other words, despite the progress he had made in his first term, he understood that much, much more had to be done.

Of course, he was not really informing people about conditions in America. Instead, he was reflecting back what people already knew, what they felt in their hearts, and what they experienced in their day-to-day lives.

In that way, his remarks were not an indictment of his own Administration but instead a rallying cry for working families across America to come together with him in a joint effort to cure these ills.

We need to do now what Roosevelt did then. We need to be clear to working people that we understand the reality of their lives and our political discourse must reflect that reality.

And what is that reality?

In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, tens of millions struggle to put food on the table, find affordable housing, affordable health care, affordable prescription drugs, affordable childcare and affordable educational opportunities. That is an indisputable reality, and it is imperative that we acknowledge that reality.

At a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, while the billionaire class and the 1 percent are doing better than at any time in American history, over 60 percent of our people live paycheck to paycheck, while many work for starvation wages and under terrible working conditions. Despite massive increases in worker productivity and an explosion in technology, the average American worker is making $45 a week less today than he or she did 50 years ago after adjusting for inflation while the vast majority of our families need two bread winners to survive.

Today, we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. Unbelievably, fewer than half of working-age Americans have any retirement savings and that number is even higher for women.

Today, despite spending twice as much per capita on health care as almost any other country, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and one out of four patients cannot afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe. As a result of a massive shortage of doctors, nurses, mental health providers and dentists many millions of Americans wait months in order to get a medical appointment and tens of thousands die, unnecessarily, because they can’t afford the health care they need when they need it.

While three people own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, nearly 600,000 Americans are homeless and some 18 million households spend over half of their income to put a roof over their heads. While major Wall Street firms gobble up working class neighborhoods in order to gentrify them, and make huge profits, workers are unable to find housing they can afford.

There was once a time, not so many years ago, when the United States led the world in terms of the quality of our educational systems. We had the highest percentage of people who were college graduates, and a very high quality public school system. Today, in an extremely competitive global economy, that is no longer the case and we now lag behind many other countries in our educational achievements. In many states, teachers are paid embarrassingly low salaries.

Meanwhile, over 45 million Americans are drowning in over $2 trillion in student debt for the crime of getting a higher education.

Today in America, not only do we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had, we have more concentration of ownership than ever before. In sector after sector, whether it is finance, agriculture, energy, defense contracting, media, transportation, health care, or Big Tech, a small number of huge, multinational corporations control what is produced, distributed and sold. The idea that our economy today is based on small business startups, rugged free enterprise and competition is nothing more than a myth.

But the crises we face are not just economic. In communities throughout the country there is increased crime, we are struggling with a major opioid epidemic and we are now experiencing the worst mental health crisis in modern history – exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Our life expectancy, which is already lower than most other major countries, is getting even lower in many parts of the country because of widespread addictions to alcohol and drugs, increased obesity and a growing suicide rate. Racism, sexism and homophobia continue to plague the country as we see an increase in hate crimes. With the school year now beginning, parents and kids worry about the epidemic of gun violence we have seen in recent years. Could it happen in our school, they ask?

Further, the American people know that our political and constitutional systems are in trouble. We have a former president who refused to acknowledge his defeat, and encouraged a violent insurrection to overturn the election results. We have state legislatures all across the country working overtime to make it harder for people of color and young people to vote, and who are gerrymandering districts to stay in power. And last, but not least, we have a campaign finance system which is totally corrupt, enabling billionaires, through their super PACs, to buy elections.

The American people also know that we have a Supreme Court that has, for the last 24 years, made far reaching decisions that have undermined faith not only in the judiciary, but the ability of our government to respond to the needs of the people. And that is not only their absurd and anti-democratic decision in Citizens United, but their willingness to undermine decades of precedent and deny the women of this country the constitutional right to control their own bodies.

The result of all of this is that faith in our democratic system is now extremely low.

Many millions of Americans have not only lost faith in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, but democracy itself.

And then, on top of all of that, just when you think the challenges we face could not be greater, the United States and the rest of the world face the existential threat of climate change. What a summer it has been. We have breathed the unhealthy smoke coming from the terrible forest fires in Canada, we have seen the floods in Vermont - the worst natural disaster in my state since 1927, we have observed the horrific death toll in Hawaii from their horrible flash fires, we have observed the drought, floods, fires and record-breaking heat waves in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. Increasingly, our people understand that climate change is not only real but that the planet is well on its way to becoming less healthy and habitable for our kids and future generations. Given their fears, millions of young couples throughout the world are wondering whether it even makes sense to have children.

So, where do we go from here? It’s easy to define the problems. It’s a lot harder to solve them. How do we revitalize American democracy and move forward toward a government which, to quote Lincoln, is “of the people, by the people, and for the people?”

In a divided nation how, in fact, do we bring our people together to address the enormous economic, social, and environmental crises we face – and create a government that works for all and not just the few?

In my view, by articulating the reality of Americans’ lives we will begin to recreate the trust that has evaporated in the institutions of government and the major political parties. To be credible we have to name names and demand accountability. It just cannot be that every political leader and every corporation and every institution other than Donald Trump and a few Republicans is acting in good faith.

The truth is that we are where we are today, because the people on top, the people with the power are extraordinarily greedy, dishonest, arrogant, irresponsible, and could care less about the needs of ordinary Americans.

Let’s confront the reality. It’s not, as Republicans tell us, the fault of immigrants, or racial minorities, or women, or LGBT people, or Muslims or any other minority group for the very desperate situation that too many people find themselves in. That’s just old fashioned demagoguery.

The reason so many have it so bad is that never before in the history of the United States have so few had it so good, owned so much and had so much economic power.

Never before in the history of the United States have so few, through their super PACs, campaign contributions, lobbyists and ownership of the media had so much political power.

And never before in our history has it been more necessary for all of us, standing together, to wrest that incredible power away from the few and redistribute it to the many.

Whether it is Wall Street, where three investment firms exercise incredible economic power as they control over $20 trillion in investments and, combined, are the major stockholders in the vast majority of S&P companies.

Whether it is the health insurance companies who make huge profits off a dysfunctional health care system that costs us twice as much per capita as virtually any other country.

Whether it is the pharmaceutical industry, which makes tens of billions in profits every year while charging us the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

Whether it is the major defense contractors who produce massive cost overruns and have jacked up our military spending to some $900 billion a year.

Whether it is the food industry, which has dramatically increased prices at the grocery store while reaping enormous profits.

Whether it is Big Tech, which intentionally addicts our kids to social media platforms and contributes to the mental health crisis facing so many young people.

Perhaps most importantly, it is the fossil fuel industry which has lied for years about the causation of climate change, and is now enjoying record-breaking profits as they raise the price of gas at the pump.

Add it all together and what we are seeing is an unprecedented level of corporate greed. In fact, over half the inflationary costs that we have seen in the United States in recent years has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, nothing to do with broken supply chains but everything to do with the greed of corporate America, the prices they have raised and the record breaking profits they are making.

And by the way, this is not just an American issue. This is a global issue. While over 6 million people throughout the world died of COVID, and millions more became ill because they were forced to go to work to support their families, the billionaire class used the pandemic to make themselves even richer. During the first two years of the pandemic, the world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion while the incomes of 99 percent of humanity went down and an additional 160 million people were forced into poverty.

These multibillionaires want it all, and they are prepared to step on anybody who gets in their way.

That is the kind of corporate greed we’re looking at now and the kind of greed that virtually all Americans - whether they’re black or white or Latino or Asian American or Native American - are increasingly disgusted with. This is where good policy is good politics. If we are looking at bringing the American people together, we have got to take on corporate greed.

And in that regard, we should take another lesson from President Roosevelt as he was fighting against the cabal of the economic elite of his era. In a 1936 campaign speech at Madison Square Garden during the Democratic Convention this is what Roosevelt said:

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

“They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred."

He continued:

“I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”

That is what Roosevelt said in the 1936 campaign, which by the way he won in a landslide. And that is what we should be saying in the 2024 campaign. Like Roosevelt, we should not be afraid to welcome the hatred of the billionaire class that is doing so much harm to our country.

Whether they like it or not, we must address the crisis of wealth and income inequality and demand that billionaires and large profitable corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

Whether they like it or not, we must increase the federal minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to a living wage of at least $17 an hour.

Whether they like it or not, we need to end the concentration of ownership in this country and break up giant monopolies that are strangling small businesses and keeping inflation artificially high.

Whether they like it or not, we need to make certain that every worker in this country who wants to join a union has the opportunity to do that. We can no longer tolerate the illegal, anti-union activities of Starbucks, Amazon, and other major corporations.

Whether they like it or not, we need to establish once and for all, that health care is a human right, not a privilege. We must take on the greed of the insurance companies that made over $69 billion in profits last year while tens of thousands of Americans die because they are unable to get the medical care they need. The current health care system is broken and dysfunctional. We need to fight for Medicare For All.

Whether they like or not, we need to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry – which has 1800 paid lobbyists in Washington – and make sure that drug companies can no longer charge us by far the highest prices in the world.

Whether they like it or not, we must take on the military industrial complex, cut military spending, and use those savings to invest in expanding Social Security benefits, affordable housing, child care, and education.

Whether they like it or not, we will save the planet by transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuels to renewable and sustainable energy.

Whether they like it or not, we will overturn Citizens United and move to public funding of elections and no longer allow billionaires and their Super PACs to buy elections.

Let me conclude by saying this. In the United States, and in fact around the world, support for the establishment and their institutions is in decline. People want change. And change will come. The question is: what kind of change will it be? Will it be the kind of change that is dominated by the wealthy and powerful? A change which bans books, denies our history, pits one group of Americans against another, and treats women as second class citizens who are not smart enough to make important decisions for themselves. That is one kind of change that could happen.

But there is another kind of change which could happen. And that is a change that would create a fairer, more just and more democratic society, based on love, solidarity and compassion. A change based on the principles of economic, social and racial justice. The choice is clear. And I know the kind of change I will be fighting for.

The Worst People Run for Office. It’s Time for a Better Way.

 

Aug. 21, 2023, from the New York Times

 

Credit...Photo illustration by Boris Zhitkov/Getty Images

By Adam Grant

Dr. Grant, a contributing Opinion writer, is an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the author of “Think Again” and the host of the TED podcast “Re:Thinking.”

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On the eve of the first debate of the 2024 presidential race, trust in government is rivaling historic lows. Officials have been working hard to safeguard elections and assure citizens of their integrity. But if we want public office to have integrity, we might be better off eliminating elections altogether.

If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?

People expect leaders chosen at random to be less effective than those picked systematically. But in multiple experiments led by the psychologist Alexander Haslam, the opposite held true. Groups actually made smarter decisions when leaders were chosen at random than when they were elected by a group or chosen based on leadership skill.

Why were randomly chosen leaders more effective? They led more democratically. “Systematically selected leaders can undermine group goals,” Dr. Haslam and his colleagues suggest, because they have a tendency to “assert their personal superiority.” When you’re anointed by the group, it can quickly go to your head: I’m the chosen one.

When you know you’re picked at random, you don’t experience enough power to be corrupted by it. Instead, you feel a heightened sense of responsibility: I did nothing to earn this, so I need to make sure I represent the group well. And in one of the Haslam experiments, when a leader was picked at random, members were more likely to stand by the group’s decisions.

Over the past year I’ve floated the idea of sortition with a number of current members of Congress. Their immediate concern is ability: How do we make sure that citizens chosen randomly are capable of governing?

In ancient Athens, people had a choice about whether to participate in the lottery. They also had to pass an examination of their capacity to exercise public rights and duties. In America, imagine that anyone who wants to enter the pool has to pass a civics test — the same standard as immigrants applying for citizenship. We might wind up with leaders who understand the Constitution.

A lottery would also improve our odds of avoiding the worst candidates in the first place. When it comes to character, our elected officials aren’t exactly crushing it. To paraphrase William F. Buckley Jr., I’d rather be governed by the first 535 people in the phone book. That’s because the people most drawn to power are usually the least fit to wield it.

The most dangerous traits in a leader are what psychologists call the dark triad of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. What these traits share is a willingness to exploit others for personal gain. People with dark triad traits tend to be more politically ambitious — they’re attracted to authority for its own sake. But we often fall under their spell. Is that you, George Santos?

In a study of elections worldwide, candidates who were rated by experts as having high psychopathy scores actually did better at the ballot box. In the United States, presidents assessed as having psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies were more persuasive with the public than their peers. A common explanation is that they’re masters of fearless dominance and superficial charm, and we mistake their confidence for competence. Sadly, it starts early: Even kids who display narcissistic personality traits get more leadership nominations and claim to be better leaders. (They aren’t.)

If the dark triad wins an election, we all lose. When psychologists rated the first 42 American presidents, the narcissists were more likely to take reckless risks, make unethical decisions and get impeached. Add a dash of Machiavellianism and a pinch of psychopathy, and you get autocrats like Putin, Erdogan, Orban and Duterte.

Eliminate voting, and candidates with dark triad traits would be less likely than they are now to rise to the top. Of course, there’s also a risk that a lottery would deprive us of the chance to select a leader with distinctive skills. At this point, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. As lucky as America was to have Lincoln at the helm, it’s more important to limit our exposure to bad character than to roll the dice on the hopes of finding the best.

Besides, if Lincoln were alive now, it’s hard to imagine that he’d even put his top hat in the ring. In a world filled with divisiveness and derision, evidence shows that members of Congress are increasingly rewarded for incivility. And they know it.

A lottery would give a fair shot to people who aren’t tall enough or male enough to win. It would also open the door to people who aren’t connected or wealthy enough to run. Our broken campaign finance system lets the rich and powerful buy their way into races while preventing people without money or influence from getting on the ballot. They’re probably better candidates: Research suggests that on average, people who grow up in low-income families tend to be more effective leaders and less likely to cheat — they’re less prone to narcissism and entitlement.

Switching to sortition would save a lot of money too. The 2020 elections alone cost upward of $14 billion. And if there’s no campaign, there are no special interests offering to help pay for it.

Finally, no voting also means no boundaries to gerrymander and no Electoral College to dispute. Instead of questioning whether millions of ballots were counted accurately, we could watch the lottery live, just as we do with teams getting their lottery picks in the N.B.A. draft.

Other countries have begun to see the promise of sortition. Two decades ago, Canadian provinces and the Dutch government started using sortition to create citizens’ assemblies that generated ideas for improving democracy. In the past few years, the French, British and German governments have run lotteries to select citizens to work on climate change policies. Ireland tried a hybrid model, gathering 33 politicians and 66 randomly chosen citizens for its 2012 constitutional convention. In Bolivia, the nonprofit Democracy in Practice works with schools to replace student council elections with lotteries. Instead of elevating the usual suspects, it welcomes a wider range of students to lead and solve real problems in their schools and their communities.

As we prepare for America to turn 250 years old, it may be time to rethink and renew our approach to choosing officials. The lifeblood of a democracy is the active participation of the people. There is nothing more democratic than offering each and every citizen an equal opportunity to lead.

From Nixon to Trump: The Decline of the Common Good in American Politics

Chapter 5 of The Common Good

Robert Reich

Aug 25, 2023

 

 

 

Friends,

America’s failure to hold Richard Nixon accountable for his attacks on democracy when he was president undermined the common good and paved the way for Donald Trump to mount even worse attacks.

The scandal that came to be known as “Watergate” and led to Nixon’s resignation from the presidency was a shock to the American political system. Afterward (analogous to putting locks on the doors after a town’s first robbery), Congress enacted many reforms, but all were eventually watered down or found by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.

The Watergate scandal began the modern era of “whatever-it-takes-to-win” politics — blatant disregard of any and all norms and laws that interfered with gaining or keeping power. Trump is the logical and inevitable consequence.

In 1974, in his last remarks about Watergate as a senator, 77-year-old Sam Ervin —who as chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee became widely revered for his fairness and deep respect for the Constitution — explained that President Nixon and his aides had “a lust for political power” that “blinded them to ethical considerations and legal requirements; to Aristotle’s aphorism that the good of man must be the end of politics.”

What was particularly chilling about Nixon’s behavior was his disdain for the common good and total obsession with himself.

On the tapes of his White House meetings, Nixon can be heard to talk incessantly about himself — his needs, his place in history, and his animosities — but he never once mentions the nation’s needs. For Richard M. Nixon, there was no common good. Only Richard Nixon.

 

The details of what occurred still shock.

In 1970, Nixon authorized break-ins or “black bag jobs” of people considered domestic security threats. An early goal was to destroy the reputation of Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked to the news media the Pentagon Papers, showing that the Johnson administration had lied to the American people about the Vietnam War.

Nixon’s burglars broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, seeking information that might smear Ellsberg and undermine his credibility in the antiwar movement. “You can’t drop it, Bob,” Nixon told his assistant H. R. Haldeman in June 1971, referring to Ellsberg. “You can’t let the Jew steal that stuff and get away with it. You understand?”

In early 1972, Nixon launched a plan for spying on and sabotaging Democrats in the upcoming presidential campaign, including wiretaps and burglaries.

His henchmen paid the chauffeur of Senator Ed Muskie, whom Nixon considered his most likely Democratic opponent, to photograph Muskie’s internal memos and strategy documents.

They paid others to dig up dirt on the sex life of Senator Ted Kennedy, a potential opponent in 1976. “I’d really like to get Kennedy taped,” Nixon told Haldeman. They inserted a retired Secret Service agent into the team protecting Kennedy who, Haldeman assured Nixon, would “do anything that I tell him.” Nixon replied, “We just might get lucky and catch this son of a bitch and ruin him for ’76,” adding, “That’s going to be fun.”

Nixon ordered another assistant, John Ehrlichman, to direct the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax returns of all likely Democratic presidential candidates, including Kennedy. “Are we going after their tax returns?” Nixon asked. “You know what I mean? There’s a lot of gold in them thar hills.”

Off the Top of My Head

It's Not Biden's Job to Reduce Inflation. That's Jerome Powell's Job.

by John Lawrence

Republicans are so stupid. They blame Joe Biden for not doing something that's not his job to do. Furthermore, the way Powell is going about his job requires him to create more unemployment, to reduce economic activity. That's the traditional way to reduce inflation. So getting rid of inflation requires more economic pain not less. Then if there is a recession, they'll blame Joe Biden, not Jerome Powell, for that. As far as house prices being out of sight for more and more people, how about blaming the hedge funds and other entities that are bidding up asset prices. Eventually houses will be unaffordable for the masses of people which will turn the American people into renters and basically debtors. Is that Joe Biden's fault or the fault of hedge finds and other cash flush investors who are entering this market? In fact they are in the process of cornering this market. Higher interest rates are also hurting would be home owners and car buyers. Is that Joe Biden's fault or Jerome Powell's fault for raising interest rates? Joe Biden has no control over interest rates. The American consumer is all about me, me, me not what is best for the country as a whole.

Biden has done more than any President since Lyndon Johnson to improve the economy with the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan and more. Nearly 11 million jobs have been created since President Biden took office – including 750,000 manufacturing jobs. It's the first time the US government has had an industrial policy. He kept the economy afloat during the COVID lock down. The US economy has been left to free enterprise for too long. With deregulation this has allowed corporate entities to pollute, to create dangerous products, to do nothing about carbon dioxide emissions.The government was just supposed to be hands off and let corporations run wild, all in the name of maximizing GDP. Well there are more important things than maximizing GDP like saving the planet from global warming. It is all ready too late to do that. It's only a question at this time of how bad it will get before some of the measures that are being taken today will kick in and save the planet, hopefully, from complete destruction. Each year heat waves and floods are getting more severe. Each year is hotter than the previous year. How important is it to maximize GDP under these conditions?

During World War II, the government made sure that the economy was completely focused on the war effort. Consumer consumption was kept low in order to support the war effort. Today with an even larger danger looming, the economy is going on its merry way with so many elements of it not focused on climate change. In fact I call it the Taylor Swiftization of the economy. Entertainment including professional athletics are very large components of GDP. Nero fiddling while Rome burned is nothing compared to what is happening today. Perhaps the energy going into these frivolous sectors should be refocused on climate change. But the American people don't even all agree that climate change is even a serious situation. They want more fossil fuels, more drilling, more pipelines, more gas production. Fortunately, some states like California are doing more like outlawing gas powered cars by 2035. However, 2035 is too late. Too little, too late is the story of the world's response to climate change. So major disasters will continue with the government's fiscal budget increasingly committed to bailing out these disasters. FEMA, by the way, is bankrupt, and insurance companies no longer want to insure.

Off the Top of My Head

How Trump and All His Co-defendants Will Win

by John Lawrence

In a nutshell: get one Trump voter on the juries. You need all 12 jurors to agree that someone is guilty. You need only one Trump voter on the jury to acquit. Who wins? The lawyers who will make millions. The media who will be transfixed with this legal circus. It'll end up being much ado about nothing. If Trump happens to be found guilty and actually faces jail time, he will probably leave the country. Why should a billionaire or semi-billionaire, who has assets in other countries and probably money stashed away off shore, willingly go to some sleazy jail or even some country club jail when he could live well in some other country? Trump is not exactly a loyal American citizen who adheres to the rule of law and playing fair. He can declare from abroad that he is some sort of President in Absentia and his loyal followers will still probably send him money. He will say he is prepared to come back to America as soon as his followers take political power and he can come in riding on a white horse.

Trump and his lawyers like constitutional scholar John Eastman who set up the fake electors scheme will work the system, and, if they can't convince one juror of their innocence, they will get themselves pardoned by the next elected Republican President which could be in 2024. American voters are nothing if not fickle. They have one of the best Presidents in American history who, despite great odds, accomplished more than anyone since Lyndon Johnson. Biden's popularity is in the tank despite his accomplishments. Why is this? Maybe because of his age. Maybe because he's not "charismatic" enough. Trump voters seem to be impressed by his charisma first and foremost. I guess charisma and popularity, not competence, is what gets you elected President in this country. Even as he faces 91 criminal indictments, on the TV it's all Trump, all the time. Just like the movie Trump is everywhere all the time all over the place.

Trump and his lawyers had a scheme for replacing electors, but it was not all that far fetched. Until 1913 state legislatures had control over electors. Passed by Congress on May 13, 1912, and ratified on April 8, 1913, the 17th Amendment modified Article I, Section 3, of the Constitution by allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. senators. Prior to its passage, senators were chosen by state legislatures. So Eastman and others were just trying to argue that there was something unconstitutional about the 17th Amendment. The Supreme Court might have been convinced that he was right and the state legislatures should have the final say in which case Trump would have been elected, not Biden. Republicans have used the Supreme Court before to get George W Bush elected in 2000 despite the fact that, when all the votes were counted, Al Gore really won the election. Bush convinced the Supreme Court to stop counting the votes. The result was the disastrous George W Bush administration in which he lied us into the Iraq war.

Republicans have been using dirty tricks for years to get themselves elected including gerrymandering and doctoring voter rolls to eliminate black voters. Black politicians and activists say that Republican lawmakers have used racial gerrymandering and voter suppression to secure those majorities and are using their political might to further consolidate power among mostly White Republicans. Republicans have been busy removing black voters from registration lists. According to Mother Jones: Fifty-five percent of the registration notices were sent to municipalities where Hillary Clinton had defeated Donald Trump, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and nine of the 10 areas with the highest concentration of voters on the purge list were big cities and college towns that had voted for Clinton. Milwaukee and Madison, the state’s two Democratic strongholds, accounted for 14 percent of the state’s registered voters but 23 percent of the names on the removal list. Voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods or areas with large student populations were nearly twice as likely to be flagged for removal, The Guardian found.

Trump and his lawyers just took dirty tricks to a whole new level. Now they will win in court just by the process of jury selection. It only takes one to find any of the myriad of defendants not guilty.

Rich Men North of Richmond

Republicans court cultural populism, while Democrats eschew economic populism. But economic populism is the key.

Robert Reich

Aug 21, 2023

Over the past week, Oliver Anthony’s video of his song “Rich Men North of Richmond” has gone viral, clocking more than 20 million views on YouTube. As it’s risen to the top of the streaming charts, it’s also become a theme song for reactionary conservatives (Marjorie Taylor Greene calls it “the anthem of the forgotten Americans”).

“Rich Men North of Richmond” expresses class resentment with words and music evocative of Woody Guthrie. But Guthrie aimed his fire at economic elites who oppressed hardworking Americans. Anthony is aiming at cultural elites who have reduced the status of white American-born men.

America is in a new populist age, but the new populism comes in two radically different forms: cultural and economic.

Today’s Republicans are wielding cultural populism on behalf of so-called “forgotten Americans” who are white, male, Christian, and nationalist.

For seven years, Donald Trump has rarely missed a day to blame all America’s problems on immigrants, Democrats, socialists, the mainstream media, the “Deep State” (including the FBI, Justice Department, prosecutors, and unfriendly judges), “coastal elites,” and, wherever possible (and usually indirectly), women and people of color.

Florida’s Ron DeSantis is basing his inchoate presidential campaign on a war against what he calls America’s “ruling class,” which includes bureaucrats, journalists, educators, and other supposed “woke” experts who, as DeSantis told the audience attending his campaign kickoff in Iowa in May, “are not enacting an agenda to represent us. They’re imposing their agenda on us, via the federal government, via corporate America and via our own education system.” DeSantis is shipping undocumented immigrants out of Florida, barring teaching about sex or America’s history of racism, blocking abortions after twelve weeks, requiring Trans young people to use bathrooms according to their gender at birth.

For Republican politicians these days, the culture wars are the central struggle of American public life. Why? Because cultural populism’s underlying political agenda is white male Christian nationalism. It aims to resurrect the social and racial hierarchy that dominated American life before the 1960s.

This not only fuels the Republicans’ mostly white, male, Christian, American-born base. It also reassures the fat cats bankrolling the GOP that working-class resentments are channeled away from economic populism — which could threaten the fat cats’ wealth.

What are Democrats doing with economic populism?

Some Democrats continue to talk about “forgotten Americans” who have been left behind economically. And Biden and his allies in Congress have made a good start at helping these Americans — even though most of the working middle class doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

But few Democrats are willing to blame what’s happened on economic elites. (When Bernie Sanders tried in 2016, the Democratic establishment squashed his presidential ambitions.)

Yet the Republicans’ cultural populism is bogus. The biggest change over the last three decades — the change lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of the working middle class — has nothing to do with identity politics, “woke”ism, Critical Race Theory, transgender kids, or any other current Republican bogeymen. It has directly to do with a huge shift in the distribution of income and wealth.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has just released a report showing changes in the distribution of family wealth from 1989 to 2019 (the first and the most recent years for which comparable survey data on family wealth are available).

Families in the top 10 percent of the distribution now hold more than two-thirds of all wealth. Families in the bottom half of the distribution hold only 2 percent of total wealth. (Families in the bottom quarter have negative net wealth — they’re in debt. Families in the top 1 percent — indeed, the top one-tenth of 1 percent — have a disproportionate share of the wealth of the top 10 percent.)

Look at the dramatic change over the last three decades. Although total wealth is much greater now than it was then, the distribution of that wealth is far more unequal. The bottom 50 percent hasn’t budged. Wealth at the top has exploded.

 

This change didn’t happen because of so-called “neutral market forces.” It happened because of policy decisions made over the last three decades.

What sort of decisions? To open the borders wide to imports from China. To deregulate Wall Street and allow it to make bets with other people’s money. To dramatically cut taxes on the rich. To let corporations bash unions and fire workers who try to organize. To encourage private equity to take over “underperforming” companies and then promptly fire workers and sell off assets. To allow big corporations to buy or merge with other big corporations. To bail out the biggest banks but not homeowners who get caught in the downdrafts. To encourage corporations to buy back their shares of stock rather than reinvest profits. To privatize higher education and push students into taking out massive college loans. And so on.

These policy decisions didn’t just happen, either. They were pushed by wealthy elites on Wall Street and in corporate C-suites, who made mammoth donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle — mostly but not exclusively Republican — to ensure that their wishes would be honored.

Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other Republican culture warriors don’t represent “forgotten Americans.” They’ve championed the very policies that have caused these Americans to be forgotten.

Biden and most Democratic lawmakers in Congress are advocating policies that will make the nation more equitable, such as student-loan forgiveness and negotiated drug prices. But they’re reluctant to push very hard for higher taxes on the wealthy, or labor laws that make it easier to organize, or to roll back any of the other big structural changes that wealthy elites have put in place over the last 30 years.

And they don’t want to blame the rich for what’s happened.

“I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay,” Anthony sings.

Yes, you have — but not because cultural elites have replaced white Christian nationalist men with people of other races, genders, nationalities, and creeds.

It’s because America’s wealthy have turned their growing wealth into increasing political power to change the rules of the game in ways that further enlarge their wealth and power, while shafting the bottom half.

If Democrats don’t tell the economic truth about what’s happened and place the blame squarely where it’s deserved, the lies of Republican cultural populists will fill the void — not just with faux-populist lyrics, but with bad laws.

Off the Top of My Head

Ted Kaczynski and His Protest Against Technology

by John Lawrence

Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unibomber, wanted a revolution in which all technology would be removed from civilization and we would basically go back to the days of hunter gatherers, which he considered to be our natural state. If he were protesting only the harm that technology has done, he might have had a better case. In particular the chemical industry which has given us plastics which are polluting the oceans, PFAS chemicals, aka 'forever chemicals', weed killers such as Monsanto's Roundup and other chemicals likely causing cancer, Kaczynski might have had a better case. But his case was based on his perception that technology was psychologically inhibiting human freedom. In particular participation in a technological society was enslaving the human spirit. In many respects his protest was against wage slavery which in the early days of the American republic some writers considered almost as pernicious as chattel slavery. Michael Sandel writes in Democracy's Discontents:

"Labor leaders dramatized their case against wage labor by equating it with Southern slavery - "wage slavery," as they called it. Working for wages was tantamount to slavery not only in the sense that it left workers impoverished but also in the sense that it denied them the economic and political independence essential to republican citizenship.

"Wages is a cunning device of the devil for the benefit of tender consciences who would retain all the advantages of the slave system without the expense, trouble and odium of being slaveholders," wrote Orestes Brownson. The wage laborer suffered more than the southern slave and, given the unlikelihood of rising to own his own productive property, was scarcely more free. The only way to make wage labor compatible with freedom, Brownson argued, would be to make it a temporary condition on the way to independence: "There must be no class of our fellow men doomed to toil through life as mere workmen at wages. If wages are tolerated it must be, in the case of the individual operative, only under such conditions that, by the time he is at a proper age to settle in life, he shall have accumulated enough to be an independent laborer on his own capital, on his own farm or in his own shop."

Kaczynski's problem with the system included the slavery of the university system in which one must struggle for years at no or little pay for the privilege of going to work as a more highly paid wage slave and what this does to the human spirit that longs for freedom from this technological system. By going off and leading a barely self sufficient life in a cabin in the mountains, Kaczynski was escaping from the system which had enslaved his mind psychologically for years. What he didn't realize was that he could have achieved this by dropping out of that system and pursuing an independent life based on some form of independent labor. In other words, he could have left the system for self-employment and so can anyone else. The really destructive thing about the technological society is not what it did to the human spirit but what it did to the environment, and that was something that Kaczynski was not very much concerned about. Some people evidently have no problem with participating in the "system." However, the destruction of the environment brought about by the chemical industry and fossil fuels is actually destroying the planet. Kaczynski missed his calling. He could have made his life a protest against climate change and environmental destruction caused largely by the chemical industry, and he could have figured out a different way to get his manifesto published without killing and maiming people. Self publishing, perhaps?

The US and China must unite to fight the climate crisis, not each other

Cooperation is not only in the best interests of all countries, but is absolutely necessary for the survival of the planet

 

from the Guardian, Mon 21 Aug 2023 06.11 EDT, Last modified on Mon 21 Aug 2023 12.45 EDT

 

by Bernie Sanders

 

‘US and China should come to an agreement to mutually cut their military budgets …’ Photograph: Leah Mi

Climate change is a global crisis and cannot be solved by any one country alone. If the United States, China and other industrialized countries do not come together to dramatically decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world we leave our children and future generations will become increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable. Tragically, the cooperation required to address this existential threat is being undermined by hawks in both the United States and China who are moving us toward a disastrous cold war.

Now is the time for a radical rethinking of geopolitics to reflect the reality that international cooperation is not only in the best interests of all countries, but is absolutely necessary for the survival of the planet.

Here’s the reality. The last eight years have been the eight hottest on record. This year is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, and this past July was the hottest month on record. Across the United States, July broke more than 3,200 daily temperature records and dozens of American cities broke or tied their previous daily temperature records three or more times. Phoenix experienced 31 days in a row at or above 110F (43.3C), 13 days longer than the previous record. El Paso, Miami, Austin and many other places also suffered under record-breaking stretches of extreme heat.

Smoke from unprecedented wildfires in Canada enveloped US cities and drifted halfway around the world, causing dangerously unhealthy air quality. Vermont, my home state, experienced floods that damaged 4,000 homes and 800 businesses, the state’s worst natural disaster since 1927. In Maui, Hawaii, rapidly moving fires destroyed 2,700 structures in historic Lahaina and took more than 100 lives, making it the deadliest wildfire in the US in more than a century.

But it’s not just the US that is dealing with record-breaking heatwaves and enormous climate-caused devastation. China experienced record-high temperatures last month, including the country’s all-time temperature record of 126F (52.2C), and recent flooding has killed about 100 people, destroyed nearly 200,000 homes, displaced some 1.5 million people and caused more than $13bn in damage.

From Tokyo to Rome to Tunis to Tirana, cities across Asia, Europe and north Africa experienced their hottest days on record. In Iran, the heat index hit 158F (70C), testing the limits of human survival. In our own hemisphere, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador all saw temperature records fall. It’s winter right now in South America, but that hasn’t stopped temperatures from exceeding 100F (37.7C) in some places, a heating event a climate historian labeled “one of the extreme events the world has ever seen”.

And it’s not just that temperatures have been soaring on land. Our oceans have never been warmer. Right now, 44% of the world’s oceans are experiencing a marine heatwave. The Mediterranean Sea is experiencing its hottest temperatures on record, more than 9F hotter than average in some places. Off the coast of Newfoundland, waters are as much as 18F above normal. South of Miami, waters reached 101F (38.3C). You’re supposed to find temperatures like that in a hot tub, not the ocean. This warming could further devastate coral reefs, fisheries and marine ecosystems around the world.

In the midst of this global crisis, there is both good news and bad news. The good news is that recent years have seen long-overdue steps to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels into more efficient and renewable energy sources. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act included an unprecedented $300bn in investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, which could help increase US solar energy by 500% and more than double wind energy by 2035, reducing carbon emissions by roughly 40%.

Other countries have also made major investments. China spent $546bn on clean energy last year and continues to manufacture and deploy more renewable energy than the rest of the world combined. By 2030, China may deploy enough renewable energy to essentially power the entire US electrical grid three times over. The European Union has laid out a plan to invest more than $1tn over the next decade in renewables and energy efficiency, aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% compared with 1990.

Importantly, large sections of the corporate world have turned away from investments in fossil fuels and are now spending hundreds of billions on sustainable energy. Altogether, the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the global community to invest $1.6tn in wind, solar power, electric vehicles, batteries, and electric grids this year, compared with just $1tn in fossil fuels. This progress has led the IEA to forecast that renewables will surpass coal to become the largest source of global electricity generation by early 2025, much faster than previously predicted.

The bad news is that we are still falling well short of the kinds of investments needed to deal with this crisis. We are still not moving fast enough to save our planet. The latest report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that without more urgent action, the world will pass the key 1.5C (2.7F) threshold by the early 2030s, risking a far deadlier future for our children and future generations. The science is clear: if the US, China, and the rest of the planet do not act with greater urgency to dramatically cut carbon emissions, our planet will face enormous and irreversible damage.

Let’s be clear: since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the US has put more carbon into the atmosphere, by far, than any other country. While the new technologies sustained by fossil fuels improved our standard of living, we laid the groundwork for the climate calamity the planet is now experiencing.

In recent years, the rapidly growing Chinese economy has eclipsed the US as the world’s major carbon emitter. Right now, China is building six times as many coal-fired power plants as the rest of the world combined – the equivalent of two new coal plants every week. Last year, they quadrupled the number of new coal plants approved compared with 2021. Current plans will see China add as much new coal to its grid as used in all of India, the second largest coal user, and five times more coal capacity as the US.

It is no great secret the Chinese government is undertaking many policies that we and the international community should oppose. They are cruelly repressing and interning the Uyghurs, threatening Taiwan and stifling freedom of expression in Tibet and Hong Kong. China has bullied its neighbors, abused the global trading system, stolen technology and is building out a dystopian surveillance state.

The US is rightly organizing its allies to press Beijing on these and other issues. But organizing most of our national effort around a zero-sum global confrontation with China is unlikely to change Chinese behavior and will alienate allies and partners.

Most importantly, it could doom our planet by making climate cooperation impossible between the world’s two largest greenhouse emitters. We need to move in a bold new direction. Recent history provides some instructive examples.

In 1962, when the US and the Soviet Union stood on the verge of nuclear war, President John F Kennedy and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, came together to prevent mutual destruction. Just a few months later, with the nuclear crisis as the background, President Kennedy proposed to the Soviet Union an arms reductions plan which would change the confrontational dynamic that had brought the world to the brink. Even arch anti-communists like Nixon and Reagan made bold gambits to reduce tensions, fearful of global annihilation. We face a similar dynamic today, facing collective catastrophe if we do not change course.

Here is the insane dynamic that must be changed. In recent years, both the US and China have greatly increased their military budgets. The US now spends some $900bn on the Pentagon, more than the next 10 nations combined. China, with the world’s second largest military budget, spends almost $300bn. Despite spending these huge amounts on “defense”, both countries are losing the war against the climate ccrisis. The US has experienced massive floods, fires, drought and extreme weather disturbances, which have cost us hundreds of billions. The recent flooding in China alone will cost that government tens of billions. Into the future, scientists tell us that great cities like Shanghai and New York will be underwater if we do not act effectively against the climate crisis.

So here’s a “radical” idea. Instead of spending enormous amounts of money planning for a war against each other, the US and China should come to an agreement to mutually cut their military budgets and use the savings to move aggressively to improve energy efficiency, move toward sustainable energy and end our reliance on fossil fuels. They should also provide increased support for developing countries who are suffering from the climate crisis through no fault of their own.

Now, I know that establishment politicians in both countries will tell me how naive and unsophisticated I am to offer such a suggestion and they will provide a million reasons as to why it can’t be done. My response is this: go talk to the people in Vermont who have lost their homes because of unprecedented flooding and the families in Hawaii who lost loved ones in the recent fires. Go talk to the more than 1 million people in China who have been displaced by catastrophic floods. Go talk to the people in southern Africa who are starving because of the terrible drought and floods they are experiencing or farmers around the world who can no longer grow their crops because of water shortages.

Perhaps most importantly, go talk to the hundreds of millions of young people in every country on earth who are losing hope, wondering whether they should even have children of their own, given the enormous challenges the climate crisis poses for a normal life.

Nelson Mandela famously remarked; “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” If we are to save the planet, now is the time for bold action. Let’s do it.

• Bernie Sanders is a US Senator and chairman of the health, education, labor and pensions committee

EPA’s new definition of PFAS could omit thousands of ‘forever chemicals’

Agency plans a ‘case-by-case’ approach that allows for flexibility, but critics say ‘this is not a new definition – it is a lack of definition’

Tom Perkins

Fri 18 Aug 2023 06.00 EDT

Last modified on Fri 18 Aug 2023 07.47 EDT from the Guardian

 

A person fishes in the Cape Fear River 30 June 2022, in Wilmington, North Carolina. The consequences of the EPA’s narrower definition have already been felt in North Carolina’s Cape Fear basin, which is contending with decades of Chemours pollution. Photograph: Allison Joyce/The Guardian

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office responsible for protecting the public from toxic substances has changed how it defines PFAS for a second time since 2021, a move critics say they fear will exclude thousands of “forever chemicals” from regulation and largely benefit industry.

Instead of using a clear definition of what constitutes a PFAS, the agency’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics plans to take a “case-by-case” approach that allows it to be more flexible in determining which chemicals should be subjected to regulations.

Among other uses for the compounds, the EPA appears to be excluding some chemicals in pharmaceuticals and pesticides that are generally defined as PFAS, current and former EPA officials say, and the shift comes amid fierce industry opposition to proposed limits on the chemicals.

The approach puts the toxics office at odds with other EPA divisions, other federal agencies, the European Union, Canada and most of the scientific world. The definition is likely to generate confusion in the chemical industry and within the agency, current and former EPA officials say.

“This is not a new definition – it is a lack of definition, and it makes no sense,” said Linda Birnbaum, a former EPA scientist and head of the National Toxicology Program. “It is just going to lead to terrible confusion.”

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.

In a statement to the Guardian, the EPA said its latest definition was more “expansive” than the previous. Its approach was designed “to focus on substances most likely to be persistent in the environment, including some chemical substances whose structures or sub-structures resemble, at least in part” more thoroughly studied PFAS compounds, like PFOS and PFOA.

But public health advocates warn that all PFAS are persistent in the environment and all that have been studied are toxic, and for those reasons many are calling on the government to largely restrict the entire chemical class.

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, a current EPA employee in the toxics office said the chemical’s definition has been evolving for several years. The employee said they first learned of the latest change in public comments made by Michal Freedhoff, a Biden-appointed toxics office administrator.

Current and former EPA employees say the agency is not defining some fluorinated chemicals used in pesticides as PFAS at a time when research has discovered their widespread use in agricultural products. The agency also excludes some “ultra short chain” PFAS refrigerants, which are defined as PFAS by the European Union but not the toxics office, said Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA attorney now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility nonprofit.

He said the stricter regulations in Europe have forced the industry away from the kind of PFAS refrigerants produced by Chemours, a chemical manufacturer with a plant in North Carolina. Chemours opposes defining the refrigerants as PFAS “because it is going to destroy their market” as it has in Europe, Whitehouse added.

The consequences of the EPA’s narrower definition have already been felt in North Carolina’s Cape Fear basin, which is contending with decades of Chemours pollution. A 2019 citizen group petition asked the EPA to conduct studies that would shed light on the health impacts of 54 PFAS compounds found in human blood and water in the region.

In the agency’s December 2021 response, itdeclined to test for 15 chemicals it said “do not meet” the toxics office PFAS definition.
The change also creates uncertainty for chemical companies who are producing substances that may or may not fall within the definition, which Kyla Bennett, a former EPA official now with PEER, characterized as “insanely frustrating”.

“The EPA claims they switched to a case-by-case basis to remain flexible, but in the past it has said, ‘We want to provide regulatory certainty,’ but this is the furthest from regulatory certainty that I can think of,” she added.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology coordinates among federal agencies could provide guidance to federal agencies on which definition to use, but it has failed to do so, Bennett said.

“The bottom line is the EPA has one job and that is to protect human health and the environment, and when it comes to PFAS they are not,” she added.

It is unclear what prompted the latest shift, the employee said, but it comes as the EPA implements its “PFAS strategic roadmap” to help rein in PFAS pollution. The shifting definition complicates that effort, the employee said.

 

“EPA can’t get its act together on what PFAS are,” they added. “To regulate PFAS, you have to agree what are and are not PFAS.”

 

The most widely used, inclusive definition, and that proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), defines any chemical with one fluorinated carbon atom as a PFAS. That could include tens of thousands of chemicals on the market and some public health advocates say a narrower definition is warranted.

 

The EPA toxics office in 2021 implemented a “working definition” that defined PFAS as chemicals that have “at least two adjacent carbon atoms, where one carbon is fully fluorinated and the other is at least partially fluorinated”. It covered about 6,500 PFAS, but the toxics office expanded the definition as the industry exploited loopholes.The employee said debating the definition distracts from the more important effort to quickly regulate PFAS that are already known to be found in people and animals.

How private equity is destroying the labors of love

Private equity is turning every business into a short-term profit center.

by Robert Reich

Aug 17, 2023

 

 

 

 

Friends,

Last week, Paramount announced that it will be selling Simon & Schuster, one of the biggest and most prestigious publishing houses in the United States, to the private-equity firm KKR, for $1.62 billion.

The acquisition vastly increases the influence of financial interests over book publishing.

This worries me because it continues a trend that began years ago — elevating profits above the love of publishing books.

When I published my first book decades ago, the purpose of most publishing houses was to publish books. Publishers made money in order to publish books. They earned enough on their big bestsellers to take chances on unknown authors like me and put out books that delighted small numbers of enthusiastic readers but never showed a profit.

But in more recent years, the major purpose of most book publishers has switched from publishing books to making money.

After KKR takes over Simon & Schuster, this prestigious publishing house won’t be taking risks on unknown authors or putting out wonderful books that appeal to small numbers of enthusiastic readers. It’s going to be a profit center for one of the biggest private equity firms on Wall Street, dedicated exclusively to making money.

The same dynamic has infected other parts of the economy. News organizations once made money in order to report the news. Now, news organizations exist in order to make money.

For years, CBS News was insulated from the commercial side of CBS. This allowed Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite to report what they thought the public needed to know. Today, most network and cable news has to show a profit. It’s been a slippery slope leading to Fox News’s shameless pandering to the lies and bigotry its viewers find entertaining.

Hospitals and health insurers once made money in order to provide health care. Now, hospitals and health insurers provide health care in order to make money.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield began as nonprofits that insured all comers. But as big profit-seeking insurers targeted younger and healthier people, the Blues were left to insure the older and less healthy, which made it impossible for them to continue. They turned to making money. Now, private equity runs hospitals, into the ground.

And so on.

I was reminded of this distinction — between making money in order to provide particular products and services, and providing products or services in order to make money — while watching the magnificent series “The Bear,” now streaming on Hulu.

If you haven’t seen it, I won’t give away the plot except to say that the major characters want to create a great restaurant. Each has a backstory that reveals why this is so important to them.

Making money is the means to achieving their dreams, but they aren’t in it for the money. They’re in it to produce wonderful food, served with perfection. This transcendent goal is central to their own self-worth. It gives each of their lives purpose and meaning.

It’s still possible for businesses to exist in order to produce wonderful goods and services. I know many retailers, small manufacturers, and professionals who do what they do mainly for the love of it. (My father ran a clothing store, and although he worked seven days a week, making money was secondary — enabling him to keep his family afloat and continue to do what he loved.)

But the financialization of the American economy has turned almost all larger businesses into profit centers. Private equity in particular has leached out every other value.

When I ask my former students how they like their work, I often hear the same story. “I like it well enough,” they say, often with a tinge of regret. “But the money people won’t let me do what I’d really love to do.”

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Off the Top of My Head

Contrasting the Chinese, EU and American Economic Systems

by John Lawrence

Since 2001, China has pursued a “going-out” investment policy. At first, the PRC (People's Republic of China) mainly encouraged SOEs (state owned enterprises) to invest overseas but in recent years, China's overseas investments have diversified with both state and private enterprises investing in nearly all industries and economic sectors. After Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, China opened up its economic policy with the result that approximately 800 million people were lifted out of poverty in about 40 years. This turned China into a capitalistic nation ruled by the Chinese Communist party although the word "communist" is largely an anachronism at this point. China developed a unique economic system comprised of state owned enterprises and private enterprise. It has been the private aspects of China's system that have mainly driven the huge increases in GDP to the point where China is likely to take over the US as the world's largest economy in terms of GDP in a few years.

There are 4 components of GDP: consumption, investment, government spending and profit from exports. Some of the reasons for China's becoming an economic powerhouse are that consumption is only 38% of GDP whereas US consumption is nearly 70% of GDP. While Americans consume, China produces, exports and invests. I would characterize the US as having a Taylor Swift economy, an economy based on consumption of entertainment and other disposable items with no lasting value. It has been reported that Taylor Swift and the Barbie movie have been at least somewhat responsible for keeping the American economy afloat. When you add in social media and professional athletics, much of American consumption is immediately disposed of as soon as the event is over. In the EU consumption is about 52% of GDP so somewhat larger than China's but much less than the US.

Chinese investment is 43% of GDP while The US' is about 16%. EU investment is about 25% of GDP so midway between the US and China. At 21.4% EU government spending is larger than either the US (17.6%) or China (16%). Like the American government the Chinese government doesn't spend a lot of money on welfare. Chinese families are basically savers and provide a lot of the same services to their own intergenerational extended families which are provided by EU governments. The American ethos is largely individualistic and so many family members who can't provide for themselves fall through the cracks. This is one reason for the homeless crisis in the US.

The Chinese economy is bolstered by the fact that it is a net exporter (2.5% of GDP) while the US (-2.7%) and the EU (-2.7%) are net importers which subtracts from their GDPs. China also exports capital and manpower in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative. Announced in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to strengthen China’s connectivity with the world. It combines new and old projects, covers an expansive geographic scope, and includes efforts to strengthen hard infrastructure, soft infrastructure, and cultural ties. As of October 2019, the plan touches 138 countries with a combined Gross Domestic Product of $29 trillion and some 4.6 billion people. Supporting a diverse array of initiatives that enhance connectivity throughout Eurasia and beyond could serve to strengthen China’s economic and security interests while bolstering overseas development. 

The Chinese political system, nominally communist, has the same elements of democracy that the early US political system had which is that locally elected bodies select the next higher political body with 3 successive iterations so that the National Assembly is chosen by the provincial assemblies at the next lower level. The original American Constitution had a similar feature in that the Senate was not chosen directly by the people but by state legislatures. State legislatures continued to elect senators until adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 which provided for popular election of senators. The Chinese system tends to meritocraticy with the best and brightest ascending to the top levels whereas the more democratic American system has within it the possibility of electing complete idiots like Donald Trump whose ascendancy served to prove how vulnerable the two party system really is. By contrast the Chinese emphasize harmony and stability which are attributes of their main philosophical inheritance: Confucianism.

'This Is Huge': Judge Sides With Montana Youths in Historic Climate Ruling

Youth plaintiffs await the start of the nation's first youth climate change trial at Montana's First Judicial District Court on June 12, 2023 in Helena, Montana. (Photo by William Campbell/Getty Images)

"As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today's ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation's efforts to save the planet," said one attorney representing 16 young plaintiffs.

by Julia Conley, August 14, 2023, from Common Dreams

Climate advocates on Monday expressed hope that an unprecedented ruling by a state judge in Montana, siding with 16 young residents who argued the state violated their constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuel extraction, will mark a sea change in the outcomes of climate lawsuits.

In Held v. State of Montana, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that rights of the plaintiffs—who range in age from 5 to 22— have been violated by the Montana Environmental Policy Act because the law has prevented the state from assessing the climate impacts of mining projects.

Fossil fuel emissions including Montana's "have been proven to be a substantial factor" in heating the planet and causing pollution, Seeley said in the nation's first ruling on a constitutional, youth-led lawsuit regarding the climate.

Because the Montana Constitution guarantees residents a "clean and healthful environment," the state's environmental policy law violates the document, said Seeley.

"This is HUGE," said meteorologist Eric Holthaus.

"This is a landmark decision establishing enforceable principles of intergenerational justice."

Julia Olson, founder of Our Children's Trust, the non-profit law firm that helped represent the plaintiffs, called the victory a "sweeping win" that could have reverberating effects on the hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed in the U.S. arguing against the continued extraction of fossil fuels.

"As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today's ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation's efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos," said Olson in a statement.

In their defense, state attorneys argued that Montana's fossil fuel emissions are insignificant compared to global emissions, but Seeley said in her ruling that the state's per capita emissions are "disproportionately large" and rank in the top six per capita emissions in the United States.

The state also ultimately rested its case on the argument that the state legislature should take up the issue of the environmental law rather than the judiciary—an admission, said Michael Gerrard of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, that the climate science underpinning the plaintiffs' case was indisputable.

"Everyone expected them to put on a more vigorous defense," Gerrard toldThe Washington Post Monday. "And they may have concluded that the underlying science of climate change was so strong that they didn't want to contest it."

During the trial, the plaintiffs testified about their own suffering due to pollution and extreme weather, while climate experts explained the connection between the state's fossil fuel activities and planetary heating, the wildfires and scorching heat that have overwhelmed parts of the West, and other extreme weather.

"Judge Seeley's decision comes at a time when we're seeing the impacts of climate change accelerate—from low streamflows and lake levels to unprecedented heat waves, floods, and wildfires," said Melissa Hornbein, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, which along with McGarvey Law also represented the plaintiffs. "These are the climate realities the youth plaintiffs and expert witnesses told us about on the stand, while the state disclaimed any responsibility and dismissed them."

"We're relieved that the court recognized that these youth plaintiffs are already feeling the impacts of the climate crisis, as well as the dangers threatening their future if the state doesn't take meaningful action to address it," Hornbein added. "We're also delighted that Judge Seeley recognized Montana's significant role as an emitter on the global stage, as well as its ability—constrained only by a resistant government—to rectify its disproportionate contribution to the climate crisis."

The Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate action organization, said the ruling is "proof that our generation is unstoppable—we have the power to bring down the fossil fuel industry and win a Green New Deal."

As Common Dreams reported last month, lawsuits around the world have emerged as a key driver of climate action as a wide range of plaintiffs—from children in the U.S. to senior citizens in Switzerland—have argued that their human rights have been violated by the companies and lawmakers that have promoted fossil fuel production despite scientific evidence of the danger it poses.

Out of approximately 2,200 worldwide climate cases, about three-quarters have been filed in the United States, according to the United Nations Environment Program and the Sabin Center, and the number of legal challenges has more than doubled since 2017.

The outcome of the Montana case could "open up the floodgates for more climate lawsuits," said Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that the next plaintiff to file a case against the fossil fuel industry should be the federal government, to hold companies accountable "for their role in the climate crisis."

"This is a landmark decision establishing enforceable principles of intergenerational justice," said Roger Sullivan, an attorney at McGarvey Law. "Simply stated, the government elected by this generation must abide its obligation to pass on a stable climate system to future generations."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

 

 

Julia Conley

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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Judge Rules in Favor of Montana Youths in Landmark Climate Case

The court found that young people have a constitutional right to a healthful environment and that regulators must be allowed to consider climate impact.

Youth plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana gathered in June at Pioneer Park in Helena, Mont.Credit...Janie Osborne for The New York Times

 

By Mike Baker

Aug. 14, 2023, 1:48 p.m. ET, from the New York Times

 

A judge in Montana ruled on Monday that young people in the state have a constitutional right to a healthful environment, finding in a landmark case that the state’s failure to consider climate change when evaluating new projects was causing harm.

The case, brought by a group of young Montana residents ranging in age from 5 to 22, is the first of its kind to go to trial in the United States. While the state has contended that Montana’s emissions are minuscule when considered against the rest of the globe’s, the plaintiffs argued that the state must do more to consider how emissions are contributing to droughts, wildfires and other growing risks to a state that cherishes a pristine outdoors.

In her ruling, Kathy Seeley, a district court judge, found that the state’s emissions “have been proven to be a substantial factor” in affecting the climate. Laws that limited the ability of regulators to consider climate effects were unconstitutional, she ruled.

“This is a huge win for Montana, for youth, for democracy and for our climate,” said Julia Olson, the executive director of Our Children’s Trust, which brought the case.

A Record 15 Billion-Dollar Disasters Have Hit US So Far This Year: NOAA

The El Rico Pipe Yard remains submerged as Tulare Lake continues to expand in Corcoran, California on March 30, 2023. (Photo: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

The tally could rise with the Atlantic hurricane season set to pick up.

by Jessica Corbett, August 8, 2023, from Common Dreams

The United States has already endured 15 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters this year, underscoring the dangers of and need for humanity to combat the fossil fuel-driven planetary emergency. The record pace of pricey extreme weather was announced Tuesday as part of the findings in the latest monthly U.S. climate report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Since recordkeeping began in 1980, the U.S. has experienced 363 weather and climate disasters with damages hitting $1 billion, with a consumer price index (CPI) adjustment to 2023, according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). The total cost of those events topped $2.59 trillion.

As of Tuesday, there have been 15 confirmed events with losses exceeding $1 billion including "one flooding event, 13 severe storm events, and one winter storm event," NCEI's related webpage explains. "Overall, these events resulted in the deaths of 113 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted. The 1980-2022 annual average is 8.1 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent five years (2018-2022) is 18 events (CPI-adjusted)."

 

While the total damage for the 15 events neared $40 billion, the costliest disasters were early March storms in the South and East ($6.1 billion), a tornado outbreak March 31-April 1 ($5.4 billion), and California flooding ($4.6 billion).

Jonathan Erdman, a senior meteorologist with The Weather Channel, noted Tuesday that "2017 is the full-year record. There were 22 billion-dollar disasters in 2017, responsible for an estimated $383.7 billion in damage, both the most of any year since 1980. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria were responsible for 86% of that damage tally in 2017."

While the Atlantic hurricane season officially begins in June, it tends to pick up in August—meaning this month could increase the billion-dollar disaster tally and put 2023 on track to break the 2017 record.

Florida Todayreported Monday that "there are now five tropical waves out there in the Atlantic the National Hurricane Center is keeping an eye on that are expected to bring some thunderstorms to the Lesser Antilles and the Caribbean this week, but no major tropical activity is expected over the next few days."

AccuWeather meteorologists in March forecast 11-15 named storms this season but last week updated that estimate to 13-17.

Erdman pointed out that "since 1980, America's costliest weather disasters have almost exclusively been hurricanes. For example, 2005's Hurricane Katrina's damage—adjusted for inflation to 2023—was $193.8 billion, almost five times the total of all 15 of 2023's disasters so far. Last year, Hurricane Ian inflicted an estimated $115.2 billion in damage."

In addition to the billion-dollar disasters, other key findings from NOAA's new report include that the year-to-date temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 53°F, or 1.7°F above average, with Florida seeing its warmest January-July period yet while Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and New Jersey saw their second-warmest periods.

For just last month, the average temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 75.7°F, or 2.1°F above average, making it the 11th-hottest July in the 129 years recorded. Four states—Arizona, Florida, Maine, and New Mexico—saw their hottest Julys on record.

The recent extreme heat has fueled fresh demands for action from Congress and the White House, with campaigners and even some policymakers pressuring President Joe Biden to stop approving fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency.

"We are experiencing extreme weather events across the globe. Heatwaves. Wildfires. Drought. Flooding," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said on social media Saturday. "President Biden must declare a climate emergency now!"

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

 

 

Jessica Corbett

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

U.N. Chief Warns of ‘Catastrophe’ With Continued Use of Fossil Fuels

António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said instead of replacing Russian oil, gas and coal, nations must pivot to clean energy.

António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, at the organization’s headquarters in New York City this month.Credit...Andrew Kelly/Reuters

By Lisa Friedman

March 21, 2022, from the New York Times

WASHINGTON — Countries are “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe” if they continue to rely on fossil fuels, and nations racing to replace Russian oil, gas and coal with their own dirty energy are making matters worse, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned on Monday.

The ambitious promises world leaders made last year at a climate summit in Glasgow were “naïve optimism,” Mr. Guterres said. Nations are nowhere near the goal of limiting the average global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic impacts increases significantly. The planet has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

And the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet is continuing to increase. Global emissions are set to rise by 14 percent in the 2020s, and emissions from coal continue to surge, he said.

“The 1.5 degree goal is on life support. It is in intensive care,” Mr. Guterres said in remarks delivered to a summit The Economist is hosting on sustainability via video address.

“We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe,” he said. “If we continue with more of the same, we can kiss 1.5 goodbye. Even 2 degrees may be out of reach. And that would be catastrophe.”

Mr. Guterres’s speech comes as the European Union is trying to find ways to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas, and countries like the United States are scrambling to increase fossil fuel production to stabilize energy markets. President Biden and European leaders have said that the short-term needs will not upend their longer-term vision of shifting to wind, solar and other renewable sources that do not produce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions.

But the U.N. secretary general said he fears that strategy endangers the goal of rapid reduction of fossil fuel burning. Keeping the planet at safe levels means slashing emissions worldwide 45 percent by 2050, scientists have said.

In Glasgow in November world leaders promised to stave off climate change and, for the first time, planned to “phase down” coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel. Leaders from 100 countries also pledged to stop deforestation by 2030, a move considered vital since trees absorb carbon dioxide. The United States, Europe and about 100 other nations also said they would cut methane emissions 30 percent by 2030. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas produced from oil and gas operations.

But there has been almost no progress, Mr. Guterres said. In addition, rich countries most responsible for polluting the planet have not met their obligation to help the poorest countries — already “slammed” by high inflation, rising interest rates and debt — to develop clean energy, he said.

At the same time, he warned, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is upending global energy markets, further undermining climate goals.

“As major economies pursue an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence and close the window to 1.5 degrees,” Mr. Guterres said.

He cautioned countries could become so focused on the immediate need to fill the oil, gas and coal gap “that they neglect or kneecap policies to cut fossil fuel use.”

“This is madness,” he said. “Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction.”

Last week the International Energy Agency warned that the world faced its first global energy crisis, and recommended that major economies conserve energy by implementing 10 strategies, from carpooling to traveling by train instead of airplane.

In his speech, Mr. Guterres said wealthy nations should be dismantling coal infrastructure to phase it out completely by 2030, with other nations doing so by 2040. He called for an end to fossil fuel subsidies and a halt to new oil and gas exploration. Mr. Guterres also said private sector financing for coal must end.

“Their support for coal not only could cost the world its climate goals,” he said. “It’s a stupid investment — leading to billions in stranded assets.”

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents oil and gas companies, said in a statement that the industry “can responsibly develop America’s vast resources while at the same time reducing emissions to address climate change.”

President Biden has promised a rapid clean energy transition in the United States but it has not started yet. Legislation he has championed to hasten the shift to renewable energy, the Build Back Better Act, is stalled in Congress. Meanwhile, his plans to stop new oil and gas leasing have faced challenges in the courts.

---

Lisa Friedman reports on federal climate and environmental policy from Washington. She has broken multiple stories about the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal climate change regulations and limit the use of science in policymaking. More about Lisa Friedman

Off the Top of My Head

The Best Democracy May Not Be One Achieved by Elections

by John Lawrence

For a truly democratic system we would have to go back to ancient Greece and the system developed by Aristotle: sortition. Sortition is the selection of a legislative body randomly by lot. If the American House of Representatives truly represented the American people it would be chosen in this way. There is no more representative way of choosing a democratic legislative body. In the ancient Greek legislative body known as the Council of 500, each representative was chosen by lot. If the American House was chosen in this way, it would a) eliminate the need for money in American politics and b) eliminate the need for political parties in American politics. People have been brainwashed to believe that only a government in which there are elections for the representatives is a true democracy. It's not the only or even the best way. Representatives chosen by lot are more representative of the American people than representatives chosen by election. So at least for the purposes of selecting this body, with sortition the two party system would go by the wayside.

So what would this say about the relative merits of a democracy in which the representative body was chosen by lot and a one party system such as the Chinese government. In other words how would a no party system compare to a one party system , and is a no party system more democratic than a one party system. Yes, certainly it would be. But is a two party system such as the US currently has necessarily more democratic than a one party system. In the Chinese system the lowest deliberative body is voted on by the people. Then there are 3 levels of elections. The first is for the municipal people's Congress which elects the people's congresses of provinces which elects the highest level the National People's Congress. If the National People's Congress were to be selected by lot, then the Chinese system would be truly democratic just as the American system would be if the House of Representatives were selected by lot. Based on this analysis one could argue that the Chinese one party system is just as much a version of democracy as the American two party system and that if both systems used sortition instead of elections by vote, both systems would be arguably more democratic. Whether a system is a one party system, a two party system or a multiparty system such as they have in Europe, the various systems should only be compared on the actual results the system is capable of manifesting and how much their various bodies reflect the wishes of the people.

The American system is currently on the brink of systemic failure due to the fact that there is such a great divisive split between the two parties.The American system notably does not always elect the best and brightest candidates. The Chinese system arguably is more merit based than the US system. In the US a clown and no nothing like Trump can be elected and cause great havoc. In fact he almost instigated a complete overthrow of the American system of democracy. People with money or financial backing stand a better chance of being elected than people of merit or good will. The First Amendment allows candidates to lie about virtually anything, and, if they can convince enough voters that their alternative facts are the true facts, they can win elections. While the Chinese system does not represent the ultimate democratic form of government, neither does the American system. Both systems could be reformed to allow more truly representative government and more successful and capable government. In fact in the US if the House of Representatives were formed by sortition and the Senate were formed by voting or sortition based on a pool of candidates that had at least minimal background, experience and educational requirements, the American system would be quite a bit more democratic than it is right now. The ideal system might be one that approaches as closely as possible to a no party system.

Off the Top of My Head

American Democracy Teetering on the Brink

by John Lawrence

So what are the possible outcomes? Let's assume Trump is the Republican nominee. Option 1: Trump is convicted and goes to jail before the 2024 election. In this scenario, Trump will probably lose the election for President. Independents will be aghast. Trump's base will not be able to organize sufficiently to carry out another assault on the seat of American democracy. There will be sporadic outbursts. In jail Trump will not have the media exposure he has outside of jail. Option 2: Trump is indicted multiple times but not convicted before the 2024 election. Trump probably still loses the national election, but is in a position as a free man to organize another insurrection, this time on a much larger level than the one on January 6, 2021. This could amount to civil war. Option 3: Trump loses the election and subsequently goes to jail. This could also result in a dangerous situation because Trump still has access to an outsize megaphone and continue to rile up his base before he goes to jail and cause trouble leading again to a possible civil war.

As long as Trump is a free man, he can continue to foment a revolution. He can continue to advocate for violence towards his perceived enemies, even those that are a legitimate part of the judicial and legal system. He is already attacking Jack Smith, the special counsel, who is prosecuting him on multiple counts regarding January 6 and also the document handling fiasco. Trump continues to insist that the American legal system is not legitimate. He continues to undermine the legitimacy of the rule of law. His followers essentially consist of a cult who want Trump exonerated irrespective of his purported criminality. As long as Trump is free, he will continue to whip up his followers and lead them to the brink of civil war. Who knows if in addition to Trump's calls for revolution, there is also a parallel movement going on to organize for a response to Trump's being convicted and put in jail or if Trump loses the election regardless of whether he has been convicted or not. Trump's followers are bound and determined to put Trump back in the White House by any means necessary. They will do whatever Trump eggs them on to do.

The United States' continued existence as a democracy cannot be taken for granted at this point. The Republican controlled House can throw the US into chaos if they decide not to authorize the budget. That in and of itself could shut the country down. There is a good chance that they will not authorize the continuance of government spending. There are many other ways that they could partner with Trump to bring the country down. Are some elements of the military also in league with Trump? Who knows. It seems that they were on January 6 when they wouldn't send troops to protect the Capitol on a timely basis. Obviously, some people in the military establishment sympathize with Trump. The influence of Fox News and other conservative media continues to amplify Trump's messages. The First Amendment guarantee of free speech enhances Trump's ability to foment a possible civil war. Trump's base who have grievances going back to loss of the Civil War combined with Trump's perceived grievances reinforce each other. An aggrieved leader and his aggrieved followers represent a volatile mixture

Trump almost succeeded in overturning the American government on January 6. Only Mike Pence stood in his way. Notably, firearms were not a part of the insurrectionists' arsenal as they invaded the Capitol. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that next time they would bring their fire arms. Could another mob do what they did on January 6, and also be successful at it? Or could they be successful at the State level? These are tenuous times during which a number of scenarios involving Trump trying to take over the American government could play out. His base will never accept the outcomes of any indictments or even convictions. How will they react when he is sentenced to jail for the rest of his life? Or will the prosecutors chicken out when it comes to conviction and putting Trump in jail. If Trump is successful in fomenting a civil war, an unlimited right of Free Speech will be largely to blame. Can Trump be sentenced to shutting his mouth?

Gazing into the future should really make us sweat

 

Ibrahim Rayintakath

 

By David Wallace-Wells Opinion Writer, New York Times, August 2, 2023

On the last day of July, Phoenix finally registered a temperature high below 110 degrees Fahrenheit — the first time that had happened in 31 days. The temperature of pavement in the city measured up to 180 degrees, and local burn units are full of patients who simply fell to the ground and were burned, as though Maricopa County’s whole surface were a skillet on the stove. The I.C.U.s are filling up, too, and the region’s iconic saguaro cactuses are crumpling and collapsing in the heat. On the same day last week that President Biden offered only a few meek remarks about extreme heat and just a few million dollars in new funding for heat forecasting, the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, leaned into a typically vehement formulation. “The era of global warming has ended,” he said. “The era of global boiling has arrived.”

It was, worldwide, the hottest month on record. June was the hottest June on record. August appears poised to be the hottest August. Every single day for four straight weeks, as Canada burned and Sicily burned and Algeria burned, global temperatures surpassed the daily record set in 2016 and matched last summer, when 61,000 Europeans are estimated to have died as a result of the heat.

But what else do you expect as greenhouse gas emissions continue? On opposite ends of the planet, temperatures recorded in the North Atlantic and sea ice measured near the South Pole, tracked so far from recent trends that you might embarrass yourself simply stating the size of the anomaly — a four sigma event in the temperatures of the North Atlantic, meaning that, given a stable climate and a normal distribution of chance, it should be expected about once every few hundred years and perhaps a six sigma event for Antarctic sea ice, meaning we should expect to see it, at least according to the simplified math, only once every 7.5 million years.

At a certain point, that math just gets silly, telling you perhaps more about the improper way you might have structured the comparison than about the size of the anomaly itself. But you can measure the anomalies in other ways, such as by noting the hot-tub ocean temperatures off the Florida Keys, a year’s worth of rain falling in 36 hours in parts of Beijing or 100-degree temperatures in the mountains of Chile or that there is an Argentina-size gap between this year’s Antarctic sea ice and the typical extent. And the fact that we are seeing these gob-smacking anomalies at all is a sign that the historical framework implied by terms like “seven sigma” and “500-year storm,” imperfect in the best of times, no longer applies to the world we live in now.

The environmental journalist Juliet Eilperin called the ocean temperatures “beyond belief”; The Washington Post reported that they had “baffled scientists.” Contemplating the trajectory of Arctic sea ice, the atmospheric scientist Zack Labe wrote memorably about how often he finds himself answering questions about the state of the science these days by saying, “I don’t know.” And for all the uncertainty, many of those watching the changes unfold have a queasy intuition that we may be entering a new climatic regime — and perhaps inching closer to some quite concerning tipping points.

“Shocking but not really surprising,” is how NASA’s Gavin Schmidt put it. “Even the things that are unprecedented are not surprising.” That is where we are all living now, in a climate that is both shocking and unsurprising. For several decades, those anxious about global warming have lived in fear of climate prophecies. We are beginning to simply live within them, a process that looks from some vantages like a horror story and from others surprisingly normal.

There are different ways to measure the changes, some less hair-raising than others. In a report published July 25, the World Weather Attribution network examined recent heat waves in the United States, Europe and China, finding that all but the Chinese event would have been impossible without climate change. In a stable, prewarming climate, the heat wave that baked China would have happened once every 250 years; now, the network said, it should be expected every five years. The episodes in Europe and North America, once impossible, should be expected once every 10 to 15 years. I’d bet on these frequencies being underestimates. Last summer there were 100 million Americans under heat advisories, and heat across Europe was called record-breaking then, as well. (On British television, a broadcaster complained that her meteorologist guest was being too gloomy about the heat; “I want us to be happy about the weather,” she said. In the weeks that followed, several thousand Britons died in the heat.)

But the World Weather Attribution report also characterized the heat waves in another way, incorporating a critique made by Patrick Brown of the Breakthrough Institute last summer to measure the simple size of the temperature anomaly attributable to climate change, too. By this metric, the network found, warming had added just one degree Celsius to the temperatures in China, two degrees to the heat waves in North America and two and a half degrees to southern Europe’s.

The coolheaded climate scientist Zeke Hausfather tried to quickly contextualize the recent string of anomalies to show that, in fact, they were, while alarming, nevertheless within the range of expected outcomes, given the present level of global warming. Well, at least two of the three anomalies he examined — the Antarctic sea ice was still quite off the charts. (About those, one scientist told The Guardian that “something weird is going on”; another said that the abrupt changes were “very much outside our understanding of this system.”)

But even if, in most cases, the science is vindicated by this summer’s extremes, that isn’t ultimately all that reassuring. Forecasts for warming have long scared many of those who really looked at them, and so it’s not exactly comfortable to know that we are merely coasting along the high end of those forecasts today. As the climate stalwart Bill McKibben put it to me recently, when it comes to global warming, “‘I told you so’ are the four least satisfying words in the language.”

“The speed of us passing limits is mind-bending,” wrote the Texas A&M atmospheric scientist Andrew Dessler, with whom Hausfather shares a Substack, in a short reflection on why climate impacts seemed to be escalating so quickly. “When the Earth warms the next 0.1 degrees Celsius, an entirely new group of thresholds will be passed, bringing great harms to entirely different groups of people,” he wrote. “Many of them will not expect it, having been lulled into complacency by the fact that they hadn’t been negatively impacted by warming up to then. Is that you?”

As the extreme events have piled up this summer, I keep returning to a conversation I had last fall with the Texas Tech atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a lead author of several U.S. National Climate Assessments and the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy.

“The good news is we have implemented policies that are significantly bringing down the projected global average temperature change,” she said, describing a suite of projections now showing expected temperature rise this century of two to three degrees Celsius rather than four to five. But the bad news was that we had been “systematically underestimating the rate and magnitude of extremes.” Even if temperature rise is limited to two degrees, she said, “the extremes might be what you would have projected for four to five.”

In a long essay I published soon after that conversation, I emphasized that good news — that thanks to the technological and economic miracle of renewables, a global political awakening and an understanding that some earlier assumptions about future energy use were too pessimistic, we had about cut in half our expectations of warming in less than a decade.

This summer, I’ve been thinking more about her bad news — that even accounting for rapid global decarbonization and a drastic cut in expected global temperature rise, we may still end up in a world defined by impacts long called catastrophic. For now, it seems scary enough to say, we don’t really know.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Toxic Masculinity

by John Lawrence

Traditional masculine traits are dominance, aggression, emotional repression, violence. These traits have been historically mostly expressed in terms of the military. In the First World War, many of the participants were more than eager to cover themselves in glory by proving their manhood in combat. Instead many of them ended up dying miserable deaths in muddy trenches or hung from barbed wire. The persistence of war in the human experience can be laid squarely at the feet of men and their interpretation of what is manly in my opinion. In fact peace or even world peace is seen as a feminine idea. Most traditional men would not consider peace in the form of world wide understanding and compassion even possible because it would be based on feminine values. The only peace even possible in the traditional male mind is "peace through strength." Traditional male values prevent even an acknowledgment of what peace would really consist of because it would consist of emotional values that are traditionally feminine. The predominant attitude is that joining the military will "make a man out of you." A real man is only supposed to express a limited and actually stunted set of emotions and certainly is not supposed to express any vulnerabilities. Physical force or the threat of force is acceptable in a man's world. Understanding, cooperation and diplomacy are not.

Traditional male activities are beer drinking (a man can hold his liquor), fast car racing or pickup driving (showing dominance by means of a powerful machine), participation in or spectating at competitive sports, participation in or admiration of the military. Dominance, competitiveness, the use or threat of violence, pugnaciousness, toughness, looking down on men who don't conform to this stereotype - these are all traditional male traits. None of these traits are physically or mentally healthy. For instance, holding your liquor can lead to cirrhosis of the liver. Emotional repressiveness can lead to an inability to relate to women even though some women are attracted to the traditional male type. In fact it can be argued that Trump's popularity is a result of his expression of traditional male values. In an article in FiveThirtyEight entitled With His Version of Masculinity, we find this:

But the quest to seem masculine is particularly complicated in this year’s GOP primary because Trump has been so successful at projecting a macho image that Republican voters have responded to. This masculine identity isn’t about demonstrations of physical prowess — nobody talks about how far Trump can run or whether he can bench-press a certain weight. His version of manliness is fueled by other kinds of behavior — including his belittling of other candidates, aggression toward women, “tell it like it is and don’t apologize” affect — that are associated with traditional ideas about how a man should behave. The other GOP candidates largely aren’t trying to imitate those aspects of Trump’s macho identity — but experts told us that without Trump’s signature belligerence, his version of masculinity might not resonate as much. And that means his rivals may have an especially difficult time convincing the GOP primary electorate that they’re as strong a leader as Trump.

“In this view of masculinity, men are supposed to be dominant, powerful, aggressive,” said Theresa Vescio, a professor of psychology at Penn State University who studies masculinity. “And the more that people — both men and women — think that good men should be high in power, status, dominance and toughness, the more they say that’s what a man is, the more they support Trump.”

It might seem strange to some that a man who is not particularly physically fit or athletic, never served in the military and eats junk food is an exemplary manifestation of manhood. It seems ridiculous that Trump's penchant for belittling his opponents is seen by some as "manly." That his getting away with stiffing contractors, creditors and not paying taxes are manly traits. But somehow Trump's unwillingness to apologize about anything or ever admit he did anything wrong is seen by some Republicans as the counter to "liberal values" like having compassion and respect for people who disagree with you. Instead Trump calls his detractors and competitors names, assails them as weaklings and asserts his macho masculinity while he hides behind a bevy of lawyers and uses his money to shield himself from any negative consequences. His seeming ability to get away with stuff is seen as quintessentially masculine. The article continues:

These are the voters who are especially likely to find Trump’s version of masculinity appealing. Trump is particularly effective at drawing on his supporters’ fears about threats to traditional masculinity, while simultaneously building himself up as a paragon of that version of manliness, according to the experts we spoke with. His image as president was aggressively militant, threatening other world leaders and avoiding compromise. And his refusal to apologize for a well-documented track record of sexual harassment and assault makes him seem authentically masculine and powerful to some voters, according to Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies male gender identity. “It’s as much about tearing others down as it is about building others up,” Cassino says. “The insults, the misogynistic behavior — these are very negative masculine traits but he’s willing to assert them in a way others aren’t, and that means nobody thinks he’s lying about who he is.”

By projecting an image of himself as a powerful, strong, dominant man who’s willing to shrug away modern conventions around how men and women should behave, Trump has reached people who support traditional gender hierarchies. “There are a lot of conservatives — men but some women too — in this country who increasingly feel like they’re on the outside looking in, while liberals run things,” said Paul Elliott Johnson, a professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh who studies gender and politics. “Trump invites those people to feel victimized and then says, ‘I will fix the problem.’”

As detrimental to society in general as these toxic traditional masculine values are, they will even probably contribute to the annihilation of the human race altogether either through war or the ignoring of climate change. There is not even any talk of world peace any more. It's not even on anyone's radar. The militarization of the American psyche is complete. The Peace Corps is never even mentioned in the media. Most people would not even know that it exists. The Peace Corps represents the feminine values of help and caring for those less fortunate. The traditional male simply looks upon them as losers in the game of life, probably because of their inferiority to white males. As traditional white males, they believe that they have simply outcompeted those who come from as Trump has termed them, "shithole countries."  Let people with feminine values agonize over them and their claims that rich white men should help them out with their situations due to climate change. Macho men would scoff at their suggestions that the rich nations should bear the cost of ameliorating the effects of global warming or as U.N. chief António Guterres declared, "global boiling." As Trump and other macho men might say, "suck it up." There will probably never be world peace until women run the world. And where would that leave the traditional man and his toxic values? Healthy manhood, in my humble opinion, should be nothing more nor less than loving, supporting and cherishing the girls and women in our lives whether they be girlfriends, lovers, wives, daughters, mothers or grandmothers. All the rest of the positive values a man can manifest are simply personhood values which can be exemplified by both sexes.