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Thom Hartmann: The Crisis of Western Culture

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2023 //
8

Thom Hartmann is reproducing chapters of his book on his blog. This is the beginning of Chaper 12. It is insightful, brilliant, hopeful.

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. It is true, that in the meantime, we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war, and long oppressions of enormous public debt. …If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost. For this is a game where principles are the stake.

—Thomas Jefferson, writing about the conservative John Adams presidency

At the core of every form of political and social organization is culture—the collective stories people tell themselves about who they are, how they got there, and where they’re going. Government, in many ways, is one of the most direct expressions of culture, as we’ve seen by the forms of governance adopted by groups ranging from the Maori to the New Caledonians to the Danes to modern-day Americans. Conservatives are fond of describing contemporary political battles as “culture wars,” and this is far truer than most Americans realize.

The good news is that democracy has come under assault in America before, we’ve survived, and the nation actually became stronger for the struggle. The year 1798, for example, was a crisis year for democracy and those who, like Thomas Jefferson, believed the United States of America was a shining light of liberty, a principled republic in a world of cynical kingdoms, feudal fiefdoms, and theocracies. Although you won’t learn much about it from reading the “Republican histories” of the Founders being published and promoted in the corporate media these days (particularly those of John Adams, whom conservatives are trying to reclaim as a great president), the most notorious stain on the presidency of John Adams began in 1798, with the passage of a series of laws startlingly similar to the Patriot Act.

In order to suppress opposition from the Democratic Republican Party (today called simply the Democratic Party) and about twenty independent newspapers who opposed John Adams’s Federalist Party policies, Federalist senators and congressmen—who controlled both legislative houses along with the presidency—passed a series of four laws that came to be known together as the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The vote was so narrow—44 to 41 in the House of Representatives—that in order to ensure passage, the lawmakers wrote a sunset provision into the Acts’ most odious parts: Those laws, unless renewed, would expire the last day of John Adams’s first term of office, March 3, 1801.

Empowered with this early version of the Patriot Act, President John Adams ordered his “unpatriotic” opponents arrested (beginning with Benjamin Franklin’s grandson) and specified that only Federalist judges on the Supreme Court would be both judges and jurors.

The Alien and Sedition Acts reflected the new attitude Adams and his wife had brought to Washington, D.C., in 1796, a take-no-prisoners type of politics in which no opposition was tolerated. In sharp contrast to his predecessor, George Washington, America’s second president had succeeded in creating an atmosphere of fear and division in the new republic, and it brought out the worst in his conservative supporters. Across the new nation, Federalist mobs and Federalist-controlled police and militia attacked Democratic-Republican newspapers and shouted down or threatened individuals who dared speak out in public against John Adams.

In the end, the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to publish “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government or its officials, expired in 1801. The Alien Enemies Act, which enables the president to apprehend and deport resident aliens if their home countries are at war with the United States of America remains in effect today (and is most often brought forth during times of war). Some things, it seems, have changed, but many remain the same from the days of Adams’s Federalist hysteria.[liv]

Recovering a Culture of Democracy

Our democracy and culture have truly reached a threshold. It is time, now, for us once again to follow Jefferson’s wise advice. Hope for the best, organize for a better America, and recognize the power and evil unleashed by politicians who believe that campaign lies are defensible, laws gutting the Bill of Rights are acceptable, and that the ends of stability justify the means of repression and corruption.

America has been through crises before, and far worse. If we retain the vigilance and energy of Jefferson, who succeeded Adams as president—as today we face every bit as much a struggle against the same forces that he fought—we shall prevail.

For the simple reason that, underneath it all, “this is a game where principles are the stake.”

While the principles of that day were confined largely to issues of democracy, personal liberty, and the public good (the interconnectedness of humans), today we have an added principle that we must draw quickly into our national—and international—consciousness. Very simply, if we fail to realize—and to make part of our national education and discourse—the reality of our interconnectedness with every other life form on the planet and the importance to hold them all sacred, we may well perish, or at the very least descend into a hellish existence of our own making.

As Leonardo DiCaprio so eloquently points out in his movie of the same name, we are now at the eleventh hour:

An acre and a half of rainforest is vanishing with every tick of the second hand—rain forests that are not only one of the two primary lungs of the planet, but also have given us fully 25 percent of our pharmaceuticals, while we’ve only examined about 1 percent of rain forest plants for pharmaceutical activity.[lv] They account for fully half of the planet’s biodiversity, although in the past century over half of the world’s rainforest cover has vanished. In Brazil alone over 90 separate rain forest human cultures, complete with languages, histories, and knowledge of the rain forest, have vanished since the beginning of the last century.[lvi]

In 2008 the “Red List” of endangered species was updated to note that fully half of all mammals on earth (we are mammals, let’s not forget) are in full-blown decline, while the number of threatened mammals is as high as 36 percent.[lvii]

* Every five seconds a child somewhere in the world dies from hunger; every second somebody is infected with TB, the most rapidly growing disease in the world, which currently infects more than a billion people; every day one hundred to species vanish forever from this planet.

In America there are 45 million people with no health insurance, and most Americans are one illness or job-loss away from disaster. Worldwide, more than half of all humans are already experiencing that full-bore disaster, living without reliable sanitation, water, or food supplies. As global climate change accelerates, within thirty years more than five billion humans living along seacoasts or in areas with unstable water supplies will experience life-threatening water-related crises.[lviii]

Every single one of these problems (and the many others mentioned earlier) is, at its core, a crisis of culture.

Reunite Us with Nature

Nothing but changing our way of seeing and understanding the world can produce real, meaningful, and lasting change, and that change in perspective—that stepping through the door to a new and healthy culture—will then naturally lead us to begin to control our populations, save our forests, recreate community, reduce our wasteful consumption, and return our democracy to “We the People.”

This requires transforming our culture through reimagining and re-understanding the world as a living and complex thing, rather than as a machine with a series of levers and meters. We are not separate from nature, and we are not separate from each other. “We are all one” is a religious cliché, but when you look at our planet from space and see this small blue marble spinning through empty blackness at millions of miles an hour, you get that, like most clichés, it’s grounded in a fundamental truth.

The message of mystics from time immemorial is that, at its core, that we’re all interconnected and interdependent. Ironically, such mystics were the founders of all the world’s great religions, yet that part of their message has largely been ignored—although every major religious tradition still has within it the core of the idea of oneness.

In October 2005, the thirty-million-member National Association of Evangelicals sent a statement to their fifty-thousand member churches that said, in part: “We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part. … [G]overnment has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation.”

It’s a beginning that we must bring to all religions, to all governments, to all people of the world.

Please open the link to read the rest of the chapter.

Categories Democracy, Environment, Equity, Ethics, Hope

Ryan Cooper: What’s Behind Republicans’ Anti-Woke Hysteria?

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2023 //
14

Ryan Cooper writes in The American Prospect that the anti-woke frenzy among Republicans is a purposeful smokescreen. While their followers rant and rave about WOKE targets, like books and drag queens, the Republican legislators will continue to pass legislation to protect the interests of the rich.

Cooper writes:

It’s long been a truism among liberal political writers that a great deal of conservative culture-war politics is misdirection that disguises the GOP’s real policy agenda. By far the most consistent laws the Republican Party has produced in office since the 1980s are tax cuts for the rich and deregulation. This type of thing is unpopular, even among Republican voters, and so a regular supply of shiny objects is needed to distract them.null

That is of course true of the latest conservative hate frenzy: the crusade against “wokeness,” which the right increasingly uses as a catchall slur for everything they dislike—diversity, reproductive rights, accurate history, climate policy, the dissolution of a failed bank, and so on. Meanwhile, beneath the din, typical pro-rich policy is quietly written up.

Yet not only is the anti-woke frenzy covering up the oligarchic economics of the GOP, it is also directly profiting the allies of Republican politicians. Helping corporate CEOs and anti-woke grifters: Like the gif says, why not both?

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies are rushing through a law that would force banks not to use “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) criteria in their investing decisions. This is a version of a resolution that Republicans passed through Congress recently, leading to what’s expected to be President Biden’s first veto. As Jason Garcia writes at Popular Information, the Florida law would forbid any bank with accounts from state government from making banking or investment decisions based on a company’s “business sector,” or based on “support of the state or Federal Government in combatting illegal immigration.”

This idea is wildly impractical, as ESG or “business sector” questions must include many factors that directly affect the profits of an investment—like when Norfolk Southern spilled a huge amount of vinyl chloride in East Palestine, Ohio. (Would they get civil rights protections because of that in Florida?) Taken literally, DeSantis’s law would outlaw virtually half of all banking.

Of course, it is not meant literally. The subtext is that Florida banks better start lending again to DeSantis’s favorite immigrant detention camp company, or else. A private prison firm called GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, got cut off from mainstream banking in 2019, thanks to protests over its appalling treatment of detainees. The company has been one of DeSantis’s biggest campaign contributorssince 2018, as well as of Florida Republicans, and it stopped paying dividends in 2022. That is likely to weigh on company stock, unless those “woke” rules turn around and GEO Group can get its financing back.

In short, DeSantis would force Wall Street to once again fund his political cronies, and thence his own political campaigns.

Or in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott recently announced that the state government is taking control of the 200,000-strong Houston school district, supposedly because one of its 50 high schools has struggled academically. (The district as a whole was recently given a “B” by the state education agency.) It’s not a coincidence that, as Forrest Wilder writes at Texas Monthly, Abbott has recently been touring overtly right-wing private religious schools touting the benefits of his school voucher plan. These luxurious schools typically cost over $10,000 per year in tuition. The wealthy, ultra-right-wing families that use them—and the highly paid right-wing administrators and teachers who run them—would benefit from a voucher that might cover about half the cost, while undermining public schools. All that is needed to get the job done is to delete a provision in the Texas constitution separating church and state, which Texas Republicans have proposed, helped along by the fearmongering that woke schools are ruining children’s lives, no doubt.

Not only is the anti-woke frenzy covering up the oligarchic economics of the GOP, it is also directly profiting the allies of Republican politicians.

Perhaps most telling of all is the situation in Hungary, increasingly considered as an anti-woke utopia by American conservatives. CPAC invited Prime Minister Viktor Orban to their conference last year, and prominent conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Rod Dreher make regular pilgrimages.

Hungary is a quasi-dictatorship, and Orban has used his power to turn the country into a colony of international capital. When he took power in 2010, he made Hungary extremely attractive to foreign investors by slashing taxes on the rich and corporations while raising them on the working class. Together with Hungary’s low wages, this set the stage for a decade-long economic boom, concurrent with an explosion in domestic inequality. Orban’s latest plan is to entice a Chinese company into building the largest battery factory in Europe, though the idea is reportedly not popular among locals, who correctly suspect the company is not going to take proper precautions against pollution, and that workers and the local economy will see very little of the benefits.

Conservative politics is about creating, reinforcing, and preserving hierarchy. Oligarchic economics is only natural. Wedge issues that pit the lower classes against one another to cloak this hierarchy are also par for the course. If and when Republicans take national power again, it’ll be one more screaming tantrum after the next, while they rob the American people blind in the background.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Deregulation, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Hoax, Lies, Republicans

ProPublica on The Most Anti-Democratic and Powerful Group You Never Heard Of

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2023 //
13

ProPublica wrote recently about a powerful organization of far-right conservatives that carefully avoids public scrutiny. They are wealthy, powerful, and networked, thanks to the Federalist Society and its mastermind Leonard Leo. Leo is the guy who picked judges for Trump and engineered the selection of Brett Kanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Please read this article about Teneo, an organization with long tentacles and a goal of crushing liberal ideas, ideas that are central to our democracy.

A few tidbits:

ProPublica and Documented have obtained more than 50 hours of internal Teneo videos and hundreds of pages of documents that reveal the organization’s ambitious agenda, influential membership and burgeoning clout. We have also interviewed Teneo members and people familiar with the group’s activities. The videos, documents and interviews provide an unfiltered look at the lens through which the group views the power of the left — and how it plans to combat it.

In response to questions for this story, Leo said in a statement: “Teneo’s young membership proves that the conservative movement is poised to be even more talented, driven, and successful in the future. This is a group that knows how to build winning teams.”

The records show Teneo’s members have included a host of prominent names from the conservative vanguard, including such elected officials as U.S. Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Missouri’s Josh Hawley, a co-founder of the group. Other members have included Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, now the fourth-ranking House Republican, as well as Nebraska’s attorney general and Virginia’s solicitor general. Three senior aides to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, are members. Another is the federal judge who struck down a Biden administration mask mandate. The heads of the Republican Attorneys General Association, Republican State Leadership Committee and Turning Point USA — all key cogs in the world of national conservative politics — have been listed as Teneo members…

Teneo co-founder Evan Baehr, a tech entrepreneur and veteran of conservative activism, said in a 2019 video for new members that Teneo had “many, many, many dozens” of members working in the Trump administration, including in the White House, State Department, Justice Department and Pentagon. “They’re everywhere….”

Soon after Leo took an interest in Teneo, the group’s finances soared. Annual revenue reached$2.3 million in 2020 and nearly $5 million in 2021, according to tax records. In 2021, the bulk of Teneo’s income — more than $3 million — came from one source: DonorsTrust, a clearinghouse for conservative, libertarian and other charitable gifts that masks the original source of the money. In 2020, the Leo-run group that received the Chicago business owner’s $1.6 billion donation gave $41 million to DonorsTrust, which had $1.5 billion in assets as of 2021.

Teneo’s other funders have included marquee conservative donors: hedge fund investor Paul Singer, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the DeVos family, according to Baehr.

As the group’s finances improved, its videos became much more professionally produced, and its website underwent a dramatic upgrade from previous iterations. All of this was part of what Baehr called “Teneo 2.0,” a major leap forward for the group, driven in part by Leo’s guidance and involvement….

Many of the connections happen at Teneo’s annual retreat, which brings together hundreds of members and their spouses, plus allies including politicians like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and DeSantis as well as business leaders and prominent academics. Speakers at past Teneo retreats have included luminaries spanning politics, culture, business and the law: New York Times columnist David Brooks, federal judge Trevor McFadden, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, “Woke, Inc.” author and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, former Trump cabinet official and 2024 presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, ultrawealthy donors and activists Dick and Betsy DeVos, and Chick-fil-A board chair Dan Cathy.

These are the only posts today. Read them. Think about it. What did you learn? What should we do? None of us is a billionaire. How can we save our democracy?

Organize. Be informed. Vote.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Elections, Environment, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Gender, Injustice, Lies, Privatization, Race, Religion, Republicans, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The Story Behind the Ohio Derailment

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2023 //
26

Heather Cox Richardson’s post includes a story that has been under-reported about the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that released massive toxic fumes. The Trump administration repealed an Obama regulation that imposed braking rules on trains carrying toxic materials. The trail industry lobbied to kill the regulation.

She writes:

President Joe Biden hit the road today to continue the push to highlight the successes of his administration’s investment in the economy. In Lanham, Maryland, at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 26, he celebrated the economic plan that “grows the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down.”

He praised union labor and said that the nation’s investment in green energy would mean “good-paying jobs for electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, laborers, carpenters, cement masons, ironworkers, and so much more. And these good jobs you can raise a family on.” “It’s a stark contrast to our Republican friends, who are doubling down on the same failed politics of the past. Top-down, trickle-down economics is not much trickle down…to most kitchen tables in America,” he said.

He reiterated that he would lay out his budget on March 9 and that he expected the Republicans to lay out theirs, so people can compare the two. Biden maintains that his policy of investing in infrastructure and putting money in the hands of ordinary Americans will nurture the economy and reduce the deficit as growth brings in more tax dollars. Meanwhile, he said, the Republican tax cut of 2017 has already added $2 trillion to the federal deficit.

Good economic news is putting wind under Biden’s wings. The economy continues to perform better than expected in 2023. Retail buying increased 3% in January, and the job market remains strong. The administration today highlighted another series of large private sector investments in American manufacturing: Boeing announced that Air India has contracted to buy more than 200 aircraft; Ford announced it will build a $3.5 billion factory in Marshall, Michigan, to make advanced batteries for electric vehicles; and Texas Instruments announced it will build an $11 billion semiconductor plant in Lehi, Utah.

Biden emphasized that these investments would provide “good-paying jobs that [Americans] can raise a family on, the revitalization of entire communities that have often been left behind, and America leading the world again in the industries that drive the future.”

Biden accused the Republicans of proposing measures that would raise the deficit, which is already rising again. The Congressional Budget Office today projected a much higher deficit for 2023 than it did in May 2022 because of new laws, mandatory spending for Social Security and Medicare, and higher interest rates in place to combat inflation. The CBO notes that “spending substantially exceeds revenues in our projections even though pandemic-related spending lessens. In addition, rising interest rates drive up the cost of borrowing. The resulting deficits steadily increase the government’s debt. Over the long term, our projections suggest that changes in fiscal policy must be made to address the rising costs of interest and mitigate other adverse consequences of high and rising debt.”

This is precisely what Republicans have been complaining about with regard to the Democrats’ recent laws to rebuild infrastructure and invest in the economy, while ignoring that their own tax cuts have also added mightily to the deficit. Republicans want to address the rising deficit with spending cuts; Biden, with taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations.

Biden appears to be trying to turn the nation to a modern version of the era before Reagan, when the government provided a basic social safety net, protected civil rights, promoted infrastructure, and regulated business. Since the 1980s, the Republicans have advocated deregulation with the argument that government interference in the way a company does business interrupts the market economy.

But the derailment of fifty Norfolk Southern train cars, eleven of which carried hazardous chemicals, near East Palestine, Ohio, near the northeastern border of the state on February 3 has powerfully illustrated the downsides of deregulation. The accident released highly toxic chemicals into the air, water, and ground, causing a massive fire and forcing about 5,000 nearby residents in Ohio and Pennsylvania to evacuate. On February 6, when it appeared some of the rail cars would explode, officials allowed the company to release and burn the toxic vinyl chloride stored in it. The controlled burn sent highly toxic phosgene, used as a weapon in World War I, into the air.

Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine has refused federal assistance from President Biden, who, he said, called to offer “anything you need.” DeWine said he had not called back to take him up on the offer. “We will not hesitate to do that if we’re seeing a problem or anything, but I’m not seeing it,” he said.

Just over the border, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said that Norfolk Southern had botched its response to the accident. “Norfolk Southern has repeatedly assured us of the safety of their rail cars—in fact, leading Norfolk Southern personnel described them to me as ‘the Cadillac of rail cars’—yet despite these assertions, these were the same cars that Norfolk Southern personnel rushed to vent and burn without gathering input from state and local leaders. Norfolk Southern’s well known opposition to modern regulations [requires] further scrutiny and investigation to limit the devastating effects of future accidents on people’s lives, property, businesses, and the environment.”

Shapiro was likely referring to the fact that in 2017, after donors from the railroad industry poured more than $6 million into Republican political campaigns, the Trump administration got rid of a rule imposed by the Obama administration that required better braking systems on rail cars that carried hazardous flammable materials.

According to David Sirota, Julia Rock, Rebecca Burns, and Matthew Cunningham-Cook, writing in the investigative journal The Lever, Norfolk Southern supported the repeal, telling regulators new electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on high-hazard flammable trains (HHFT) would “impose tremendous costs without providing offsetting safety benefits.” Railroads also lobbied to limit the definition of HFFT to cover primarily trains that carry oil, not industrial chemicals. The train that derailed in Ohio was not classified as an HHFT.

Nonetheless, Ohio’s new far-right Republican senator J. D. Vance went on the Fox News Channel show of personality Tucker Carlson to blame the Biden administration for the accident. He said there was no excuse for failing infrastructure after the passage last year of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, and said that the administration is too focused on “environmental racism and other ridiculous things.” We are, he said, “ruled by unserious people.”

He also issued a statement saying that “my office will continue to work with FEMA” over the issue, although FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has not been mobilized because Ohio governor DeWine has not requested a federal disaster declaration.

—

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/02/15/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-economy-7/

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/15/politics/biden-maryland-economy-speech/index.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-15/us-economy-keeps-charging-ahead-adding-pressure-on-fed-to-hike

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/02/15/icymi-biden-boom-continues-another-week-of-massive-private-sector-investments-in-american-manufacturing/

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58940

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/02/04/east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/15/ohio-train-derailment-toxic-chemicals/

https://apnews.com/article/biden-politics-district-of-columbia-us-republican-party-kevin-mccarthy-744d501534e43e8823fee135faf6d46e

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-escalates-fight-social-security-medicare-frustrating-republicans-rcna70104

https://www.foxnews.com/us/ohio-skyline-lit-up-fireball-black-plumes-smoke-toxic-chemicals-released-derailed-train

SENATOR VANCE ISSUES STATEMENT ON EAST PALESTINE TRAIN DERAILMENT

https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-blame-ohio-train-derailment-1781163

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-train-derailment-wake-up-call

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ohios-dewine-says-he-has-not-taken-up-biden-on-offer-of-anything-you-need-in-wake-of-train-derailment-disaster-adf4c949

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/02/sen-sherrod-brown-blasts-trump-administration-for-rail-safety-cuts-after-ohio-derailment.html

https://www.axios.com/2023/02/15/cbo-deficit-debt-ceiling-2023

Categories Accountability, Biden, Environment, Health, Obama, Ohio

Texas: The Link Between the Charter School Lobby and Fossil Fuel Industry

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2022 //
7

The Texas Public Policy Foundation was established in 1989 by wealthy Texans to promote charter schools. The charter lobby in Texas has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in writing laws that favor the expansion of charter chains and shield them from accountability. Although it still pushes charter schools, the TPPF has turned its attention to fighting anything that threatens the dominance of the fossil fuel industry. The New York Times published a major exposé of the organization, its goals, and its funders: the oil and gas industry

When a lawsuit was filed to block the nation’s first major offshore wind farm off the Massachusetts coast, it appeared to be a straightforward clash between those who earn their living from the sea and others who would install turbines and underwater cables that could interfere with the harvesting of squid, fluke and other fish.

The fishing companies challenging federal permits for the Vineyard Wind project were from the Bay State as well as Rhode Island and New York, and a video made by the opponents featured a bearded fisherman with a distinct New England accent.

But the financial muscle behind the fight originated thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean, in dusty oil country. The group bankrolling the lawsuit filed last year was the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an Austin-based nonprofit organization backed by oil and gas companies and Republican donors.

With influence campaigns, legal action and model legislation, the group is promoting fossil fuels and trying to stall the American economy’s transition toward renewable energy. It is upfront about its opposition to Vineyard Wind and other renewable energy projects, making no apologies for its advocacy work….

In Arizona, the Texas Public Policy Foundation campaigned to keep open one of the biggest coal-fired power plants in the West. In Colorado, it called for looser restrictions on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. And in Texas, the group crafted the first so-called “energy boycott” law to punish financial institutions that want to scale back their investments in fossil fuel projects, legislation adopted by four other states.

At the same time, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has spread misinformation about climate science. With YouTube videos, regular appearances on Fox and Friends, and social media campaigns, the group’s executives have sought to convince lawmakers and the public that a transition away from oil, gas and coal would harm Americans.

They have frequently seized on current events to promote dubious narratives, pinning high gasoline prices on President Biden’s climate policies (economists say that’s not the driver) or claiming the 2021 winter blackout in Texas was the result of unreliable wind energy (it wasn’t).

They travel the nation encouraging state lawmakers to punish companies that try to reduce carbon emissions. And through an initiative called Life:Powered, the group makes what it calls “the moral case for fossil fuels,” which holds that American prosperity is rooted in an economy based on oil, gas and coal and that poor communities and developing nations deserve the same opportunities to grow….

James Leininger, who earned a fortune selling medical beds, founded Texas Public Policy Foundation in 1989 to promote charter schools. As it evolved, the organization embraced other causes including criminal justice, immigration, border security, taxes, and energy.

Mr. Leininger bankrolled Rick Perry’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 2000, and Mr. Perry reciprocated by donating the proceeds of his 2010 book, “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington,” to the group. Other wealthy conservative donors began writing checks, including Tim Dunn, an oilman who is the vice chairman of the board.

Billionaire Tim Dunn is a major supporter of charters and vouchers. He is an evangelical Christian who wants students to have a Christian education. According to CNN, Dunn and his pal, fellow billionaire Farris Wilks, are focused on transforming education: “their ultimate goal is to replace public education with private, Christian schooling.”

When President Donald J. Trump tapped Mr. Perry in 2017 to serve as energy secretary, the group followed him to Washington, opening an office there and placing several senior officials inside the administration.

Mr. Trump nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, a fellow at the foundation, to lead the Council on Environmental Quality. Ms. White, who had once described believing in global warming as “a kind of paganism,” stumbled at a confirmation hearing, and the White House withdrew her nomination.

Susan Combs, another fellow at the group, became acting assistant secretary of fish, wildlife and parks at the Department of the Interior. Brooke Rollins, chief executive of the foundation, went to work at the White House.

Bernard McNamee, a onetime policy adviser to Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, joined the Department of Energy under Mr. Perry, then left for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, only to return to the Trump administration after a few months. Mr. McNamee is now a lawyerwho advises fossil fuel companies.

Douglas W. Domenech, who ran the foundation’s efforts to block the Obama administration from regulating emissions from power plants, became assistant secretary at the interior department. He was later found to have violated federal ethics rules by meeting with foundation officials, creating the appearance that he was working on behalf of a former employer.

As the organization’s profile grew, donations ballooned from $4.7 million in 2010 to $25.6 million in 2021, the most recent year for which records are available. That allowed the group to expand its mandate far beyond the Lone Star state.

The story says that the TPPF is not required to reveal the names of its donors.

But publicly available tax filings show that the group has received money from fossil fuel companies including the coal giant Peabody Energy, Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

The foundation has also received at least $4 million from conservative donors including Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, according to public filings. Koch Industries owns oil refineries, petrochemical plants and thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines, and the brothers have a long history of funding efforts to block climate action.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Environment, Texas

Florida Withdraws $2 Billion from Investment Fund Because It Has “Woke” Standards

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
90

The Tampa Bay Business Journal reported that Florida will withdraw $2 billion in investment funds from BlackRock because the firm abides by standards against racism and for environmental awareness. This sort of ethical investing is repulsive to Governor Ron DeSantis and the extremists in his government. Republicans usually represent and celebrate big corporations. But in the past decade, many Republicans have turned against the same corporations for what they call “woke capitalism.” That is, a number of big corporations have sought to placate their Black employees and customers, their LGBT+ employees and customers, and socially aware young people.

When corporations take stands on sensitive issues which make their employees and customers angry, hat’s “woke capitalism.” When they oppose hate laws and work to promote diversity and equity, that’s “woke capitalism.” The more they step up to support minority causes, the more they enrage reactionary Republicans like DeSantis.

Here is an example of Governor Ron DeSantis acting boldly to crush “woke capitalism.”

Florida will pull $2 billion from the largest asset-management firm in the world over ideological differences.

State Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronisannounced Thursday that Florida will immediately freeze about $1.43 billion in long-term securities and about $600 million in short-term overnight investments managed by BlackRock because of the firm’s use of “Environmental, Social, and Governance” standards — known as ESG.

Patronis in a prepared statement said he doesn’t “trust BlackRock’s ability to deliver” and “BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is on a campaign to change the world.”

“Whether stakeholder capitalism, or ESG standards, are being pushed by BlackRock for ideological reasons, or to develop social credit ratings, the effect is to avoid dealing with the messiness of democracy,” Patronis said.

Republican leaders in Florida and across the country have targeted ESG ratings, which can involve considering a wide range of issues in investments, such as companies’ climate-change vulnerabilities; carbon emissions; racial inequality; product safety; supply-chain labor standards; privacy and data security; and executive compensation.

Patronis said the state Department of Financial Services oversees about $60 billion and that the money with BlackRock will be moved “elsewhere.”

“I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use their power to influence societal outcomes,” Patronis said. “If Larry (Fink), or his friends on Wall Street, want to change the world — run for office. Start a non-profit. Donate to the causes you care about. Using our cash, however, to fund BlackRock’s social-engineering project isn’t something Florida ever signed up for.”

Fink is a leading proponent of ESG metrics. In a letter this year to corporate executives, Fink said companies using the standards are “performing better than their peers.”

“Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics,” Fink wrote. “It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper.”

BlackRock manages over $8 trillion in assets. They are unlikely to miss Florida’s $2 billion.

Categories DeSantis, Economy, Environment, Florida, Racism

Elon Musk Took Advantage of Huge Federal Subsidies

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2022 //
15

Elon Musk, the nation’s richest man, is heavily subsidized by taxpayers, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Musk’s net worth is somewhere about $210 billion. Yet he goes where the government money is.

Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.

And he’s built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.

Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.

“He definitely goes where there is government money,” said Dan Dolev, an analyst at Jefferies Equity Research. “That’s a great strategy, but the government will cut you off one day.”

The figure compiled by The Times comprises a variety of government incentives, including grants, tax breaks, factory construction, discounted loans and environmental credits that Tesla can sell. It also includes tax credits and rebates to buyers of solar panels and electric cars.

A looming question is whether the companies are moving toward self-sufficiency — as Dolev believes — and whether they can slash development costs before the public largesse ends.

Tesla and SolarCity continue to report net losses after a decade in business, but the stocks of both companies have soared on their potential; Musk’s stake in the firms alone is worth about $10 billion. (SpaceX, a private company, does not publicly report financial performance.)

Musk and his companies’ investors enjoy most of the financial upside of the government support, while taxpayers shoulder the cost.

The payoff for the public would come in the form of major pollution reductions, but only if solar panels and electric cars break through as viable mass-market products. For now, both remain niche products for mostly well-heeled customers.

Musk declined repeated requests for an interview through Tesla spokespeople, and officials at all three companies declined to comment.

Thanks to our reader Joel for directing me to this story.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Economy, Environment

Ruth Marcus: Get Ready for Reactionary Decisions by an Arrogant Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2022 //
23

Ruth Marcus, deputy editor of the Washington Post editorial page, writes a warning: if you thought the Supreme Court’s decisions were bad last year, this year will be even worse. Their solid five votes of hard-right conservatives, occasionally teen forced by a sixth vote from Chief Justice John Roberts, has removed all constraint, any need to negotiate with their liberal colleagues. Mitch McConnell created the most conservative court in almost a century, with help from Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society. They seem determined to roll the clock back a century.

She writes:

Last term, in addition to overruling Roe v. Wade, the conservative majority expandedgun rights, imposed severe new constraints on the power of regulatory agencies and further dismantled the wall of separation between church and state….

If there was a question, at the start of that term, about how far and how fast a court with six conservatives would move, it was answered resoundingly by the time it recessed for the summer: “Very far, very fast,” said Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who served as solicitor general under President Barack Obama. “I hope the majority takes a step back and considers the risk that half the country may completely lose faith in the court as an institution.”

Maybe it will, but for now, the court is marching on toward fresh territory, taking on race, gay rights and the fundamental structures of democracy — this even as the shock waves of the abortion ruling reverberate through our politics and lower courts grapple with a transformed legal regime. And there’s every indication that the court intends to adopt changes nearly as substantial — and as long sought by conservatives — as those of last term…

In assembling its cases for the term, the conservative wing has at times displayed an unseemly haste — prodded by conservative activists who have seized on the opportunities presented by a court open to their efforts to reshape the law. The court reached out to decide a dispute about when the Clean Water Act applies to wetlands, even as the Environmental Protection Agency rewrites its rules on that very issue. It agreed to hear a wedding website designer’s complaint that Colorado’s law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates her free speech rights to oppose same-sex marriage, even though Colorado authorities have not filed any complaint against her. It took the marquee case of the term — the constitutionality of affirmative action programs at colleges and universities — although the law in this area has been settled and there is no division among the lower courts.

“They’re impatient,” Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus said of the conservative justices, especially the longest-serving, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. “They’ve spent a lot of time waiting for this majority to happen, and they don’t plan to waste it.”

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Environment, Republicans

Idaho: 18-Year-Old Activist Defeats Far-Right Candidate for Boise School Board

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2022 //
27

This is a thrilling story, reported by The Intercept.

THE NATIONWIDE CAMPAIGN to stifle discussions of race and gender in public schools through misinformation and bullying suffered a reversal in Idaho on Monday, when a high school senior vocally opposed to book bans and smears against LGBTQ+ youth took a seat on the Boise school board.

The student, Shiva Rajbhandari, was elected to the position by voters in Idaho’s capital last week, defeating an incumbent board member who had refused to reject an endorsement from a local extremist group that has harassed students and pushed to censor local libraries.

Rajbhandari, who turned 18 days before the election, was already well-known in the school district as a student organizer on climate, environmental, voting rights, and gun control issues. But in the closing days of the campaign, his opponent, Steve Schmidt, wasendorsed by the far-right Idaho Liberty Dogs, which in response helped Rajbhandari win the endorsement of Boise’s leading newspaper, the Idaho Statesman.

Rajbhandari, a third-generation Idahoan whose father is from Nepal, was elected to a two-year term with 56 percent of the vote.

In an interview, Rajbhandari told The Intercept that although he had hoped people would vote for him rather than against his opponent — “My campaign was not against Steve Schmidt,” he said — he was nonetheless shocked that Schmidt did not immediately reject the far-right group’s endorsement. “I think that’s what the majority of voters took issue with,” Rajbhandari said.

The Idaho Liberty Dogs, which attacked Rajbhandari on Facebook for being “Pro Masks/Vaccines” and leading protests “which created traffic jams and costed [sic] tax payers money,” spent the summer agitating to have books removed from public libraries in Nampa and Meridian, two cities in the Boise metro area.

But, Rajbhandari said, “that’s the least of what they’ve done. Last year, there was a kid who brought a gun to Boise High, which is my school, and he got suspended and they organized an armed protest outside our school.”

Rajbhandari, who started leading Extinction Rebellion climate protests in Boise when he was 15, is familiar with the group’s tactics. “We used to have climate strikes, like back in ninth grade, and they would come with AR-15s,” he said, bringing rifles to intimidate “a bunch of kids protesting for a livable future.”

So when the Idaho Liberty Dogs called on Boise voters to support Schmidt — and a slate of other candidates for the school board who, ultimately, all lost — Rajbhandari told me he texted his rival to say, “You need to immediately disavow this.”

“This is a hate group,” Rajbhandari says he told Schmidt. “They intimidate teachers, they are a stain on our schools, and their involvement in this election is a stain on your candidacy.” Schmidt, however, refused to clearly reject the group, even after the Idaho Liberty Dogs lashed out at a local rabbi who criticized the endorsement by comparing the rabbi to Hitler and claiming that he harbored “an unrelenting hatred for white Christians.”

While the school board election was a hyperlocal one, Rajbhandari is aware that the forces he is battling operate at the state and national level. “Idaho is at the center of this out-of-state-funded far-right attack to try to undermine schools, with the end goal of actually abolishing public education,” Rajbhandari told me. “There’s a group, they’re called the Idaho Freedom Foundation, and they actually control a lot of the political discourse in our legislature. Their primary goal is to get rid of public education and disburse the money to charter schools or get rid of that funding entirely.”

For his courage and candor, he won the endorsement of The Idaho Statesman.

This is a remarkable young man with a bright future ahead of him. I am happy to add him to the honor roll of this blog.

Read the rest of the story by opening the link. Rajbhandari is a force to be reckoned with. He is a good omen of the bright, dedicated young people who stand up for their teachers and for environmental activism, who fight for gun control and against censorship. Best wishes to him!

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Citizenship, Courage, Education Reform, Environment, Guns, Honor Roll, Idaho, Students, Teachers

Rightwing Mega-Donor Gives $1.6 Billion to Fund Extremist Candidates

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2022 //
44

A billionaire named Barre Seid has given $1.6 billion to a new far-right group, to be used to fund extremist candidates.

ProPublica wrote about how the billionaire structured the deal to avoid taxes.

An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.

Through a series of opaque transactions over the past two years, Barre Seid, a 90-year-old manufacturing magnate, gave the massive sum to a nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the conservative legal group the Federalist Society.

The donation was first reported by The New York Times on Monday. The Lever and ProPublica confirmed the information from documents received independently by the news organizations.

Our reporting sheds additional light on how the two men, one a judicial kingmaker and the other a mysterious but prolific donor to conservative causes, came together to create a political war chest that will likely supercharge efforts to further shift American politics to the right.

As President Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, Leo helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, which recently eliminated Constitutional protections for abortion rights and has made a series of sweeping pro-business decisions. Leo, a conservative Catholic, has both helped select judges to nominate to the Supreme Court and directed multimillion dollar media campaigns to confirm them.

Leo derives immense political power through his ability to raise huge sums of money and distribute those funds throughout the conservative movement to influence elections, judicial appointments and policy battles. Yet the biggest funders of Leo’s operation have long been a mystery.

Seid, who led the surge protector and data-center equipment maker Tripp Lite for more than half a century, has been almost unknown outside a small circle of political and cultural recipients. The gift immediately vaults him into the ranks of major funders like the Koch brothers and George Soros.

In practical terms, there are few limitations on how Leo’s new group, the Marble Freedom Trust, can spend the enormous donation. The structure of the donation allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 million in taxes. Thus, he maximized the amount of money at Leo’s disposal.

Sourcewatch says about him.

Barre Seid is a right-wing industrialist and donor to advocacy groups and thinktanks attacking climate science and promoting Islamaphobia. He is closely allied with the Koch network and funnels dark money through the same groups used by the Kochs, including Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Seid built a fortune as the Chairman and CEO of Trippe Manufacturing Company (now known as Trippe Lite), which produces electrical equipment such as surge protectors and power strips, and Fiber Bond, which produces HVAC equipment.[1][2] In 1985, he established the Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation. It donates primarily to education, cultural organizations and the arts, and other philanthropic associations.[3]

Attacks on Climate Science

Seid is a major donor to the Heartland Institute, a vocal denier of climate science. According to leaked internal Heartland Institute documents obtained by DeSmogBlog, between 2007 and 2011, Seid contributed over $13,342,267 in donations.[4][5] In September 2013, the Heritage Foundation hosted an event for Heartland Institute CEO Joseph Bast and two of Heartland’s contracted climate denial scientists Willie Soon and Bob Carter. During the event, the Heartland Institute representatives would present a report titled “Climate Change Reconsidered” which was funded by Barre Seid. The report denies the seriousness of global warming and directly challenges the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC). According to Greenpeace, the Heartland Institute falsely claims that the report is peer-reviewed.[6]

The Heartland Institute, in addition to denying climate change, is a big supporter of vouchers.

The Sourcewatch article describes his effort to take control of a small liberal arts college outside of Chicago and turn it into a reflection of his extreme ideology.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Democracy, Education Industry, Environment, Extremism
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