Bob Sheak, September 1, 2023

Introduction

This post reviews evidence on global warming and how the Republican Party and its right-wing allies severely exacerbate the problem by promoting fossil fuel production and consumption. The problem of global warming is growing and heating the planet to levels unknown for thousands of years. There is resistance to such extremist policies, but it has yet to curtail, let alone reverse, the problem.

Life on Earth is at stake from the rising heat

Thom Hartman offers these astounding facts on the “existential threat to life on Earth” from human activities, particularly from the heat generated by fossil fuel emissions, which are responsible for 80% of all greenhouse gas emissions.  

“Right now we humans are adding heat to the atmosphere (because of higher levels of greenhouse gasses) at a rate identical to 345,600 Hiroshima bombs going off in our atmosphere every day: four nuclear bombs per second, every second, minute, and hour of every day” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/2024-gop-victory-threat).

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How we know the Earth is at its hottest in thousands of years.

Scott Dance, a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment, reports on scientific findings that “the earth is its hottest in thousands of years” and how we know this (https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/08/earth-hottest-years-thousands-climate).

“Observations from both satellites and the Earth’s surface are indisputable — the planet has warmed rapidly over the past 44 years. As far back as 1850, data from weather stations all over the globe make clear the Earth’s average temperature has been rising.

“In recent days, as the Earth has reached its highest average temperatures in recorded history, scientists have made a bolder claim: It may well be warmer than any time in the last 125,000 years.”

“… the observations are enough to make paleoclimatologists, who study the Earth’s climate history, confident that the current decade of warming is exceptional relative to any period since before the last ice age, about 125,000 years ago.”

“Records from the most recent decades are, of course, the most detailed. Data from the 1800s is slightly less rich, and slightly less precise, but still thorough. For a period going back about 2,000 years, scientists and historians have used artifacts and geologic observations to piece together climate patterns and extreme events on a scale from decades to single years.”

“If any a single day in the past 100,000 or 125,000 years could have been as hot as the Earth this week, scientists said it could only have occurred about 6,000 years ago. At that time, the planet had warmed with the end of the last ice age, and a period of global cooling began that would continue until the Industrial Revolution.

“During the stretch 6,000 years ago, the warmth was largely the result of fluctuations in Earth’s orbit, which is elliptical rather than circular. While nowadays Earth gets closest to the sun in early January each year, at that time it happened around this time of year, during the Northern Hemisphere summer. That had an overall planetary warming effect because the Northern Hemisphere contains more land than the Southern Hemisphere, and land heats up quicker than oceans.”

Human activities now the cause

“Unlike any previous warm period, this one was caused by people.””

“I’m pretty damn certain it’s the warmest day in the last 2,023 years,” said Thorne, who was a coordinating lead author of a chapter exploring long-term changes to Earth’s climate in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment.

“That assessment states with “medium confidence” that temperatures from 2011-2020 exceed those of any multi-century period of warmth over the past 125,000 years.

“Further, there is no evidence anywhere in scientists’ understanding of Earth’s history of warming that occurred nearly as rapidly as the ongoing spike in temperatures, caused by the burning of fossil fuels and emissions of greenhouse gases.”

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The heat index reached 152 degrees in the Middle East — near the limit for human survival – but rising heat and humidity is rampant

In another article by Scott Dance, he reports on the dire situation in the Middle East, the hottest place in a planet that is heating up and as an example of what is to come everywhere

(https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/18/extreme-heat-record-limits-human-survival). He gives the following examples.

“In recent days, China set an all-time high of nearly 126 degrees Fahrenheit, while Death Valley hit 128 degrees, two shy of the highest reliably measured temperature on Earth. Phoenix was expected to observe a record-breaking 19th consecutive day at or above 110 degrees Tuesday. And in the Middle East, the heat index reached 152 degrees, nearing — or surpassing — levels thought to be the most intense the human body can withstand.

“Such conditions are more than enough to overwhelm the body’s ability to regulate its internal temperature, experts said, and offer a glimpse of dangers only expected to become more prevalent as global warming increases extremes in heat and humidity.

“‘We know these extreme temperatures are killing people right now,’ said Cascade Tuholske, an assistant professor at Montana State University.

“The human body is remarkably resilient to heat, but the combination of heat and humidity (called the “wet bulb temperature”) can make it harder — or impossible — to cool down.”

“Research has shown the human body loses its ability to cool itself via sweating at 95 degrees (35 degrees Celsius) on a scale known as the wet bulb global temperature, which factors in a combination of temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover. Unlike the heat index, which rises above the air temperature based on humidity, the wet bulb globe temperature is not designed to be interpreted as a measure of how hot it feels outside.

“On Sunday at the Persian Gulf International Airport in Iran, air temperatures exceeded 100 degrees, and the air was nearly saturated with humidity. That translated to a wet bulb temperature of 92.7 degrees (33.7 degrees Celsius), according to data and a wet bulb conversion calculator from the National Weather Service.

“The heat and humidity were so intense, they translated to a heat index value that was literally off the charts. The heat index is designed to max out at about 136 degrees, but on Sunday it surpassed 150 degrees on the Persian Gulf.

“Well beyond the Middle East, wet bulb temperatures were approaching dangerous levels. Across the southwestern and southeastern United States, wet bulb temperatures hovered in the upper 80s to around 90 degrees on Monday, according to Weather Service data.

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We Are Witnessing the First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse

Michael T. Klare, professor emeritus of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C., composes an in-depth article on this ominous subject  (https://thenation.com/article/environment/civilization-collapse-climate-change). The article was published in The Nation magazine on August 22, 2023.

He reflects on geographer Jared Diamond’s 2005 bestseller, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Diamond focused on “past civilizations that confronted severe climate shocks, either adapting and surviving or failing to adapt and disintegrating, including “the Puebloan culture of Chaco Canyon, N.M., the ancient Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica, and the Viking settlers of Greenland. Such societies, having achieved great success, imploded when their governing elites failed to adopt new survival mechanisms to face radically changing climate conditions.” Before they collapsed, they “supported large, sophisticated populations.”

What happened?

Klare refers to Diamond’s explanation. Diamond “identified three key indicators or precursors of imminent dissolution: a persistent pattern of environmental change for the worse like long-lasting droughts; signs that existing modes of agriculture or industrial production were aggravating the crisis; and an elite failure to abandon harmful practices and adopt new means of production. At some point, a critical threshold is crossed and collapse invariably follows.”

Today, on a planetary basis, “it’s hard to avoid indications that all three of those thresholds are being crossed.”

First, on a planetary basis, “the environmental impacts of climate change are now unavoidable and worsening by the year. To take just one among innumerable global examples, the drought afflicting the American West has now persisted for more than two decades, leading scientists to label it a ‘megadrought’ exceeding all recorded regional dry spells in breadth and severity. As of August 2021, 99 percent of the United States west of the Rockies was in drought, something for which there is no modern precedent. The recent record heat waves in the region have only emphasized this grim reality.” The effects are worldwide.

Second, the climate crisis is also reflected in “the refusal to alter agricultural and industrial methods of production which only aggravate or—in the case of fossil-fuel consumption—simply cause the crisis, is growing ever more obvious. At the top of any list would be a continuing reliance on oil, coal, and natural gas, the leading sources of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) now overheating our atmosphere and oceans. Despite all the scientific evidence linking fossil-fuel combustion to global warming and the promises of governing elites to reduce the consumption of those fuels—for example, under the Paris Agreement of 2015—their use continues to grow.”

Fossil fuel consumption will continue to increase according to a 2022 report by the International Energy Agency

“global oil consumption, given current government policies, will rise from 94 million barrels per day in 2021 to an estimated 102 million barrels by 2030 and then remain at or near that level until 2050. Coal consumption, though expected to decline after 2030, is still rising in some areas of the world. The demand for natural gas (only recently found to be dirtier than previously imagined) is projected to exceed 2020 levels in 2050.”

Emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are increasing

“The same 2022 IEA report indicates that energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide—the leading component of greenhouse gases—will climb from 19.5 billion metric tons in 2020 to an estimated 21.6 billion tons in 2030 and remain at about that level until 2050. Emissions of methane, another leading GHG component, will continue to rise, thanks to the increased production of natural gas.”

Planetary temperatures have risen to a catastrophic level

“Not surprisingly, climate experts now predict that average world temperatures will soon surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level—the maximum amount they believe the planet can absorb without experiencing irreversible, catastrophic consequences, including the dying out of the Amazon and the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (with an accompanying rise in sea levels of one meter or more).

Third, “today’s powerful elites are choosing to perpetuate practices known to accelerate climate change and global devastation. Among the most egregious, the decision of top executives of the ExxonMobil Corporation—the world’s largest and wealthiest privately-owned oil company—to continue pumping oil and gas for endless decades after their scientists warned them about the risks of global warming and affirmed that Exxon’s operations would only amplify them. As early as the 1970s, Exxon’s scientists predicted that the firm’s fossil-fuel products could lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” Yet, as has been well documented, Exxon officials responded by investing company funds in casting doubt on climate change research, even financing think tanks focused on climate denialism. Had they instead broadcast their scientists’ findings and worked to speed the transition to alternative fuels, the world would be in a far less precarious position today.”

The Apocalyptic Summer of ’23

“July 2023 has already been declared the hottest month ever recorded,” Klare writes, “and the entire year is also likely to go down as the hottest ever. Unusually high temperatures globally are responsible for a host of heat-related deaths across the planet. For many of us, the relentless baking will be remembered as the most distinctive feature of the summer of ’23. But other climate impacts offer their own intimations of an approaching Jared Diamond-style collapse.” Klare points to “two ongoing events fit that category in a striking fashion.

One, “The fires in Canada: As of August 2, months after they first erupted into flame, there were still 225 major uncontrolled wildfires and another 430 under some degree of control but still burning across the country. At one point, the figure was more than 1,000 fires! To date, they have burned some 32.4 million acres of Canadian woodland, or 50,625 square miles—an area the size of the state of Alabama. Such staggering fires, largely attributed to the effects of climate change, have destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures, while sending particle-laden smoke across Canadian and American cities—at one point turning New York’s skies orange. In the process, record amounts of carbon dioxide were dispatched into the atmosphere, only increasing the pace of global warming and its destructive impacts.” The Canadian government appears to be helpless to deal with it.”

Two, “The American West’s megadrought has been accompanied by another indicator of abiding environmental change: the steady decline in the volume of the Colorado River, the region’s most important source of water. The Colorado River Basin supplies drinking water to more than 40 million people in the United States and, according to economists at the University of Arizona, it’s crucial to $1.4 trillion of the US economy. All of that is now at severe risk due to increased temperatures and diminished precipitation. The volume of the Colorado is almost 20 percent below what it was when this century began and, as global temperatures continue to rise, that decline is likely to worsen.

Groundwater depletion

The scarce water problem grows and extends to many states in the U.S. A team of journalists at the New York Times have undertaken a ground-breaking study of the increasing depletion of groundwater (https://nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groundwater-dying-climate-change.html).

Entering a New World Beyond Imagining

“It’s true,” Klare points out, “that much has been accomplished in the intervening years. The percentage of electricity provided by renewable sources globally has, for example, risen significantly and the cost of those sources has fallen dramatically. Many nations have also taken significant steps to reduce carbon emissions. Still, global elites continue to pursue strategies that will only amplify climate change, ensuring that, in the years to come, humanity will slide ever closer to worldwide collapse.

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Unprecedented high ocean temperatures

Julia Conley reports on August 4 2023 on scientists being alarmed “over the unprecedented ocean heat,” particularly since “policymakers in the top fossil fuel emissions-producing countries show no sign of ending planet-heating oil and gas extraction”

(https://commondreams.org/news/ocean-temperaturews-breaks-record). Here’s some of what she reports.

“The European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus Climate Change Service, reported this week that the average daily global ocean surface temperature across the planet reached 20.96°C (69.7°F), breaking the record of 20.95°C that was previously set in 2016.

“The record set in 2016 was reported during an El Niño event, a naturally occurring phenomenon which causes warm water to rise to the surface off the western coast of South America. The weather pattern was at its strongest when the high ocean temperature was recorded that year.

“El Niño is forming this year as well, but has not yet reached its strongest point—suggesting new records for ocean heat will be set in the coming months and potentially wreak havoc in the world’s marine ecosystems.”

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, told the BBC that March is typically when the oceans are at their hottest.

“The fact that we’ve seen the record now makes me nervous about how much warmer the ocean may get between now and next March,” she told the outlet.

The warming oceans are part of a feedback loop that’s developed as fossil fuel emissions have increasingly trapped heat in the atmosphere.

“Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are warming the oceans, leaving them less able to absorb the emissions and contributing to intensifying weather patterns.

“‘Warmer sea surface temperatures lead to a warmer atmosphere and more evaporation, and both of these lead to more moisture in the atmosphere which can also lead to more intense rainfall events,’ Burgess told ‘Today’ on BBC Radio 4.”

According to Burgess, “And warmer sea surface temperatures may also lead to more energy being available for hurricanes.”

“The warming ocean could have cascading effects on the world’s ecosystems and economies, reducing fish stocks as marine species migrate to find cooler waters.”

“Certain parts of the world’s oceans provoked particular alarm among scientists in recent days, with water off the coast of Florida hitting 38.44°C—over 101°F—last week [late July, 2023].

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the BBC that ocean temperatures in that area typically hover between 23°C and 31°C at this time of year.

“Since scientists first began measuring ocean temperatures using satellites and research buoys about four decades ago, the global average sea surface temperature has gone up by roughly 0.6°C [or 42.8 Fahrenheit].

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Critical ocean current system closer to collapse

Brett Wilkins, staff writers for Common Dreams, reports on a study warning that we are closer than previously thought to a collapse of a critical ocean current system (https://commondreams.org/news/amoc-current-collapse).

“The system of Atlantic Ocean currents that drive warm water from the tropics toward Europe is at risk of collapsing in the coming decades, an analysis of 150 years of temperature data published Tuesday concluded.

“‘The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream, is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region,’ states the study, which was published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.”

“Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate action group 350.org, tweeted that ‘Gulf Stream collapse used to be viewed as a far-off and remote possibility… Less so now.’

“Meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus called the study’s findings “incredibly worrying.”

“The new study adds to a growing body of evidence that this crucial ocean system is in peril. Since 2004, observations from a network of ocean buoys [have shown] the AMOC getting weaker—though the limited time frame of that data set makes it hard to establish a trend. Scientists have also analyzed multiple “proxy” indicators of the current’s strength, including microscopic organisms and tiny sediments from the seafloor, to show the system is in its weakest state in more than 1,000 years.

“For thousands of years, the Gulf Stream has carried warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico northward along the eastern North American seaboard and across the Atlantic to Europe. As human-caused global heating melts the Greenland ice sheet, massive quantities of fresh water are released into the North Atlantic, cooling the AMOC—which delivers the bulk of the Gulf Stream’s heat—toward a ‘tipping point’ that could stop the current in its tracks.” This would severely disrupt the rains that billions of people depend on “for food in India, South America, and West Africa. It would increase storms and drop temperatures in Europe, and lead to a rising sea level on the eastern coast of North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.”

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Arctic glaciers and methane

Chris Mooney reports “Scientists working in one of the world’s fastest-warming places [the Arctic] found that rapidly retreating glaciers are triggering the release into the atmosphere of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes global temperatures to rise (https://washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/06/arctic-glacier-melt-methane-global-temperatures

“The releases,” he continues, “are triggered as glaciers across the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, rapidly retreat and leave behind newly exposed land, scientists said. If the phenomenon is found to be more widespread across the Arctic — where temperatures are quickly rising and glaciers melting — the emissions could have global implications.”

“As the Svalbard glaciers move and land is left behind, groundwater beneath the Earth seeps upward and forms springs. In 122 out of 123 of them, the scientists found, the water is filled with apparently ancient methane gas at very high concentrations that bubble upward under pressure. The amount of emissions these springs are emitting are not well-quantified.”

“This is a feedback loop that’s caused by climate change,” said Gabrielle Kleber, the study’s lead author and a scientist based at the University of Cambridge and the University Center in Svalbard. “Glaciers are retreating due to climate warming, and they are leaving these exposed forefields behind, which are encouraging methane gas to be released.”

“The study was published on Thursday in Nature Geoscience by Kleber, Hodson and colleagues based at universities in Norway, Canada and the United Kingdom. The scientists studied 78 Svalbard glaciers that are based on land and several additional glaciers that stretch all the way into the ocean.”

“Most concerning is the apparent age of the methane — the fact that it appears to be ancient suggests it could be coming from very large underground reservoirs with the potential to unleash a lot of gas. The researchers found that the most intense gas flows occurred in regions with underground shale layers that are millions of years old.”

“This implies that the gas has been sequestered for long periods in ancient deposits of fossil fuels, principally natural gas and coal — but that something has recently removed what scientists call a ‘cryospheric cap,’ once provided by glaciers or permafrost. It kept a lid on the methane, and its removal allowed the once stable gas to escape upward. Svalbard is widely known to be rich in fossil fuels — the largest settlement, Longyearbyen, was originally established as a coal-mining town.

“The real fear is not what is happening in Svalbard, but rather, what it would mean if the phenomenon is more widespread — or, if it is poised to worsen due to further glacial retreat. Kleber notes, for instance, that glaciers that currently spill into the ocean are also retreating, in many cases backing up onto land and thus once again exposing land surfaces that could have methane beneath them.”

“In a 2012 study, Walter Anthony and a team of scientists estimated that 2 million tons per year of ancient methane gas, stored deep beneath the earth, could be seeping into the air across the Arctic as permafrost thaws, new lakes form and other changes provide new paths for it to reach the atmosphere. Based on the new study, Walter Anthony now says that figure could be ‘much larger.’”

“In one case, Walter Anthony documented a bubbling lake in Alaska that was also emitting ancient, geologic methane at the alarming rate of nearly 11 tons of gas per day.

“The latest study ‘is important because it shows how ubiquitous [methane] seeps, of various origins, are in the environment of retreating glaciers,’ Walter Anthony said in an email. ‘Similar methane rich seeps have been found in Alaska and Greenland along margins of glaciers and the ice sheet.’”

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The Republican Party is a party of climate deniers and evaders

Their plan

Kristoffer Tigue, a New York City-based reporter for Inside Climate News, where he covers environmental justice issues, reports on “the right-wing plan to undo any progress on the climate crisis” (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01082023/far-right-battle-plan-to-undo-climate-progress-trump-win-2024). The article was published on August 1, 2023.

Tigue writes that the 920-page plan is called Project 2025. The extremist Heritage Foundation is “leading the initiative,” though it is authored or supported by more than “350 right-wing hardliners.” If realized, it “would gut environmental spending, stymie clean energy development and fundamentally shift how federal agencies regulate U.S. industries.” It would “block wind and solar power from being added to the electrical grid; gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency; eliminate the Department of Energy’s renewable energy offices; prohibit states from adopting California’s tailpipe pollution standards, transfer many federal environmental regulatory duties to Republican state officials; and generally prop up the fossil fuel industry.”

“…the plan compiles a list of as many as 20,000 like-minded conservatives who could serve in the next administration to carry out the kind of deregulatory overhaul that became a hallmark of the Trump administration.”

“The proposal would be especially damaging for the EPA, the nation’s top environmental and health regulatory agency and one of the most important tools a president has to address climate change. It would eliminate the EPA’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, drastically slash the agency’s budget and terminate new hires in what the plan’s authors refer to as ‘low-value programs.’ The plan would also revive the so-called ‘secret science’ rule, a controversial proposal by the Trump administration that would have severely limited how the EPA can use scientific studies in its policy making.”

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Climate denial and the GOP presidential candidate debate

John Nichols, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and prolific author, identifies the “scariest lie” by GOP presidential candidates at the Party’s Convention held in Milwaukee on August 23, 2023

(https://thenation.com/article/politics/gop-debate-recap-climate-change). The article was published on August 24, 2023.

The debate confirmed two things: “that climate denial is thriving in the GOP, and that these candidates will do absolutely nothing to save the planet.”

“The eight Republicans who will not be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024 held their first debate on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, where they asked a crowd of 4,000 partisans to suspend disbelief regarding their own prospects, the reality of what has become of their party, and—on a day when Milwaukee’s heat index soared to 114 degrees—the climate crisis that, for the most part, Republicans continue to deny.”

“With devastating wildfires leaving hundreds dead in Hawaii, tropical storms and unprecedented flooding in California, and a massive ‘heat dome’ hovering over middle America and producing record temperatures, the big question going into the debate was whether the candidates for the nomination of the party of climate denial would even mention the crisis. If it was left to the contenders, they almost certainly would have neglected the issue. MacCallum and Baier featured a question from a college-age conservative about whether the contenders could respond to the concerns of young voters regarding climate change. Then the Republicans who would be president revealed themselves—and their party—as the problem rather than the solution.

“Things heated up when MacCallum asked, “Do you believe in human behavior causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do.” No one did.

“Even when they were finally forced to address the issue, the supposed ‘adults in the room’ got it wrong. While she grudgingly admitted that climate change might be ‘real,’ Haley refused to focus on what the United States can do about it. Instead, the former UN ambassador avoided any mention of the fossil fuel industry and deflected to a talking point about “telling China and India they have to lower their emissions.”

“Indeed, while Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election may be the issue of the moment, the debate reminded Americans that the original Big Lie of Republican politics was, is, and by all available evidence will continue to be climate denial.

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The GOP’s Environmental Appropriations Bill Is a Major Giveaway to the Fossil Fuel Industry

Josh Axelrod and Valerie Cleland report on House Republicans advancing a bill to “hand over our public lands and water to Big Oil” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/house-appropriations-bill). Josh Axelrod is a senior advocate for the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Valerie Cleland is a senior ocean advocate with the Nature Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Cleland advocates for policies that protect and restore our oceans. The article was published on July 18, 2023

They write: “In their latest legislative attack on our climate, the Republican majority in the House has written a bill that is so detrimental to our environment and communities, it may rank as the worst appropriations bill in decades.

“For both our shared public lands and oceans, the bill carves out giveaways for the fossil fuel industry that go against not only our climate goals but also common sense. Instead of recognizing that federally managed lands and oceans host a myriad of uses and industries and contribute in countless ways to the national economy, the House majority seems to view them as having one purpose: unabated production of oil, gas, and coal.

“The Republican majority’s latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil, this bill strips away the Department of Interior’s land and ocean management discretion. In doing so, it tips the scales toward congressional control of the oil and gas leasing process, dictates the number of lease sales the administration must offer, and overrides any commonsense considerations as to which areas should or should not be leased.”

“For offshore ocean areas, House Republicans have proposed:

“A new mandate that each five-year leasing program include at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico every year” and two lease sales in Alaska. “This requirement has the effect of removing authority from the agency to decide the amount of lease sales needed to ‘best meet our national energy needs,’ a requirement of existing law.

“Additional requirements to offer all un-leased areas that aren’t strictly off limits—regardless of impacts to endangered species, sensitive habitats, vulnerable ecosystems, or other conflicts—further restricting the discretion of the agency to decide which areas to include in a lease sale.

“For onshore federal public lands, House Republicans have proposed:

“A mandated leasing system that requires the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to hold four leases per year in each of nine specified states.

“Elimination of the BLM’s discretion to apply any meaningful ecosystem or environment-related screens over what lands are eligible and available for oil and gas leasing, instead requiring that all lands deemed available under applicable resource management plans be immediately eligible for nomination.

“A requirement that BLM honor all industry nominations for leasing, regardless of prudent considerations like conflicts with sensitive or endangered species, potential for development, or any other rational screen that might help mitigate environmental and other harms to shared public lands.

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The wealthy are disproportionately responsible for greenhouse gas emissions

Brett Wilkins reports on a study that finds “the Wealthiest 10% of US Households [are] Responsible for 40% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions” (https://commondreams.org/news/greenhouse-gas-emissions).

The study was published in Plos Climate. The study, led by University of Massachusetts, Amherst sustainability scientist Jared Starr—”analyzed 30 years of U.S. household income data and the greenhouse gas emissions generated in creating that income.

“‘We find significant and growing emissions inequality that cuts across economic and racial lines,’ the paper notes. ‘In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households.

“‘Among the highest-earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15-17% of national emissions), investment holdings account for 38-43% of their emissions,’ the publication continues. ‘Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution,’ that is, income from undistributed interest and profits on shareholder’s stocks and bonds.”

“The study’s findings are consistent with research published in 2021 by the Institute for European Environmental Policy and the Stockholm Environment Institute that estimated the wealthiest 1% of humanity was on track to produce 16% of all global CO2 emissions by 2030. Additionally, a 2022 Oxfam report found that a single billionaire produces a million times more carbon emissions than the average person.”

“The study asserts that ‘results suggest an alternative income or shareholder-based carbon tax, focused on investments, may have equity advantages over traditional consumer-facing cap-and-trade or carbon tax options and be a useful policy tool to encourage decarbonization while raising revenue for climate finance.’

“Lucas Chancel, a French economist who was not part of the study, told the Post that “all Americans contribute to climate change, but clearly not in the same way.”

“Without policies such as regulations or taxes on very polluting investments,” he stressed, “it’s unlikely that wealthy individuals making a lot of money from fossil fuel investments will stop investing in them.”

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Compounding the problem

Trillions in fossil fuel subsidies

Jake Johnson writes on August 23, 2023 on how “G20 Nations Dished Out at Least $1 Trillion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies in 2022”

(https://commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuel-subsidies).

“An analysis released this week by the International Institute for Sustainable Development shows that G20 countries spent at least $1 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, running afoul of recent pledges to curb financial support for the sector most responsible for the global climate emergency.”

A report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)  “estimates that G20 governments provided a record $1.4 trillion in support for fossil fuels last year, including subsidies and loans from public financial institutions.”

“This support perpetuates the world’s reliance on fossil fuels” and “also severely limits the possibilities of achieving climate objectives set by the Paris Agreement by incentivizing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while undermining the cost-competitiveness of clean energy,” they added. “G20 governments need to shift their financial resources away from fossil fuels to instead provide targeted, sustainable support for social protection and the scaling-up of clean energy.”

The researchers point out that “these subsidies are problematic because they influence larger private investment flows, lock in higher fossil fuel production and emissions, and take up scarce fiscal resources that are needed to catalyze investments in clean energy transition solutions.”

“The analysis calls on G20 nations to establish a firm deadline for completely eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, which disproportionately benefit wealthy households that contribute far more to the climate crisis than lower-income households.

“At the 2021 COP26 summit in Glasgow, 197 countries agreed to phase out ‘inefficient’ fossil fuel subsidies—but they did not agree on a timeframe for action, nor did they clearly define ‘inefficient.’

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Concluding thoughts

Fossil fuel uses and emissions continue to rise and to spur higher temperatures and an array of catastrophic effects in the U.S. and worldwide. The U.S. government continues to subsidize fossil fuel production and consumption. The Republican Party, still led by Trump, supports harmful policies that use ever more fossil fuels and, with control of the U.S. House of Representative, are able now to block or subvert climate initiatives by the Democrats. The big oil and gas companies have no serious plans to curb emissions. (https://commondreams.org/news/oil-companies-emissions). At the same time, many people and communities remain mostly dependent on gasoline for their vehicles and transportation, on natural gas for heating and cooling their homes and office buildings, and on the jobs linked to or dependent fossil fuels. While the use of renewable energy sources is increasing, they still face obstacles reflected in the lack of adequate batteries and limited access to the energy grid.

Robert C. Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer, calls for the need to increase funding on “clean energy”  (https://commondreams.org/opinion/one-world-solve-climate). The article was published on July 21, 2023. He writes,

“The New York Times’ Brad Plumer, for instance, writing about a report recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, noted:

“Governments and companies would need to invest three to six times the roughly $600 billion they now spend annually on encouraging clean energy in order to hold global warming at 1.5 or 2°C, the report says. While there is currently enough global capital to do so, much of it is difficult for developing countries to acquire.”

On Democracy Now’s August 31, 2023, program, climate activist and scientist Peter Kalmus calls for Biden to declare a climate emergency in order to unleash the government’s ability to transition away from fossil fuels (https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/31/peter_kalmus_climate).

Bob Sheak, August 15, 2023

The film “Oppenheimer” focuses on the role played by the brilliant physicist, Julies Robert Oppenheimer, in the creation of the first atomic and plutonium bombs. It suggests that he was at the center of organizing the scientific and technical work on the first bombs. Then after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, he became tormented by the destructive power of the bombs and advocated futilely for international control of these weapons. He lost his security clearance as a result of this position and lived on in relative obscurity without any influence on policy. However, the U.S. remained committed to nuclear weapons, to a first-use policy, helped to precipitate the Cold War, and all this continues to this day.

Here is a summary of what occurred in what became known as the Manhattan Project from the Wikipedia public encyclopedia (https://wikipedia.org/Manhattan_Project).

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“The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with support from the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. The Army component was designated the Manhattan District, as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the name gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. The project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $24 billion in 2021).^[1] Over 90 percent of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10 percent for development and production of the weapons. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

“The project led to the development of two types of atomic bombs, both developed concurrently, during the war: a relatively simple gun-type fission weapon and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon. The Thin Man gun-type design proved impractical to use with plutonium, so a simpler gun-type design called Little Boy was developed that used uranium-235. Three methods were employed for uranium enrichment: electromagnetic, gaseous and thermal. In parallel with the work on uranium was an effort to produce plutonium. After the feasibility of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, was demonstrated in 1942 at the Metallurgical Laboratory in the University of Chicago, the project designed the X-10 Graphite Reactor and the production reactors at the Hanford Site, in which uranium was irradiated and transmuted into plutonium. The Fat Man plutonium implosion-type weapon was developed in a concerted design and development effort by the Los Alamos Laboratory.

The project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear weapon project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents, and rounded up German scientists. Despite the Manhattan Project’s tight security, Soviet atomic spies successfully penetrated the program.

The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb during the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexico’s Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on 16 July 1945. Little Boy and Fat Man bombs were used a month later in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, with Manhattan Project personnel serving as bomb assembly technicians and weaponeers on the attack aircraft. In the immediate postwar years, the Manhattan Project conducted weapons testing at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads, developed new weapons, promoted the development of the network of national laboratories, supported medical research into radiology and laid the foundations for the nuclear navy. It maintained control over American atomic weapons research and production until the formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947.”

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The German bomb creation goes nowhere

The Manhattan project was launched out of fear that the German military was on the cusp of building an atomic bomb that would enable the German military to turn the war in their favor. As it turns out, Germany abandoned the project in the autumn of 1942.

And the German army surrendered to allied forces after losing ground to the Russians and after British and US ground forces had moved toward Germany and carpet bombed major German cities. The U.S. then turned its attention to the war against Japan. By 1945, US bombers had already extensively carpet-bombed Japanese cities.

Japan becomes the target for the new bombs

The concern of the Truman administration and military leaders was that Japan would not surrender and that it would potentially take tens of thousands of US soldiers to conquer the island nation, causing massive injury and death to US forces. This is a controversial point. In this interpretation, the bombs were dropped to save American lives. Subsequent research and books on the issue document that the Japanese were ready to surrender provided that the Japanese Emperor was allowed to continue without any change in his role. The U.S. commanders insisted on obtaining an unconditional surrender. At the same time, some research on the issue suggests that the U.S. used the bombs to deter the Russian army from invading and occupying parts of northern Japan and to assert US nuclear supremacy. Ward Wilson delves into this still unresolved controversy (https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-Japan-stalin-did).

The genie is out of the bottle

The Russians exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949. Here’s an account from History site(https://history.com/this-day-in-history/soveits-explode-atomic-bomb).

“At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name ‘First Lightning.’” “The atomic explosion, which at 20 kilotons was roughly equal to ‘Trinity….’

“On September 3, a U.S. spy plane flying off the coast of Siberia picked up the first evidence of radioactivity from the explosion. Later that month, President Harry S. Truman announced to the American people that the Soviets too had the bomb. Three months later, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who had helped the United States build its first atomic bombs, was arrested for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. While stationed at U.S. atomic development headquarters during World War II, Fuchs had given the Soviets precise information about the U.S. atomic program, including a blueprint of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb later dropped on Japan, and everything the Los Alamos scientists knew about the hypothesized hydrogen bomb. The revelations of Fuchs’ espionage, coupled with the loss of U.S. atomic supremacy, led President Truman to order development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

“On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated “Mike,” the world’s first hydrogen bomb, on the Elugelab Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear device instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a crater more than a mile wide. Three years later, on November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of the so-called ‘superbomb,’ and the world lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.”

Other countries develop the bomb

The Arms Control Association provides information on the spread of nuclear weapons by country

(https://armscontrol.org/factssheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat). The contacts at the Association for this article are Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy, (202) 463-8270 x102; Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director, (202) 463-8270 x1070. Here’s some of what they have researched.

“At the dawn of the nuclear age, the United States hoped to maintain a monopoly on its new weapon, but the secrets and the technology for building the atomic bomb soon spread. The United States conducted its first nuclear test explosion in July 1945 and dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945. Just four years later, the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test explosion. The United Kingdom (1952), France (1960), and China (1964) followed. Seeking to prevent the nuclear weapon ranks from expanding further, the United States and other like-minded countries negotiated the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996.

“India, Israel, and Pakistan never signed the NPT and possess nuclear arsenals. Iraq initiated a secret nuclear program under Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. North Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT in January 2003 and has successfully tested advanced nuclear devices since that time. Iran and Libya have pursued secret nuclear activities in violation of the treaty’s terms, and Syria is suspected of having done the same. Still, nuclear nonproliferation successes outnumber failures, and dire decades-old forecasts that the world would soon be home to dozens of nuclear-armed states have not come to pass.”

“Today, the United States deploys 1,419 and Russia deploys 1,549 strategic warheads on several hundred bombers and missiles, and are modernizing their nuclear delivery systems. Warheads are counted using the provisions of the New START agreement, which was extended for 5 years in January 2021. Russia suspended its participation in the treaty on Feb. 21, 2023; in response, the United States instituted countermeasures limiting information sharing and inspections.

“However, both the U.S. and Russia have committed to the treaty’s central limits on strategic force deployments until 2026.

“New START caps each country at 1,550 strategic deployed warheads and attributes one deployed warhead per deployed heavy bomber, no matter how many warheads each bomber carries. Warheads on deployed ICBMs and SLBMs are counted by the number of re-entry vehicles on the missile. Each re-entry vehicle can carry one warhead.

“The United States, Russia, and China also possess smaller numbers of non-strategic (or tactical) nuclear warheads, which are shorter-range, lower-yield weapons that are not subject to any treaty limits.

“China, India, and Pakistan are all pursuing new ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and sea-based nuclear delivery systems. North Korea continues its nuclear pursuits in violation of its earlier denuclearization pledges.”

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Where the film falls short

#1 – Says little about the effects of the bomb on Japanese civilians and the horrific death and injuries they suffered

Hiroshima

Here’s some of what we learn from the Texas A&M University’s “Narratives of World War II in the Pacific” (https://tamucc.edu/library/exhibits/s/hist4350/page/the-aftermath-of-the-atomic-bomb). The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.        

“Citizens were unaware of their fate and were going on about their days. Men, women, and children all fell victim to the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. The bombing of Hiroshima caused the deaths of thousands of citizens instantly and more to the nuclear fallout and the lack of infrastructure which would lead to the deaths of many more Japanese civilians due to the devastating destruction by the atomic bomb.”

“The United States main goal for the Atomic Bomb was for it to be used on military targets only and minimize civilian casualties as much as possible. Hiroshima was used by the Japanese Army as a staging area but was also a large city with a population of roughly 410,000 people. Hiroshima was selected for the first bomb to be dropped and to be observed for future bombs that could be used in the future.

“August 6^th, 1945 was a typical morning for Hiroshima. The city was flourishing with activity of people going to work, children playing, and businesses opening. The warning signs began around 7A.M. with air raid sirens which was a common occurrence for the people of Japan and most ignored it. Around 8:14 A.M. however, is when Hiroshima changed forever.”

“Once the initial explosion took place, it is estimated that 60,000 to 80,000 people died instantly due to the extreme heat of the bomb, leaving just shadows of where they once were. Fires broke out and spread rapidly while people were trying to find loved ones as well as figure out what exactly had happened.^[2] The lack of people physically able to fight the fire and the weather increased the fires and the whole city became a blazing fireball all from a single bomb. Not only were people instantly vaporized, the people who did survive the initial blast, succumbed to radiation sickness and would later die a painful slow death. Sometimes symptoms did not reveal themselves until weeks or even years after being exposed to such high levels of radiation.” Over time, at least 60,000 more people died of radiation sickness.

 Nagasaki

Shampa Biswas writes on the bombing of Nakasaki   (https://thebulletin.org/2023/08/what-can-we-learn-from-oppenheimer-about-the-blind-spots-in-nuclear-storytelling).

“Fat Man laid a city [of Nakasaki] to waste, quickly killing between 60,000-80,000 people, the death toll eventually rising to over 130,000. Nagasaki is now the site of an elaborate Peace Memorial whose central story is the victimhood of Japan. It is a deeply moving story, but one told through a nation-making lens, with barely a nod to Japan’s own war crimes or its uneven redressal of the claims of first- and second-generation hibakusha, the surviving victims of the bombing.

“The Nagasaki museum tells its heart-breaking story through photographs and objects: dented household pots, ripped clothing, bones of a human hand stuck to a piece of metal, a replica of the destroyed ruins of the Urakami cathedral at Ground Zero, pictures of scarred and dead bodies and a city leveled flat. It is a story that makes you weep for a devastated past and hope for a more peaceful future.”

Biswis admonishes us.

“We will be well served if Oppenheimer instigates a much-needed public conversation about the dangers of nuclear weapons. We will be better served if the stories we tell about those dangers include the full breadth of nuclear harms and attend to those made most vulnerable by nuclear weapons production, testing, and use.”

A message of concern about nuclear weapons from the UN Secretary General

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gives the world a message on the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki at the Nagasaki Peace Memorial

(https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm21901.doc.htm). Here’s some of what he said.

“This ceremony is an opportunity to remember a moment of unmatched horror for humanity — the use of atomic weapons on Nagasaki 78 years ago.

“The United Nations will continue working with global leaders to strengthen the global disarmament and non-proliferation regime — including through the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  I have pledged to do everything in my power to ensure that the voices and testimonies of the hibakusha continue to be heard.”

“It is in their name — and in memory of what happened here in 1945 — that the Secretary-General has declared that the elimination of nuclear weapons is the United Nations’ highest disarmament priority.  We must never again allow such devastation to occur.

“Despite the terrible lessons of 1945, humanity now confronts a new arms race.  Nuclear weapons are being used as tools of coercion.  Weapons systems are being upgraded, and placed at the centre of national security strategies, making these devices of death faster, more accurate and stealthier.

“All this, at a moment when division and mistrust are pulling countries and regions apart.  The risk of nuclear catastrophe is now at its highest level since the cold war.

In the face of these threats, the global community must speak as one.  Any use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.  We will not sit idly by as nuclear-armed States race to create even more dangerous weapons.

“That’s why disarmament is at the heart of the recently launched Policy Brief on a New Agenda for Peace.  The Agenda calls on Member States to urgently recommit to pursuing a world free of nuclear weapons, and to reinforce the global norms against their use and proliferation.  Pending their total elimination, States possessing nuclear weapons must commit to never use them.  The only way to eliminate the nuclear risk is to eliminate nuclear weapons.”

#2 – Says nothing about the effects of the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico on nearby residents and how radiation spread across the U.S.

Lesley M.M. Blume, a journalist, historian, and a New York Times bestselling author, most recently of Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World, reports on research on the effects of the Trinity atom bomb test on communities in the New Mexico desert, across the country, and even across national borders (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/20/science/trinity-nuclear-test-atomic-bomb-oppenheimer).

“On July 16, when the plutonium-implosion device was set off atop a hundred-foot metal tower in a test code-named ‘Trinity,’ the resultant blast was much stronger than anticipated. The irradiated mushroom cloud also went many times higher into the atmosphere than expected: some 50,000 to 70,000 feet. Where it would ultimately go was anyone’s guess.

“A new study, released on Thursday [July 13, 2023] ahead of submission to a scientific journal for peer review, shows that the cloud and its fallout went farther than anyone in the Manhattan Project had imagined in 1945. Using state-of-the-art modeling software and recently uncovered historical weather data, the study’s authors say that radioactive fallout from the Trinity test reached 46 states, Canada and Mexico within 10 days of detonation.”

“The drift of the Trinity cloud was monitored by Manhattan Project physicists and doctors, but they underestimated its reach.

“They were aware that there were radioactive hazards, but they were thinking about acute risk in the areas around the immediate detonation site,” Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said. They had little understanding, he said, about how the radioactive materials could embed in ecosystems, near and far. ‘They were not really thinking about effects of low doses on large populations, which is exactly what the fallout problem is.’”

“Determined to fill in the gaps, the team started the study about 18 months ago. Dr. Philippe has extensive background in modeling fallout and was an author of a similar project in 2021 that documented the effects from French nuclear tests.

“A breakthrough came in March, when Ms. Alzner and Megan Smith, another co-founder of shift7 and a former United States chief technology officer in the Obama administration, contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There, Gilbert P. Compo, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado and the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, told the team that the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts had only a week earlier released historical data that charted weather patterns extending 30,000 feet or higher above Earth’s surface.”

“Using the new data and software built by NOAA, Dr. Philippe then reanalyzed Trinity’s fallout. And while the study’s authors acknowledge limitations and uncertainties within their calculations, they maintain that ‘our estimates likely remain conservatively low.’”

“The results show that New Mexico was heavily affected by Trinity’s fallout. Computations by Dr. Philippe and his colleagues show the cloud’s trajectory primarily spreading up over northeast New Mexico and a part of the cloud circling to the south and west of ground zero over the next few days. The researchers wrote that there are “locations in New Mexico where radionuclide deposition reached levels on par with Nevada.”

“Census data from 1940 shows that as many as 500,000 people were living within a 150-mile radius of the test site. Some families lived as close as 12 miles away, according to the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. Yet no civilians were warned about the test ahead of time, and they weren’t evacuated before or after the test.”

“The study also documents significant deposition in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and Idaho, as well as dozens of federally-recognized tribal lands, potentially strengthening the case for people seeking government compensation.

#3 – There were many subsequent above-ground as well as underground tests. The effects?

Lesley M. M. Blume also reports on evidence on the many bomb tests that the U.S. government exploded in the years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing (https://nationalgeographic.com/history/article/us-nuclear-testing-devastating-legacy-lingers-30-years-later). Here’s some of what she reports.

“The United States conducted 1,054 atomic tests—costing more than $100 billion and taking an incalculable toll on humans and the environment.

Citizens in the area of the Trinity bomb test were misled or left uninformed

“None of those living near the Trinity site were warned or evacuated before or after the blast. It had been selected in part for its supposed remoteness from human settlement, but census data from 1940 show that nearly half a million people in New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico lived within 150 miles of ground zero. (Privately acknowledging the “very serious hazard” posed by the blast, the Manhattan Project’s chief medical officer advised that future tests should likely only be conducted where no one lived within a 150-mile radius.) To calm nerves, officials told people that a nearby ammunition dump had exploded. Many learned the truth about the blast only years later, and Trinity test survivors are not among the downwinders eligible for government compensation.”

“Blume points out, “Officials assured those living around the site that the detonations were ‘relatively small in explosive power,’ but some blasts were enormous: Hood was a 74-kiloton bomb exploded in 1957 as part of a larger military exercise in a nearby field involving 2,200 U.S. Marines. In 1962, the 104-kiloton Sedan test—seven times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb—displaced more than 12 million tons of earth and left a hole 1,280 feet wide and 320 feet deep. It has the distinction of being the largest manmade crater in the U.S., and the Nevada Test Site’s Yucca Flat testing region remains the most cratered landscape on the planet, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.”

The testing

Blume writes: “Formerly an iron mining and agricultural community, Cedar City stands about 175 miles east of the Nevada Test Site, where the United States conducted more than 900 nuclear tests from 1951 through 1992. Others were held across the country, including in Colorado, Alaska, and Mississippi. Tests of the U.S.’s biggest nuclear megaweapons were reserved for sites in the Pacific, including one device in the Marshall Islands a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.”

The last test carried out

“The U.S. carried out its last atom/nuclear weapons test on September 23, 1992, with the detonation in Nevada of an approximately 20-kiloton device codenamed Divider. (A kiloton is equivalent to a thousand tons of TNT; the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons.) Just over a week later, on October 2, President George H. W. Bush signed a moratorium on further testing, which has been honored to this day.”

The record of atomic bomb testing in the U.S.

Blume continues. Before the 1992 testing moratorium, the U.S. government tested nearly a thousand nuclear bombs above and below ground in four states, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Mississippi. Tests were also carried out in Alaska. Nevada was the central domestic site. The military “conducted 928 tests over 41 years at the Nevada Test Site.”

“For people living the vicinity of the Trinity test and subsequent testing, the people are sometimes known as “downwinders,” or “people exposed or likely exposed to radioactive fallout during tests.” They “say that the specter of a possible return to testing someday haunts them. In 2020, when the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was considering resuming nuclear testing, following unsubstantiated assertions by administration officials that China and Russia were testing low-yield nuclear devices, many in Nevada and Utah decried the decision.

“Joe Biden, then a presidential candidate, called the notion “reckless” and “dangerous.” 

A moratorium and the end of atomic/nuclear bomb testing

“In 1958, the United States instituted a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear tests. On October 31, 1958, the United States entered into a unilateral testing moratorium announced by President Eisenhower with the understanding that the former Soviet Union also would refrain from conducting tests (https://acq,osd.mil/ncbdp/nm/NMHB2020rev/chapters/chapter14.html). The Soviet Union resumed testing in September 1961, with a series of the largest number of tests ever conducted.

“On September 15, 1961, the United States resumed testing at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) on a year-round basis and conducted an average of approximately 27 tests per year over the next three decades. These included 24 joint tests with the United Kingdom;¹ 35 tests for peaceful purposes as part of the Plowshare program;² seven to increase the capability to detect, identify, and locate nuclear tests as part of the Vela Uniform³ program; four to study nuclear material dispersal in possible accident scenarios; and post-fielding tests of specific weapons. By 1992, as noted above, the United States had conducted a total of 1,054 nuclear tests. In 1992, Congress passed legislation that prohibited the United States from conducting an underground nuclear test and led to the current policy restriction on nuclear explosive testing.”

“Conceding at last the consequences to humans of aboveground testing, Congress in 1990 passed the first iteration of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for ‘downwinders’ in designated geographic areas suffering as the result of possible exposure to fallout from leukemia, multiple myeloma, lymphomas, or one or more of 16 different cancers.

“The act, updated in 2000 and extended earlier this year, has distributed more than $2 billion to downwinders and workers at nuclear sites. Previously ineligible downwinders—including those affected by the Trinity test—are campaigning urgently for inclusion. Claudia Peterson is among those who say the act’s recognition and compensation are insufficient for covering medical costs—and paltry compared to nuclear weapons budgets. “No amount of money can compensate for watching a child die,” she says.”

Testing in Pacific Ocean islands in the first decades after Trinity

According to a PBS report, “On March 1, 1954 the United States tested an H-bomb design on Bikini Atoll that unexpectedly turned out to be the largest U.S. nuclear test ever exploded (https://pbs.org/wgnb/americal-experience/features/bomb-us-tests). Named “Bravo,” it “yielded 15 megatons — making it more than a thousand times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

“The blast gouged a crater about a mile wide in the reef. Within seconds the fireball was nearly three miles in diameter. The illumination from the blast was visible for almost one minute on Rongerik, an island 135 miles east of the burst. It trapped personnel in experiment bunkers and engulfed the 7,500 foot diagnostic pipe array. Physicist Marshall Rosenbluth was on a ship about 30 miles away. He remembers that the fireball, “just kept rising and rising, and spreading… It looked to me like what you might imagine a diseased brain, or a brain of some mad man would look like on the surface… And the air started getting filled with this gray stuff, which I guess was somewhat radioactive coral.” 

“An hour-and-a-half later a similar gritty, snow-like substance began raining down on a Japanese fishing vessel called the Lucky Dragon that was about 80 miles east of Bikini. The 23 fishermen aboard had no idea the ash was fallout from a hydrogen bomb test. When they returned to port two weeks later they were all suffering severe radiation sickness. The radio operator later died. One Tokyo newspaper headline demanded that the U.S. authorities “Tell us the truth about the ashes of death.” 

“Marshall Islanders were also exposed to the fallout. One islander on Rongelap about 100 miles east of Bikini remembers hearing, ‘a loud explosion and within minutes the ground began to shake. A few hours later the radioactive fallout began to drop on the people, into the drinking water, and on the food. The children played in the colorful ash-like powder. They did not know what it was.’” 

The financial cost

Blume quotes an expert. “The testing program easily cost taxpayers more than $100 billion in fiscal 2023 dollars, according to Stephen Schwartz, nonresident senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Total spending on U.S. nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs ‘now exceeds $10 trillion and counting,’ he says.

“The human costs, however, are incalculable.”

The danger of a new Cold War

“Experts advise,” Blume writes, “that if a U.S. administration does resume testing, it would risk setting off a new nuclear arms race—as the very first atomic test, in New Mexico, did 77 years ago. During its Cold War nuclear race with the Soviets, the U.S. detonated 1,149 nuclear devices in 1,054 tests—more than those by all seven of the other nuclear-testing nations combined, including the Soviet Union, which conducted more than 700 tests.

“In the U.S.’s bid for nuclear supremacy, populations in the vicinity of test sites became collateral damage from radioactive fallout. Officials in charge of the tests also courted environmental and geological catastrophes, including possible earthquakes, tidal waves, dam breaks, and more.”

Blume continues. “Tests of the U.S.’s biggest thermonuclear bombs—hugely powerful weapons also known as hydrogen bombs or H-bombs—were reserved for the Pacific Proving Grounds, located largely in the Marshall Islands, some 2,400 miles west of Hawaii. The first U.S. H-bomb—codenamed Ivy Mike, with an explosive payload of 10.4 megatons, nearly 700 times that of the Hiroshima bomb—was detonated in 1952. It vaporized the small island of Elugelab, leaving a crater more than a mile long and 164 feet deep.

“Then came Castle Bravo, in 1954, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb exploded at Bikini Atoll. A bomb that size detonated over New York City would cause up to five million deaths and create a fireball nearly two miles wide, according to NukeMap. (In 1961, the Soviets detonated their largest thermonuclear weapon, the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, which had “roughly 10 times the total explosive power unleashed in all of World War II, including both the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” according to nuclear expert Sara Kutchesfahani.)

“‘These multimegaton weapons [were] very dirty in terms of their fallout content,’ Wellerstein says, as quoted by Blume. Clouds from Ivy Mike and Castle Bravo were closely monitored, he adds, ‘and they went around the entire world over the course of a week or so.’ Contamination spread over roughly 7,000 square miles—’the worst radiological disaster in U.S. history,’ according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.”

#4 – Nuclear accidents

There is now a long history of accidents at nuclear weapons’ launching missile sites, both in the US and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), that came within minutes of starting a nuclear war. This history is painstakingly documented by Eric Schlosser in his book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, and in an article for The New Yorker, titled “World War Three, by Mistake (Dec 23, 2016). You can find the article at: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake.

Schlosser’s main argument is that “harsh political rhetoric, combined with the vulnerability of the nuclear command-and-control system, has made the risk of global catastrophe greater than ever.” He concludes his long article with the following ominous words.

“My greatest concern is the lack of public awareness about this existential threat, the absence of a vigorous public debate about the nuclear-war plans of Russia and the United States, the silent consent to the roughly fifteen thousand nuclear weapons in the world. These machines have been carefully and ingeniously designed to kill us. Complacency increases the odds that, someday, they will. The ‘Titanic Effect’ is a term used by software designers to explain how things can quietly go wrong in a complex technological system: the safer you assume the system to be, the more dangerous it is becoming.”

Fred Pearce devotes an entire book to how accidents, mis-judgements, out-right lies have almost triggered nuclear war. See his book Fallout: Disasters, Lies, and The Legacy of the Nuclear Age. In his book, The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg writes: “every president from Truman to Clinton has felt compelled at some point in time in office – usually in great secrecy – to threaten and/or discuss with the Joint Chiefs of Staff plans and preparation for possible imminent US initiation of tactical or strategic nuclear warfare, in the midst of an ongoing non-nuclear conflict or crisis” (pp .319-322). There were also such instances during the Bush Jr administration and, much more blatantly under Trump, who have talked about bombing North Korea and Afghanistan with nuclear weapons (see Mark Green and Ralph Nader’s book, Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t, the chapter on “War and Peace”).

#5 – Nuclear Winter

No nation, no people, can survive an even limited, regional nuclear war with warheads in the present nuclear arsenals. Even a first-use attack by, say, the US to destroy the nuclear-launching capacity of, say Russia, would produce a worldwide catastrophe. The smoke from nuclear bomb blasts would rise into the atmosphere and remain there for an extended period, enough to cripple food production around the world. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter.)

There are no winners in nuclear war. However, the “doctors strange loves” in the Pentagon are busy at designing smaller nuclear weapons that may not themselves produce a nuclear winter. If ever they are exploded, once they are used, they are likely to lead to more bombs being deployed.

#6 – The situation would be horrendous for people and communities in the wake of a nuclear war

Robert Jacobs describes some of the chaos and hardship that would prevail after nuclear war had commenced (https://truth-out.org/news/item/3290-we-cannot-survive-a-nuclear-apocalpse-by-ducking-and-covering).

Jacobs offers this graphic example: “After a nuclear attack, the suggestion that one [a survivor] can go somewhere and find clean water is ridiculous. Or that one could take their contaminated clothes off and simply find uncontaminated clothes nearby. Or that washing your hair one time will remove the systemic dangers of being in a radiologically contaminated environment, and your hair would not simply reabsorb some of that radiation. Or that shampoo would be contaminated, etc.” Jacobs refers to a study by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) which concluded that the radiation produced by a hydrogen bomb “detonated over Washington DC would have the following effects: “not only would everyone in Washington DC be dead from the blast and heat of the weapons, but everyone in Baltimore, Philadelphia and half the population of New York City would soon die of radiation sickness if they did not immediately evacuate.”

#7 – U.S. stays committed to a “first use” policy

Daniel Ellsberg makes this point in his book, The Doomsday Machine.

“Preparation for preemption or for carrying out threats of first use or first strike remains the essence of the ‘modernization’ program for strategic weapons for the last seventy years – prospectively being extended by Presidents Obama and Trump to one hundred years – that has continuously benefited our military-industrial-complex” (p. 324)….“The felt political need to profess, at least, to believe that the ability to make and carry out nuclear threats is essential to US national security and to our leadership in our alliances is why every single president has refused to make a formal ‘no-first-use’ (NFU) commitment” (p. 324)

“…the United States has tenaciously resisted the pleas of most other nations in the world to make an NFU pledge as an essential basis for stopping proliferation, including at the Nonproliferation Treaty Extension Conference in 1995 and the Review Conference since 2000. Moreover, the United States has demanded that NATO continue to legitimize first-use threat by basing its own strategy on them, even after the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had dissolved (and most of the former Pact members had joined NATO. Yet this stubborn stance – along with actual threats of possible US nuclear first use in more recent confrontations with Iraq, North Korea, and Iran – virtually precludes effective leadership by the United States (and perhaps anyone else) in delegitimizing and averting further proliferation and even imitation of US use of nuclear weapons” (324-325)

“UN Resolution 36/100, the Declaration on the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe… was adopted on December 9, 1981, in the wake of Reagan’s endorsement of the Carter Doctrine – openly extending US first-use threats to the Persian Gulf – which this resolution directly contradicted and implicitly condemned. It declares in its preamble: ‘Any doctrine allowing the first use of nuclear weapons and any actions pushing the world toward a catastrophe are incompatible with human moral standards and the lofty ideals of the UN.” 

Eighty-two nations voted in favor of it, 41 abstained (under pressure from US), 19 opposed it (including the US, Israel and most NATO member nations) (p. 325)”

Concluding thoughts

In a rational world based on verifiable, scientifically based evidence, the world leaders would be not only taking “practical” steps to reduce the chances of nuclear war but making efforts to ban nuclear weapons altogether. This is not so far-fetched. On July 7, 2017, “some 130 countries” at the United Nations successfully negotiated a treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons and, according to a report by Kennette Benedict for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “agreed to make the developing, testing, manufacturing, possessing, or stockpiling of nuclear weapons by any state illegal” (https://thebulletin.org/prohibition-nuclear-weapons-treaty-10936). If we are lucky and rational, the U.S. would join the international movement to phase out nuclear weapons.

Bob Sheak, August 7, 2023

The Climate Crisis

We are in an unprecedented global warming crisis. It is affecting some parts of the U.S. and world more than others, but, not too long from now in the absence of sufficient responses, it will harmfully impact all aspects of life – people, societies, economies, agriculture, oceans, and virtually everything. Scott Dance captures this dire situation, writing “the earth is at its hottest in thousands of years” (https://washingtpost.com/weather/2023/07/08/earth-hottest-years-thousands-climate). Dance continues:

“Observations from both satellites and the Earth’s surface are indisputable — the planet has warmed rapidly over the past 44 years. As far back as 1850, data from weather stations all over the globe make clear the Earth’s average temperature has been rising.

“In recent days, as the Earth has reached its highest average temperatures in recorded history, scientists have made a bolder claim: It may well be warmer than any time in the last 125,000 years.”

If the carbon emissions from fossil fuels are not greatly reduced, the future of life on earth is threatened. In the meantime, there will be extensive damage to societies and ecosystems.  

Fossil fuels at the center of the climate crisis

Fossil fuel emissions are not the only cause of global warming, but they are the principal cause. Jake Johnson points out that “fossil fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022 (https://commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuels-global-energy-consumption).

“Data published Monday shows that fossil fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022, another indication that the global transition away from planet-warming sources is moving far too slowly as rich nations continue burning oil, gas, and coal at an unsustainable pace.”

Johnson continues.

“Juliet Davenport, president of the Energy Institute, said in a statement that ‘2022 saw some of the worst ever impacts of climate change—the devastating floods affecting millions in Pakistan, the record heat events across Europe and North America—yet we have to look hard for positive news on the energy transition in this new data.’

“‘Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,’ said Davenport. ‘We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.’”

 “Meanwhile, according to the new Energy Institute data, oil consumption continued to increase in 2022—up 2.9 million barrels per day compared to last year—and global coal use rose to its highest level since 2014.”

Johnson does see some bright spots in the growth in new wind and solar capacity, reaching 12% of power generation in 2022.

Fossil fuel consumption in U.S.

The University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems provides the following figures (https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/us-renewable-energy-factsheet).

“About 79% of the nation’s energy comes from fossil fuels, 8.4% from nuclear, and 12.5% from renewable sources. In 2019, renewables surpassed coal in the amount of energy provided to the U.S. and continued this trend in 2021. Wind and solar are the fastest growing renewable sources, but contribute just 5% of total energy used in the U.S.”

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More evidence

Jeff Goodell, the author of the book “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” gives us a glimpse of the future” under a rapidly warming planet with the example of how Texas and other places are now being affected  (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/08/opinion/heat-texas-climate.html). He writes:

“…in mid-June…a heat dome settled over the entire Southwest as well as Mexico, breaking temperature records and turning asphalt to mush. I [Goodell] had recently moved to Austin, Texas. Yes, Texas is a hot place. But this was different. We’re talking about a heat index — the combination of temperature and humidity — as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Events disturbingly similar to what I had reported on in other places several years earlier were playing out in real time around me, like hikers dying of heatstroke and thousands of dead fish washing up on Gulf Coast beaches (hotter water contains less oxygen, making it difficult for fish to breathe). The red-faced desperation on the faces of homeless people living beneath an overpass near me was spookily evocative of the red-faced desperation I’d seen on the faces of people in India and Pakistan.”

Goodell continues.

“You can argue that Texas has done this to itself. The planet is getting hotter because of the burning of fossil fuels. This is a simple truth, as clear as the moon in the night sky. No state has profited more from fossil fuels than Texas. Revenues from oil and gas production have long been central to the Texas economy and are at least partly responsible for the more than $32 billion projected surplus in the state’s 2024-25 budget. And Texas is also responsible for emitting more than 600 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year, more than twice as much as any other state.”

Affecting everywhere

“But living under the Texas heat dome has reinforced my view [Goodell’s] that we have to be cleareyed about the scope and scale of what we are facing. The extreme heat that is cooking many parts of the world this summer is not a freakish event — it is another step into our burning future. The wildfires in Canada, the orange Blade Runner skies on the East Coast, the hot ocean, the rapidly melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica and the Himalayas, the high price of food, the spread of vector-borne diseases in unexpected places — it is all connected, and it is all driven by rising heat.”

Will there be meaningful action?

“We need to start seeing hot days as more than an invitation to go to the beach or hang out at the lake. Extreme heat is the engine of planetary chaos. We ignore it at our peril. Because if there is one thing we should understand about the risks of extreme heat, it is this: All living things, from humans to hummingbirds, share one simple fate. If the temperature they’re used to — what scientists sometimes call their Goldilocks Zone — rises too far, too fast, they die.”

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The current situation

There has been too little constructive change while the problem of global warming steadily increases. The time for mitigating, adapting to, or reversing this dire existential problem is running out. Here’s some of the evidence highlighting the obstacles to reducing the problem.

#1 – We have long known that fossil fuel emissions are the principal cause of global warming

Bill McKibben, the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org, has long warned us of the unfolding climate crisis (https://commondreams.org/opinion/i-told-you-so-on-climate-emergency).

“I [McKibben] wrote the first book on what we now call the climate crisis way back in 1989, and it feels like I’ve spent the subsequent three-and-a-half decades warning that eventually we’d get to this particular July: the hottest day and week and month on record. And long before records too: It seems almost certain that this is the hottest weather on our planet in 125,000 years; Jim Hansen made a quite reasonable case Friday that it is already or soon will be hotter than it’s been for a million years, which is to say before the evolution of homo sapiens.”

McKibben continues.

“And here’s The Washington Post today, reporting on the heat in Phoenix, which will soon break its record of 18 straight days of heat above 110°F. (The average temperature forecast for all next week, across all 24 hours, is 104.6°F, which would crush the city’s previous warmest week on record, which had an average temperature of 102.9°F.) What happens when it gets that hot? People get savage burns when they walk a few barefoot steps across a patio, or let a seatbelt buckle touch bare skin. They scald themselves with water that’s been sitting in a garden hose soaking up the sun.”

“The current horrors are not a reason to stop working. We know from a recent study that every 10th of a degree in temperature rise that we prevent keeps 140 million of our brothers and sisters in habitable zones on this planet. And nothing has changed my basic conviction about the key: We need to keep building huge movements to finally break the political power of the fossil fuel industry and force the emergency conversion to clean energy. When we’ve made progress—the Paris accords, say, or the Inflation Reduction Act—mass mobilizing is how we’ve done it; we have to give good politicians the room they need, we have to give bad politicians the boot, and we have to hold corporations accountable for killing us and our world. We have to keep on changing the zeitgeist.”

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#2a – Fossil fuel companies spent decades lying about the unfolding climate crisis

They knew

Nicholas Kusnetz, a reporter for Inside Climate News and winner of numerous awards for his work, reports on how big oil companies like ExxonMobil knew for many decades before scientists reported on it that burning fossil fuels produced climate-heating emissions (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12012023/exxon-doubt-climate-science). He writes:

“For climate activists, the term ‘Exxon Knew’ has settled deeply into the lexicon of climate accountability, shorthand for the contradiction between the oil giant’s long campaign to publicly question climate science and its internal understanding that the science was sound.” 

New research confirms they knew and lied about it

“Now, new academic research lends statistical rigor to this concept by showing that the company’s own climate projections, dating back decades, consistently predicted the warming that was to come primarily from burning fossil fuels.

“The peer-reviewed paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, analyzed all known climate predictions produced or reported by scientists at ExxonMobil and its predecessor from 1977-2003, and found that they were ‘at least as skillful’ as those by independent experts (Exxon merged with Mobil in 1999). Like those independent models, most of Exxon’s proved to be accurate.

“They didn’t just vaguely know something about global warming decades ago, they literally knew as much as independent academic scientists did,” said Geoffrey Supran, the paper’s lead author, who recently left a research position at Harvard University to become an associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science. ‘We now have this airtight, unimpeachable evidence that Exxon accurately predicted global warming years before it turned around and publicly attacked climate science.’

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This core understanding—that Exxon executives knew climate change was real, but publicly cast doubt on the science anyway—was first revealed in a 2015 investigation by Inside Climate News and has since been supported by reporting and research by other news organizations, activists and academics.” 

The accumulating evidence documents Exxon’s culpability  

“The new article is the latest in a series by Supran and Naomi Oreskes, a co-author and professor of the history of science at Harvard, about Exxon’s messaging on climate change. In 2017, Supran and Oreskes published a peer-reviewed article that applied quantitative analysis to Exxon documents, statements and peer-reviewed papers from the late 1970s into the 2000s. The work concluded that while internal documents largely acknowledged that global warming was caused by humans, public-facing statements from the same period instead stressed doubt and uncertainties about the science.

“In 2021, the researchers published an article showing that Exxon’s public statements began to shift in the 2000s away from directly questioning the science and towards more subtle messaging on climate change that minimized the severity of climate impacts and transferred responsibility for action to consumers.

“The article published Thursday, like those before it, drew on internal corporate documents, including some first published by Inside Climate News, and peer-reviewed papers. This time, however, Supran and Oreskes worked with Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, to analyze all the climate projections included in those documents.

“The researchers found that company scientists predicted overall warming with a degree of certainty that left no doubt that the burning of fossil fuel was warming the planet. They also accurately predicted that human-induced warming would be detectable by 2000, a fact confirmed that year by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Despite the evidence, Exxon and its allies “want the public to think the scientific findings on the unfolding climate crisis is ‘uncertain.’ Kusnetz points out, ‘As late as 2013, the article notes, then-chief executive Rex Tillerson said ‘the facts remain there are uncertainties around the climate… what the principal drivers of climate change are.’” 

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#2b – Exxon and other big oil companies must be investigated and held accountable by the Department of Justice, according to some Senate Democrats, as reported by Sharon Zhang on July 31, 2023 (https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-warren-doj-must-sue-big-oil-for-decades-of-lies-on-climate-crisis).

“A group of senators is urging the Department of Justice to file lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry over its decades-long campaign to deny its impact on the climate crisis on the last day of what scientists predict will be the hottest month on Earth on record.

“On Monday [July 1, 2023], Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) told Attorney General Merrick Garland that it is clear that the fossil fuel industry has for years broken a wide variety of laws in perpetuating climate denial, and that the DOJ must hold the industry accountable.

“‘The actions of ExxonMobil, Shell, and potentially other fossil fuel companies represent a clear violation of federal racketeering laws, truth in advertising laws, consumer protection laws, and potentially other laws,’ the lawmakers wrote in a letter.

“Since at least the 1970s, fossil fuel giants like Exxon have known that a dependence on fossil fuels would lead to climate catastrophe, with company scientists predicting with surprising accuracy how much their products would warm and destabilize the planet. Rather than heeding these warnings, the corporations worked in tandem to bury this research, and, borrowing from Big Tobacco’s strategy of lying about lung cancer, have spent decades sowing climate denial in order to enrich themselves and their shareholders.

“The lawmakers say that these companies should, at long last, be held responsible for their lies. They cite research on the climate crisis that Shell, Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute were aware of, but chose to discredit.

“While many states and climate advocates have brought lawsuits seeking to expose the industry’s lies or mandate an end to fossil fuels, the DOJ has not itself brought a lawsuit against the industry, though it did file a legal brief in support of a Colorado climate lawsuit earlier this year.”

Zhang continues.

On July 31, Sanders said “it is time to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. It is time for the DOJ to join the fight. The future of our planet depends on it.’”

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#3 – Republican climate plan is “a manual for destroying the planet,” as reported on July 18, 2023, by Jake Johnson, a staff writer for Common Dreams.

(https://commondreams.org/news/gop-climate-bill).  Here’s some of what Johnson reports.

“While Americans take refuge from record-setting extreme heat and suffer from wildfire smoke, the House majority proposes slashing environmental funding to the lowest level in 30 years.”

“Legislation that the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee is set to mark up on Wednesday would take an axe to U.S. climate spending, cutting the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by a staggering 39% while promoting fossil fuel development as huge swaths of the planet face devastating heatwaves.

“Kyle Jones, director of federal affairs with the Center for Policy Advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement Tuesday that the Republican bill is ‘historically bad… the worst of its kind we’ve ever seen.’

Jones went on to say that the legislation—one of a dozen appropriations bills currently moving through the House—’reads like a ‘how-to’ manual for destroying the planet.’”

“Made public last week amid record-shattering heat and other extreme weather across the U.S., the GOP’s Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies funding bill calls for $4 billion in total cuts to the EPA budget—slashing the agency’s clean water funds, emissions-reduction grants, and other programs.

“The bill would also cut the Interior Department’s budget by $721 million, remove the Gray Wolf from the list of endangered and threatened wildlife, and prevent the EPA from considering the social cost of carbon in any regulatory action.

“Meanwhile, the Republican legislation aims to bolster the industry fueling climate chaos by requiring the Interior Department to hold at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales in both the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska each year.

“‘The bill includes an exhaustive list of anti-environment riders that seek to derail any effort to combat climate change and undermine clean water and clean air protections,’ Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the top Democrat on the House Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, said during a hearing on the measure last week.”

Republicans “give an open invitation to exploitative oil, gas, and mineral leasing by blocking environmental regulations and even overriding judicial review,” Pingree added. “At the same time, the bill suppresses clean energy production.”

“The NRDC’s Josh Axelrod and Valerie Cleland wrote in a blog post that the legislation marks ‘the Republican majority’s latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil.’”

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#4 – Rising temperatures are causing productivity to fall

Coral Davenport reports on evidence on how the unprecedent warming is “costing the US economy billions in lost productivity” (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/31/climate/heat-labor-productivity-climate.html).

Here are some of her examples.

“From meatpackers to home health aides, workers are struggling in sweltering temperatures and productivity is taking a hit.

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As much of the United States swelters under record heat, Amazon drivers and warehouse workers have gone on strike in part to protest working conditions that can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“On triple-digit days in Orlando, utility crews are postponing checks for gas leaks, since digging outdoors dressed in heavy safety gear could endanger their lives. Even in Michigan, on the nation’s northern border, construction crews are working shortened days because of heat.

Rising temperatures will continue going up

“Now that climate change has raised the Earth’s temperatures to the highest levels in recorded history, with projections showing that they will only climb further, new research shows the impact of heat on workers is spreading across the economy and lowering productivity.

“Extreme heat is regularly affecting workers beyond expected industries like agriculture and construction. Sizzling temperatures are causing problems for those who work in factories, warehouses and restaurants and also for employees of airlines and telecommunications firms, delivery services and energy companies. Even home health aides are running into trouble.”

“A study published in June on the effects of temperature on productivity concludes that while extreme heat harms agriculture, its impact is greater on industrial and other sectors of the economy, in part because they are more labor-intensive. It finds that heat increases absenteeism and reduces work hours, and concludes that as the planet continues to warm, those losses will increase.

“The cost is high. In 2021, more than 2.5 billion hours of labor in the U.S. agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service sectors were lost to heat exposure, according to data compiled by The Lancet. Another report found that in 2020, the loss of labor as a result of heat exposure cost the economy about $100 billion, a figure projected to grow to $500 billion annually by 2050.”

No national standards for protection against hot workplaces

“Still, there are no national regulations to protect workers from extreme heat. In 2021, the Biden administration announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would propose the first rule designed to protect workers from heat exposure. But two years later, the agency still has not released a draft of the proposed regulation.

“Seven states have some form of labor protections dealing with heat, but there has been a push to roll them back in some places. In June, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed a law that eliminated rules set by municipalities that mandated water breaks for construction workers, even though Texas leads all states in terms of lost productivity linked to heat, according to an analysis of federal data conducted by Vivid Economics.

Business opposes a national standard

“Business groups are opposed to a national standard, saying it would be too expensive because it would likely require rest, water and shade breaks and possibly the installation of air-conditioning.”

“‘OSHA should take care not to impose further regulatory burdens that make it more difficult for small businesses to grow their businesses and create jobs,’ wrote David S. Addington, vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business, in response to OSHA’s plan to write a regulation.”

An example of the conditions in slaughterhouses

“The National Beef slaughterhouse in Dodge City, Kan., where temperatures are expected to hover above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the next week, is cooled by fans, not air-conditioning.

“Workers wear heavy protective aprons and helmets and use water vats and hoses heated to 180 degrees to sanitize their equipment. It’s always been hot work.

But this year is different, said one worker, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. The heat inside the slaughterhouse is intense, drenching employees in sweat and making it hard to get through a shift, the worker said.

The risk of food contamination

National Beef did not respond to emails or telephone calls [from Davenport] requesting comment.

“Martin Rosas, a union representative for meatpacking and food processing workers in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, said sweltering conditions present a risk for food contamination. After workers skin a hide, they need to ensure that debris doesn’t get on the meat or carcass. ‘But when it’s extremely hot, and their safety glasses fog up, their vision is impaired and they are exhausted, they can’t even see what they’re doing,’ Mr. Rosas said.”

Difficult to breathe

Warehouse workers across the country are also feeling the heat. Sersie Cobb, a forklift driver who stocks boxes of pasta in a warehouse in Columbia, S.C., said the stifling heat can make it difficult to breathe. ‘Sometimes I get dizzy and start seeing dots,’ Mr. Cobb said. ‘My vision starts to go black. I stop work immediately when that happens. Two times this summer I’ve had heart palpitations from the heat, and left work early to go to the E.R.’”

“Many factories were built decades ago for a different climate and are not air-conditioned. A study on the effects of extreme temperatures on the productivity of auto plants in the United States found that a week with six or more days of heat exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit cuts production by an average of 8 percent.

Some companies are installing air conditioning

In Tulsa, Okla., Navistar is installing a $19 million air-conditioning system at its IC Bus factory, which produces many of America’s school buses. Temperatures on the floor can reach 99 degrees F. Currently, the plant is only cooled by overhead fans that swirl high above the assembly line.

Shane Anderson, the company’s interim manager, said air-conditioning is expected to cost about $183 per hour, or between $275,000 and $500,000 per year — but the company believes it will boost worker productivity.”

“‘The truth is that the changes required probably will be very costly, and they will get passed on to employers and consumers,’ said David Michaels, who served as assistant secretary of labor at OSHA during the Obama administration and is now a professor at the George Washington School of Public Health.

“But if we don’t want these workers to get killed we will have to pay that cost.”

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#5 – Fossil fuel companies register record profits

Jake Johnson reports on August 1, 2023, on the “hideous” $2.6 billion profits of Oil Giant BP Common Dreams (https://commondreams.org/news/bp-profit).

The London-based oil giant BP reported second-quarter profits of $2.6 billion on Tuesday and announced a 10% dividend raise for shareholders on the heels of what was likely the hottest month on record—a grim milestone that scientists say was made possible by the burning of fossil fuels.”

“While BP’s profits for the second quarter of 2023 were far lower than the massive $8.5 billion it logged during the same period last year—a drop caused by falling global oil prices—the company has still raked in $7.6 billion in profits so far this year. The company has paid out those profits to investors in the form of share buybacks and dividends.”

Other big oil companies also rack in huge profits

“BP’s earnings report comes after its rival, Shell, posted $5.1 billion in second-quarter profits last week and announced a dividend boost of 15% amid a deadly global heatwave.”

Plans to increase use of fossil fuels

“Like Shell and other oil giants, BP recently walked back some of its stated emission-reduction targets and announced plans to produce more fossil fuels than previously expected. Earlier this year, BP said it intends to cut fossil fuel production by 25% below 2019 levels by decade’s end instead of its previous goal of 40%.

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#6 – If Trump wins the presidency in 2024 and Republicans control one or both houses of the U.S. Congress, there will be a host of policies and programs to encourage the use of fossil fuels.

Kristoffer Tigue reports on the “Battle Plan” of the “far right” to “undo climate progress” (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01082023/far-right-battle-plan-to-undo-climate-progress-trump-win-2024).

“The proposal, called Project 2025, would gut environmental spending, stymie clean energy development and fundamentally shift how federal agencies regulate U.S. industries.”

“The 920-page proposal, if implemented, would not only undo any progress the Biden administration has made to reduce emissions and fund clean energy development and other climate-related efforts, but it would make it far more difficult for a future administration to pursue any policy that seeks to address global warming at all, according to a report last week by POLITICO. The plan would even make it challenging for federal agencies to carry out common environmental protections that have been practiced in the country for more than 50 years.

“Called Project 2025 and written by more than 350 right-wing hardliners—including former Trump staffers—the plan would block wind and solar power from being added to the electrical grid; gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency; eliminate the Department of Energy’s renewable energy offices; prohibit states from adopting California’s tailpipe pollution standards, transfer many federal environmental regulatory duties to Republican state officials; and generally prop up the fossil fuel industry.

“‘Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. We are writing a battle plan and we are marshaling our forces,’ Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation, which is leading the initiative, told POLITICO. ‘Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power day one and deconstruct the administrative state.’

“The plan compiles a list of as many as 20,000 like-minded conservatives who could serve in the next administration to carry out the kind of deregulatory overhaul that became a hallmark of the Trump administration.”

“In fact, Project 2025 is part of a larger plan by Trump and his far-right allies to greatly expand the president’s authority over every part of the federal government. Their goals include ending the post-Watergate practice of shielding the Department of Justice from White House political influence; putting independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust laws and consumer protection rules, under direct presidential control; and reviving the practice of refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like—a tactic lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.”

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#7 – A trillion trees?

Maxine Joselow reports on the Republican plan to plant a trillion trees, as a proposed method for dealing with the climate crisis, while simultaneously encouraging more fossil fuel production and usage (https://washingtonpost.com/climate-enviornment/2023/08/02/trillion-trees-republicans-climate).

“The plan has some prominent backers. Then-President Donald Trump announced in 2020 that the United States would join a global initiative to plant a trillion trees, despite his antagonism toward climate science. The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee has introduced legislation to plant a trillion trees as ‘a comprehensive, practical solution to the climate issues we’re facing today.’

Scientists are skeptical

“But in recent years, climate scientists have grown more skeptical about relying on tree-planting programs. They have warned that heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by the end of this century unless humanity swiftly phases out the burning of oil, gas and coal.

The tree-planting plan would at best have only minimal effect

Joselow writes,

“Now, new research finds that planting a trillion trees would have a minimal effect on halting global warming, partly because of the long lag time for trees to reach maturity and absorb large amounts of carbon. The analysis by John Sterman, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Andrew P. Jones, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Interactive, found that planting a trillion trees would only prevent 0.15 degrees Celsius (0.27 Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100.

“‘Trees are great. I personally love to be out in the forests as much as I possibly can,’ Sterman said. ‘But the reality is very simple: You can plant a trillion trees, and even if they all survived, which wouldn’t happen, it just wouldn’t make that much difference to the climate.’

“The analysis relied on a global climate simulator called En-ROADS, developed by Climate Interactive and the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative. It also found that planting a trillion trees would only sequester 6 percent of the carbon dioxide that the world needs to avoid emitting by 2050 to meet the goal of the Paris climate accord: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

“‘Planting a trillion trees is not a serious solution to the climate crisis,’ Jones said. ‘It is too little, too late.’

“Trees do store vast amounts of carbon dioxide in their trunks, branches and roots. But old-growth forests sequester much more carbon than younger forests, and it usually takes 20 to 30 years for trees to reach full maturity. That means a tree planted today would do little to reduce emissions over the next crucial decades.

Trees are also especially vulnerable to drought, wildfires and pests, all of which are becoming more common as the world warms. In Montana, where the average temperature has increased by nearly 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950, a mountain pine beetle infestation has damaged or killed hundreds of thousands of acres of forests.

Would require an enormous amount of the land

Joselow elaborates: “The researchers also highlighted that planting a trillion trees would require an enormous amount of land — 900 million hectares, or nearly three times the size of India. It would be nearly impossible to acquire that much land without disturbing grasslands or farmland, which already store carbon. Although producing renewable energy is also land-intensive, avoiding the same amount of carbon emissions by building more wind and solar farms would require only 15 million hectares by 2050, the authors found.”

Democrats willing to go along with targeted tree planting

“Although many Democrats favor a rapid transition to renewable energy, they also support a targeted approach to planting trees. The bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021 authorizes the U.S. Forest Service to plant more than a billion trees in national forests over the next decade. President Biden’s landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, also provides more than $1 billion to increase access to trees in urban neighborhoods experiencing the “heat island effect,” in which heat reflects off surfaces such as concrete and asphalt.”

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Concluding thoughts

The Republican Party and other far right forces in the U.S. continue to oppose any meaningful regulation of fossil fuel emissions, such as having government put a price on the sources of such emissions, vastly increasing support for less environmentally-destructive alternatives, such as, solar, wind, and geothermal energy, reducing dependence on gas-driven cars, busses, and trucks, and stopping the export of natural gas.

If Republicans are victorious in the 2024 elections, U.S. energy policy will be dictated by the big fossil fuel companies. Thom Hartmann sums it up in an August 3, 2023, article: “A 2024 GOP Victory Is an Existential Threat to Life on Earth” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/2024-gop-victory-threat).

Even if Trump is not the candidate, Hartmann contends, “Republican primary voters will demand a candidate with the same affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin and other dictators; the same disdain for racial, religious, and gender minorities; the same abusive attitude toward women and girls; the same faux embrace of Confederate and hillbilly values and hatred of city-dwellers and college graduates; the same cavalier attitude toward guns and fossil fuels.”

“Scientists tell us we may have as few as five years, and certainly not more than 20, to end our use of fossil fuels and fully transition to clean renewables. Even within the five-year window it’s technically feasible, but if Trump or another MAGA Republican is elected, civilization-ending weather and the death of much of humanity is virtually assured.”

A hopeful option

C.J. Polychroniou offers a hopeful option, proposing A Global Green New Deal as the best way to save the planet (https://commondreams.org/opinion/global-green-new-deal). It will require “radical collective social and political action.”

“What is urgently needed is building long-term progressive power around a vision of left-wing politics that is energized by the pressing need to tackle the climate crisis by radically accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels while at the same time pushing for a structural transformation of present-day economies. In other words, a political platform that embraces a sound climate stabilization plan which ensures a just transition, creates a plethora of new jobs, reduces inequality, and promotes sustainable growth.

Polychroniou sees some progress

“…the movement for the Green New Deal is growing and is making a positive impact on several fronts. Several states and over 100 cities in the United States have committed to 100% clean energy. The Inflation Reduction Act may not qualify as a GND [Green New Deal], but it is still a historical piece of legislation, especially given the existing political climate in the country.”

Need to do more

“Still, one might say that what we really need in order to save the planet is a comprehensive GND, formulated as a worldwide program. But we do have such a blueprint in place, courtesy of the American economist Robert Pollin, and fully endorsed by the world’s greatest intellectual alive, namely Noam Chomsky.”

Check out these books for in-depth analyses of what a global green deal would entail.

Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal

Robert Pollin, Greening the Global Economy

Stan Cox, The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can

Bob Sheak, July 27, 2023

Introduction

This post continues my criticisms of Trump and his allies. Here, I compile evidence supporting the view that they want to undermine the political processes of the country in ways that will end any hope of strengthening liberal and progressive democracy and replace it with anti-democratic, autocratic (authoritarian, fascist) alternative. If they should succeed in the 2024 elections, America’s democracy will be eviscerated. Meanwhile, they will do their best to keep Biden and Congressional Democrats from winning legislatively, distract and frighten people with “cultural wars,” and disparage opponents.

Trump and his allies plan for an imperial presidency

Journalist Jeet Heer, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of a weekly Nation podcast, considers why a second Trump presidency would increase the chances that democracy would be replaced by an autocratic “unitary executive” or imperial presidency (https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-unitary-executive).

“According to the unified executive theory in its unvarnished form, the whole federal government serves at the command of the president, with neither Congress nor the courts having the right to check the president’s orders.”

Heer reports that in his first term as president, Trump’s authoritarian aspirations were tempered by inexperience and incompetence.” Now, however, there is “alarming evidence that Trump, and more importantly his GOP allies, have learned from his mistakes. If he gets a second term, one of his major goals will be to purge the people that stopped him from ruling like an autocrat the last time.”

Heer continues. While Trump’s first presidential term produced an unusually chaotic administration, with a rapid turnover in staff, a rush of badly designed executive orders that even Republican judges swatted down, and an inability to push through even a bare-bones agenda in Congress. Almost immediately, Trump’s willful rejection of rules got him entangled in political scandals, leading to the Mueller investigation and, by the end of his presidency, two impeachments.” Now he is facing indictments on a growing number of his actions.

Legislatively, Trump was unable “to repeal Obamacare, unable to overhaul the federal tax system, or unable to balance the budget. But Heer reminds us, he did help to achieve “a 6-3 supermajority in the Supreme Court as well as more than 200 federal judges.”

Along the way, “Trump forged a lasting alliance with the Federalist Society, one that has created a Supreme Court that gave the right major victories on abortion and affirmative action and rolled back LGBTQ rights. Further, in certain fields, Trump found advisers who were in fact able to execute his agenda: Stephen Miller undeniably made immigration policy much more cruel, something that the Biden administration has not fully undone. These victories solidified Trump’s status as the leader of GOP, remaking the party into a personality cult in which most Republican lawmakers publicly supported him even after his clownish coup attempt on January 6, 2021.”

Trump continues to have the support of his vast electoral base, including a large percentage of Republicans. The anti-democratic plan “is being developed by institutions and figures who have worked with Trump before, notably the Heritage Foundation and former White House personnel chief John McEntee.” The broad goal “is ‘to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition….” There would be only limited congressional and judicial checks, if any.

Trump’s potentially unchecked power will have massive impacts

“Currently,” Heer points out, “a president can make roughly 4,000 political appointments. In his second term, Trump’s plan would change the rules defining appointments to expand that number to 50,000. This would allow Trump to sweep the bureaucracy of anyone who opposes him. A new Trump White House would also revive the practice of impounding funds, giving the presidency complete discretion over the money allocated by Congress. A new imperial presidency would also assert presidential control over hitherto independent agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Controlling these powerful agencies, Trump could use the power of the state to reward corporate friends (say by approving licenses for TV stations) and punish political enemies (pursuing antitrust action against those who defy him).”

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Going after the Justice Department

Sasha Abramsky, a freelance journalist and a part-time lecturer at the University of California at Davis, delves into Trump’s and his GOP acolytes’ unfolding plan by focusing on how they want to end the independence of the Justice Department and other executive-branch agencies (https://truthout.org/articles/trump-attacks-on-the-legal-system-are-a-preview-of-how-he-plans-to-govern). The article was published on July 24, 2023. Abramsky provides some context.

“As Donald Trump’s legal perils mount and with a trial date now set for his mishandling of classified documents, the disgraced ex-president — and many of his GOP acolytes — are launching a full-court campaign against the independence of the Justice Department. They are hoping to turn the department into a scapegoat to cushion Trump in the public eye from the impact of prosecution, and also, ultimately, to turn it into a pliant tool of Trump and his henchmen so as to wage a relentless revenge war against his critics.

“Trump and his advisers frame this as simply restoring integrity to a department that he has convinced his followers is engaged in a ‘witch hunt’ against him. Their argument doesn’t carry water,” Abramsky contends. “In reality, the special counsel in charge of these investigations, Jack Smith, operates at a distance from Attorney General Merrick Garland, does not liaise and plot strategy with President Joe Biden and his team, and the indictments have been handed down not by political apparatchiks but by the ordinary people empaneled onto grand juries — the bedrock institution of the U.S. criminal legal system. Trump is facing not a show trial but a series of state and federal court proceedings in which, since he has pleaded not guilty, he will go to trial and be judged by juries of his peers.”

Hitler-like ambitions?

“In a series of extraordinary speeches earlier this year, Trump told his supporters that he would be their ‘justice’ and their ‘retribution.’” Political scholars call

“this sort of coordinated power grab ‘autocratic capture.’ In practice, it means bending crucial institutions and governing systems to meet the personal whim of one person: the president. This is how countries such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, and, to a degree, Narendra Modi’s India function; it is, in short, how democracies die, with loyalty to a constitution replaced by fealty to an individual. In German, the phrase for such a personalized loyalty test is the Führerprinzip, a central component of Hitler’s governing methodology. It is a vision of governance that in 1930s Germany led to the jackboot and the concentration camp. There’s no indication that under a vengeful Trump 90 years later it would be anything more benign. Such a program is, in brief, entirely incompatible with the notion of political pluralism and constitutional governance.

In plain view, Trump and the plethora of GOP candidates who need his base in order to win are crafting a program for autocratic capture.”

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More on the “plan”

New York Times political reporters Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman, provide further details on the autocratic/authoritarian designs of Trump and his Republican allies (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html).

“Donald J. Trump and his associates are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.” They want

“to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.”

Here is some of what Trump hopes to achieve.

#1 – “Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

#2 – “He wants to revive the practice of ‘impounding’ funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

#3 – “He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda.

#4 – “And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

“Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election.”

Russell T. Vought ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

“John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.”

The Heritage Foundation in the lead

“The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.”

Their legal “theory”

“The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them.”

Hoping to eliminate or subdue the “independent agencies” in the Executive Branch

The New  York Times  journalists elaborate.

Why independent?

“Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)”

Taking away that “independence”

“Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them ‘under presidential authority.’”

Impounding funds already authorized by Congress

“On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.”

Firing civil service employees at will with the implementation of “Schedule F”

“Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

“The former president views the civil service as a den of ‘deep staters’ who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, ‘Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,’ that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

“Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.”

“‘We will demolish the deep state,’ Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. ‘We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.’”

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Example of ongoing Efforts by the Right to subvert the federal government

#1 – Add poison pills to proposed legislation

Brett Wilkins, a staff writer for Common Dreams, reports on GOP’s adding “200 poison pills to House spending bills” (https://commondreams.org/news/republican-poison-pills). He writes,

“A coalition of advocacy groups on Monday sounded the alarm on the more than 200 so-called ‘poison pill’ riders attached by Republican U.S. lawmakers to House spending bills in recent weeks in a bid to block funding for a dizzying range of progressive policies and programs.” This evidence comes from the Clean Budget Coalition, “which is made up of nearly 260 advocacy groups.”

“‘Prior to the July 4th recess, it took two months for House Republican appropriators to add more than 100 new poison pills to draft spending bills marked up in committee,’ the coalition noted. ‘In the past week alone, the previous total has doubled to more than 217.’”

Examples

“‘Most of these measures are special favors for big corporations and ideological extremists that have nothing to do with funding our government and could not become law on their own merits,’ the groups added. ‘Some of them attack women’s health, some fuel political corruption, some harm our environment, and much more.’

Some of the riders tracked by the Clean Budget Coalition include measures to block proposed transportation safety rules and prohibit funding for the World Health Organization, climate mitigation, gender equality programs, and critical race theory education. Other riders target gas stove bans, funding for high-speed rail, pesticide warning labeling, wildlife protection, reproductive healthcare, and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

Wilkins quotes Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and co-chair of the Clean Budget Coalition.

“We cannot allow policy that harms regular people, threatens our rights, hurts the environment, and does any number of other terrible things to ride along with the appropriations package. We must put out this five-alarm fire by rejecting the inclusion of poison pills.”

In response, “the Clean Budget Coalition is calling on lawmakers to ‘pass clean spending bills’ by removing all poison pill riders and opposing passage of ‘any legislation that includes these unpopular and controversial special favors for big corporations and ideological extremists.’”

“David Shadburn, senior government affairs advocate at the League of Conservation Voters—a Clean Budget Coalition member—said earlier this month that ‘House Republicans continue using the same tired playbook: They’re hijacking must-pass bills with harmful poison pill riders that neither the public nor Congress support but benefit their polluter donors.’

“‘Just as Republican leaders held the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to make it easier to pollute, now they are proposing riders to greenlight pipelines, block clean air and water regulations, stall clean energy deployment, and prohibit the federal government from addressing long-standing inequities.’”

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#2 – Playing down the climate crisis

One of the tragic hallmarks of Trump and the Republicans is that they want an “energy” policy that maximizes the use of fossil fuels, the principal sources of the climate crisis and the terrible heat wave engulfing parts of the U.S. and world. Eve Ottenberg reports on the “climate denialists” who minimize or sideline policies that would address this growing existential-level problem (https://counterpunch.org/2023/07/21/as-earth-sizzles-climate-denialists-rearrange-deck-chairs). Right-wingers argue that humans are too puny an environmental and global force to heat up the planet or generate untold numbers of climate-related catastrophes. But the facts belie their arguments.

Human activity has changed the planet’s axis.

On this point, Ottenberg writes that it appears that ‘around the start of this century, the earth’s centerline moved, the New York Times reported June 28, and ‘earth’s spin started going off kilter.’ The cause? It’s twofold. First, polar ice sheet and mountain glaciers melting ‘changed the way mass was distributed around the planet enough to influence its spin.’ Second: ‘Colossal quantities of water pumped out of the ground for crops and households.’”

Groundwater depletion

Between 1960 and 2000, ground water depletion “more than doubled, to about 75 trillion gallons a year.” That’s a lot of groundwater. It’s no wonder it shifted earth’s axis. “Variations in Earth’s gravity have revealed the staggering extent to which groundwater supplies have declined in particular regions, including India and the Central Valley of California.” At this rate, expensive ocean desalinization plants may well be the wave of the future. And, as the article notes, human activity and the global climate, which melt mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets, also shift the earth’s mass and hence its axis. So does impounding water behind dams.”

Temperatures soar on land

“That first week in July reached ‘the hottest global average since scientists began recording such data in 1979,’ Truthout reported on the fifth. ‘The global temperature was bumped up by a heat wave blistering across the U.S. with an estimated 57 million people exposed to dangerous heat…with at least 14 heat related deaths across Louisiana and Texas as of last week and at least 112 deaths in Mexico…In June, a heat wave in India killed at least 96 people, and record heat is gripping swaths of China, northern Africa and the Antarctic.’

“Meanwhile,” Ottenberg continues, “on July 10, Miami hit a 109-degree heat index. It was the thirtieth consecutive day with a 100 degree plus heat index, while ‘nearly 50 million Americans are set to face triple-digit temperatures this week,’ according to the Washington Post July 10. ‘Heat advisories are in effect in Florida, Texas and New Mexico, while excessive heat watches and warnings blanket much of Arizona, Southern California and Nevada.’ Temperatures were predicted to soar to 117 degrees in Phoenix. Ditto in Las Vegas, the weekend of July 15. As much of the nation sizzled, freak floods drowned New England and New York state. By July 16 the heat wave stretching from Florida to Oregon and covering everything in between had peaked, but that doesn’t mean things cooled down dramatically. And lest anyone wonder about the dangers of this extreme calefaction – in 2022 over 61,000 people died from record-smashing heat.

The oceans heat up

“On July 10 Colin McCarthy, an expert on extreme weather, tweeted: ‘A severe marine heatwave has emerged off the coast of Florida, as water temperatures have soared into the 90s. Multiple buoys in Everglades National Park are reporting water temperatures as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit.’ Worse is predicted for the planet’s oceans in August. That’s too hot. Such heat endangers marine wildlife and their ecosystems.

“It also means the ocean has difficulty acting as a heat sponge, which is, uh, a real problem. The oceans absorbed excess heat produced by us denizens of the capitalist west as we burned oil, coal and gas. Now, oceans begin to lose that capacity, and that spells trouble.

The release of methane in the Arctic

“To make matters worse, as the Washington Post headlined July 6, ‘Reeling Arctic glaciers are leaving bubbling methane in their wake.’ This is called a feedback loop, exacerbated by the albedo effect, which means in the absence of snow and ice, earth absorbs, rather than reflects back, more heat. As for the feedback loop, methane is the guilty party, being 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Melting glaciers, polar ice caps and frozen tundra all release methane, lots of it, which in turn warms the atmosphere even more, causing more melt and more heat.”

Scientists have long recognized the problem of “climate change”

“The problem is known. It has been known for generations, to scientists and to the oil, gas and coal companies who researched and then concealed the lethal effects of their product. Simply put, our social and political economy, structured around burning fossil fuels, heats the earth. The chief culprits in this profligate burning are wealthy countries and their massive organizations like the American military. Small, poor countries have small carbon footprints. This deadly pollution cannot be blamed on them or their so-called excessive birth-rate.”

A Way Out

Ottenberg points to “solutions that maybe even plutocracy could accept,” though there is little evidence of this. “Like solar panels on every building in the world and massive investment in wind power. Also, we could speed up the switch to electric vehicles. Promoting sustainable, organic, peasant farming to replace industrial, pesticide-dependent agriculture would help too. That’s just a start, because there’s lots more.”

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#3 – A counterproductive public land leasing policy

Josh Axelrod and Valerie Cleland report on a GOP environmental appropriations bill that “is a major giveaway to the Fossil Fuel Industry (https://commondreams.org/opinion/house-appropriations-bill).

Josh Axelrod is a senior advocate for the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Valerie Cleland is a senior ocean advocate with the Nature Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Cleland advocates for policies that protect and restore our oceans.

They argue that, in their latest attack on the climate, “the Republican majority in the House has written a bill that is so detrimental to our environment and communities, it may rank as the worst appropriations bill in decades.” Why?

“Instead of recognizing that federally managed lands and oceans host a myriad of uses and industries and contribute in countless ways to the national economy, the House majority seems to view them as having one purpose: unabated production of oil, gas, and coal.”

According to the report, “The Republican majority’s latest in a series of attempts to hand over our public lands and waters to Big Oil, this bill strips away the Department of Interior’s land and ocean management discretion. In doing so, it tips the scales toward congressional control of the oil and gas leasing process, dictates the number of lease sales the administration must offer, and overrides any commonsense considerations as to which areas should or should not be leased.”

For example, House Republicans propose this: “A new mandate that each five-year leasing program include at least two offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico every year. This requirement has the effect of removing authority from the agency [the Bureau of Land Management, BLM] to decide the amount of lease sales needed to ‘best meet our national energy needs,’ a requirement of existing law.” Additionally,

“…requirements to offer all un-leased areas that aren’t strictly off limits—regardless of impacts to endangered species, sensitive habitats, vulnerable ecosystems, or other conflicts—further restricting the discretion of the agency to decide which areas to include in a lease sale.”

Biden’s ambivalent policy on leasing

Coral Davenport considers the Biden administration’s policy on drilling on federal lands (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/20/climate/biden-drilling-federal-lands.html).

She points out that “royalty rates paid by oil, gas and coal companies for the right to drill and mine on land owned by the public have not changed since 1920.” On July 20, 2023, the administrationTop of FormBottom of Form “proposed a rule that would raise the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to pull oil, gas and coal from public lands for the first time since 1920, while increasing more than tenfold the cost of the bonds that companies must pay before they start drilling.

“The Interior Department estimated that the new rule, which would also raise various other rates and fees for drilling on public lands, would increase costs for fossil fuel companies by about $1.8 billion between now and 2031. After that, rates could increase again.

“About half of that money would go to states, approximately a third would be used to fund water projects in the West, and the rest would be split between the Treasury Department and Interior.

“Interior officials characterize the changes as part of a broader shift at the federal agency as it seeks to address climate change by expanding renewable energy on public land and in federal waters while making it more expensive for private companies to drill on public lands.”

“Some of the changes were mandated by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which directs the Interior Department to increase the royalty rates paid by companies that drill on public lands to 16.67 percent from 12.5 percent, and to increase the minimum bid at auctions for drilling leases to $10 per acre from $2 per acre, among other provisions. The 12.5 percent royalty rates have been in place since 1920.

“The law also orders the agency to set a minimum rental rate of $3 per acre on public drilling leases in the first two years after a lease is issued, rising to $15 per acre after 10 years, and to establish a new fee of $5 per acre for companies to formally register their interest in leasing public land for drilling.

“But the Interior Department’s new rule would go even further than Congress required: It would dramatically raise the cost of the bonds that companies must guarantee to pay to the federal government before drilling on public lands, which has not increased since 1960. The department wants to use those funds to remediate damage left by abandoned uncapped oil and gas wells, so that the cost is borne by companies rather than taxpayers.

“The new rule proposes to increase the minimum bond paid upon purchasing an individual drilling lease to $150,000 from $10,000. The cost of a bond required upon purchasing a drilling lease on multiple public lands in a state would rise from $500,000 from $25,000. The changes would eliminate an existing national bond under which companies can pay $150,000 as insurance against damaged, abandoned wells anywhere in the country.”

Falling short

“As a candidate, Mr. Biden promised ‘no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.’

“But since Mr. Biden took office, his administration has continued to sell leases to drill, compelled by federal court decisions. The Biden administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling in its first two years (over 6,900 permits) than the Trump administration did in the same period (6,172 permits). Major oil and gas companies saw record profits in 2022.”

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#4 – Threatening to shutdown the government

Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes report how Republicans in the U.S. House are gearing up to have a government shutdown if their demands are not met https://politico.com/news/2023/07/24/republicans-budget-funding-shutdown-00107611

“Looming just a few months away, on Sept. 30, is a potential government shutdown.

“Across the Capitol, senators are waiting to see how the House drama plays out — with their bipartisan funding talks running behind McCarthy’s go-it-alone strategy.”

One question is whether Speaker McCarthy can unify his caucus. For him, one of the biggest hurdle in the funding debate is a bloc of House Freedom Caucus members who want even deeper reductions to the spending bills….”  .

“Teeing up partisan spending bills this summer will also challenge nearly every House Republican to vote for controversial social policies like denying abortion access to veterans, stripping funding from organizations that serve LGBTQ people and barring young immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from filling federal government jobs.”

“To avoid a shutdown, House and Senate leaders will have to band together to extend current funding levels to a later date, while wrestling with additional needs like a rapidly dwindling pot of federal disaster aid and the polarizing issue of more aid to Ukraine.”

“When lawmakers return to session in September, the House’s top Democratic appropriator predicted ‘chaos’ in the race to fund the government before Oct. 1.

“At worst, the trajectory is to shut the government down,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said. “And there are some who think that’s OK.”

DeLauro added that House GOP leaders are bending “to a small group of people who don’t vote for” spending bills anyway.”

————–

Will the right-wing plan come to pass?

Jim Jones argues that the “GOP is rushing headlong into huge election losses in 2024” with Trump as its presidential candidate (https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4114318-the-gop-is-rushing-headlong-into-huge-election-losses-in-2024). It appears now that there are no viable opponents in the Republican Party to overtake Trump’s popularity or to reverse his political prospects.  

“There are other presidential candidates. But the ‘main problem for most of the party’s presidential contenders is sheer cowardice. Other than former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Trump’s top-tier opponents cannot muster the courage to take him on, to make the case that he is a clear and present danger to American democracy, as well as the future of the Republican Party. They merely tiptoe around Trump, while making throw-away comments about the ‘weaponization of government.’ Such comments trivialize Trump’s criminal conduct, strengthening his grip on the GOP base.”

Despite this, Jones contends that Trump “can’t and won’t win another term. He is wrong on the issues, he has no vision for a second term other than trying to establish an autocracy, and he will likely be convicted in one or more of the criminal cases that are currently in the works. The majority of American voters are still swayed by important issues, and Trump is wrong on most of them. Abortion extremism and gun safety will be major issues in 2024. Neither issue favors Trump and down-ballot Republicans.”  

Abortion

“Abortion is particularly tricky for Republicans because they have doubled down on tighter restrictions, even though a majority of Americans disfavor that position. Trump has equivocated on abortion, claiming credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade but cautioning Republicans against supporting further restrictions.” 

The unfolding climate crisis

“In past years, Republican climate deniers were able to convince enough voters that global warming was not a looming disaster. They pointed to snowstorms as proof that climate scientists were wrong — a bona fide snow job. With the catastrophic weather that has been wreaking death and destruction across the U.S. and around the globe this year, that will no longer work to assuage the electorate.” 

“Tornadoes have become more widespread across the country and more destructive. Biblical downpours have ravaged Texas, California, Vermont and a host of other states. Historically high temperatures are plaguing a great portion of the country. This issue will likely have a major influence on the 2024 elections because the heat next year, as one scientist predicted, ‘will probably leap to a whole new level.’ If that turns out to be the case, voter demand to combat global warming will also leap to a whole new level.” 

Jones offers this conclusion: “Republicans will lose the presidency by a wide margin, whoever the party’s candidate might be, the Democrats will end up with a House majority of at least 20 members and the Senate majority could go either way by one or two members.” 

—————

Concluding thoughts

Democracy in the United States is being threatened by a far-right Trump and Republican Party. The Republicans want a society in which there is a strongman leader and have been steadfast in their support of Trump, the Republican Party, and seemingly content to be driven by hateful cultural issues that reflect the worst aspects of America’s history and society.

With Trump, they want revenge against their Democratic opponents, appear little interested in supporting democratic institutions, are willing to live with political chaos as long as they or their leaders have political power, and dismiss or reject policy proposals that address real important issues such as the climate crisis, corporate power, poverty, civility in public discourse. They live in a post-truth world. They have no regard for the common good or the civic norms of fairness.

Despite all this, dedicated and informed citizens led by democratic leaders can give us a less divided and more honest political system.

Bob Sheak, July 16, 2023

 There are well-known intense partisan divisions between the two major political parties in the United States. This is true generally across the board. In this post, the focus is on the political differences in policies over the rights of workers and employees.

Republicans

The Republican Party supports domestic policies that favor limited government spending (except for bipartisan military spending), deregulation, the enhancement of corporate power, low taxes, the privatization of any public asset or function that has potential profits, opposition to unions, and a stigmatizing and inadequate safety net that would leave workers with no viable option outside of paid work, regardless of how low the pay, the absence of benefits, the existence of unsafe workplace conditions, little or no protection against employer shutdowns, striker replacements, or discrimination.

 Democrats

Unlike the Republicans, progressive and sometimes other Democrats have advanced policies that benefit workers, including support of unions, the creation of an effective National Labor Relations Board and other regulatory agencies (e.g. occupational safety), a high minimum wage, wage subsidies, a relatively strong social-safety net without work requirements, a progressive tax system, and anti-discrimination, civil rights policies.

If these Democratic goals were ever realized, the economy would be less exploitative and more equal than it is. Under such reforms, corporate executives and boards would have to take into account the interests of workers/employees more than they have, while government would take on greater responsibility to ensure security and opportunities for American workers.

Some Democrats veer right

 Not all Democrats or Democratic Presidents have supported a pro-worker agenda. Jon Shelton describes the neo-liberal aspects Bill Clinton’s agenda in his book, The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy.

“…for those in the vast group of Americans in the bottom two-thirds of the economic distribution, the policies of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council] championed by Clinton facilitated the flight of blue-collar jobs [an effect of NAFTA] and made it more difficult to access the safety net. And they replaced these jobs and social supports with false promises. Further, the 1994 Crime Bill, touted by Clinton and other Democrats like Delaware Senator Joe Biden, which stiffened penalties on a series of infractions, provided funding for new prison construction and institutionalized inequitable penalties for crack cocaine” (p.163).

—————

Workers’ rights

 Ideally

 At its best, a policy of workers’ rights would build on Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights.” Shelton describes the substance of this historic speech (pp. 1-2).

 “In his State of the Union address on January 11, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights. While the original Bill of Rights appended to the Constitution in 1791 promised a core set of civil liberties, Roosevelt’s proposal offered the guarantee of economic freedoms to all Americans.” The proposal included, for example, “The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation,” the “right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation,” as well as rights to a “decent home” and “adequate medical care,” “protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment,” and a “good education.” 

One implication of Roosevelt’s speech was that government would play a big role in the economy, making up for the short-comings of the private sector and, when necessary, including job creation in “public” sector jobs.

—————

Biden and the Democrats have supported legislation to improve opportunities for workers.

 Here are sections of my post of Nov. 2, 2021, titled “Disjunctions in Labor Markets: Capital versus Workers that identifies policies of the Democrats and Biden administration (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/1235).

—————————————————————————————–

 Executive orders

 Nelson Lichtenstein is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. He reports on how on Friday, July 9, 2021, “President Biden signed a sweeping executive order intended to curb corporate dominance, enhance business competition and give consumers and workers more choices and power. The order features 72 initiatives ranging widely in subject matter — net neutrality and cheaper hearing aids, more scrutiny of Big Tech and a crackdown on the high fees charged by ocean shippers” (https://nytimes.com/2021/07/13/opinion/biden-executive-order-antitrust.html).

The executive order also features a return to the “antitrust traditions” of the Roosevelt presidencies early in the last century.” This is a tradition, Lichtenstein contends, “that has animated social and economic reform almost since the nation’s founding. This tradition worries less about technocratic questions such as whether concentrations of corporate power will lead to lower consumer prices and more about broader social and political concerns about the destructive effects that big business can have on our nation.”

Lichtenstein emphasizes that “the most progressive part of the executive order is its denunciation of the way in which big corporations suppress wages. They do this both by monopolizing their labor market — think of the wage-setting pressures exerted by Walmart in a small town — and by forcing millions of their employees to sign noncompete agreements that prevent them from taking a better job in the same occupation or industry.” He quotes Biden. “If your employer wants to keep you, he or she should have to make it worth your while to stay. That’s the kind of competition that leads to better wages and greater dignity of work.”

Biden introduces pro-union, pro-worker legislation

 Proposed legislation

At a presidential press briefing on March 9, 2021, President Biden introduced the “Protecting the Right to Organize” (PRO) Act of 2021, strongly encouraging the House to take up and pass the legislation and stating that it would be a major step, if and when approved, “in dramatically enhancing the power of workers to organize and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions” (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases-2021/03/09/statement-by-the-president-joe-biden-on-the-house-taking-up-the-pro-act). You can access the full proposal at https://joebiden.com/empowerworkers.

Biden believes that the conditions and prospects of ordinary workers starts with rebuilding unions. He states: “The middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class. Unions give workers a stronger voice to increase wages, improve the quality of jobs and protect job security, protect against racial and all other forms of discrimination and sexual harassment, and protect workers’ health, safety, and benefits in the workplace. Unions lift up workers, both union and non-union.  They are critical to strengthening our economic competitiveness.”

And there are almost “60 million Americans [who] would join a union if they get a chance, but too many employers and states prevent them from doing so through anti-union attacks.” There is the precedent of strong action by the federal government in support of unionization, that is, the National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935 despite unified business opposition. The president pointed out that the NLRA “said that we should encourage unions. The PRO Act would take critical steps to help restore this intent.”

U.S. House of Representatives passes Pro Act

 Don Gonyea reports on NPR that on March 13, 2021, House Democrats approved the Pro Act by a 224-206 vote, “with five Republicans joining Democrats in favor of it.” Union leaders supported it (https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975259434/house-democrats-pass-bill-that-would-protect-worker-organizing-efforts).

 Gonyea lists five provisions of the Pro Act.

 “1. So-called right-to-work laws in more than two dozen states allow workers in union-represented workplaces to opt out of the union, and not pay union dues. At the same time, such workers are still covered under the wage and benefits provisions of the union contract. The PRO Act would allow unions to override such laws and collect dues from those who opt out, in order to cover the cost of collective bargaining and administration of the contract.

 “2. Employer interference and influence in union elections would be forbidden. Company-sponsored meetings — with mandatory attendance — are often used to lobby against a union organizing drive. Such meetings would be illegal. Additionally, employees would be able to cast a ballot in union organizing elections at a location away from company property.

 “3. Often, even successful union organizing drives fail to result in an agreement on a first contract between labor and management. The PRO Act would remedy that by allowing newly certified unions to seek arbitration and mediation to settle such impasses in negotiations.

 “4. The law would prevent an employer from using its employee’s immigration status against them when determining the terms of their employment.

 “5. It would establish monetary penalties for companies and executives that violate workers’ rights. Corporate directors and other officers of the company could also be held liable.”

 In an interview with Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, described the Pro Act as a potential “game changer,” saying it would a major step in correcting the “wages and wealth inequality, opportunity and inequality of power.”

 Gabby Berenbaum cited a poll that found a majority of voters supporting the legislation (https://www.vox.com/2021/6/16/22535274/poll-pro-act-unioniization-majority-bipartisan). She writes: “The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act seems unlikely to succeed in the Senate due to a lack of Republican support — but it has the support of the majority of likely voters, according to a new poll from Vox and Data for Progress.” But there is a partisan divide among likely voters. The survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted June 4 to 6 — “found 40 percent of Republicans support the PRO Act, along with 74 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents. Overall, the poll found the bill has the support of 59 percent of likely voters.”

 However, Republicans in the Senate threatening a filibuster and powerful business lobbying groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and The National Retail Federation kept the Pro Act from moving forward in the Senate.

 

—————————————————————————————

 An impasse

 Biden’s agenda on workers’ rights is at a legislative impasse. The same is true for his two infrastructure bills and other initiatives. The obstacles are corporate and business opposition, the ability of Republicans in the U.S. Senate to obstruct legislative initiatives by using the filibuster, the insistence of a couple Democratic Senators who have so far refused to support an end of the filibuster. It doesn’t matter much what the public thinks. Jumping to the present (July 2023), Republicans gained control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections and made it more difficult to pass progressive or any Democratic legislation.

Beyond the Pro Act

 While the Pro Act, if ever passed, would strengthen the positions of unionized workers and make it easier for workers to create unions. That’s all good. But there is much that the legislation doesn’t do.

So, as of now, the majority of workers will continue to be non-unionized, others will have little choice but to take “bad” jobs, while some will continue to subsist outside of the labor force on inadequate government social/welfare programs, on support from relatives, or being desperately poor. In the absence of the Pro Act, unionized workers will continue to be at a severe disadvantage vis a vis employers. In this eventuality, anti-democratic, right-wing political forces will be further empowered and the society will be that much closer to some type of fascism.

 —————- Unions like what Biden is doing

 Jessica Corbett reports on June 16, 2023, on the “unprecedented show of solidarity” of major unions for Biden and his 2024 presidential run (https://commondreams.org/news/unions-endorse-biden-2024).

“On the eve of a Philadelphia rally hosted by labor leaders, the AFL-CIO and 17 unions on Friday endorsed Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for reelection in 2024.

“During the 2020 campaign and since taking office, Biden has pledged ‘to be the most pro-unio President leading the most pro-union administration in American history.’ He has won praise for various appointments—including Julie Su for labor secretary, which still lacks U.S. Senate approval—and actions to improve the lives of exploited workers.

“Although Biden also has at times angered organized labor—particularly in December when he signed a congressional resolution preventing a nationwide rail strike as industry workers were fighting for paid sick leave—AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler still stressed Friday that ‘there’s absolutely no question that Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in our lifetimes.’

“From bringing manufacturing jobs home to America to protecting our pensions and making historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and education, we’ve never seen a president work so tirelessly to rebuild our economy from the bottom up and middle out,” Shuler said. “We’ve never seen a president more forcefully advocate for workers’ fundamental right to join a union.”

“‘Now, it’s time to finish the job,’ she declared. ‘The largest labor mobilization in history begins today, supercharged by the excitement and enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands of union volunteers who will work tirelessly to reelect a president they know has our backs and will always fight for us.’

“Coming nearly 17 months before the 2024 election, Friday’s announcement is the earliest presidential endorsement in history for the general board of the AFL-CIO—which represents 60 unions and more than 12.5 million workers.”

“‘Joe Biden ran for president four years ago because he knows the way to grow the economy is to grow the middle class, and that starts with strong unions and labor representation,’ she continued. ‘With the early support from the labor movement, our campaign can tap into organized labor’s incomparable organizing abilities, which allows us to reach deep into communities and talk to voters about the tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs created by President Biden’s first-term agenda.’”

“Along with the AFL-CIO, unions individually endorsing the Biden-Harris campaign include the Actors’ Equity Association; American Federation of Government Employees; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); American Federation of Teachers (AFT); Communications Workers of America; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; International Union of Operating Engineers; International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers; Laborers’ International Union of North America; and National Nurses United (NNU).

————-

Where Republicans have been wrong

 Contrary to what Republican critics of Biden’s policies assert, the Biden/Democratic economic policies have not produced a recession or inflation or caused workers to leave the job market in favor of government assistance.

#1- No recession

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman documents how the Federal Reserve and Republican critics wrongly predicted an economic recession stemming from high employment levels. There is no recession, at least not as of July 2023 (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/11/opinion/us-recession-yield-curve.html). Here’s some of what Krugman writes.

“By late 2022, members of the Federal Reserve committee that sets monetary policy were predicting an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent by late 2023; private forecasters were predicting 4.4 percent. Either of these forecasts would have implied at least a mild recession.

“To be fair, we don’t know for sure that these predictions will be falsified. But with unemployment in June just 3.6 percent, the same as it was a year ago, and job growth still chugging away, the economy would have to fall off a steep cliff very soon to make them right, and there’s little hint in the data of that happening.”

“Indeed, the Fed has, once again, raised rates sharply to fight inflation. But events since then have failed to follow the script in two distinct ways

“First, those rate hikes have so far failed to produce a recession. Instead, the economy has been remarkably resilient. Mortgage interest rates — arguably the most important place where the rubber of monetary policy meets the road — have soared over the past year and a half:

“Yet unemployment hasn’t meaningfully gone up at all, which isn’t what most economists, myself included, would have predicted. Why not?

“Part of the answer may be that housing demand surged in 2021-22, largely as a result of the rise in remote work, and that this increase in demand has muted the usual negative impact of higher rates. This is especially true for multifamily housing, where high rents have given developers an incentive to keep building despite higher borrowing costs.

“Anotherpart of the answer may be that the Biden administration’s industrial policies — in effect, subsidies for semiconductors and green energy — have led to a boom in nonresidential investment, especially manufacturing.”

 #2 – Low inflation

Despite concerns that inflation would rise, the economy cooled sharply in June, according to a report by Jeanna Smialek (https://nytimes.com/live/2023/07/12/business/cpi-inflation-fed).

“The Consumer Price Index climbed 3 percent in the year through June, less than the 4 percent increase in the year through May and just a third of its roughly 9 percent peak last summer.”

#3 – The strong economy has not made workers “lazy”

Paul Krugman addresses this issue and rebuts the right-wing belief that workers will avoid work if they have alternatives in the form of government unemployment and other government assistance (https://nytimes.com/2023/07/10/opinion/socialism-workers-plarticipation-labor-market.html).

 Hecites Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot, who argues, “‘Socialism,’ he opined, has destroyed the work ethic: ‘Nobody works. Nobody gives a damn. ‘Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work — I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid.’”

Marcus is hardly alone in espousing such views. Krugman writes:

 “Without question, rich men are constantly saying similar things at country clubs across America. More important, conservative politicians are obsessed with the idea that government aid is making Americans lazy, which is why they keep trying to impose work requirements on programs such as Medicaid and food stamps despite overwhelming evidence that such requirements don’t promote work — but do create red-tape barriers that deny help to people who really need it.”

 “Given the opportunities created by a full-employment economy — arguably the first truly full-employment economy we’ve had in almost a quarter century — Americans are, in fact, willing to work. Indeed, they’re more willing to work than almost anyone, even optimists, had imagined. And the robustness of the American work ethic has huge implications for policy.”

“One way to look past demographic changes is to focus on labor force participation by Americans in their prime working years, which is higher now than it has been for 20 years. Bobby Kogan of the Center for American Progress reports that if youadjust for age and sex, overall U.S. employment is now at its highest level in history — again, despite the lingering effects of the pandemic.”

 Krugman asks where the additional workers coming from? “One answer,” he points out, “is that in a tight labor market, employers are more willing to look at marginalized groups, many of whose members turn out to be perfectly capable of productive employment. We have, for example, seen a stunning rise in employment among Americans with disabilities.” Two, there ha been “a surge in foreign-born workers, who “tend to be both working-age and highly motivated.”

 Krugman continues.

 “And while the hot economy may have temporarily boosted inflation, it also put Americans to work — not just those who lost jobs during the pandemic and its aftermath but also some who previously were unable to get a foot in the door. (It also produced especially big gains for low-paid workers.)

If we manage to avoid a severe recession, many of these job gains will probably persist.”

 These facts challenge what “grumpy rich men may say, [namely that] Americans haven’t become lazy. On the contrary, they’re willing, even eager, to take jobs if they’re available. And while economic policy in recent years has been far from perfect, one thing it did do — to the nation’s great benefit — was give work a chance.”

 #4 – Republican opposition to unions and collective bargaining lacks a factual basis

 In a post sent out on November 2, 2021, I quoted Robert Reich on this issue. (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/1235). Reich challenges “five big lies spread by wealthy corporations and their enablers intended to stop workers from organizing and to protect their own bottom-lines” (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-5-biggest-corporate-lies-about-unions).

 “Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers – even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America – even those who were not unionized – had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.

 “Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.

 “Lie #3: Laborunions are as powerful as big business. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than 70million dollars to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed 1.6billion dollars. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

 “Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors – retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers–which comprise 59% of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of 802 dollars a week. Non-unionized service workers made on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.

 “Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly-unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, womenwho were  in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. AndAfrican-Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African-Americans who were non-unionized.”

—————–

 Concluding thoughts

If Trump and the right-wing forces that support him prevail in 2024, we can expect that an increasing proportion of the US population will find themselves economically insecure, marginalized, and/or poor. They will continue to be without union representation, and burdened with inadequate employment options, with jobs that pay low wages, provide no benefits or affordable benefits (e.g., health insurance; pensions), and provide little or no job security.

 

 

 

Bob Sheak, July 1, 2023

Introduction

This post continues the critique of right-wing forces in the U.S., focusing on Trump’s and Republicans’ anti-democratic record, their condemnations of and efforts to delegitimize their Democratic opponents and hope to create a one-party-dominated state. One particularly important example is how they obscure and confuse the public on the unfolding climate crisis. Their rejection or dismissal of the scientifically-established evidence on the increasing climate crisis and its myriad harmful effects is an example of how Trump, the Republican Party and their supporters deny or misconstrue the facts in their quest for total power.

Part 1: Right-wing extremism – attacking Democrats

I considered the reactions by Trump and the Republican Party to Trump’s indictment in my last post, titled “Trump and Republican Party support attacks, even violence, against Biden and all opponents” (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/3093), and, before that, on June 8, a post on the climate crisis titled “The planet is getting hotter” (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/3075).

As we know from media coverage, the indictment of Trump is for unlawfully keeping classified government documents after he left the White House and then misleading the FBI on this situation. Trump’s response to the indictment has been to encourage resistance, if not violence, against Democrats’ who, he claims, have “weaponized” the state.” Meanwhile, Trump hopes to see his fund-raising soar, as he expects his cult-fawning base and rich and powerful benefactors to come to his assistance in paying his mounting legal bills and in joining him in the subversion of the rule of law.

The money rolls in

Alexandra Marquez reports on NBC News, June 14, 2023, on Trump’s fund-raising after the indictment and suggests his support has not diminished

(https://nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/trump-announces-raising-6-million-federal-indictment=-news-rcna89385). She writes:

“Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign said Wednesday that it has raised $6.6 million since news of his federal indictment broke, including more than $4.5 million online.

“In an announcement, the campaign said an additional $2.1 million came in at a pre-planned fundraiser Tuesday night at Trump’s Bedminster golf course in New Jersey.

“Altogether, that’s a bit more than half of the $12 million Trump’s campaign previously announced raising in the six days following the news in late March that he had been indicted in New York City.” 

————-

Trump, the Republican “leader”

Indeed, with all his legal problems, Trump still leads by a wide margin in polls against other Republican presidential candidates (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/national), while, unsurprisingly, his unfavorability rating in national polls remains “negative” (55.4 % negative to 38.9%)

(https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump).  

Trump’s record of disregarding the law

A Long History

His supporters are seemingly indifferent to Trump’s long history of illegal behavior. Wikipedia offers a summary of this history.

“From the 1980s until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in U.S. federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and over 100 business tax disputes.^[1] He has also been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault,^[2][3] with one accusation resulting in Trump being held civilly libel” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_affairs_of_Donald_trump). David Cay Johnston documents how not only Trump but also his family have financially benefited from the time Trump spent in the White House (The Big Cheat).

Recent cases against Trump

Nia Prater reviews the recent and pending legal cases against Trump (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/what-are-the-legal-cases-against-donald-trump). Here’s Prater’s summary.

“In Georgia, he is being investigated for his attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results while he was president. In Washington, D.C., a Justice Department special counsel is running a fast-moving probe into both his handling of classified documents and his conduct around the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Then there are the civil case against him by E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexual assault and defamation, and Attorney General Letitia James’s fraud case against Trump and three of his children.”

Why does Trump still have a massive following?

I’ve addressed this question numerous times. Here’s a relevant paragraph from a post titled “Plutocracy v Democracy: A showdown of existential significance’

(https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/697). It was distributed on August 23, 2020.

Trump and the Republican Party have done their best to subvert our democracy, obstruct Democratic legislative initiatives in the US Senate [now House], advance a neoliberal agenda designed to benefit the mega-corporations and the rich, and also rallied an electoral base of right-wing and extreme groups that includes fundamentalist evangelicals, gun rights absolutists, anti-immigration advocates, white supremacists and racists, those who distrust the federal government, and those who espouse a variety of conspiracy theories. (E.g., see Thomas B. Edsall’s article for an in-depth analysis of what the research of experts indicates about the ties between Trump and his base and why they accept his “lies” at: https://nytimes.com/2023/06/28/opinion/donald-trump-presidency-lies.html.)

Trump diverts some of the donations of his supporters of pay his legal fees

Rich Hasen offers some evidence of this opportunistic diversion of donations in an article published on June 25, 2023

(https://electionlawblog.org/?p=137066). Here’s some of what Hasen reports.

“Facing multiple intensifying investigations, former President Donald J. Trump has quietly begun diverting more of the money he is raising away from his 2024 presidential campaign and into a political action committee that he has used to pay his personal legal fees.

“The change, which went unannounced except in the fine print of his online disclosures, raises fresh questions about how Mr. Trump is paying for his mounting legal bills — which could run into millions of dollars — as he prepares for at least two criminal trials, and whether his PAC, Save America, is facing a financial crunch.

“When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America.

“But internet archival records show that sometime in February or March, he adjusted that split. Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations, and 10 percent goes to Save America.

“The effect of that change is potentially substantial: Based on fund-raising figures announced by his campaign, the fine-print maneuver may already have diverted at least $1.5 million to Save America.

“And the existence of the group has allowed Mr. Trump to have his small donors pay for his legal expenses, rather than paying for them himself….”

————

Trump ups his attacks on Democrats

Donald Trump Says His Enemies (e.g., Democrats) Are ‘Communists’ 

Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, analyzes how Trump is reviving the branding of opponents as “Communists” to frighten voters and to advance his quest for presidential power and in response to his indictment (https://politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/22/donald-trump-red-scare-communishm-00102990). Sarat starts his analysis as follows.

“More than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump seems determined to resurrect red baiting as a political tactic. Calling his political opponents communists has become a regular feature of Trump’s attacks on the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, and the likes of George Soros.

“Using this tactic, Trump hopes that a single word can discredit their political views. He wants his followers to fear what the people and institutions he calls communist will do to those who don’t share their world view — including to the former president himself.

Trump’s anti-communist rhetoric goes back years to his first appearance as a national political candidate in 2015. Sarat writes:

“Trump’s effort to brand his political opponents and those who now would hold him to account for his alleged criminal conduct as communists has been a through line of his rhetoric since he became a major political figure in 2015. In October of that year, he called Sen. Bernie Sanders, then a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, ‘a socialist-slash-communist … He’s going to tax you people at 90 percent; he’s going to take everything!’”

Such rhetoric has continued.

“Trump continued his red baiting throughout his term in the White House. In September 2019, he used an address to the United Nations General Assembly to expand on his anti-communist crusade. ‘Socialism and communism,’ Trump said, ‘are not about justice. They are not about equality. They are not about lifting up the poor. They are certainly not about the good of the country. Socialism and communism are about one thing only — power for the ruling class.’

‘America,’ Trump promised, ‘will never be a socialist country.’”

For example:

“During his 2020 reelection campaign he told a rally of supporters in Vandalia, Ohio, ‘The choice in November is going to be very simple. There’s never been a time when there’s been such a difference. One is probably communism. I don’t know. They keep saying socialism. I think they’ve gone over that one. That one’s passed already.’

It has some effects.

“Three years later,” Sarat point out, “reviving the Red Scare also is part of Trump’s 2024 electoral strategy. It works for at least three reasons.

“First, it is designed to appeal to older voters who remember the days when the phrase ‘Better Dead Than Red’ signaled solidarity among white people in this country against a common enemy. Polls show that only 3 percent of people in their 70s and older have a favorable view of communism as opposed to 28 percent among Gen Z.

“Second, it stirs up fears of China, today’s most prominent and powerful communist nation.

“Finally, this language has special meaning in South Florida, where the former president is under federal indictment. It’s no accident that Trump reacted to his arraignment in the classified documents case on June 13 by waving the bloody flag of communism and describing the threat it allegedly poses.

If they [e.g., Democrats; federal and state courts] succeed in advancing their political power, Trump said they “‘won’t stop with me.” “They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates.”

It’s rhetoric that undemocratic leaders have used before. According to Sarat,

“Whatever his motivations, Trump’s kind of red baiting has a long lineage. It is right out of the playbook of authoritarians and tyrants from the early 20th century. It was instrumental in the rise of fascist leaders in mid-century Germany and Italy.”

Trump’s revival of the Red Scare also draws on an American tradition that fueled the notorious Palmer Raids in 1919 and 1920, when the Justice Department arrested and deported anarchists, communists, and radical leftists. The raids, sparked by social unrest following the First World War, were the climax of that era’s own Red Scare.

Making it up

“Trump is “hallucinating” a communist threat where there is none, according to the Guardian columnist Richard Seymour, quoted by Sarat.

 ‘Seymour gets it right when he suggests that for a would-be authoritarian like Trump, communism signals a ‘single, treasonous, diabolical enemy.’ ‘Rather like a racial stereotype,’ Seymour writes, “‘communism’ figuratively presents systemic crisis as … a demonic plot … Those labelled ‘communists’ are thus blamed not just for the reforms they demand, but for all the crises that call for reform.”

————-

Trump promises payback for his indictment over illegal possession of government documents prosecution follows years of attacking democratic traditions

Nicholas Riccardi and Gary Fields report for ABC News, June 16 2023, on Trump’s quest for revenge against political opponents in wake of his federal indictment

https://abscnews.com/US/wireStory/trumps-promise-payback-prosecution-years-attacking-democratic-traditions-100132666

“Donald Trump’s attacks on the justice system after his indictment on federal charges this week are the latest step in a now eight-year campaign by the former president and his allies against the traditions and institutions that have helped maintain American democracy.”

Revenge

“Trump upped the level of his claims and threats as he faces the potential of years in prison if convicted on 37 charges of obstruction, illegal retention of defense information and other violations. Hours after pleading not guilty, Trump claimed he is being targeted by the special prosecutor, who is nonpartisan, for political reasons and vowed to retaliate against President Joe Biden if he is elected president in 2024.

“‘There was an unwritten rule’ to not prosecute former presidents and political rivals, Trump told supporters in a speech at his golf club in New Jersey. ‘I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family.’”

“‘If he did that, it’d be an authoritarian system, the end of a system of laws rather than of one man,’ said Lindsay Chervinsky, a presidential historian.

A “victim”?

“Trump has long complained about being unfairly treated by the legal system, from contending that the judge in a lawsuit against his for-profit university was biased against him to targeting the FBI over its probe of Russian interference in his 2016 win. He even vowed retribution in that case, assigning a special prosecutor to review how the investigation into his campaign’s possible coordination with Russia was handled, which led to only one conviction.”

No one should be above the law

“The indictment came,” Riccardi and Fields write, “from a grand jury in Trump’s adopted state of Florida after an investigation led by a special counsel, Jack Smith, who is independent of political appointees in the Biden administration and has previously prosecuted Democrats as well as Republicans. Speaking after the indictment was made public, Smith stressed that investigations such as the one into the documents follow the facts and the law.

“‘We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,’ he said.

Many experts, of all political persuasions, said the charges against Trump stem from the proper functioning of the legal system, rather than a political vendetta.”

“‘There is not an attorney general of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president,’ Michael Luttig, a former federal judge who was a conservative favorite for a Supreme Court post, wrote on Twitter.

According to the indictment, Trump held onto classified documents after leaving the White House, admitted on tape that they were classified and that he no longer had the presidential power to declassify them, then refused to return the records when the government demanded them back.”

————–

Trump’s plan to take control of the Justice Department

Robert Reich explains in an article distributed online on June 19, 2023 Trump’s plan to turn the Justice Department into his personal vendetta machine (https://robertreich.substack.com/p/new-things-to-turn-the-justice). Here’s some of analysis.

“Last week [3rd week in June, 2023] Trump said that if reelected, he’d appoint a ‘real special prosecutor’ to ‘go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.’”

“In other words,” Reich continues, “if Trump is reelected, you can kiss nonpartisan criminal justice goodbye.” Trump views “the Justice Department as an extension of his own will — even claiming, ‘I have an absolute right to do what I want to with the Justice Department.’”

The former president has a record of interfering in the Department and gives these examples.

“Trump interfered in the department’s prosecutions of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating possible collusion between Russia and Trump associates, and demanded that the department reopen a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton.”

Reich continues.

“Now, Trump threatens that if reelected he’ll turn the Justice Department into his own personal vendetta machine. If there weren’t already enough reason to fear a second Trump presidency, this would be it.” Meanwhile, such rants have affected “public trust.”

————–

House GOP promotes Jan. 6 insurrectionists as heroes

Jordain Carney and Kyle Cheney consider some of the evidence (https://politico.com/news/2023/06/18/house-gop-jan-6-extremism-00101259). They write,

“House Republicans don’t want to talk about Jan. 6. They also can’t stop talking about it.

“At times, GOP lawmakers insist they’re uninterested in relitigating an attack that is political poison for the party outside of deep-red areas. But at other times, some Republicans have stoked narratives that falsely pin blame for the attack on police, Democrats or far-left agitators — or downplay the violence at the Capitol. The latter approach has seen a noticeable uptick of late.

“And it’s not just far-right conservatives who fall in that group — some House GOP leaders and key committee chiefs have shown they’re willing to flirt with the fringe without an outright embrace. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has shared security video of that day with far-right media figures who have minimized or fed inaccurate portrayals of the attack.”

“Notably, no committee chairs or party leaders participated in the biggest platform House Republicans have given Jan. 6 defendants so far: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), joined by a handful of others from the conference’s right flank, hosted an event last week with former Trump acting assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark, people charged in relation to Jan. 6, defendants’ family members and allies.

“The event featured a veritable kitchen sink of conspiracy theories as well as rehashed false claims, including that the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ and that the Jan. 6 committee ‘doctored’ video.”

“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that probing the Justice Department’s handling of Jan. 6 prosecutions should be one of the ‘top priorities’ for a Judiciary sub-panel tasked with investigating GOP claims of bias against conservatives within the federal government.

“She introduced impeachment articles against the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who has taken the lead on prosecuting members of the mob. Meanwhile, Gaetz introduced a resolution to censure Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who led the now-closed riot select committee. Both efforts have a single-digit number of cosponsors at the moment.

“Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) did recently release a wider report that accused the FBI of artificially conflating the number of Jan. 6-related investigations. The report and a subsequent hearing also included testimony from whistleblowers who lost their security clearances due to improper actions related to Jan. 6.”

————

Part 2: – Obscuring and/or denying real problems

Here I focus on “climate crisis” in the U.S. This is an example of how Trump and the Republican Party exacerbate and muddle a deadly serious problem facing the United States and all nations.

I have addressed the growing problem of the climate crisis in earlier posts, on, for example, Feb. 1, 2023 (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/2705)

and recently on June 8, 2023 (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/3075).

The evidence of this dire, existential-threatening problem continues unabated, while Trump and the Republican Party continue to give overwhelming support for any policy that boosts the use of fossil fuels and simultaneously sidelines proposals to advance solar or wind power. Ian Angus’s book, facing the anthropocene: fossil capitalism and the crisis of the earth system, is worth reading on these interrelated topics. So is Bill McKibben’s book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Eve Darian-Smith’s Global- Burning: Rising AntiDemocracy and the Climate Crisis is full of relevant evidence.

———–

The Climate Crisis

The most significant sources of rising temperatures and the climate crisis are fossil fuels. Jake Johnson reports that new data indicate that fossil Fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022 (https://commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuels-global-energy-consumption). Here’s what he writes.

“Data published Monday [by the Energy Institute] show that fossil fuels made up 82% of global energy consumption in 2022, another indication that the global transition away from planet-warming sources is moving far too slowly as rich nations continue burning oil, gas, and coal at an unsustainable pace.

“Juliet Davenport, president of the Energy Institute, said in a statement that ‘2022 saw some of the worst ever impacts of climate change—the devastating floods affecting millions in Pakistan, the record heat events across Europe and North America—yet we have to look hard for positive news on the energy transition in this new data.’”

“‘Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,’ said Davenport. ‘We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.’” Wind and solar energy account for 12% of power generation.

——————

Oceans continue to warm

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Delger Erdenesanaa reports that “ocean warmth set a record for May”

(https://nytimes.com/2023/06/15/climate/oceans-global-warming.html).

“Temperatures are already breaking records this year: Last month was the warmest May for the world’s oceans since record-keeping began in 1850, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

“The average ocean temperature throughout May was 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.85 degree Celsius, higher than normal for the month.

“For the planet as a whole May was the third warmest on record, the agency said on Thursday in its monthly climate update. North and South America had their warmest Mays on record.

“In the United States, rising temperatures hit Washington State and northern Idaho especially hard. Two cities in Washington, Bellingham and Spokane, as well as smaller communities in the region, set records for their warmest Mays.

Warmer oceans “harm ocean life and feed wildfires.”

“Warmer water tends to hold less oxygen, and large-scale fish die-offs may happen earlier in the year as the climate continues to warm. Last week, thousands of dead fish washed up on Texas beaches from unusually warm waters and lack of oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico. Across the ocean, higher temperatures contribute to coral reefs dying. The ocean also expands as it warms, raising sea levels even further on top of the added water from melting ice sheets.”

Global warming and wildfires

“Last month’s unusual heat contributed to Canada’s spate of wildfires,” according to Erdenesanaa. “As wildfire smoke spread, air quality in western Canada and the northern Great Plains in the United States deteriorated significantly. More recently, the wildfire smoke reached cities in the Northeast and Midwest, causing Air Quality Index readings to skyrocket across much of the country.”

“With climate change and global warming, it’s been an interesting start to the season,” said Rocky Bilotta, a climatologist at NOAA, during a call with reporters.

“Last week, the agency [NOAA] declared that the global ocean and atmosphere had officially entered the climate pattern known as El Niño, which occurs naturally when the surface of the Pacific Ocean becomes warmer than usual. The phenomenon generally leads to warmer temperatures globally, but Mr. Bilotta said that El Niño would most likely influence temperatures later this year and next year.

It’s hard to pinpoint a single cause for May’s heat, he said, but as the climate warms overall, increasingly hot temperatures and records are to be expected worldwide, both in the ocean and on land.

“Most of the United States can expect an unusually hot summer, with elevated drought and wildfire risks, according to NOAA. South Texas and much of New England are in for an especially hot July. On hotter days, plants lose more water to the atmosphere and dry out, worsening the effects of droughts and providing more fuel for wildfires.

“Warmer temperatures can also lead to more evaporation from the ocean and other bodies of water. More water vapor in the atmosphere can then lead to heavier rain and snowfall, and fuel tropical storms.

“For the next month, the northern Great Plains, the Mid-Atlantic region and the western Gulf Coast can expect more rain than usual, the agency forecast. Over the entire summer, the middle of the country can expect more rain while the Pacific Northwest, parts of the Southwest, the Great Lakes region and parts of the Mid-Atlantic should prepare for drought.

Longer term, El Niño conditions will almost certainly last at least until spring 2024, and could contribute to worse winter storms in the southern United States.

—————-

The North Atlantic is hotter than usual

Dan Stillman also reports on how the North Atlantic is getting hotter; indeed, hotter than it has been in 170 years (https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/06/23/ocean-heatwave-northatlantic-uk-climate). The “warm waters could pose a deadly threat to marine life and impact summer weather in the U.K. and Europe.” Stillman continues.

“The ocean waters surrounding the United Kingdom and much of Europe are baking in an unprecedented marine heat wave that scientists say is being intensified by human-caused climate change. Scientists are astounded not only by how much the waters have warmed during the past month but also how early in the year the heat wave is occurring. The warm waters are a threat to marine life and could worsen heat waves over land this summer, they say.

“Sea surface temperatures are running as high as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, the warmest in more than 170 years, and are more typical of August and September when the waters are usually at their warmest. The event has registered as a Category 4 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine heat wave scale with localized areas reaching Category 5, the two highest categories on the scale.

“NOAA defines a marine heat wave as a period with persistent and unusually warm ocean temperatures, ‘which can have significant impacts on marine life as well as coastal communities and economies.’ The agency describes Category 4 as ‘extreme’ and Category 5 as ‘beyond extreme.’”

—————

Texas Cities Are Setting Temperature Records in Unremitting Heat Wave

The immediacy of the climate crisis is reflected in the extraordinary hot weather now occurring in Texas. Dylan Baddour reports on this situation in an article published by Inside Climate News on June 21, 2023 (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20162023/texas-heat-wave-record-climate-change). Here’s some of what Baddour  writes.

“Readings in Laredo, Del Rio, San Angelo and Junction were the highest ever recorded, while Corpus Christi logged an all-time-high heat index of 125 degrees. Forecasters warn that no relief is in sight this month.” These data come from the National Weather Service, which also issued “excessive heat warnings and heat advisories that affect more than 40 million people.”

“The duration of the heat wave is straining utility infrastructure and drawing attention to the need for heat mitigation strategies for vulnerable populations. Sommerville said the extreme heat was expected to continue ‘for the foreseeable future, for at least the next couple of weeks.’”

Top of Form

“Temperatures in Del Rio, on the Rio Grande, hit 113 on Tuesday, exceeding the previous record of 112 measured in July 2020 and June 1988, while San Angelo posted a record 114 degrees, toppling the previous high of 111 set in 1960.” 

———–

Republicans oppose Biden from declaring a “national emergency”

Despite the high temperatures and polluted air affecting people across the United States, Republicans in both the U.S. Senate and House take action to prevent President Biden from declaring a national emergency, according to a report by Jake Johnson (https://commondreams.org/news/gop-bill-climate-emergency).

“Senate Republicans introduced legislation earlier this week that would prohibit President Joe Biden from declaring a national climate emergency as millions across the U.S. shelter indoors to escape scorching heat and toxic pollution from Canadian wildfires, which have been fueled by runaway warming.

“Led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)—a fossil fuel industry ally and the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee—the GOP bill would “prohibit the president from using the three primary statutory authorities available (the National Emergencies Act, the Stafford Act, and section 319 of the Public Health Service Act) to declare a national emergency solely on the basis of climate change,” according to a summary released by the Republican senator’s office.

“Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), another friend of the oil and gas industry, is leading companion legislation in the House.

————-

Part 3 – Two examples of what can be done to address the climate crisis

Increase support for renewable energy

The effects of the heatwave in Texas could be worse, according to an article by Julia Conley published in Common Dreams on June 24, 2023

(https://commondreams.org/news/solar-power-texas-heat). She writes,

“A sweltering heatwave has gripped Texas over the last two weeks, pushing temperatures to 115°F in parts of the state—but its status as a new leader in the development of solar power has reportedly protected many in the state from a catastrophic loss of power.”

“But this month, reported The New York Times on Friday, ‘the lights and air conditioning have stayed on across the state,’ and analysts have linked the continuation of power to Texas’s doubling of the amount of solar energy it’s generated since early 2022.

“While Texas has built its reputation in recent decades as a center of oil and gas production in the U.S., ‘solar is producing 15% of total energy right now,’ University of Texas research scientist Joshua Rhodes told the Times. The state now leads the nation in renewable energy, with 17 gigawatts of solar power operational this year.”

————-

Political action in Virginia makes a positive difference

Madeline Ostrander reports on the example of “down-ballot race” in Virginia and how pro-environmental candidates are doing well in these contests (https://thenation.com/article/politics/virginia-elections-climate-change). This is an example of what can be accomplished to address the climate crisis. Here’s some of what she reports.

“For decades, across the US, groups like the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club have jumped into state and local politics—endorsing candidates and supporting campaigns on issues like conservation or pollution cleanup. But only recently have environmentalists given significant attention to the role that states and local governments can play in climate change. “You’re going to get a national climate bill out of Congress every 10 years, maybe,” says Qua. “What are you going to do the rest of that time?” Since its founding in 2016, Lead Locally [A Virginia environmental group] has supported nearly 400 candidates willing to take on local and state climate issues. The scrappy, small-staffed organization always partners with regional and local groups and campaigns—and often leaps into lower-profile races, including primaries—to back candidates who have especially ambitious climate platforms.”

Twenty of the 25 candidates supported by a pro-environment political group won their primaries.

—————

Concluding thoughts

The United States is on the edge of losing its already tenuous democracy to a power-hungry Republican Party still led by Trump. They lie, conspire, support twofold agenda, one supporting rich and powerful benefactors (e.g., lower taxes) and the other expressing support for a host of right-wing groups and ideologies.

At times, they explicitly want their supporters to know that their “leaders” will seek revenge and extreme institutional changes, and that, if elected president in 2024, they believe Trump is the man to accomplish all this. They want right-wing Republicans to control all pillars of power at all levels of the society. And, as emphasized in this post, they have little or no tolerance for creating an energy system that is sustainable, dismiss verifiable evidence whenever it conflicts with their views, and seem content to see Trump or some other aspiring autocrats control the country.

How can such a future be avoided?

American citizens must support Democratic candidates who want to preserve and strengthen democracy and support policies that address real problems. There is a role for the Democratic Party at all levels, for democratically-based groups and citizens to participate in electoral politics, for fighting against voter suppression and preserving the rule of law in candidate selection, for combatting the lies and disinformation of the Republicans, and for keeping abreast of important issues. Certainly, it is important to educate people about the seriousness of the climate crisis and to urge them to support the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels.

Martin Wolf emphasizes the importance of “citizenship” in these processes. He writes: “It is by thinking and acting as citizens that a democratic political community survives and thrives.” Such citizenship “must have three aspects: concern for the ability of fellow citizens to have a fulfilled life; the desire to create an economy that allows citizens to flourish in this way; and, above all, loyalty to democratic political and legal institutions and the values of open debate and mutual tolerance that underpin them” (p. 380).

David Pepper has written a book of instructions on “Saving Democracy,” the title of the book. It is an in-depth “manual for every American” and what they can do to strengthen democratic institutions, while organizing with others to support democratically-oriented groups, individuals, and candidates. He says that the struggle for democracy is a long one and requires information, research, and activism at all levels of the political system. A tall order. But so much is at stake.

Bob Sheak, June 18, 2023

Introduction

The focus here is on the indictment of Trump for keeping classified government documents and his unlawful attempts to avoid handing them over to the FBI and grand jury investigations, and how the former president and the GOP are encouraging resistance, if not violence, against the alleged Democrats’ “weaponization of the state.” Meanwhile, Trump hopes to see his fund-raising soar, as he expects his cult-like base and rich and powerful benefactors come to his assistance. In the deeply divided electorate, reasonable and civil government – at all levels – becomes difficult to achieve.

——————-

The indictment

Charlie Savage offers an abbreviated version of the full text of the 49-page indictment, with annotations and a link the full indictment, at:

https://nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/09/us/trump-indictment-document-annotated.html. He writes:

“The Justice Department on Friday unveiled an indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with 37 criminal counts. They relate to Mr. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents after he left office and his refusal to return them, even after being subpoenaed for all remaining records in his possession that were marked as classified.

31 counts

Related to withholding national defense information

One count against Mr. Trump for each document he was alleged to have kept in his possession.

5 counts

Related to concealing possession of classified documents

Among them are counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice and withholding documents and records, levied against both Mr. Trump and an aide, Walt Nauta.

2 counts

False statements

Related to statements to the F.B.I. by Mr. Trump and an aide, Walt Nauta.

————

Jessica Corbett provides an analysis of the indictment and its implications (https://commondreams.org/news/trump-indictment-unsealed-mar-a-lago-documents). She makes the following key points.

One, the indictment against Trump was unsealed and made available to the public on June 9 by Special Council Jack Smith. She quotes Smith.

“‘Today an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice,’ said Smith, who was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in November, after the twice-impeached former president announced he is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“‘This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged,’ he continued. ‘Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk.’”

“‘We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone,’ Smith added. ‘It’s very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. To that end, my office will seek a speedy trial in this matter, consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.’”

Two, Trump kept classified government documents after leaving the White House.

“The indictment explains that after leaving office in January 2021 ‘Trump caused scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported’ to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, where FBI agents executed a search warrant last August. Even though ‘Trump was not authorized to possess or retain those classified documents,’ the document adds, he stored them throughout the club, ‘including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.’

“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.

Three, Trump is accused of showing some of the information to people who lacked a security clearance.

“The indictment accuses Trump of showing classified materials to people who lacked security clearance to see them at least twice at his golf club in New Jersey.”

“The first time was in July 2021, during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff.

“The former president ‘showed and described a ‘plan of attack’ that Trump said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official,’ according to the document. ‘Trump told the individuals that the plan was ‘highly confidential’ and ‘secret.’ Trump also said, ‘As president I could have declassified it,’ and, ‘Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.'”

“Then, in August or September 2021, Trump allegedly showed a representative of his political action committee ‘a classified map related to a military operation,’ told the unnamed individual that he should not be doing so, and said not to get too close.”

Four, Trump is accused of obstructing a criminal investigation

“After the FBI launched a criminal investigation in March 2022, which led to a grand jury issuing a subpoena for all records with classification markings in mid-May, ‘Trump endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal his continued retention of classified documents,’ the document details.

It goes on to share some comments Trump supposedly made to his attorneys in late May 2022, when the lawyers said they needed to search for materials to comply with the subpoena:

“I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes.”

“Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

“Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?”

————-

Trump’s reactions to the indictment

A team of New York Times journalists, including Shayna Jacobs,David Ovalle, Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein, report on Trump’s reactions (https://nytimes.com/national-security/2023/06/13/trump-court-miami-indictment).

They write: “Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal charges that he broke the law dozens of times by keeping and hiding top-secret documents in his Florida home — the first hearing in a historic court case that could alter the country’s political and legal landscape.” U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman, who presided over the arraignment, ruled that “Trump should not speak to [co-defendant Walt] Nauta or witnesses about the facts of the case. As to which Trump employees might be affected by the restriction, the judge instructed the prosecution team to provide a list.”

Attacking the special council

Just before the arraignment, Trump publicly “attacked special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation, in the hours before his court appearance, calling the veteran prosecutor a ‘thug and a “lunatic” in social media posts.”

Viewing it as a fund-raising opportunity

Even during his arraignment, Trump’s legal strategy continued to be primarily political: A fundraising email from his campaign landed while he was inside the courthouse, vowing he would never drop out of the 2024 race. “They can indict me, they can arrest me, but I know … that I am an innocent man,” Trump wrote in the appeal for money. And he tried as much as possible to turn the potential humiliation of a criminal court date into a publicity tour, staging a surprise campaign stop in Miami at a popular Cuban restaurant and scheduling an evening speech in New Jersey, where he again claimed that the documents were his.”

Projecting strength

In an article for the Washington Post, Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey report on how Trump greeted the arraignment with showmanship in his bid to upstage charges (https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/14/donald-trump-arraignment-day-speedy).

“Former president Donald Trump faced down the most serious threat to his personal liberty and political future like just another day on the campaign trail — waving to fans, giving a thumbs up, swinging by a storied eatery, soliciting donations and planning a spirited speech to supporters at one of his properties.”

“‘He’s scared s—less,’ said John Kelly, his former chief of staff. ‘This is the way he compensates for that. He gives people the appearance he doesn’t care by doing this. For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable. Up until this point in his life, it’s like, I’m not going to pay you; take me to court. He’s never been held accountable before.’”

Arnsdorf and Dawsey continue.

Trump has wanted to show, according to his advisers, that he is ready to fight — instead of looking downtrodden and glum — as he appeared in court Tuesday.”

“It’s fine,” Trump said when asked about his mood in a right-wing radio interview on the eve of his arraignment.

“You sound like you’re in great spirits,” the host, Howie Carr, concluded.

“I am,” Trump said. “I’m just fighting for the country.”

Trump returned to his golf club, the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday following the court appearance in Miami and that night made a speech “in front of Republican donors, party officials, past and present advisers and politicians.”

Trump walked through the doors miming wonder at the adulation that poured over him and mouthing “thank you” as the crowd chanted his name.” “The speech took a dark turn, however, as Trump attacked Biden and special counsel Jack Smith in vicious terms and portrayed his arrest as a political persecution like in repressive regimes.”

Arnsdorf and Dawsey quote from Trump’s speech.

“If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me. They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates….“I am the only one that can save this nation.”

The audience included Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), longtime New York GOP chairman Ed Cox, former White House aides Kash Patel and Sebastian Gorka, election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, televangelist Robert Jeffress, former Senate candidate Bernie Moreno of Ohio, former Senate candidate Leora Levy of Connecticut, former Nevada secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant and potential Senate candidate Jeffrey Gunter of Nevada.

Being “delusional”

Chris Lehmann, the D.C. Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler, considers that Trump is being delusional, lying to himself, in his responses to the then pending indictment and other cases. It’s a chronic condition (https://thenation.com/article/politics/trump-indictment-classified-documents). Here’s some of what Lehmann writes.

“For all the genuine alarm, and legal agita, over the Mar-a-Lago case’s national security implications, we are left reckoning with something broader and uglier at the heart of all of Trump’s power-mongering: a wholly personalized model of presidential authority that overtly sacrifices constitutional government at the maximum leader’s whim, inconvenience, or tantrum. The theory behind all the many Trump prosecutions is that, at this late stage of democratic decay, the law will serve as the system’s 11th-hour savior. But the law won’t stop Donald Trump from lying to himself—and seems unlikely to rescue a political and media order that keeps mistaking Trump’s nihilistic delusions for reasoned policy disagreement.”

Inappropriate reference to The Presidential Records Act

Stefan Beckett and Melissa Quinn consider what the Presidential Records Act means and how Trump gets it wrong (https://cbsnews.com/news/trump-presidential-records-act-indictment-arraignment). The article was published on June 13, 2023.

“Since the indictment charging him with 37 federal felony counts was unsealed last week, former President Donald Trump and some of his allies have repeatedly mischaracterized a law known as the Presidential Records Act, according to legal experts and the federal agency charged with preserving White House records.

“‘Under the Presidential Records Act, I’m allowed to do all this,” he wrote on Truth Social after the indictment was revealed, referring to his decision to retain dozens of boxes of documents and other material from his time in the White House. He repeated that claim in a speech in Georgia over the weekend, calling the charges a /fake indictment.’ 

“Former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore also misconstrued the law last week, telling CNN that outgoing presidents are ‘supposed to take the next two years after they leave office to go through all these documents to figure out what’s personal and what’s presidential.’

“Those assertions prompted a public rebuke from the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA. The agency released a statement detailing how presidential records are meant to be handled.

“‘The PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to [NARA] at the end of their administrations,’ the Archives said. 

NARA also refuted Parlatore’s assertion, saying that there is ‘no history, practice, or provision in law for presidents to take official records with them when they leave office to sort through, such as for a two-year period as described in some reports.’”

“Trump is not charged with violating the Presidential Records Act, which has no enforcement mechanism. But his repeated invocation of the law has renewed questions about what it says and how it applies to government documents.”

“Enacted in 1978, four years after President Richard Nixon’s resignation, the Presidential Records Act established that presidential records belong to the U.S. government, not the president personally, and must be preserved.”

“Records that must be preserved include documents relating to certain political activities and information relating to the president’s duties, including emails, text messages and phone records. Excluded from the act’s requirements for preservation are a president’s personal records, or documents of a ‘purely private or nonpublic character.’” 

“‘After his presidency, TRUMP was not authorized to possess or retain classified documents,’ the indictment said.

“Prosecutors are not relying on the PRA to bring charges against Trump. He is instead charged with retaining national defense information under a different law known as the Espionage Act, a 1917 statute that has been used to prosecute other high-profile cases related to the retention or dissemination of classified information. 

Going after Biden

In Legal Peril, Trump Tries to Shift the Spotlight to Biden

Michael D. Shear, a veteran White House correspondent, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and co-author of “The Border Wars,” reports on Trumps attempts to “shift the spotlight to Biden” (https://nytimes.com/2023/06/14/us/politics/trump-indictment-biden.html). Shear writes:

Under indictment and enraged, former President Donald J. Trump — with the help of Republican allies, social media supporters and Fox News — is lashing out at his successor in the hopes of undermining the charges against him.

“‘A corrupt sitting president!’ Mr. Trump blared on Tuesday night after being arrested and pleading not guilty in Miami. ‘The Biden administration has turned us into a banana republic,’ one of his longtime advisers wrote in a fund-raising email. ‘Wannabe dictator,’ read a chyron on Fox News, accusing Mr. Biden of having his political rival arrested.

“The accusations against Mr. Biden are being presented without any evidence that they are true, and Mr. Trump’s claims of an unfair prosecution came even after Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel specifically to insulate the inquiries from political considerations.

“But that hardly seems to be the point for Mr. Trump and his allies as they make a concerted effort to smear Mr. Biden and erode confidence in the legal system. Just hours after his arraignment, Mr. Trump promised payback if he wins the White House in 2024.

“‘I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,’ Mr. Trump said during remarks at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

“On Twitter, the former president’s followers used words like ‘traitor,’ disgrace,’ ‘corrupt’ and ‘biggest liar’ to describe the current president. And while Fox News said on Wednesday that the ‘wannabe dictator’ headline was ‘taken down immediately’ and addressed, the network counts Mr. Trump’s many followers as loyal viewers.”

(Also check out the article by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Habberman, “The Radical Strategy Behind Trump’s Promise to ‘Go After Biden’” (https://nytimes.com/2023/06/15/us/politics/trump-indictment-justice-department.html).

———–

Right-wing violence being encouraged?

There is evidence.

#1 – Violent rhetoric

Journalists at the New York Times, including Michael S. Schmidt, Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Adam Glodman, do find evidence (https://nytimes.com/2023/06/10/us/politics/trump-supporter-violent-rhetoric.html).

“The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action.”

As one example, they quote Kari Lake, the Republican former candidate for governor of Arizona, who has issued a call to Trump supporters to be ready for armed warfare.

“In Georgia, at the Republican state convention, Kari Lake, who refused to concede the Arizona election for governor in 2022 and who is an ardent defender of Mr. Trump, emphasized that many of Mr. Trump’s supporters owned guns.

“‘I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one is for you,’ Ms. Lake said. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”

“In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.

“The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him.

“Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be ‘wild.’”

“‘So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,’ said Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who has studied the ties between extremist rhetoric and violence. ‘Until that happens, there’s little deterrent to using this type of language.’”

On Saturday [June 10, 2023], in his first public remarks since the latest indictment on seven charges related to the retention of classified documents and efforts to obstruct justice, Mr. Trump attacked those investigating him as engaged in ‘demented persecution.’”

According to Schmidt et. al., “security experts said that the rhetoric and the threats from it were unlikely to subside and would likely become more pronounced as the case moves forward and the 2024 election nears.”

“‘Rhetoric like this has consequences,’ said Timothy J. Heaphy, the lead investigator for the select House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in the White House after his presidency. ‘People who we interviewed for the Jan. 6 investigation said they came to the Capitol because politicians and the president told them to be there. Politicians think that when they say things it’s just rhetoric, but people listen to it and take it seriously. In this climate politicians need to realize this and be more responsible.’”

#2 – Millions of Americans think violence is justifiedTop of Form

Bottom of Form

Kenny Stancil reports that “12 Million US Adults Think Violence Is Justified to Put Trump Back in White House” (https://commondreams.org/news/12-million-us-adults-think-violence-justified-to-restore-trump-presidency). The article was published on June 9, 2023.

“More than two years after the deadly January 6 insurrection, 12 million people in the United States, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe the use of violence is justified to restore former President Donald Trump to power, The Guardian reported Friday.” Stancil continues.

“In the two and a half years since Trump’s bid to overturn his 2020 loss fell short, Republican state lawmakers have launched a full-fledged assault on the franchise, enacting dozens of voter suppression and election subversion laws meant to increase their control over electoral outcomes. Due to obstruction from Republicans and corporate Democrats, Congress has failed to pass federal voting rights protections and other safeguards designed to prevent another coup attempt ahead of November 2024.

“‘We’re heading into an extremely tumultuous election season,’ Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor and CPOST director, told The Guardian. ‘What’s happening in the United States is political violence is going from the fringe to the mainstream.’”

“Several right-wing candidates who echoed Trump’s relentless lies about President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory lost in last year’s midterms. But more than 210 others—including at least two who participated in the January 6 rally that escalated into an attack on the U.S. Capitol—won congressional seats and races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, underscoring the extent to which election denialism is now entrenched in the GOP and jeopardizes U.S. democracy for the foreseeable future.

The CPOST survey conducted in April found that 20% of U.S. adults still believe “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president,” down only slightly from the 26% who said so in 2021.

“According to the newspaper, Pape compared ‘sentiments about political violence’ to ‘the kindling for a wildfire.’ While “many were unaware that the events on January 6 would turn violent, research shows that public support for violence was widespread, so the attacks themselves should not have come as a surprise.”

“‘Once you have support for violence in the mainstream, those are the raw ingredients or the raw combustible material and then speeches, typically by politicians, can set them off,’ said Pape. ‘Or if they get going, speeches can encourage them to go further.’”

“The research center’s most recent survey found that ‘almost 14%—a minority of Americans, but still a significant number—believe the use of force is justified to ‘achieve political goals that I support,’ the newspaper reported. ‘More specifically, 12.4% believe it’s justified to restore the federal right to abortion, 8.4% believe it’s justified to ensure members of Congress and other government officials do the right thing, 6.3% think it’s justified to preserve the rights of white Americans, and 6.1% believe it’s justified to prevent the prosecution of Trump.”

“‘There’s a tremendous amount of opposition to political violence in the United States,’ Pape remarked, ‘but it is not mobilized.’”

#3 – Building the infrastructure for violence

Thom Hartmann, a talk-show host and prolific author, considers how the GOP is building mini-fascist laboratories in Red States nationwide (https://commondreams.org/opinion/the-gop-is-building-mini-fascist-laboratories-in-red-states-nationwide). They are doing this “by asserting control over elections, purging tens of millions of voters off the rolls, destroying public schools, and arresting Black voters and parading them before cameras in shackles.” And it getting worse.

“This is the great danger at the state level for both American political parties as the GOP sinks deeper and deeper into its mire of regionalism, violence, racism, homophobia, misogyny, gun deaths, pollution, and victimhood, led by corrupt politicians like Trump, DeSantis, Kemp, and Abbott.”

“Generally, Red states are committed to making it difficult for all but middle-aged white people to vote (and trying to block the vote of college students); Blue states welcome the participation of as broad a cross-section of society as possible.

“Red states embrace guns, book and abortion bans, and pollution; Blue states are leading the way into pluralism, a clean energy future, and rebuilding their schools and infrastructure.

“The contrast is startling: a child living in Mississippi is fully ten times more likely to be killed with a gun than a child living in Massachusetts.

“Everybody in Oregon votes by mail and has for more than a quarter-century; Texas Republicans just made it extremely difficult for people in Houston to do the same, so they could force citizens in that very Blue city to take time off from work and stand in line for hours.

“A woman in California can get an abortion any time within the constraints of Roe v Wade; a woman or her family in Texas can get stalked, hit with $10,000 lawsuits, and even go to prison if she tries to do the same.

“Minnesota is joining 18 other states to become sanctuaries for trans people; being publicly trans in Florida can get you imprisoned or even killed.

“The differences between Red and Blue states are increasingly stark, and growing month-by-month as Red states pass more and more laws to regulate every intimate detail of people’s private lives.”

“Donald Trump and the fascists he has empowered are the main force leading the GOP into this doom spiral, with considerable help from billionaire-owned rightwing media. But this is not the first time this has happened in American history.”

Hartmann continues: “Republicans fall all over themselves in a mad rush to deliver more tax cuts to their billionaire owners, more pollution from the industries that fund their campaigns, more voting restrictions in parts of the states they control with large Black populations, and more guns to their citizens.

“Yesterday, The Washington Post noted, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) introduced legislation that would reinstate massive corporate tax loopholes, kill the new tax credits for electric vehicles and clean energy, and end a tax on toxic waste sites used to fund their cleanup.

“At the same time, Republican politicians from Florida to Arizona to Iowa are openly embracing the rhetoric of political violence. In Idaho, the party recently hosted a “Trigger Time With Kyle” event where donors could pay to shoot assault weapons with Kyle Rittenhouse.”

#4 – Republicans honor the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, as Trump is arrested

Dana Milbank reports on this (https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/16/house-gop-trump-indictment-reaction-jan-6). Here’s some of what he writes.

“During the very same hour in which the former president surrendered to federal authorities in Miami, his Republican allies in the House were, in their most visible and official way yet, embracing as heroes and martyrs the people who sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in hopes of overturning Trump’s election defeat.

“In the Capitol complex, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), with sidekick Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and four other far-right lawmakers, held a ‘hearing’ that honored participants in the riot, family members of Jan. 6 rioters and organizers of the attempted overthrow of the 2020 vote.

“Technically, Gaetz couldn’t call such a hearing, because he isn’t a committee chairman. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is trying to win back the support of extremists such as Gaetz, let it happen anyway.”

“Gaetz opened the hearing with a video suggesting FBI culpability in the Jan. 6 attack. He claimed he ‘became aware of evidence’ that the Justice Department had evidence of ‘fraud in the election’ but Trump Attorney General ‘Bill Barr was suppressing evidence.’”

“From the witness table came howls of ‘wrongful conviction’ and ‘fascism.’ From the dais came a cry of ‘tyranny.’ From both came attacks on judges, juries and prosecutors. Audience members were wearing T-shirts saying rioters had been ‘murdered by Capitol police.’ In the hallway, keeping the peace, were two Capitol Police officers, guarding the people accusing them of murder.”

Concluding thoughts

Trump, the Republican Party and their supporters are encouraging violence as one part of their strategy to win control in 2024 of the White House, both branches of the U.S. Congress, and states across the country. They now have the cult-like support of Trump’s massive electoral base and, additionally, much of the corporate community, right-wing media, and the Supreme Court.

If Trump’s indictment ends up putting him in jail, the country will be relieved of one aspiring autocrat. However, in such an eventuality, the interest groups that make up his “base” and the rich and wealthy benefactors of the Republican Party will not disappear. They will go on fighting for a less democracy and worse.

In this political context, with all its flaws, the Democratic Party is presently the only viable alternative with respect to preventing the Republican Party from taking the country down the road to an authoritarian political system.

Bob Sheak, June 8, 2023

Introduction

This post focuses on the unfolding and accelerating climate crisis and that, though there is not much time to gain some control over this crisis, there are innumerable people in the U.S. who are concerned about it and many thousands who engage in actions to address this problem. The Republican Party, many corporations, and right-wing supporters continually attempt to subvert efforts to adequately address this existential problem.

———–

Some Context

On February 1, 2023, I sent out a post with the title “Is it too late to curtail the progression of climate disruption and its calamitous effects?” (https://wordpress.com/post/vitalissues-bobsheak.com/2705).

I referred to recent books and authoritative reports that “give us a good understanding of the dire effects and projections of climate change (climate disruption, climate crisis, global warming), how fossil-fuel corporations and an array of other powerful corporate and political forces in and outside of government have created or supported false and misleading narratives denying climate change, deflecting attention away from it, or proffering false solutions (e.g., geoengineering). There are two themes that stand out.

We don’t have much time to prevent the ongoing increase in climate catastrophes from getting worse, and we have the know how to slow down, if not prevent, this from happening. In the final analysis, politics will make the difference.

Climate scientist Michael E. Mann’s main contention in his book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, published in 2021, is that there is an intransigent enemy, prominently the Republican Party and its corporate and wealthy benefactors, that threatens to make life on the planet less and less habitable, and that it will take an equally powerful force to stop them.

At the same time, Mann contends it is not too late to radically reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are the principal sources of climate change and, through domestic and international efforts, to limit the emissions enough to keep the global temperature from rising no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next decade. That would require at least a 50 percent reduction in fossil fuel emissions. To achieve this goal, he argues, policies based on science must be instituted, citizens must be “educated” about the facts and, some at least, must be or become active in the political process. The disinformation of the fossil fuel interests must be effectively challenged, and the government must, over the next decade institute policies to remove fossil fuels from the energy mix and replace them with renewables, energy efficiency, and other environmentally sustainable technologies.  

As time passes that there is little or no reason to expect the Republican Party or their allies and supporters to negotiate on this issue – or most issues – in good faith. See Steve Benen’s documentation of this point in his book, The Imposters: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics (publ. 2020). Kate Aronoff, Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – and How We Fight Back (publ. 2021). Geoff Dembicki analyzes the “far-right conspiracy to cover up climate change,” in his book, The Petroleum Papers (publ. 2022).

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Too little is being done to stop or reverse global warming

Meanwhile, oil, natural gas, and coal continue to provide most of the overall energy and electricity for the U.S, though there is some decline in the contribution of fossil fuels in the energy mix, as renewable energy sources increase their share of energy production. According to the U.S. Office of Energy and Renewable Energy, “renewable energy generates about 20% of all U.S. electricity, and that percentage continues to grow.” In 2021, wind accounted for 9.2%, hydropower 6.3%, solar 2.8%, biomass 1.3%, and geothermal 0.4%. (https://energy.gov/eere/renewable-energy#).

USA Facts provides data on the problematic energy consumption from petroleum or natural gas (https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/energy/#).

“About 68% of energy consumption is from petroleum or natural gas, while renewable and nuclear sources account for 20%. Coal production has declined since 2010. Natural gas and crude oil production are growing. Nuclear energy production, the nation’s leading non-fossil fuel energy source since 1984, has remained flat for two decades. Solar and wind energy are growing. Out of 7.8 million energy-related jobs in 2021, energy efficiency jobs comprised the largest share, employing 2.2 million people. Carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption rose in 2021 and 2022 after dropping in 2020.” 

Andrea Germanos reported on November, 2017, that nearly 17,000 scientists from 180 countries issued a warning to humanity about the advanced and unfolding disruptive changes in the “biosphere” in a letter published in the international journal BioScience. (2017). Unless humanity, that is the world’ governments, set about making transformative changes in their societies soon, the scientists believe that the best evidenced indicates that there will be “widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss.” The scientists are especially troubled by actually observed trends, that is, of rising greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, agricultural production, and the sixth mass extinction event underway” (http://commondreams.org/news/2017/11/13/over-1500-scientists-just-issued-second-notice-humanity-can-we-listen-now). With respect to agriculture, they are referring to the dominant agriculture system that relies on chemical fertilizers that degrade soil, generates carbon emissions, and overutilize and contaminate water sources.

To expedite the transition away from fossil fuels will require systemic changes of massive levels, including changes that would reduce, if not phase out, fossil fuels over the next three decades, in the U.S. and around the world.

Brad Plumer reports that “there is still one last chance to shift course…. But it would require industrialized nations to join together immediately to slash greenhouse gases roughly in half by 2030 and then stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s. If those two steps were taken, the world would have about a 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius…. Delays of even a few years would most likely make that goal unattainable, guaranteeing a hotter, more perilous future” (https://nytimes.com/2023/03/20/climate-global-warming-ipcc-earth.html

However, there are developments that could shatter any hope for resolving the climate crisis. Here’s one example. In an article published for The Atlantic magazine On March 18, 2023, Christian Elliott calls our attention to research on the danger that vast areas of permafrost could melt and release the greenhouse gas methane as temperatures rise (https://theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/permafrost-mercury-toxic-arctic-carbon-canada/673428). He writes:

“Covering nearly the same area as Norway, the Hudson Bay Lowlands in northern Ontario and Manitoba is home to the southernmost continuous expanse of permafrost in North America. Hudson Bay can stay frozen late into the summer, its ice-covered surface reflecting sunlight and keeping the surrounding area cold.

“Trapped in all that permafrost is an estimated 30 billion tons of carbon. It’s an unfathomable amount, Kirkwood says. With global warming, the permafrost is thawing, threatening to release a ‘carbon bomb’ of heat-trapping methane gas into the atmosphere.”

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Political obstacles in the U.S.

Climate Deniers in the 117th and 118th Congresses

Ari Drennen and Sally Hardin document that “there are [were] 139 elected officials in the 117th Congress who still deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change” (https://americanprogress.org/article/climate-deniers-117th-congress). Ari Drennen is the associate director of communications for the Energy and Environment War Room at the Center for American Progress. Sally Hardin is the Center’s director of the Energy and Environment War Room.

That 139 includes “109 representatives and 30 senators, who refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. All 139 of these climate-denying elected officials have made recent statements casting doubt on the clear, established scientific consensus that the world is warming—and that human activity is to blame. The same 139 climate-denying members have received more than $61 million in lifetime contributions from the coal, oil, and gas industries.

These numbers do not fully capture the position of Republicans in the U.S. Congress. Even those who do not take a public stand on the climate crisis, and are therefore not counted in the numbers cited by Drennen and Hardin, Republicans in the Congress vote together on relevant legislation. (The recent vote on the debt limit ceiling is an exception, but then only to avoid a first-time catastrophic default.)

Robinson Meyer illustrates this point on Republican partisanship in an article analyzing the vote on The Inflation Adjustment Act, a bill advanced by President Biden and Democrats in both houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by Biden on August 16, 2022 (https://theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/08/ira-climate-bill-house-vote-republicans/671133). Robinson notes that the legislation is “the first comprehensive climate legislation in U.S. history,” and it will authorize the spending of “roughly $374 billion on decarbonization and climate resilience over the next 10 years, getting us two-thirds of the way to America’s Paris Agreement goals.”

Here’s the point. No Republicans in the House supported the bill. “The IRA [Inflation Adjustment Act] was adopted entirely along party lines, with all Democrats and not a single congressional Republican in support of the legislation.” Meyer continues. In the Senate, “the bill passed only because there were 50 Democrats in the Senate, with a Democratic vice president to cast the tie-breaking vote. Had any of those Democrats lost their elections—had Joe Manchin, for instance, decided against running for reelection in 2018 in his heavily Republican home state, or had Democrats not eked out two Senate wins in Georgia last year—then the bill would not have made it across the finish line.”

Withal, Drennen and Hardin find it to be “stark and shocking” that there were 139 elected [Republican] officials in the U.S. Congress who are willing publicly and without apology to deny the empirically-based scientific consensus, despite the obvious effects of climate change now accelerating across the country and globe. In the political partisan environment, most other Republicans in the Congress go along with the anti-scientific position.

Drennen and Hardin point out that there is an urgency about climate change that requires attention. A climate catastrophe “is no longer a distant threat looming in the future—nor has it been for quite some time. In 2020, there were 22 extreme weather events that caused damage in the United States that exceeded $1 billion each, a new annual record that shattered the previous record of 16 events that happened in both 2011 and 2017. With the backdrop of a deadly pandemic, Americans last year [2021] had to flee their homes in the face of out-of-control wildfires and an unprecedented number of hurricanes and seek shelter from sweltering heat waves—events that exacerbate already-troubling racial and economic inequalities.”

The fossil fuel industry’s funding of climate denial

As already noted, “The 139 climate science deniers have accepted more than $61 million in lifetime direct contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industries, which comes out to an average of $442,293 per elected official of Congress that denies climate change. This figure includes all contributions above the Federal Election Commission’s mandated reporting threshold of $200 from management, employees, and political action committees in the fossil fuel industries. Not included in this data are the many other avenues available to fossil fuel interests to influence campaigns and elected officials. For example, oil, gas, and coal companies spent heavily during the 2020 election cycle to keep the Senate under the control of former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)—a known climate denier—with major oil companies like Valero, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips contributing more than $1 million each to the conservative Senate Leadership Fund.”

“This analysis only shows direct, publicly disclosed contributions to federal candidates. The fossil fuel industry regularly spends millions of dollars of dark money advertising to the public; shaping corporate decisions; lobbying members of Congress; and otherwise funding the infrastructure that makes climate denial politically feasible and even profitable.”

The reality that so many members of Congress and senators—including many newly elected officials—deny basic science leaves the overwhelming majority of the American people who accept the evidence with a grueling task ahead. Without bold new investments in a clean energy economy and an end to the practice of subsidizing fossil fuel extraction, the agents of doubt peddling climate change misinformation will have succeeded in darkening not just the future but also the shape of the present as well.

——————

At least 149 GOP members of the present, 118th Congress, are STILL willing to reject openly the reality of climate science.

Meteor Blades, a writer and contributing editor at DailyKos, documents that there are “at least 149 GOP members of Congress STILL reject the reality of climate change” (https://redgreenandblue.org/2022/12/15/least-149-gop-members-congress-still-reject-reality-climate-science). That is up 10 from the 117th Congress. Blades writes:

“I include as a denier any elected official who argues in favor of expanding oil and gas production while simultaneously calling for reducing the regulatory authority of the EPA or abolishing it altogether. Low rankings on the League of Conservation Voters congressional scorecard provides additional evidence of a tendency toward denial.”

He continues.

“It would be bad enough if all these lawmakers were merely fools. However, most of them know climatologists’ warnings aren’t fake news. This doesn’t stop them from continuing to regurgitate debunked propaganda that the fossil fuel industry has for four decades been paying shills to disinform the public about. Nor does it spur them to take legislative action to address what scientists say we must. They don’t care. And if fattening their wallet accompanies their not caring, so much the better.

“These days, ‘hoax’ has mostly been replaced with some version of ‘the climate is always changing.’ This subterfuge fails to acknowledge that scientists agree with this hoary truism but simultaneously warn that the speed with which the changes are coming is unprecedented since modern humans left Africa tens of thousands of years ago. Not to mention that the overwhelming majority of climatologists have concluded that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions is causing this rapid change.

In addition to explicit and publicly out-spoken climate deniers, there are other Republicans reasonably suspected of harboring such views. For Blades, “any member of Congress who doesn’t put the climate crisis among at least their Top 5 priorities counts at this late date as a denier no matter how much they claim to accept what scientists are telling us.”

He also refers to “denier-adjacents,” whose “statements are ambiguous enough to give them a pass. Many Republican candidates, incumbents or not, also escape the list by simply avoiding mentioning climate altogether.”

“There are a multitude of those denier-adjacents in the current cycle, including Eric Burlison of Missouri’s 7th district, Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon’s 5th, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona’s 6th and Eli Crane of Arizona’s 7th, Anthony D’Esposito of New York’s 4th, Monica de la Cruz of Texas’s 15th, Brad Finstad of Minnesota’s 1st, Erin Houchin of Indiana’s 9th, Jen Kiggans of Virginia’s 2nd, and Anna Luna of Florida’s 13th.”

———–

Recent evidence of a warming planet

There is ever-more evidence that the planet continues to warm and the “systemic” changes that are needed are not being realized soon enough. Indeed, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)reports on May 17, 2023, that “Global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fueled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño event (https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/global-temperatures-set-reach-new-records-next-five-years). Consider WMO evidence.

Surface temperatures

“There is a 66% likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.  There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.

“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years. However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.”

“‘A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory,’ he said. ‘This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared,’ said Prof. Taalas.”

Ocean temperatures

The WMO report also points out “human-induced greenhouse gases are leading to more ocean heating and acidification, sea ice and glacier melt, sea level rise and more extreme weather.”

Likely to exceed 1.5C global climate temperature goal of Paris Agreement

“The Paris Agreement sets long-term goals to guide all nations to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 °C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 °C, to avoid or reduce adverse impacts and related losses and damages.

—————

Mel Gurtov, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective, an international affairs quarterly and blogs at In the Human Interest, considers highlights of “the latest IPCC report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on global warming, the most comprehensive scientific report to date” (https://counterpunch.org/2023/04/04/the-climate-time-bomb).

The report “was approved by 195 governments, and synthesizes the results of countless other scientific reports as well as summarizes its six previous assessments.” Alas, “the IPCC contributing authors keep issuing warnings, governments keep making dubious promises, and worsening environmental conditions keep multiplying. We’re approaching a tipping point but no authority exists to stop our passing it.” We are told yet again “that 2030 is the year of living dangerously—when humanity must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half, and then proceed to stop them altogether by 2050.”

Indeed, “Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least two million years” and the prospects to curtail and/or reduce global warming “are very small.” Gurtov adds: “The planet has already warmed to 1.1 degrees C. above pre-industrial levels, and every year we see heat records being set around the world.” We are headed for 2.0 degrees C – and more.

Meanwhile,

“Governments will violate their pledges on climate change whenever their economies need pumping up—such as China’s decision to permit 168 new coal-fired power plants to be built, or the US decision to go ahead with the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.” Additionally, populations, especially in the richest countries refuse to “change their habits.”  

“They (we!) want more plastic packaging, more air conditioning, more access to food from far away, more oil and gas, more lumber from old forests, more water to combat the drought they helped create, more homes where they shouldn’t be built, and more government bailouts when things go wrong.

Gurtov amplifies his point, writing:

“Climatologists are not saying that the world will end as we approach 2.0 degrees C. of warming. What they are saying is that living conditions for nearly everyone will be profoundly affected by changes in weather, including health and safety for many millions of people and other species.” If current trends continue, the effects will be catastrophic.

* The rich-poor gap in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) continues to grow: “The 10% of households with the highest per capita emissions contribute 34–45% of global consumption-based household GHG emissions, while the bottom 50% contribute 13–15%.”

* Food and water security is endangered: “Roughly half of the world’s population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year due to a combination of climatic and non-climatic drivers.” As many as 2.4 billion people will experience water scarcity by 2050, and millions more will not have access to safe sanitation in water supplies.

* Extreme heat is responsible for increased deaths, water-borne diseases, and displaced persons in all world regions. “Compound heatwaves and droughts are projected to become more frequent . . . Due to relative sea level rise, current 1-in-100 year extreme sea level events are projected to occur at least annually in more than half of all tide gauge locations by 2100 under all considered scenarios. Other projected regional changes include intensification of tropical cyclones and/or extratropical storms, and increases in aridity and fire weather.”

* Every increment of global warming increase will increase the risks and make them more difficult to manage. “Multiple climatic and non-climatic risk drivers will interact, resulting in compounding overall risk and risks cascading across sectors and regions. Climate-driven food insecurity and supply instability, for example, are projected to increase with increasing global warming, interacting with non-climatic risk drivers such as competition for land between urban expansion and food production, pandemics and conflict.”

(Democracy Now reported the following headline in its online program on June 7, 2023:

“A new study published this week by Nature Communications finds the Arctic is expected to be ice-free during the summer months starting as early as the 2030s. Even in a best-case emissions reduction scenario — which the world is not currently on track to achieve — scientists say the loss of Arctic sea ice in the summer is now inevitable in the next few decades” (https://democracynow.org/2023/6/7/headlines/arctic_summers_could_be_ice_free_by_next_decade)).”

Not enough is being done

“As usual,” Gurtov writes, “the IPCC report does mention multiple ways in which adaptation and mitigation can affect climate change. All are quite familiar, such as more efficient use of resources, better forest management, carbon capture of fossil fuels, sustainable land use, electric vehicles, and more efficient buildings. There’s never been a problem imagining a net-zero carbon world. Here and there, these changes are being accepted. But for every piece of good news, there’s an ‘on the other hand.’ For example:

* From 2035 on, new gasoline-powered cars and most heavy trucks cannot be sold in California, and only zero-emission cars can be sold in New York. That’s two big states, but it leaves 48 others.

* Greenpeace reportsthat an international group is now putting together a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty. (Worst offender? Coca-Cola.) But only a tiny fraction of plastics is being recycled, and more than 170 trillion plastic particles are found in the ocean alone.

* The soft-energy path is catching on. As the IPCC reports: “From 2010– 2019 there have been sustained decreases in the unit costs of solar energy (85%), wind energy (55%), and lithium ion batteries (85%), and large increases in their deployment, e.g., >10x for solar and >100x for electric vehicles, varying widely across regions.” But: “Public and private finance flows for fossil fuels are still greater than those for climate adaptation and mitigation.” Any wonder why oil and gas company profits are at their highest level ever? BP, for example, reported $28 billion in profits in 2022, and ExxonMobil reported $56 billion in profits. These companies have, without embarrassment, announced they will be scaling back commitments to move toward renewable energy.”

————-

A devastating start to 2023: 7 weather/climate disasters, 97 lives lost, billions in damage

Dinah Voyles Pulver reports on climate/energy related costs that ran to $1 billion or more just in the first four months of 2023 (https://usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/05/09/billion-dollar-weather-disasters-to-start-2023-noaa-says-70195541007). She refers to evidence from NOAA.

“The disasters – with preliminary total costs estimated at $19 billion – are the second most on record for the first four months of the year, even adjusted for inflation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday [May 8, 2023].

“The California flooding and six other billion-dollar storm events claimed 97 lives, the agency said.

“It’s also been a record warm year so far for seven states and among the top 10 warmest for another 21 states, NOAA said.” The top seven include: Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.”

Pulver continues.

“The U.S. isn’t the only country seeing record warmth in some locations. April was the fourth warmest on record globally, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Monday. Spain, Portugal and Morocco recorded their highest-ever April temperatures, according to the Copernicus summary.

“Meanwhile, the BBC reported that Thanh Hoa, a province in Vietnam, reported its highest ever temperature last week, about 111 degrees Fahrenheit.”

What are NOAA’s billion-dollar disasters this year?

California flooding, January-March, 3.5 billion

Northeastern winter storm / cold wave, February 2-5, $1.5 billion

Two South and Eastern severe weather outbreaks, March 2-3 and March 24-26, $6.4 billion

Central tornado and Eastern severe weather outbreak, March 31-April 1, $4.3 billion

Central and Eastern severe weather, April 4-6, $2.2 billion

Central and Southern severe weather, April 15, $1.0 billion

————

Examples of efforts and programs to contain, slow down, and/or reverse the greenhouse gases that are the principal causes of rising temperatures and their effects?

#1 – The Biden administration (https://earthjustice.org/article/biden-administration-climate-scorecard). The article on the Earth Justice website was published on May 19, 2023. It lists the climate/energy related achievements of the administration. And, bear in mind, these achievements would not have occurred if the pro-fossil-fuel Republicans and their supporters had been in control of the White House and Congress. The achievements.

• Protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from drilling
• Accelerate transmission infrastructure in an equitable way
• Secure strong efficiency standards
• Direct 40% of climate investment benefits to the communities most impacted by pollution
• Defend Tribal sovereignty
• Protect forests that absorb climate pollution
• Ensure bioenergy initiatives provide real climate benefits
• Strengthen methane pollution standards for the oil and gas industry
• Cut carbon and hazardous air pollution from power plants

#2 – Keep hope alive

This is one of the principal themes in the book, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Edited by Rebecca Solnit & Thelma Young Lutunatabua, it is a collection of short essays that reflect the book’s title. It’s about hope, commitment, activism, voting and the need to join and support social movements aimed at reducing dependence on fossil fuels and shifting to climate-friendly renewable energy alternatives. One essay lists 80 “climate victories” over the years from 1974 through 2022, reflecting widespread and growing activism (pp. 92-102). Solnit offers the following examples of myriad types of activism aimed at stopping and reversing global warming.

“Climate activists have blockaded roads, pipeline paths, and fracking sites, gone on…hunger strikes, tree sits, marches, long walks, rallies, FridaysForFuture weekly protests; have orchestrated divestment campaigns, petitions, phone-ins, die-ins, sit-ins, educational campaign; blockaded harbors with kayaks; hung banners from bridges; doused nude figures in fake oil in London’s Tate’s Modern museum while it was taking money from BP; painted morals in the street; staged mock trials; shut down thousands of coal plants and prevented others from being built; stopped fossil-fuel leases and pipelines; blockaded oil trains; interrupted board meetings; organized shareholders; raised money; and, more important, raised consciousness” (p. 8).

Among the climate victories is this one: “In 2022, investments in renewables outstripped investments in conventional energy for the first time” (p. 9).

Leah Cardamore Stokes gives this example. “Consider the key clean technologies: solar, wind, batteries, and heat pumps. Over the past several decades, the cost of each of these technologies have fallen rapidly.” For example, the cost of an American household to rely on solar photovoltaics for a month has dropped from $300,000 in 1957 to just $30 today (p 49).

In an essay titled “In Praise of Indirect Consequences,” Sonet writes:

“Activism routinely consists of a movement, a manifesto, a group demanding something and not getting it, at least not at first. Too often, people seem to think that if there are not immediate and obvious consequences, there’s failure. In reality, what happens in response is often more subtle, delayed, unpredictable, incremental, and indirect – and yet still valuable and significant, sometimes more so – than simple formulas and short timelines account for. Often those consequences continue to ripple outward and unfold for decade afterward” (p. 130). She adds: “The Green New Deal, longtime activists agree, changed the whole conversation about what is possible and what we want…. It was a jobs- and infrastructure program, and a farm program, and a justice program.” It later became a “template for Biden’s climate platform” (p. 135).

#3 – Minnesota as a role model, with Democrats in control of the state government

Minnesota Emerges as the Midwest’s Leader in the Clean Energy Transition

In an article on Inside Climate News, Aydali Campa points out that Minnesota as emerged as the Midwest’s leader in the clean energy transition, moving ahead of Illinois (https://insidelclimatenews.org/news/31052023/minnesota-clean-energy-leader).

On May 24, 2023, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill that advances the state’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Campa elaborates as follows.

“Legislative sessions recently wrapped up in the two Midwestern states that saw the most clean energy transition efforts in the first quarter of the year. The states, where Democrats control both legislative chambers and have Democratic governors, saw a slew of bills introduced this session promoting clean energy and environmental justice. Still, each had generally different aims and outcomes.  

“Experts say the difference in each state’s number of actions taken and how many of those measures were enacted can also be attributed to differences in electric utility markets between the two states, when their 100 percent clean energy standards were set and the political makeup of their legislative bodies. Minnesota’s Senate flipped from Republican to Democratic control in the 2022 midterms.” 

“In February, Minnesota passed a 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2040 law that also streamlines permitting for renewable energy projects, defines what qualifies as renewable energy and ensures that constructing or retrofitting of major electric facilities receive the prevailing wage in the state. The new law also includes provisions excluding large polluting incinerators near environmental justice communities from counting toward its 100 percent target and ensuring that all Minnesotans have access to and benefit from clean and renewable energy.

“On top of setting one of the country’s most ambitious clean energy standards, Minnesota also passed a new rule requiring regulators to consider existing pollution levels in an area before granting or renewing a permit within or near an environmental justice community.”

————–

Concluding thoughts

The U.S. and all nations now face many crises, some of which could destroy the world as we know it. Certainly, the climate crisis is one such crisis, along with the growing threat of nuclear war. It doesn’t help that as the earth’s population continues to grow, mining, agricultural, and ranching continue to encroach on and destroy the dwindling habitable parts of the earth, consumption levels by the rich and the more economically prosperous countries seemingly have no restraint in their consumption levels, the rich and powerful resist environmental restrictions, and, in the U.S., the Republican Party at all levels of government oppose regulations and even encourage increased dependence on fossil fuels.   

The situation is getting so bad environmentally that in some parts of the U.S. (e.g., California, eastern Kentucky, Louisiana, Florida) insurance companies are refusing to insure home owners and businesses protection or charging exorbitant rates, according to a news item written by  Christopher Flavelle, Jill Cowan and Ivan Penn, (https://nytimes.com/2023/05/31/climate-change-insurance.html).

Though bad, the situation is not yet hopeless. There is certainly a need to limit corporate power generally and fossil fuels specifically. This goal can be advanced by a progressive political party, by energized environmental movements, and by an informed and active electorate. The agenda: enforcing anti-trust law, phasing out fossil fuels, increasing support for climate-friendly options like solar, wind, geothermal, along with sweeping energy efficiency measures, ending subsidies to fossil-fuel corporations, banning the US export of natural gas and oil, providing transitional support for workers who are displaced from fossil-fuel jobs, and educating the public about sustainable lifestyle options and what makes for a “resilient community.” See the book, The Community Resilience Reader, for multiple views on resilient communities, and David Miller’s book, Solved: How the World’s Great Cities are Fixing the Climate Crisis.

May 28 2023

Trump and his electoral base, the Republican Party, and powerful and wealthy supporters are systematically working to end America’s tenuous, partisan-divided democracy and replace it with a minority-controlled, right-wing rule. They are doing this from the bottom up, across local communities, in already “red” states, and all the way up to the federal government and federal judiciary.

They are accomplishing this by advancing an extreme, anti-democratic agenda, which involves suppressing the votes of opponents, fueling racism, outlawing reproductive rights of women, promoting maximum access and deregulation of guns, scapegoating immigrants trying to enter the country, separating immigrant children at the border from their parents, and supporting policies and programs that benefit the rich and powerful (e.g., low taxes, deregulation, privatization). There is more.

In true Social Darwinist fashion, they oppose social-welfare programs that benefit the poor and working- and even middle-classes. They favor banning books, encouraging parents to criticize teachers for any subject matter that makes their children “uncomfortable.” They are subverting public education generally by diverting money from public schools to school vouchers, for-profit charter schools and home-schooling. They also want to end the separation of state and religion, replacing it with Christian Nationalism. They deny or avoid the scientifically established climate emergency and want to give oil and gas mega-corporations unhindered access to public sources of such energy.

If they have their way, America will end up with something like a modern fascist, but unstable, state. That is, it will be a government dominated by the rich and powerful, particularly mega-corporations and billionaires, by the Republican Party, by Trump’s right-wing electoral base, and by the partisan Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Trump, the Republican Party and their allies have been threatening to push the country toward economic, political, and social chaos by making demands in the present debt-limit crisis that could lead to the collapse of the economy.Trump wants the House Republicans to pass their bill and get everything they want regardless of the consequences for the domestic and global economies

(https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/24/trump-language-policy-2024-race).

It remains to be seen whether the country will experience such a calamitous outcome.

But on late May 27, 2023, President Biden and House leader Kevin McCarthy reached an agreement “in principle” that may avoid such an outcome.

The legislation will soon be voted on in the House and Senate, though it is not at all yet certain that the Party leaders in the two branches of the Congress will be able to get the votes to pass the compromised legislation in time to avoid default.

I first consider the meaning and implications of the Republican demands and then consider information on what’s in the compromised legislation designed to avoid default.

—————-

PART 1: THE DEBT-LIMIT CRISIS

Default?

It’s meaning and potential effects

Monica Potts, a senior politics reporter at FiveThirtyEight, considers the meaning and impacts of a government default (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/debt-ceiling-default-consequences). Here’s some of what she writes in this May 26, 2023, analysis.

“With less than a week until the U.S. runs out of cash, economists and policymakers are using words like ‘cataclysmic event’ and ‘calamity’ to describe what will happen if Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit. 

“It seems bad. Economists are predicting that if the government is unable to pay its bills, it could bring much of the global financial system to a halt. But everyday people will be affected too. So who would a failure to raise the debt limit hurt first — and who would be hurt the most?

“You can think of the impact of the default as a sinkhole, pulling down the people closest to the epicenter first but spreading out to more and more people until (depending on how long it lasts) it finally engulfs the U.S. economy. The first people who are likely to be affected are those who get money directly from the government, including government employees and recipients of government direct payments, like retirees, veterans and disabled Americans who rely on social security income. Soon, though, the government’s inability to pay its bills might hit health care providers who are reimbursed through Medicare and Medicaid. Homebuyers, too, could get hit by higher interest rates, making it even more difficult for them to purchase houses in an already-competitive market. All of this adds up to a potential economic slowdown that could cause a severe recession if the crisis drags on.”

Potts elaborates on the consequences of a default.

“A lot of people rely on the government to pay its bills on time. There are almost 2 million federal government employees whose direct income could be affected. That doesn’t include the roughly 1.3 million active-duty military personnel, as of last count, and an additional 3.9 million veterans who receive disability support.

“The government could furlough or lay off workers in an effort to save money during a debt-ceiling crisis, leaving many of these people without an income. These tradeoffs could start to happen immediately, since one of the first bills that’s coming due is $12 billion in promised veterans’ benefits on June 1, and an additional $5 billion in federal salaries and insurance is scheduled to be paid out on June 9, according to an analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“Additionally, just about 66 million Americans received some form of social security benefit, like retirement or disability income, as of the end of 2022. That number included 7.6 million disabled workers who receive Social Security Disability Insurance. Federal policy already limits the ability of recipients to save, because of asset limits, and the amount of additional income allowed, so going without any one check could pose a severe hardship, said Kimberly Knackstedt, director of the Disability Economic Justice Team at the left-leaning The Century Foundation. “That sort of insecurity of, ‘Is this check that’s already not enough to get housing and food going to come this month, or is it not,’ is causing serious concern for us and for people around the country,” Knackstedt said.

“Almost 6 million people are receiving unemployment payments, too. While unemployment insurance is administered by the states, it relies on federal money that could also be disrupted, according to Bernard Yaros, an economist at Moody’s Analytics who focuses on federal fiscal policy. The government has multiple Social Security payments set throughout the month of June, according to the BPC analysis, which could be delayed.

Industries that contract with the federal government

“And it’s not just individuals who rely on government payments. Industries that contract with the federal government, like the aerospace industry and defense contractors, are vulnerable, according to Moody’s. Health care institutions could also suffer, especially small and rural hospitals, because they rely on Medicaid and Medicare payments for much of their revenue. States heavily reliant on these industries, like Virginia, could see hits to their local economy that might be bigger than the impact on the country as a whole.” 

Homebuyers

“Homebuyers would also be hard hit. The housing market, walloped by dramatic ups and downs during the COVID-19 pandemic, is just reaching a tenuous stability. Mortgage interest rates remain high, which has kept some buyers out of the market, but there are just enough buyers and sellers to see some activity. That could all change with a crash, which is what might happen if large numbers of people are suddenly pushed out of the market by higher rates. Jeff Tucker, a senior economist at the real-estate marketplace Zillow, estimated that rates could go up by an additional 2 percentage points. If that happened, he said, “the housing market would get pushed down further 23 percent from … the pace we were expecting for this summer.”

“Moreover, homebuying remains an important wealth-building tool, and it’s already been a market where those looking for affordable options have struggled to gain a foothold. A longer default could mean that rates remain high for a while, making it even more difficult for non-wealthy people to buy. “I think the longer term impact there will be to widen inequality from a wealth-building perspective,” Tucker said.

“White adults are already much more likely to be able to afford a home, and the median age of first-time homebuyers is rising. A debt default crisis would make that problem worse just as a diverse generation of millennials enters prime home-buying years, he said.

The entire economy

“Then there’s the threat to the broader economy, which isn’t as direct, but is still very serious. Think about it this way: In addition to the tumult that’s likely to ensue in the financial markets, if all of the people who rely on the government for payments are suddenly struggling, then those effects will ripple out to the economy, because they and the other recipients of government payments won’t be buying goods and services to the same degree. That’s part of the reason economists warn that a debt default could create a recession, even if the crisis is short. A prolonged crisis could have severe consequences, especially because the economy is already fragile. 

“Moody’s calculated the result of a short debt-ceiling breach as a 0.7 percent decline in real GDP, 1.5 million jobs lost and an unemployment rate that nears 5 percent. But a debt-ceiling breach that lasts through July would cause “economic carnage.” The Moody’s report forecasts real GDP would fall by 4.6 percent in the second half of this year, and an unemployment rate that rises to 8 percent. The downturn could have lasting effects in the form of higher interest rates and reduced growth throughout the next decade.

“In all, though, the financial credibility of the American government itself could be seriously harmed — which could have long-term economic impacts on ordinary people too. In 2011, a similar debt-ceiling fight led S&P to downgrade the U.S.’s credit rating, and something like that could happen again, costing taxpayers money. (Indeed, Fitch, a major credit-rating agency, has already issued a warning.)”

————

Time is running out to avoid default

Alan Rappeport, an economic policy reporter, based in Washington, reports on a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center that the government is on the edge of defaulting on the government debt (https://nytimes.com/2023/05/23/business/debt-limit-default-xdate-report.html). He puts it this way:

“The United States faces an ‘elevated risk’ of running out of cash to pay its bills between June 2 and 13 if Congress does not raise or suspend the nation’s debt limit, according to an analysis released on Tuesday [May 23] by the Bipartisan Policy Center, an influential think tank that carefully tracks federal spending.”

“It comes amid negotiations between the White House and Republicans in Congress to reach an agreement that would also lift the $31.4 trillion borrowing cap.”

Rappeport continues.

“The center said that the Treasury Department would be operating on ‘dangerously low’ cash reserves after Memorial Day and that each day in June would come with increasing risk. The department has been using accounting maneuvers known as extraordinary measures to delay a default since the United States technically hit the debt limit in January, but those are expected to be exhausted soon.

“The center noted that the federal government could get a reprieve if it can muster sufficient revenue to make it to June 15, when quarterly tax payments are due. That could push a default, the so-called X-date, into July.

“However, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said this week that she thought it was unlikely that the federal government would have enough cash on hand to make it to mid-June.

“In a letter to Congress on Monday, Ms. Yellen reiterated her estimate that the X-date could arrive as soon as June 1 (subsequently, moved to June 5). Her warning did not come with the caveats included in her previous updates, which had suggested that the government’s cash reserves could potentially last for a few additional weeks. Instead, she emphasized the urgency of the situation.

“‘If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, it would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests,’ Ms. Yellen said.”

———–

House Republicans believe they have an advantage in the negotiations over the debt-ceiling crisis

Jake Johnson reports on May 24, 2023, that Matt Gaetz has publicly confirmed that Republicans view the US Economy as “Our Hostage” (https://commondreams.org/news/matt-gaetz-debt-ceiling-hostage). He makes his point as follows.

“Through their actions in recent months, House Republicans have made clear that they view the debt ceiling standoff as a hostage situation that they can exploit to advance their political agenda—which includes draconian cuts to social programs and massive handouts to the fossil fuel industry.

On Tuesday, just days before the June 1 “X-date,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) came right out and admitted it, telling reporters that “my conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow, and they don’t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage.”

Semafor‘s Joseph Zeballos-Roig published audio of Gaetz’s comments on Twitter:

The Limit, Save, Grow Act is legislation that Republicans passed in a party-line vote last month, staking out their position that the debt ceiling shouldn’t be raised unless rich tax cheats are protected and an axe is taken to spending on federal nutrition assistance, Medicaid, affordable housing, childcare, and other key programs.

“The House GOP, officially led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) but heavily influenced by the far-right Freedom Caucus, has held to that position, threatening to force a debt default and unleash global economic chaos unless their demands are met.

“Gaetz, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested Tuesday that the deal McCarthy struck with his far-right flank to secure the speakership—specifically the rule allowing just one lawmaker to call a vote to unseat the speaker—has kept the Republican leader committed to debt ceiling brinkmanship.”

————-

Examples of what House Republicans have demanded

McCarthy wants to reduce government spending, without any tax increases or limits on the military budget

McCarthy insists that the debt limit crisis can be resolved by reducing spending, with the exception of military spending. He and his Republican conference oppose any increases in federal taxes – indeed want cuts – but favor large increases in military spending. He and his supporters seem to think that Biden and House (and Senate) Democrats will ultimately concede to Republican demands rather than see the federal government defaulting on the national debt.

On taxes, Peter Certo reports on May 25, 2023, that previous tax cuts are a major contributor to the mounting national debt, followed by bipartisan military spending (https://commondreams.org/opinion/gop-does-not-care-about-national-debt).

Republicans want more tax cuts

Despite this history and current turmoil over the debt-limit, the Republicans plan to “Unveil Deficit-Exploding Tax Cuts for the Rich Two Weeks After Debt Limit X-Date,” according to Jake Johnson (https://commondreams.org/news/gop-tax-cuts-debt-limit). He reports in this May 24, 2023 story that

“With the U.S. careening toward a default crisis that they manufactured, House Republicans are reportedly crafting a major tax cut package that would overwhelmingly benefit the rich and corporations while blowing a multitrillion-dollar hole in the federal deficit.

“The fresh push for tax cuts, according to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), further shows that ‘this hostage crisis has never been about deficits for the GOP.’

“‘It has always been about wealth transfer—taking away food and healthcare from the poor and middle class to give away $3 trillion more in tax cuts to their rich friends,’ Omar, the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted Tuesday [May 23, 2023].

“Politico reported earlier this week that Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee hope to finish work on their emerging tax legislation by June 16, just over two weeks after the so-called “X-date’—the day on which the Treasury Department expects the federal government to run out of money to cover its obligations unless Congress raises the debt limit or President Joe Biden acts unilaterally

In a May 22, 2023, article, Sasha Abramsky posits that “The GOP Would Rather Hold Hungry Families Hostage Than Tax the Wealthy” (https://truthout.org/articles/the-gop-would-rather-hold-hungry-families-hostage-than-tax-the-wealthy).

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Military spending – off limits

In a May 24, 2023, article, Brett Wilkins cites a report showing how $1.1 trillion in annual US militarized spending is “crushing society” (https://commondreams.org/news/us-military-spending).

“As the United States barrels headlong toward a possible historic debt default, a report published Wednesday highlights that the majority of this year’s federal discretionary funds were used for militarized programs, while urging the U.S. government to re-prioritize spending to serve human needs instead of the mechanisms and machinery of violence.

“The report—entitled The Warfare State: How Funding for Militarism Compromises Our Welfare—was published by the Institute for Policy Studies’ National Priorities Project (NPP), which aims to inspire people and movements ‘to take action so our federal resources prioritize peace, shared prosperity, and economic security for all.’

“Our country’s economy faces a dire threat from so-called ‘fiscal conservatives,’ including the present GOP House majority, who have resorted to dangerous brinkmanship to force deep cuts in the federal discretionary budget,” the report states, referring to what critics and even one congressional Republican have called called ‘hostage-taking’ over the ‘debt ceiling’.

“‘The discretionary budget contains the Pentagon budget as well as a number of other broadly militarized line items, including nuclear weapons, federal immigration enforcement, law enforcement, prisons, and so on,’ the paper continues. ‘That same budget also hosts most social programs outside of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and [the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program]. It includes federal jobs programs, education, scientific research, and the like.”

“‘The militarized portion of this budget is by far its largest single component,’ the report stresses. ‘And yet the same legislators demanding billions in discretionary savings have vowed to exempt that militarized spending from any cuts. Instead, they’ve targeted the much smaller portion that funds human and community needs for even deeper cuts.”

For fiscal year 2023, that militarized portion amounts to $1.1 trillion, or 62% of the $1.8 trillion federal discretionary budget. That leaves less than 40% of funds for investments in human needs like housing, education, childcare programs, disaster relief, the environment, and scientific research.

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House Republicans could care less about the poor and lower-income Americans

Yes, poverty is a problem in the US

This question is addressed in recently published books on poverty. Mark Rank, distinguished professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis, is the author of one of the books, The Poverty Paradox: Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity (publ. 2023). His research finds tens of millions of people in poverty, based on estimates for 2021. Rank writes:

“For 2021, 11.6% of the population fell below the official poverty line, representing 37.9 million individuals; 19.4% [63.8 million] experienced poverty or near-poverty; and 5.5% were living in extreme poverty” [50% or less of the official poverty line, including 18.2 million individuals] (pp. 14-15).

Most Americans will experience poverty sometime or many times during their lives. According to Rank,

“Results indicate that between the ages of 20 and 75, nearly 60% of Americans will experience at least 1 year below the official poverty line, while three-quarters of Americans will encounter poverty or near poverty (150% below the official poverty line).” He continues: “Between the ages of 20 and 35, 31.4% will have experienced poverty; by age 55, 45.0%; and by age 75, 58.5%. Similarly, 76.0 percent of the population will have spent at least 1 year below 150% of the official poverty line by the time they reach age 75” (pp. 109-110).

Poverty is typically a great, overwhelming burden on the poor and near-poor

Sociologist Matthew Desmond covers much of the same ground as Rank does in his recent book, Poverty in America (publ. 2023). He has an interesting analysis of the specific impacts that poverty has on poor and near-poor people. They have too little income or regular income, either from work or social/welfare programs, to pay for basic needs. But poverty is about more than inadequate income.

Physical pain

-They suffer physical pain or injuries from the work they do. For example, back pain from working as home health aides and certified nursing assistants, amputations in meatpacking plants.

-The adversities of living in slum housing, with the spread of asthma “from mold and cockroach allergens seeping into young lungs and airways,” lead poisoning….”

-“Roughly one in four children living in poverty have untreated cavities, which can morph into tooth decay, causing sharp pain and spreading infection to their faces and even brains” (pp. 13-14).

Trouble finding safe and affordable housing

-“Most renting families below the poverty line now spend at least half of their income on housing, with one in four spending more than 70 percent on rent and utility costs alone.” Evictions are common: “More than 3.6 million eviction filings are taped to doors or handed to occupants in an average year in America….” (p. 15).

Employment is unstable

-“Half of all new positions are eliminated within the first year. Jobs that used to come with guarantees, even union membership, have been transformed into gigs.” For example: “Temp workers are not just found driving Ubers; they are in hospitals and universities and insurance companies.” There are more than a million temp workers in manufacturing. Additionally, “America has welcomed the rise of bad jobs at the bottom of the market – jobs offering low pay, no benefits, and few guarantees” (p. 16)

Living in constant “fear” of being unable to pay the bills

-“A third of Americans live without much economic security, working as bus drivers, farmers, teachers, cashiers, cooks, nurses, security guards, social workers” (p. 17).

Living far below the poverty line

-“According to the latest national data, one in eighteen people in the United States lives in ‘deep poverty,’ that is, with income less than half the poverty line. In 2020, “almost 18 million people in America survived under these conditions.”

The Loss of Liberty

-“Almost 2 million people sit in our prisons and jails each day. Another 3.7 million are on probation or parole.” The “overwhelming major of America’s current and former prisoners are very poor” (p. 18). Those in prison are not counted in the official poverty estimates.

Feeling the government is against you

-“In recent years, up to one in twelve people killed by a gun in the United States have been killed by a police officer.”

Income is taken by the state

-“…in the form of misdemeanor charges and citations; the price paid for missing a child support payment, jumping a subway turnstile, getting caught with a joint….Criminal justice agencies levy steep fines and fees on the poor, often making them pay for their own prosecution and incarceration. When payments are missed, courts issue warrants, mobilize private bill collectors, and even incarcerate as retribution” (pp. 19-20)

Poverty is shame inducing

-“You avoid public places – parks, beaches, shopping districts, sporting arenas – knowing they weren’t built for you.”

Poverty is diminished life and personhood

-“It shrinks the mental  energy you can dedicate to decisions, forcing you to focus on the latest stressor – an overdue gas bill, a lost job – at the expense of everything else.”

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Work requirements

What Republican Work Requirements in the Debt Ceiling Bill Would Do

Nik Popli reports for Time magazine on May 1, 2023, on how the House Republicans are pushing for a debt ceiling bill that would “enact new work requirements for those seeking federal assistance, claiming the measure would help cut federal spending” (https://time.com/6276193/republicans-work-requirements-debt-ceiling). Here’s some of what Popli writes.

“Although the bill is unlikely to become law, it would require millions of low-income Americans who receive food stamps and health insurance from the federal government to work longer hours in order to qualify for benefits.”

“House Republicans say that the work requirements would reduce government spending and increase employment, but some economists are skeptical that they will result in significant savings for the federal government. ‘It’s going to cost a ton of money to implement these work requirements,’ says Lily Roberts, acting vice president for inclusive economy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning policy institute. ‘They are going to have to hire hundreds of bureaucrats to manage the process of documenting all of those work requirements now.”

“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan agency, said last week that the stricter work requirements proposed by the House GOP would reduce federal spending by $120 billion over the next decade, a small portion of the roughly $4.8 trillion in savings the bill would generate. About 600,000 Americans would lose health insurance, while about 275,000 Americans a month would lose access to food stamps, the CBO said.

“Under the GOP package, childless, able-bodied adults ages 18 to 55 could get food stamps for only three months out of every three years unless they are employed at least 20 hours a week or meet other criteria. Currently, that mandate applies to those ages 18 to 49, though it has been suspended during the COVID-19 public health emergency.

“The Republican debt ceiling package would also require certain adult Medicaid recipients to work, perform community service, or participate in an employment program for at least 80 hours per month or earn a certain minimum monthly income. It would apply to those ages 19 to 55, but not those who are pregnant, parents of dependent children, those who are physically or mentally unfit for employment or enrolled in education or in substance abuse programs, among other exceptions.

“For many Americans, the new work requirements ‘could make the situation worse,’ says Claudia Sahm, an economist and senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute. ‘The people who would lose their benefits because of a work requirement are some of the most vulnerable adults,’ she says. ‘It’s often homeless people who weren’t working before, or people who’ve faced serious barriers to work that are the ones that will lose their benefits.’”

“Even if work requirements for federal aid do not make it in the final debt limit bill, Republicans are likely to keep pushing the issue, says Matt Weidinger, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. ‘I have no doubt this will come up again in future debt limit bills or reauthorization bills,’ he says. ‘The federal government is going to be searching for ways to come up with policies that cut the costs of some of these programs.’

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PART 2: The “compromise”

White House and G.O.P. Strike Debt Limit Deal to Avert Default

Jim Tankersley, Catie Edmondson, and Luke Broadwater report on a tentative deal between Biden and McCarthy to avoid a government budget default (https://nytimes.com/2023/05/27/us/politics/debt-ceiling-deal.html). They write “negotiators sealed an agreement to raise the debt ceiling for two years while cutting and capping certain federal programs.” The compromise would “effectively freeze federal spending that had been on track to grow.”  However, they still must obtain enough votes in both the House and Senate to finalize the deal.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

“Congressional passage of the plan before June 5, when the Treasury is projected to exhaust its ability to pay its obligations, is not assured, particularly in the House, which plans to consider it on Wednesday [May 31, 2023]. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the chamber, and right-wing lawmakers who had demanded significantly larger budget cuts in exchange for lifting the borrowing limit were already in revolt.”

They quote Biden.

“‘It is an important step forward that reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘And the agreement protects my and congressional Democrats’ key priorities and legislative accomplishments. The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want.”

Then McCarthy:

“In a nighttime news conference outside his Capitol office that lasted just one minute, Mr. McCarthy said the deal contained ‘historic reductions in spending, consequential reforms that will lift people out of poverty into the work force, rein in government overreach’ and would add no new taxes. He declined to answer questions or provide specifics, but said he planned to release legislative text on Sunday.”

“The deal would suspend the borrowing limit, which is currently $31.4 trillion, for two years — enough to get past the next presidential election.”

The tentative agreement “gives Republicans the ability to say that they succeeded in reducing some federal spending — even as funding for the military and veterans’ programs would continue to grow — while allowing Democrats to say they spared most domestic programs from significant cuts.”

“The deal would impose caps on discretionary spending for two years, though those caps would apply differently to spending on the military than to the rest of the federal budget. Spending on the military would grow next year, as would spending on some veterans’ care. Spending on other domestic programs would fall slightly — or stay roughly flat — compared with this year’s levels.”

McCarthy got “new work requirements for some recipients of government aid, including food stamps and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. It would place new limits on how long certain recipients of food stamps — people under the age of 54, who do not have children — could benefit from the program. But it also would expand food stamp access for veterans and the homeless….”

“The tentative deal also claws back some unspent money from a previous pandemic relief bill, and reduces by $10 billion — to $70 billion from $80 billion — new enforcement funding for the I.R.S. to crack down on tax cheats. It includes measures meant to speed environmental reviews of certain energy projects and a provision meant to force the president to find budget savings to offset the costs of a unilateral action, like forgiving student loans — though administration officials could circumvent that requirement. It also includes an enforcement measure that is meant to avert a government shutdown later this year.”

A positive vote is not guaranteed

“Mr. McCarthy has repeatedly said he believes a majority of his conference would vote for the deal, but it is not clear yet how many Republicans will back the compromise — and how many Democrats might be needed to vote for it to make up for G.O.P. defections.

“The path also is likely to be rocky in the Senate, where quick action requires bipartisan support and conservatives have signaled they are unwilling to go along.

In a sign of their displeasure, House Freedom Caucus members were huddling to identify procedural tools to delay passage of the agreement or make the bill more conservative.” They want greater spending cuts.

At the same time, “the Congressional Progressive Caucus had already begun to fume about it even before negotiators finalized the agreement.” Progressive Democratic groups are unhappy with the proposed compromise bill. “Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the liberal Groundwork Collaborative in Washington, criticized the deal for forcing budget cuts in domestic programs — and in particular, for reducing enforcement money for the I.R.S.”

Jake Johnson adds to the reporting on the Biden-McCarthy compromise agreement (https://commondreams.org/news/progressives-blast-debt-ceiling-deal).

“Progressive economists and advocates warned that the tentative debt ceiling agreement reached Saturday by the White House and Republican leaders would needlessly gash nutrition aid, rental assistance, education programs, and more—all while making it easier for the wealthy to avoid taxes.”

It “includes two years of caps on non-military federal spending, sparing a Pentagon budget replete with staggering waste and abuse.” According to the agreement, non-military spending would be kept flat for 2024 and increased by 1% for 2025, thus “not keeping pace with inflation.”

“After inflation eats its share, flat funding will result in fewer households accessing rental assistance, fewer kids in Head Start, and fewer services for seniors,” said Owens. “The deal represents the worst of conservative budget ideology; it cuts investments in workers and families, adds onerous and wasteful new hurdles for families in need of support, and protects the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations from paying their fair share in taxes.”

“The agreement would also impose new work requirements on some recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) while scaling back recently approved IRS funding, a gift to rich tax cheats.” Work requirements would become more stringent for SNAP recipients. Johnson writes: “the deal would reportedly impose work requirements on adult SNAP recipients without dependents up to the age of 54, increasing the current age limit of 49. Policy analysts and anti-hunger activists have long decried SNAP time limits and work requirements as cruel and ineffective at boosting employment. (Most adult SNAP recipients already work.)”

Johnson quotes Angela Hanks, chief of programs at Demos, who said: “For no real reason at all, hungry people are set to lose food while tax cheats get a free pass.” 

In addition, “The White House and Republican leaders also reportedly agreed to some permitting reforms that climate groups have slammed as a boon for the fossil fuel industry. According to The New York Times, the agreement ‘includes measures meant to speed environmental reviews of certain energy projects,’ though the scope of the changes is not yet clear.”

“And while the deal doesn’t appear to include a repeal of Biden’s student debt cancellation plan—which is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court—it does reportedly contain a provision that would cement the end of the student loan repayment pause, drawing fury from debt relief campaigners.”

“Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said Sunday that “it’s a relief to see that congressional leaders and the president have come to an agreement to raise the debt limit and avert an economic disaster.”

“‘But by instituting work requirements for critical assistance programs and rescinding important funding to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, this deal will rig the economy even more in favor of the most well-off Americans while failing to fix the real structural problems that led to the current debt crisis in the first place,’ said Hanauer. ‘The deal avoids the elephant in the room: it includes no new revenues even though tax cuts of the past few decades were a primary driver of deficit growth.’”

Concluding thoughts

The debt-ceiling crisis was unnecessary, though the rising national debt needs to be addressed. But the remedy should not be on the backs of poor and lower-income Americans, as the compromise agreement suggests. From what we know about it, it will limit access to and the benefits of programs aimed at assisting the poor and students with educational debt. The outcome will be more hardship and more inequality. Oil and gas corporations will benefit from accelerated permitting processes, disregarding the existential climate crisis. The wealth and income of high-income people will remain untouched and un-audited. The increasingly radicalized Republican Party will continue raising havoc and pushing for budgets that spur increasing inequality and misery, while also engaging in voter suppression and efforts to subvert elections.

Bob Sheak, May 14, 2023

Partisan divide

The controversy over how to deal with the debt-limit crisis grows out of long-standing conflicting policy agendas of the Republicans and Democrats, though there are areas of agreement (e.g., bipartisan support of increases in military spending). Here are some examples of the differences. Republicans favor low taxes, minimal government regulation, maximum development and use of fossil fuels, the privatization of potentially profitable government functions, and cuts in social-welfare programs. Trump’s electoral base wants unregulated gun ownership, the end of abortion, the dominance of Christian nationalism, support of white supremacy, the imposition of tight border security measures. Democrats favor progressive taxes, regulation of gun ownership and use, the support of renewable sources of energy (though Biden has supported some new fossil fuel projects), support of reproductive rights, the separation of “church” and state, fair collective bargaining rules, and funding of social welfare programs.

The current fight in the U.S. government over the national debt reflects such underlying policy differences. Republicans, led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy want to radically reduce overall government spending by curtailing government’s ability to spend on programs they oppose, and do it in a way the benefits disproportionately the rich and powerful. It is worrisome, that McCarthy and House Republicans seem willing to allow the country to default on the debt, despite the enormous harms that such action would produce. In a word, they want an unfettered form of capitalism. Democrats want to continue supporting government agencies, and looking for ways to both pay the government’s bills while, if necessary, simultaneously raising the debt limit. At the same time, Democrats also want to reduce the national debt, but through taxing the rich and mega-corporations.

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Background on Debt Ceiling

In a January 17, 2023, article for Investopedia, Tim Smith provides some background on the U.S. debt ceiling law, an abstruse legal concept that defines “the maximum amount of money that the United States can borrow cumulatively by issuing bonds” and other securities (https://investopedia.com/terms/d/debt-ceiling.asp). The law was created “under the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917 and is also known as the debt limit or statutory debt limit.” The justification for the law was to make the federal government fiscally responsible during WWI and thereafter.

The U.S. Treasury Department provides some information on how since 1960 Congress has raised the debt limit: “Since 1960, Congress has acted 78 separate times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit – 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents (https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-markets-financial-institutions-and-fiscal-service/debt-limit#….).

Defaulting on national debt, a Republican option

Under the U.S. law, the nation would be in default if it went beyond the debt limit and failed “to pay interest payments to bondholders.” In that case, there could be catastrophic economic impacts. In default, the country’s credit rating would be lowered, the cost of servicing the debt would increase, millions of citizens would suffer economically, the economy would plummet, and the international economic position – and influence – of the U.S. would suffer.

Smith points out that, over the years, there “have been a number of showdowns

over the debt ceiling, some of which have led to government shutdowns.” The shutdowns occur when partisan conflict over budgetary agendas advanced by the major political parties is not resolved. Smith refers to examples of near-shutdowns and shutdowns.

“For example, in 1995, the Republican members of Congress, whose views were vocalized by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, used the threat of refusing to allow an increase in the debt ceiling to negotiate increased government spending cuts.

“Then-President Bill Clinton refused to make the cuts, which led to a shutdown of the government. The White House and Congress eventually agreed on a balanced budget with modest spending cuts and tax increases.”

“President Barack Obama faced similar issues during his two terms as president. In the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, Republicans in Congress demanded deficit reductions to approve an increase in the debt ceiling. During this time, U.S. Treasury debt was stripped of its triple-A rating by Standard & Poor’s—a rating it held for more than 70 years.

“In 2013, the government was shut down for 16 days after conservative Republicans attempted to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by leveraging the debt ceiling. An agreement to suspend the debt limit was passed within a day, which was when the Treasury was estimated to run out of money.

“The debt ceiling was raised again in 2014, 2015, and early 2017. With U.S. debt exceeding $20 trillion for the first time in September 2017, then-President Donald Trump signed a bill extending the debt ceiling to Dec. 8, 2017. The ceiling was later suspended for 13 months as part of a bill enacted in February 2018. The ceiling came into effect and was increased again in March 2019 when U.S. government debt topped $22 trillion.

“In August 2019, then-President Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which suspended the debt ceiling through July 31, 2021. The legislation also lifted spending caps on federal agency budgets, while ensuring that the government could pay its bills in the short term. Suspending the ceiling in this manner eliminated the risk of default for another two years, increasing spending to $320 billion for the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years. The debt ceiling was once again raised, to $31.4 trillion, in December 2021.” Smith writes:

“The approximate amount of the current U.S. debt ceiling, as set by congressional vote on Dec. 15, 2021, and signed into law by President Biden on Dec. 16 of the same year.45 The sum represents a $2.5 trillion increase in the ceiling.”

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The Republican agenda

House leader McCarthy is influenced by extremists in his caucus who expect him to lower government spending, with the exception of military spending, and oppose any tax increases.

Smith points out, “As part of their support to install McCarthy, conservative-faction Republicans have indicated that they would vote against raising the debt ceiling without significant federal spending reductions, setting the stage for political gridlock that could destabilize the financial system.”

McCarthy passes his first debt limit bill

Sahil Kapur reports on April 27, 2023, that “Speaker Kevin McCarthy passed his debt ceiling bill through the House on Wednesday by a wafer-thin vote of 217 to 215, with Democrats unifying to vote against it” (https://nbcnews.com/politics/congress/mccarthy-passes-debt-limit-bill-path-averting-default-uncertain-rcna81652). The title of the legislation is the “Limit, Save, Grow Act.”

According to CNN, the legislation included sizable cuts to domestic programs, sparing the Pentagon’s budget, returning funding for federal agencies to 2022 levels, while aiming to limit the growth in spending to 1% per year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the bill would trim government deficits by $4.8 trillion over 10 years (https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/politics/debt-ceiling-house-vote-negotiations/index.html).

Kapur reports: “The Democratic-controlled Senate has promised to throw McCarthy’s bill in the trash, vowing not to negotiate over paying the country’s bills. President Joe Biden has threatened to veto it. But House Republicans will now be less inclined to grant a no-strings-attached debt limit hike after they secured the votes to make an opening bid that would cut spending and roll back key parts of Biden’s agenda.

“‘Now he should sit down and negotiate,’ McCarthy, R-Calif., said Wednesday [April 26, 2023], putting the onus on Biden. ‘We are the only party to take fiscal action … that would lift the debt limit so we wouldn’t have economic damage.’

“But the White House insists there’s no deal to be made other than a simple debt limit bill without policy strings attached. Biden’s advisers see more risk in haggling over whether to pay the country’s bills than in pressuring the GOP not to use the threat of default as a bargaining chip.

“McCarthy’s bill would extend the borrowing limit by $1.5 trillion or through March 31 — whichever comes first — with trillions of dollars in spending cuts over a decade, mostly unspecified, some by killing clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.

“The House bill was crafted to meet a series of demands from the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, and it was altered in the final stretch to address regional concerns from some Republicans. Republicans in swing districts, after initially hesitating, ultimately fell in line.”

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The effects of the current Republican debt-ceiling proposal

House Vote on ‘Default on America’ Act a Major Political Liability for Republicans

Patrick Gasbard and Navin Nayak report on May 3, 2023, for the Center for American Progress about the House vote on the second Republican offer to settle the debt-limit crisis on their terms. The proposed legislation is titled “Default on America”

(https://americanprogressaction.org/article/house-vote-on-default-on-america-act-a-major-political-liability-for-republicans).

House Republicans introduced this bill, “without any hearings, markups, or floor amendments.” Gasbard and Nayak argue that “the ‘Default on America Act’ is a gut punch to America’s middle class: It would dismantle essential investments that these families depend upon, imposing an extreme 22 percent cut in just one year and locking in deep and growing cuts for 10 years.”

“One of the first polls to test support for the bill found that upon hearing that the bill ‘would cut 22% of funding for government programs that are non-military,’ the public opposed it by 25 points, at 56 percent to 31 percent. These results came before the public learned of other cuts that the bill would enact, including to veterans’ care, health care, child care, clean energy, and much more.”

“The bill enacts a $4.3 trillion cut in investments the middle class depends upon while preserving trillions of dollars in tax loopholes and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Gasbard and Nayak offer a list of some of the effects of default. They write:

“Assuming congressional Republicans impose these drastic cuts equally across all discretionary programs other than defense, here is just a fraction of the devastation the “Default on America” Act will impose on middle-class families:

-Burdensome new red tape on Medicaid that could jeopardize health care coverage for 21 million adults

-A 22 percent cut in K-12 education investments, eliminating more than 100,000 teachers’ jobs and affecting more than 25 million children

-A 22 percent cut in veterans’ medical care—reducing capacity and resulting in 30 million fewer outpatient visits

-A 22 percent cut in public safety on many fronts:

Nearly 30,000 lost jobs among law enforcement officers

-More than 7,000 fewer rail safety inspection days and the shutting down of more than 375 air traffic control towers

-The cutting of more than 1,800 food inspectors, putting the country’s food supply at risk

-A 22 percent cut in Head Start, meaning 200,000 fewer children would be unable to get a spot in early childhood education

-A 22 percent cut in child care, meaning 180,000 fewer children would have care during the day, possibly preventing thousands of parents from going to work

-Repeal of investments in clean energy manufacturing that could risk more than 140,000 new well-paying energy jobs

-A 22 percent cut to the operational funding of the Social Security Administration, which ensures Social Security checks are the correct amount and go to the correct recipients in a timely manner

-At the same time, the bill makes it easier for big corporations and wealthy individuals to cheat or avoid paying taxes altogether, by slashing the tax enforcement budget.

Vote them out of office

Ralph Nader, a consumer advocate and the author, refers to the Republican position on the debt ceiling crisis as “sadistic” in an article for Common Dreams on May 11, 2023 (https://commondreams.org/opinion/gop-debt-limit-vs-people).

“Raising the federal debt limit over the years has secured unconditional routine Congressional passage and was endorsed by presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. After all, it allows the U.S. Treasury to pay past and existing bills, not expand future spending.

“Routine, that is, until the recent arrival of the mad-dog Republicans with their monetized brains indentured to the war-making military industrial complex and Wall Street speculators gambling with other people’s savings.”

Nader continues: “the GOP cuts represent a congealed and vicious assault against defenseless Americans. Of course, the avaricious plutocrats, with their hands deep in Uncle Sam’s pockets, have been shielded from any financial pain by the demands of these ruthless Republicans.”

“The Republican-demanded cuts totally exclude the vast, bloated military budget, which amounts to over half of the entire federal government’s operational budget, and don’t reduce the huge corporate welfare giveaways and bailouts. Republicans leave intact the huge gaping tax escapes for super-wealthy individuals and giant corporations. The latter bonanza implicitly rejects Biden’s revenue producing proposals to eliminate some of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the very rich like Trump’s family.

“A partial litany of the latest heartless GOP horrors that will result from the budget cuts they are anticipated to propose include:

“Reduced funding for nutrition programs for children; reduced Social Security benefits; increased processing delays from past GOP cuts in processing disability benefit decisions and retirement claims; cuts in Pell Grant award levels meant for about 6.6 million low-income college students; damage to federal child-care programs; and the potential elimination of some 170,000 Head Start program slots.

Fewer safety inspections of workplaces (by the already financially starved OSHA); fewer inspections of the railroads, and nursing homes. Tens of thousands of people could lose access to federally funded treatment for opioid addiction. Millions of people would not receive federal student loan forgiveness.

“The GOP demands budget cuts to the health and safety agencies that protect the American people, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) air traffic control system, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) programs for auto safety, and the Federal Emergency Management’s (FEMA) emergency rescue programs.”

“There is another way for the Democrats to defeat the extortion effort by the GOP’s dangerous extremists who are playing hostage with American lives and livelihoods. Focus intensely on six or seven Republicans in the House who either are in Districts won by Biden or have expressed saner views on this gridlock. Focus also on those House Republican members who are retiring. All that Democrats need is a switch of six votes to get the increase in the debt limit approved, leaving the GOP to wallow in its unprecedented viciousness.”

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Debt Default Would “Cripple” U.S. Economy, New Analysis Warns

Jim Tankersley reports on a “new analysis” by the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, Mark Zandi, on how a debt default would cripple U.S. economy (https://nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us-politics/debt-default-economy.html).

“The U.S. economy could quickly shed a million jobs and fall into recession if lawmakers fail to raise the nation’s borrowing limit before the federal government exhausts its ability to pay its bills on time, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, Mark Zandi, warned a Senate panel on Tuesday.

“The damage could spiral to seven million jobs lost and a 2008-style financial crisis in the event of a prolonged breach of the debt limit, in which House Republicans refuse for months to join Democrats in voting to raise the cap, Mr. Zandi and his colleagues Cristian deRitis and Bernard Yaros wrote in an analysis prepared for the Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Policy.”

“‘The only real option,’ Mr. Zandi said in an interview before his testimony, ‘is for lawmakers to come to terms and increase the debt limit in a timely way. Any other scenario results in significant economic damage.’ At the same time, Zandi

“said he favored eliminating the statutory debt limit entirely to end the threats that a potential default posed to the economy. ‘I just think you want to break that cycle once and for all as best you can, because it’s very counterproductive,’ he said.”

Zandi considers a number of scenarios on how the impasse over the debt ceiling may be resolved.

“In one, Mr. Biden acts to circumvent the debt limit without the help of Congress, inviting a constitutional challenge but potentially minimizing the harm to the economy. White House aides have said repeatedly that Mr. Biden will not pursue that route.” (This is about the President’s possible use of Title Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to avert default, an option greatly opposed by Republicans, which is discussed in a later section).

“In a scenario where lawmakers’ inaction forced the Treasury Department to miss some required payments in order to make others, the analysis predicted a swift backlash from financial markets, akin to the stock plunge in 2008 when Congress at first voted down a program to shore up Wall Street banks as a global financial crisis set in. If, as in 2008, Congress reacted by quickly raising the debt limit, the lingering damage would be enough to cause a mild recession and nearly one million job losses.

“If lawmakers ignored the market warnings and went months without raising the limit, the analysis concluded, “the blow to the economy would be cataclysmic.” Federal spending would plunge, a deep recession would set in and the unemployment rate would spike to more than 8 percent from 3.4 percent.

“But if Mr. Biden were to accept Republicans’ budget blueprint, the analysis found, the resulting drop in federal spending on health care, education and other domestic programs would lead to a recession and widespread job loss. Low-income Americans would most likely bear a disproportionate brunt of the economic pain, it concluded.”

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Can the debt ceiling law be by-passed or ignored?

The option of the 14th Amendment?

Laurence H. Tribe, a university professor emeritus at Harvard and an author, most recently, of “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” advances a legal option to avoiding a debt-ceiling crisis (https://nytimes.com/2023/05/07/opinion/debt-limit.html).

“At this moment, at the White House as well as the Departments of Treasury and Justice, officials are debating a legal theory that previous presidents and any number of legal experts — including me — ruled out in 2011, when the Obama administration confronted a default.

“The theory builds on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to argue that Congress, without realizing it, set itself on a path that would violate the Constitution when, in 1917, it capped the size of the federal debt. Over the years, Congress has raised the debt ceiling scores of times, most recently two years ago, when it set the cap at $31.4 trillion. We hit that amount on Jan. 19 and are being told that the ‘extraordinary measures’ Treasury has available to get around it are about to run out. When that happens, all hell will break loose.

“Taking advantage of that prospect, congressional Republicans are threatening to do nothing unless the administration agrees to slash lots of government programs that their party has had in its sights. If the president caves in to their demands, they will agree to raise the cap — until this crisis occurs again. Then, they will surely pursue the same game of chicken or, maybe more accurately, Russian roulette. It’s a complicated situation, but a solution is staring us in the face,” according to Tribe.

“Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says the ‘validity’ of the public debt ‘shall not be questioned’ — ever. Proponents of the unconstitutionality argument say that when Congress enacted the debt limit, effectively forcing the United States to stop borrowing to honor its debts when that limit was reached, it built a violation of that constitutional command into our fiscal structure, and that as a result, that limit and all that followed are invalid.

Tribe continues: “I’ve never agreed with that argument. It raises thorny questions about the appropriate way to interpret the text: Does Section 4, read properly, prohibit anything beyond putting the federal government into default? If so, which actions does it forbid? And, most important, could this interpretation open the door for dangerous presidential overreach, if Section 4 empowers the president single-handedly to declare laws he dislikes unconstitutional?”

“The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.

“The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.

“The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.

“There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.

“And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.

“The president should remind Congress and the nation, “I’m bound by my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution to prevent the country from defaulting on its debts for the first time in our entire history.” Above all, the president should say with clarity, ‘My duty faithfully to execute the laws extends to all the spending laws Congress has enacted, laws that bind whoever sits in this office — laws that Congress enacted without worrying about the statute capping the amount we can borrow.’”

“By taking that position, the president would not be usurping Congress’s lawmaking power or its power of the purse. Nor would he be usurping the Supreme Court’s power to “say what the law is,” as Chief Justice John Marshall once put it. Mr. Biden would simply be doing his duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ even if doing so leaves one law — the borrowing limit first enacted in 1917 — temporarily on the cutting room floor.”

“For a president to pick the lesser of two evils when no other option exists is the essence of constitutional leadership, not the action of a tyrant. And there is no doubt that ignoring the debt ceiling until Congress either raises or abolishes it is a lesser evil than leaving those with lawful claims against the Treasury out in the cold.”

“In any event, Section 4 prohibits the president from permanently stiffing our creditors — even those required to wait their turn after the Treasury runs dry. So even if Speaker Kevin McCarthy and those pulling his strings succeed in making some of those creditors wait, it wouldn’t eliminate our debts; it would merely replace them with i.o.u.s. And that’s just debt in another form.”

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Jessica Corbett also reports on May 8, 2023, for Common Dreams on the option of the President invoking the 14th Amendment Common Dreams

(https://commondreams.org/news/14th-amendment-biden-debt-ceiling). Here’s some of what she writes.

“White House officials said this weekend that Mr. Biden has been publicly and privately adamant that he will not bargain with Republicans over raising the limit. ‘Let’s get it straight: They’re trying to hold the debt hostage to get us to agree to some draconian cuts, magnificently difficult and damaging cuts,’ Mr. Biden told a meeting of cabinet members and other economic officials on Friday [May 5, 2023].

“Citing three unnamed sources with knowledge of internal conversations, The Washington Post reported Monday that White House officials see unilateral actions—from invoking the 14th Amendment to minting a platinum coin worth $1 trillion—as ‘risky choices that could cause lasting economic damage’ but also ‘do not want to take the proposals completely off the table.’”

“The National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), which represents about 75,000 federal employees, cited the 14th Amendment in a federal lawsuit filed Monday that seeks to have the debt limit law declared unconstitutional.

“NAGE’s complaint, which names Biden and Yellen as defendants, argues the debt limit statute ‘is unconstitutional because it puts the president in a quandary to exercise discretion to continue borrowing to pay for the programs which Congress has heretofore duly authorized and for which Congress has appropriated funds or to stop borrowing and to determine which of these programs the president, and not the Congress, will suspend, curtail, or cancel altogether.’”

“The filing adds that NAGE ‘seeks to protect all its members from additional extraordinary measures as well as major spending-related actions that will necessarily be taken without approval of Congress and that result in layoffs, furloughs, requirements for unpaid work, and loss of funding of the pensions and retirement plans of its members.’”

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Tal Axelrod reports for ABC News on May 7, 2023, concerning the risk of a constitutional crisis from using the 14th Amendment to solve the debt-ceiling crisis

(https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/14th-amendment-solve-debt-crisis-good-option/story?id=99140989). Axelrod’s report focuses on an interview Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen gave on ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos program, “This Week.”

“Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday said invoking the 14th Amendment to get around the debt ceiling and continue borrowing money to pay the nation’s bills would risk a ‘constitutional crisis,’ downplaying the idea that the amendment would simply solve the looming problem — but she avoided ruling it out entirely.

“Yellen said on ‘This Week’ that the only way for the U.S. to avoid an unprecedented default as soon as next month is for Congress to pass legislation doing so, even as the White House and congressional Democrats appear to be in a stalemate with Republicans over GOP demands to tie steep spending cuts to raising or suspending the debt ceiling.

“Amid that debate, President Joe Biden said on Friday, of trying to use the 14th Amendment as a solution: ‘I’ve not gotten there yet.’

“But it didn’t seem like he took it off the table. So, is it still a possibility?” Stephanopoulos asked Yellen on Sunday.

“‘Our priority is to make sure that Congress does its job,’ she said. ‘There is no way to protect our financial system in our economy other than Congress doing its job and raising the debt ceiling and enabling us to pay our bills. And we should not get to the point where we need to consider whether the president can go on issuing debt. This would be a constitutional crisis.’

“Stephanopoulos followed up: ‘Is that a hard and fast position that the president will under no circumstances invoke the 14th Amendment?’

“All I want to say is that it’s Congress’ job to do this. If they fail to do it, we will have an economic and financial catastrophe that will be of our own making, and there is no action that President Biden and the U.S. Treasury can take to prevent that catastrophe,” Yellen replied, later saying, “I don’t want to consider emergency options.”

“The treasury secretary echoed the president’s position: that the debt ceiling should not be used as leverage as part of Republicans’ negotiations with the White House over the budget.”

“Yellen reiterated that she expects the Treasury Department to no longer be able to pay all of its obligations as soon as June 1, a timeline that has jumpstarted negotiations in Washington.

“‘This would be really the first time in the history of America that we would fail to make payments that are due,’ Yellen said. ‘And whether it’s defaulting on interest payments that are due on the debt or payments due for Social Security recipients or to Medicare providers, we would simply not have enough cash to meet all of our obligations. And it’s widely agreed that financial and economic chaos would ensue.’”

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Another approach: Finding the Public Debt law to be unconstitutional

Everett Wohlers, a retired attorney with extensive government experience, explores legal questions and offers a “solution” on the debt ceiling crisis (https://commondreams.org/opinion/legal-answer-to-debt-ceiling-crisis). Wohlers’ article was published on May 10, 2023. He proposes that the Attorney General prepare a legal finding “that the Public Debt Limit law is violative of the Constitution,” finding that would eliminate the debt limit.

It would up to the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the Department of Justice (DOJ). “The OLC provides legal opinions of the Attorney General when requested by the President or the heads of executive branch agencies as provided in 28 U.S. Code §§ 511 and 512.” Under this authority, the “OLC can and does render opinions that find laws adopted by Congress to be unconstitutional and, therefore, unenforceable. One such opinion, rendered on July 8, 2021, found the provision in 42 U.S.C. § 902(a)(3) that prevented the President from removing the Commissioner of Social Security to be unconstitutional and, therefore, unenforceable. There is no reason that the same approach cannot be used with regard to the Public Debt Limit law.

“In light of the stated intent of the Speaker and his caucus in the House to allow the debt limit to be exceeded by the public debt if they do not get unreasonable concessions from the administration, thereby putting the public debt in question and perhaps outright default or repudiation, the President or the Secretary of the Treasury can request an opinion from the OLC pursuant to 28 U.S. Code § 511 or § 512, respectively, concerning the constitutionality of the Public Debt Limit law, 31 U.S. Code § 3101. As the discussion above has established, that opinion would confirm that the Public Debt Limit law is unconstitutional under one or more of the three provisions of the Constitution. The Department of the Treasury can then, in full confidence, continue to honor the public debt without regard to the Public Debt Limit law.

Therefore: “To eliminate the threat to the economy posed by a potential default on the public debt by breach of the public debt limit, either the President or Secretary of the Treasury Yellen should, without delay, request an opinion from the OLC. The law is so straightforward that an opinion finding the Public Debt Limit law to be unconstitutional and, therefore, inoperable could be issued in short order, before Treasury’s extraordinary measures can no longer prevent the debt limit from being breached.”

The problem with Wohlers’ proposal is that it does not address the issue of the ever-rising national debt. At some point, the fiscal and monetary policies of the federal government must curtail the debt from continually rising.

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Concluding thoughts

The rising national debt is a problem and the current debt limit crisis must be addressed immediately to avoid an economic catastrophe domestically and internationally. In the debate with Republicans over how to respond to the debt-limit crisis, President Biden and congressional Democrats should do their best in working to resolve the crisis to minimize spending cuts and emphasize tax increases or the revocation on Trump’s massive tax cut while he was President.

The longer-term solution is to refashion the budget, something that can only be accomplished by electing majorities of progressive Democrats to the presidency and to both branches of the U.S. Congress.

They can support budgets and policies that directly affect the nation’s debt, that is, to cut military spending and increase tax rates for the rich and powerful.

Additionally, they can advance budgets that ensure the basic needs of all citizens and residents are met, that constitutional protections of citizens are not eviscerated but strengthened, that opportunities are supported for employment, health care, quality education, and that support is given to policies that foster more equality in income and wealth distributions.

There are also trends in global warming and nuclear weapons proliferation that need to be addressed. Global warming can be curtailed and hopefully reversed by phasing out of fossil fuels in all spheres of life.

The current conflict over whether to raise the national debt limit must be resolved if other pressing problems are to be solved and economic, political, and social chaos are to be avoided. Unfortunately, the Republicans in Washington appear willing to have chaos if they don’t get their own way.