disaster cap 2 bak

2 broken 2 22?

an 6 25

"What could possibly go wrong?"

That's a questionNew York Times readers sarcastically asked on social media last Wednesday, after the newspaper reported that Erik Prince, founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater and a key ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, is working with Haiti's interim government "to conduct lethal operations against gangs that are terrorizing the nation and threatening to take over its capital."

The newspaper noted that Prince declined to comment, and while Blackwater is now defunct, the former Navy SEAL "owns other private military entities." The reporting is based on unnamed American and Haitian officials and other security experts.

"Haiti's government has hired American contractors, including Mr. Prince, in recent months to work on a secret task force to deploy drones meant to kill gang members," who "have been killing civilians and seizing control of vast areas of territory" in the Caribbean country, the Times detailed.

"Mr. Prince's team has been operating the drones since March, but the authorities have yet to announce the death or capture of a single high-value target," according to the paper. Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, said the drone attacks have killed more than 200 people.

IFrame Content

American journalist Michael Deibert said on social media, "If this story is accurate, on what authority does Haiti's unelected, temporary interim [government] invite foreign forces into the country and by what means—with whose money—do they intend to pay them for their work there?"

The U.S. State Department has poured millions into Haiti's National Police but told the Times it is not paying Prince.

Deibert said that "as someone who has reported on Haiti's armed groups for 25 years, it's hard to overstate how badly wrong bringing in foreign mercenaries, such as those allied with Erik Prince, will likely go given the current security, social, and political dynamics in the country."

Also weighing in on social media, Keanu Heydari, a history Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, said: "A lot's going on here! A majority-Black nation, hollowed out by decades of foreign intervention, 'turning to' a white war profiteer to restore 'order.' That is not about logistics, this is about coloniality."

Heydari continued:

This isn't a story about drones and gangs. It's about how the world has made it structurally impossible for Haiti to govern itself—then offers mercenaries as a "solution." Haiti's sovereignty has been chipped away by debt, coups, U.N. missions, and now private warlords.Why does Erik Prince show up where Black and Brown countries are in crisis? Because the global market rewards violence disguised as security, especially when it's sold by Westerners to postcolonial states. It's racial capitalism in full view.}:

The NYT missed the story: This isn't a desperate government making tough choices. It's a story of empire outsourcing control, where mercenaries profit from the very chaos empire helped produce. Haiti deserves justice, not occupation by other means. DISASTER CAPL?

The Times article follows The Economist's reporting earlier this month that Haiti's interim government, the Transitional Presidential Council, "is so desperate that it is exploring deals with private military contractors. It has been talking to Osprey Global Solutions, a firm based in North Carolina. The founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, visited Haiti in April to negotiate contracts to provide attack drones and training for an anti-gang task force. The council declined to comment."

In response to that paragraph in the May 7 article, Jake Johnston, director of international research at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti*, also asked, "What could possibly go wrong?"

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an 10 24 comm dr jj

The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a group of Florida representatives said late Tuesday that the federal government must do more to crack down on airlines, hotels, and other companies taking advantage of emergency conditions brought by Hurricanes Helene and Milton to jack up prices and pad their bottom lines.

"Instead of making it easier for people to evacuate, airlines and hotels are exploiting a horrific situation to charge astronomical fares only the rich can afford—from over $600 for a single night in a Hampton Inn to over $1,000 for flights that usually cost around $100," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the CPC, said in a joint statement with Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), Darren Soto (D-Fla.), and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.).

"Exploiting vulnerable people fleeing a deadly storm for higher profits is a new low," said the CPC members as Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida as a monstrous Category 5 storm, fueled by record-high ocean temperatures made far more likely by the climate crisis. The hurricane is expected to make landfall in the Tampa area on Wednesday night.

The federal lawmakers' statement came amid a flood of price-gouging reports from Florida residents seeking to escape Milton's path. A spokesperson for Florida's attorney general said earlier this week that the office had received hundreds of complaints about price gouging, particularly for fuel and water.

"There were also scattered instances involving overnight accommodations, including one Airbnb listing of a 'room in Tallahassee' for nearly $6,000 a night," The Tallahassee Democratreported Tuesday. The outlet noted that "during a storm-related state of emergency, state law prohibits price gouging for equipment, food, gasoline, hotel rooms, ice, lumber, and water needed as a direct result of the event."

The Biden Transportation Department, meanwhile, said it has "been in touch with airlines to get more information about the capacity and affordability of flights in the affected areas" amid reports of sky-high ticket prices. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he is "calling on the airlines and other companies to provide as much service as possible to accommodate evacuations and not to engage in price gouging, to just do it on the level."

The Associated Pressreported that "by midafternoon Tuesday on the East Coast, airlines had canceled more than 700 U.S. flights, compared with fewer than 200 cancellations on Monday and fewer than 100 each of the two previous days, according to the FlightAware tracking service."

Major airlines, including Delta and United, said they capped fares under the emergency circumstances, but people seeking last-minute tickets reported dramatically elevated prices. One woman trying to buy a one-way ticket to New York said prices more than tripled "in a matter of seconds" as she examined her options.

"There were prices even as high as $1,000 for one leg. So wrong! So wrong!" the woman toldThe Associated Press.

In their statement Tuesday, Jayapal and the Florida lawmakers noted that "in North Carolina and Georgia, while families try to recover and rebuild from the devastating impacts of Helene, there have been hundreds of similar incidents of bad actors price gouging residents on everything from groceries to gas to hotel rooms."

"This egregious price gouging hampers evacuations and undermines recovery efforts, while putting vulnerable residents in serious jeopardy," they said.

While welcoming the Transportation Department's efforts to monitor and prevent airline price gouging, the progressive lawmakers said that "we will need a whole-of-government focus" in the coming days and weeks "on protecting the people impacted by these disasters from predatory price gouging."

"Further action is still needed from the federal government to stop the corporate exploitation that impacts all areas of American life, whether at the grocery store or gas station," the lawmakers said. "We need a federal ban on price gouging, more stringent antitrust laws and enforcement, and for Congress to reassert its role and governing power in this space—something CPC is deeply committed to and actively engaged in."

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https://www.mediamatters.org/cable-news/cable-news-discussions-record-high-gas-prices-may-10-failed-hold-fossil-fuel-industr

amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and the world’s response to Russian aggression, energy prices have been understandably top-of-mind for both news media and the general public. Gas prices reached another record high on May 10, setting off a new round of cable news coverage that coincided with President Joe Biden’s speech on the same day about his administration’s attempts to arrest inflation.

Although cable news shows covering these stories performed an adequate job of explaining how the price consumers pay at the pump is determined by a range of different factors in a globalized market, they also allowed the fossil fuel industry to escape accountability for its role in raising prices, despite the fact that oil companies are intentionally restraining oil production in order to return record profits for shareholders.

Cable news rarely connected record fossil fuel industry profits to record gas prices

CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC aired a combined 48 segments about record gas prices on May 10, with CNN (23) and Fox (19) airing the majority. Although MSNBC had the fewest segments (6), anchorKaty Tur was the only person across all 48 cable news segments who connected record gas costs with record fossil fuel industry profits.

On the May 10 episode of Katy Tur Reports, she asked Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm about “price gouging” by the fossil fuel industry, saying: “The president said he'll focus on oil companies taking advantage of the situation. The CEO of a major oil company said they saw record prices. Do you see price gouging as part of the problem here?"

[vid ]

this basic context should be part of the broader cable news coverage of gas prices.

Other cable news segments on May 10 took pains to emphasize how the war in Ukraine, European Union sanctions on Russian oil, demand rebound since 2021, and yearly summer trends have contributed to the steep rise in gas prices and could lead to future, record increases.

However, cable news analysis that day almost entirely left out a key driver of high energy prices: the fossil fuel industry.

Although the specific role the industry played in driving the most recent record gas prices is still being puzzled out by economists, Big Oil has been credibly accused by environmental activists of profiteering from economic instability caused by the war in Ukraine. In fact, multiple outlets published stories about record oil company profits just a few days ahead of the breaking news about record gas prices on May 10, including this from Fortune:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, subsequent sanctions on Russia and the exit of Western oil and gas companies from the country sent prices soaring, and fossil fuel companies are reaping the rewards.

British petroleum company Shell announced their quarterly profits on Thursday, posting a record $9.1 billion in earnings. That’s compared to $6.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Although Shell posted the highest profits, other major oil companies also announced major gains.

BP announced it hit $6.2 billion in first quarter earnings, up from the $4.1 billion reported last quarter. French oil major TotalEnergies also reported a $9 billion profit in the first quarter, up 32% from the last quarter of 2021. U.S.-based Chevron reported $6.3 billion in earnings, up from $5.1 billion last quarter.

A Time magazine article published May 11 was even more stark in describing how oil companies plan to use their windfall profits to line their own pockets, instead of making investments to ease the pain at the pump:

For the most part, major oil companies aren’t going to pour these billions of dollars into climate-mitigation investments like carbon capture technologies. Nor have they signaled any immediate intention to bolster oil production, despite calls from heads of state to do so. Their inaction has spurred U.S. and European countries, which are under pressure to keep fuel affordable, to release oil reserves and replace Russian crude oil and liquid natural gas from other sources. Despite those government efforts, oil prices have stayed above $100 per barrel, sustaining an influx of money to fossil fuel companies that are passing it on to stockholders and investors in the form of increased dividends and share buyback initiatives that drive up companies’ share values.

One analysis from the Wall Street Journal found that the nine largest U.S. oil producers spent 54% more in share repurchases and dividends in the first quarter than they invested in new oil developments. Similarly, a recent report covering the 20 largest U.S. oil companies published by the environmentalist organization Friends Of The Earth and consumer watchdog organizations Public Citizen and BailoutWatch, tallied $56 billion in new share buyback authorizations in the roughly seven months since last October, compared with $11 billion announced in the nine months before that.

Not only is the fossil fuel industry dragging its feet on actions that could potentially alleviate high energy costs for American consumers, but it also continues to profit from the global instability caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, the industry has a long and sordid history of exacerbating geopolitical conflicts for its own profit.

Journalistic accountability demands that Big Oil’s role in this crisis is included in every segment about rising gas prices or increased energy costs – particularly as right-wing media outlets such as Fox News continue running cover for the oil industry while placing blame for high gas prices almost solely on the Biden administration.

Fox is dedicated to carrying the fossil fuel industry’s water, CNN and MSNBC must do better

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Fox News has absolved Big Oil of any responsibility for energy price increases while desperately trying to blame the Biden administration.This included Fox figures mentioning the canceled Keystone pipeline approximately 141 times in segments about the Ukraine crisis from February 22-28, and mentioning “energy independence” or “energy security” – industry talking points to promote more domestic drilling for oil and gas – at least 632 times from February 24 through April 24.

In reality, the factors determining what consumers pay for gas prices are very complicated, and generally, presidents and their related policies have little effect on the price at the pump and little influence over the complex economics of energy markets, absent leading a rapid transition to a clean energy economy. But this hasn’t stopped Fox News from using the situation in Ukraine to bash the Biden administration’s energy policy.

After Biden’s March 8 announcement that the United States was banning Russian fossil fuel imports, Fox News hosts and guests blamed him for instituting the same policy that they had previously demanded– all while praising oil and gas companies as “the greatest industry around the world,” deflecting Biden’s criticism of them as “unpatriotic,” and arguing they are “basically our national defense.”

Meanwhile CNN and MSNBC’s recent coverage has largely failed to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for exploiting global conflicts and ramping up fuel prices amid their own record profits.

Their last opportunity came during the April 6 House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on the fossil industry’s role in driving record high gas prices. Fox News programs devoted 49 minutes of coverage to the hearing, much of which defended Big Oil and blamed the Biden administration, while CNN and MSNBC covered the hearings for only 10 minutes and 4 minutes, respectively. This disparity in coverage effectively allowed Fox to again shape the narrative around climate and energy on cable news. Instead of CNN and MSNBC viewers learning about the myriad factors driving gas prices, including Big Oil profiteering, they were told little, if anything, about the role the fossil fuel industry plays in driving the price at the pump.

Cable news shows must begin holding the fossil fuel industry accountable

Despite the fossil fuel industry’s billion-dollar campaign to erode the public consensus on climate change and its exploitation of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine to agitate for deepened reliance on its products, public polling shows that more than two-thirds of U.S. adults support “developing alternative energy, including wind and solar, over increasing production of fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas.” In addition, poll after poll finds that the majority of Americans want the government to take climate action – but they rarely have the opportunity to learn from TV news about the fossil fuel industry’s role in opposing urgently needed climate and environmental policies.

Reporting on consumers facing record-high prices at the gas pump while oil companies enjoy record-high profits presents just one such opportunity for cable news outlets to inform their audiences about these connections and their links to the climate crisis.

Fox News is a key cog in the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation network, so the conservative network will never cover this reality. But CNN and MSNBC can no longer afford to miss key opportunities to bring accountability to the fossil fuel industry, especially as the public demands answers and the window for meaningful climate action rapidly closes.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for any of the terms “gas,” “fuel,” “pump,” “diesel,” “record,” “price,” “soar,” or “high” on May 10, 2022.

We counted segments, which we defined as instances when record gas prices were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion that also included discussion of record gas prices. We defined significant discussion as two or more speakers in a multi-topic segment discussing record gas prices with one another. We also counted headline reports, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host read news highlights covering a range of topics. Within those segments, we then determined whether any speaker also mentioned record fossil fuel industry profits.

We did not include teasers for segments about record gas prices coming up later in the broadcast or passing mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker spoke without another engaging with the comment.

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ref no drill = discipline: // disaster capitalism?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/energy/gas-prices-oil-production-wall-street/index.html

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/03/04/grijalva-warns-against-fossil-fuel-lobbys-drilling-push-amid-ukraine-war

Grijalva Warns Against Fossil Fuel Lobby's Drilling Push Amid Ukraine War

"We can't let the fossil fuel industry scare us into a domestic drilling free-for-all that is neither economically warranted nor environmentally sound," said the U.S. congressman.

JULIA CONLEY

March 4, 2022

U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl Grijalva on Friday warned that days into Russia's war on Ukraine, the U.S. fossil fuel industry has launched a misinformation campaign aimed at promoting even more oil and gas drilling as the key to ending the conflict and aiding Ukrainians.

In an opinion piece[GUK]at The Guardian, the Arizona Democrat pointed to a list of demands the American Petroleum Institute—the largest lobbying firm for the U.S. oil and gas sector—released just before Russian forces invaded Ukraine last week, including "Release permits for energy development on public lands" and "Accelerate energy infrastructure permitting."

Such demands wrongly portray a fossil fuel industry "hobbled" by President Joe Biden and suggest the U.S. must flood the global market with oil and gas to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin, Grijalva wrote."I feel duty-bound to set the record straight," wrote the congressman. "We can't let the fossil fuel industry scare us into a domestic drilling free-for-all that is neither economically warranted nor environmentally sound."

"Much to my deep disappointment and protest, this administration actuallyapproved more U.S. drilling permits per month in 2021 than President Trump did during each of the first three years of his presidency," the congressman said.

The fossil fuel industry has already laid claim to at least 26 million acres of public land, he wrote, and has more than 9,000 approved drilling permits that companies have yet to use, as well as federal offshore oil and gas leases covering more than eight million acres.

"With the facts laid bare, we see the fossil fuel industry's crocodile tears for what they are—the same old demands for cheaper leases and looser regulations they've been peddling for decades," wrote Grijalva. "These pleas have nothing to do with countering Putin's invasion or stabilizing gas prices, and everything to do with making oil and gas development as easy and profitable as possible."

As Fossil Free Media director Jamie Hennwrote at Common Dreams earlier this week, API, the fossil fuel giants it represents, and right-wing lawmakers who count the industry among their major donors believe "they can fool the public into thinking that more U.S. fossil fuel production will help Ukraine and harm Putin."

"API likes to pretend that more infrastructure will allow the U.S. to somehow flood the global market with enough oil and gas that Putin won’t sell any of his, but that's not how markets work," Henn wrote. "As long as the world is still reliant on fossil fuels, money will be flowing into the Putin regime."

The fossil fuel lobby has been joined by Republicans and anti-climate Democrats in Congress in its push to capitalize on the crisis in Ukraine, which has so far displaced more than a million people and killed more than 2,000 people, according to the Ukrainian emergency service.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has opposed his own party's proposals to shift toward renewable energy as part of the Build Back Better Act, this week called on the U.S. to "ramp up domestic energy production," while Republicans claimed in a letter to Biden on Wednesday that the halting of the Keystone pipeline project left the U.S. and its allies "vulnerable to the malicious maneuverings of Vladimir Putin," urging him to approve more pipeline and offshore drilling permits and loosen environmental regulations.

Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine," suggested on Twitter that the right's push for more drilling amid Ukraine's deadly crisis is an example of "disaster capitalism."[twit manchin

right-wing lawmakers are also exploiting Americans' struggles with rising prices on essential goods, Grijalva said, claiming increased oil and gas extraction will lower the cost of fuel.

"But if that's true, why hasn't record oil extraction from both federal and non-federal lands over the last decade done anything to consistently lower, or at least stabilize, prices at the pump?" asked Grijalva.

Rather than ramp up oil and gas drilling, the congressman said, the U.S. must choose "a path forward that simultaneously cuts the lifeline to fossil fuel despots like Putin, stabilizes energy prices here at home, and creates a safer, more sustainable planet."

"We must wean ourselves off our oil and gas dependence and make transformational investments in cleaner renewable energy technologies, like those in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Build Back Better Act, and the Competes Act, and we must do it now," he wrote.

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random grab 1 wk into ukraine invasion:

Symbol Company Name Price Price Chg Price % Chg Vol % Chgcorp black

OXYOccidental Petroleum

56.19 16.54 41.72% 382.00%

MNRLBrigham Minerals Cl A

27.44 1.97 7.73% 256.00%

MOSMosaic Company

59.85 4.19 7.53% 182.00%

NOGNorthern Oil & Gas Inc

27.38 1.69 6.58% 166.00%

AAAlcoa Corporation

90.70 12.86 16.52% 149.00%

NTRNutrien Ltd

95.05 5.37 5.99% 147.00%

WHDCactus Inc Cl A

54.74 2.69 5.17% 142.00%

SQMSociedad Quimica Y Minra

78.15 12.00 18.14% 111.00%

CFC F Industries Holdings

91.24 4.14 4.75% 109.00%

CVXChevron Corp

158.65 2.43 1.56% 99.00%

https://www.investors.com/

3/20

cf covid corona

some overlap with good old-fashioned profiteering --> inflation, Biden, $1400 covid bailout, slight rise in wages blamed

API energy dominance

rhet analysis god/devil terms: related to chaos? maybe has implicit notion that we are gonna get rid of dems who pass regs or just the regs themselves? or more benignly acknowledges electoral shifts;

or: those naive dems will pass some ill-thought out reg ut reality will intervene and we clear eyed rational/realist gop will be forced to fix/reverse/ "reform" regs

a devil term for regulations // stability ~ crisis/chaos

https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/blog/2022/03/01/voters-to-biden-us-gas-oil-strengthens-global-security

news: President Joe Biden delivers hisState of the Union address tonight. Americans will be listening closely to how he defines our security challenges and charts the path ahead. While it’s unclear what lies ahead as Russia invades Ukraine, we know one thing for sure: American energy is a positive force in difficult times, helping to provide stability for ourselves and our allies in Europe. Indeed, because of their commitment to technology and innovation, America’s natural gas and oil producers are able to use the vast abundance of energy right under our feet.

Perspective: According to one estimateby the International Energy Agency (IEA), nearly half of all energy used globally in 2040 will come from natural gas and oil – even if all 196 nations party to the Paris Climate Agreement meet their emissions reduction goals. Whileinnovationsare well underway to meet a lower-carbon future, the fact is that we’ll need more of these critical resources – not less – as the world’s population hits a projected 9 billion people by midcentury.

The Big Question: So the important consideration is where that natural gas and oil gets produced: Here in America, which requires operators to meet environmental standards and safety laws [HALLIBURTON DR GAG 2005 YOU BASTARD] that are among the most stringent on the planet? Or, should production shift overseas to nations which may have fewer environmental protections and regulatory oversight?

Here At Home: The answer is obvious and voters agree, :{according to new:{ polling by Morning Consult on behalf of API:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box;padding-left:21px;background-image:url("):}::

90 percent of voters support the U.S. developing its own domestic sources of energy rather than relying on other regions of the world (Democrats 92%; Independents 86%; Republicans 90%).
85 percent believe producing natural gas and oil here in the U.S. helps America maintain a leadership role during a period of global uncertainty (Democrats 82%; Independents 78%; Republicans 91%).
85 percent believe that producing natural gas and oil here in the U.S. could help lower energy costs for American consumers and small businesses (Democrats 81%; Independents 80%; Republicans 90%).
84 percent agree that producing natural gas and oil here in the U.S. helps make our country and allies more secure against actions by other countries such as Russia (Democrats 83%; Independents 78%; Republicans 88%).

30,000-Foot View: With global supplies disrupted, America has the energy abundance and the expertise to sustain reliable supply in the decades ahead and is currently working full throttle to enhance energy security for our allies abroad. As President Biden enters the House Chamber this evening, few things are more paramount than increasing energysecurity at home and abroad. Taking actions to restrict U.S. natural gas and oil are steps in the wrong direction.

Action Items: Here are several actions America’s natural gas and oil producers hope that the President will take in tonight’s State of the Union speech:

Emphasize Energy Security and LNG Infrastructure: As Russia escalated threats against our European allies late last year, the U.S. overtook Australia and Qatar as the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter. Experts predict America will surpass all other nations in creating the most LNG capacity by year’s end. And for a period in January, American LNG shipments to Europe overtook Russian natural gas pipeline deliveries for the first time ever. America’s allies agree: LNG is an energy security game-changer – and the administration should take actions to ensure supply and build infrastructure. Absent restrictions and polices to curtail production, the U.S. can do even more to help Europe. The administration can move faster in authorizing additional LNG exports and should ensure LNG facilities here have the flexibility to increase export volumes if needed. It should also ease barriers that block U.S. support for overseas natural gas infrastructure projects.
Reduce Permitting Uncertainty: News last week that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had voted along partisan lines to significantly increase regulatory barriers for approving natural gas pipelines could have a direct impact on America’s response to the current geopolitical situation. FERC’s decision inserts more uncertainty into the approval process at exactly the time operators need clarity. Unfortunately, FERC is not alone in issuing restrictive policies. In an op-ed in The Hill, Ellen R. Wald, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, detailed the many restrictive actions the administration has put in place at the same time they’ve asked oil producers to increase production: “Oil prices are high enough that companies should be producing more and planning for growth, but they are not,” Wald wrote. “The White House should be working to alleviate producers’ concerns about … the permitting process and other regulatory issues so that producers can feel confident investing profits in future oil production. After all, more supply means more reasonable prices. This is perhaps the quickest way to lessen pain at the gasoline pump.”
Reject Protectionist Policies: Americans are struggling with inflation and rising energy bills. And instituting an export ban on LNG, as 10 Senators asked President Biden to implement is not a solution. Increasing LNG exports are not to blame for higher domestic costs. (For example, an Energy Information Administration report cited pipeline restrictions in New England as a key factor in local price increases.) Only about 10% of U.S. natural gas is sent overseas as LNG. And when exports grew the most, in 2019, domestic natural gas prices not only didn’t rise, but fell to three-year lows. Department of Energy studies under the Obama and Trump administrations concluded that rising LNG exports have a negligible impact on domestic prices. Amid high inflation, global instability and a worsening European energy crisis, the most important move federal policymakers can make is to signal that America is well-positioned to provide stability amid any supply disruption – and can do so without increasing costs at home. Hopefully, President Biden will continue to reject export bans that would undermine energy security.
Promote American Energy Leadership: Over the previous decade, as the benefits of the Shale Revolution were realized and policies were put in place to allow natural gas and oil development, America gained our energy independence and became a net exporter of natural gas and oil. And as the world emerges from the economic chaos and disruption caused by the pandemic, America is again the world’s top producer of natural gas and oil. However, a dip in production has meant a return to being a slight net importer in crude and refined products. The path to restoring energy dominance is in avoiding policies that restrict future investment or hinder supply. Last weekend’s decision by the Interior Department to freeze certain new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters is a great example. President Biden should announce its reversal tonight. Imperiling lease sales threatens supply and discourages the kinds of investments that enables energy leadership and lower, stable consumer costs. The President should also ensure the completion of the next five-year offshore leasing program, which should be in place July 1, 2022. President Biden should move forward with a new plan to head off another massive restriction on American energy production.

What They’re [HUH?] Saying: “We commend the administration’s focus on addressing climate change and share the goal of reducing emissions across the economy, but we cannot let that objective detract from the clear and present need for continued responsible investment in oil and natural gas development. Recent developments illustrate the importance of the government working collaboratively with industry to ensure U.S. energy and economic security, as well as that of our allies in Europe and around the world. Now more than ever, the administration should speak clearly and without equivocation that the United States will be a reliable producer and supplier of oil and natural gas to our allies around the world both now and in the future.” –API President and CEO Mike Sommers

About The Author

Lem Smith is API’s vice president for Federal Relations.Lem joined API in February 2020 as vice president for Upstream Policy & Industry Operations. He previously served as a principal at Squire Patton Boggs, an international law and public-policy firm, where he advised private and public sector clients on federal and multi-state policy matters and provided counsel on communications strategies, campaign affairs and crises management. Previously, Lem was director, U.S. Government & Regulatory Affairs at Encana,and responsible for all aspects of U.S. government relations and regulatory policy matters at the state and federal levels. Prior to that, Lem was director of Government Relations for Kerr-McGee Corporation. Lem began his career on Capitol Hill, working for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker (Mississippi) and the late U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood (Georgia), where he negotiated key member priorities within the 2005 Energy Policy Act (EPAct). Lem is a graduate of the University of Mississippi.

aha hmn well it is an investment rag, but odd lack of cursory denunciation of vlad? nuke plant under attack, 1 million refugees

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/asia/22/03/25989426/war-in-ukraine-causes-coal-to-go-parabolic-our-top-name-thats-poised-to-profit-from-the-coal-boom

War In Ukraine Causes Coal To Go Parabolic: Our Top Name That's Poised To Profit From The Coal Boom.

David Pinsen , Portfolio Armor, Benzinga Contributor FOLLOW

March 04, 2022

War In Ukraine Causes Coal To Go Parabolic: Our Top Name That's Poised To Profit From The Coal Boom.

Coal Goes Parabolic

Before the current war in Ukraine, there was already upward pressure on coal, due to a combination of the lockdowns limiting production in 2020 plus a misguided focus renewable energy, as Noah Rothman noted last October:

The sloppy, blinkered effort to transition away from fossil fuels to hypothetical sources of power that cannot meet the energy consumption needs of the planet due to the constraints imposed on them by the laws of physics is an obstacle to meeting “newly minted environmental, social and governance standards for clean energy.”

And a prime beneficiary of that was Peabody Energy Corporation BTU +14.71% (Get Free Alerts for BTU), whose shares spiked that in October after the company announced that its coal revenue in Q3 would be the highest in seven quarters and it offered bullish forward guidance. BTU shares spiked again last month, as the company posted another monster quarter in Q4. Russia's invasion of Ukraine--and the extraordinary sanctions levied against Russia in response--will likely add fuel to this quarter.

Get the inside access traders just like you are using to profit more and win bigger. Don't miss out on Benzinga Pro! Click Here to Start a FREE 14-day trial! (No Credit Card Required)

As Bloomberg energy reporter Javier Blas noted on Thursday, Russia is a major coal exporter (#3 in the world in 2019), and high quality coal has nearly doubled in price as some buyers are eschewing Russian commodities, which is limiting global supply.

A Top Name Again

Our system gauges stock and options market sentiment to estimate which securities are likely to do well over the next six months. Peabody was one of our system's top names last summer, and appeared in a portfolio we shared here at the time.

It was a top name again last October, and it's a top name again now. On Thursday, it appeared in our top ten alongside the ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF UCO +12.51%, and the steel company Cleveland-Cliffs, Inc. CLF +2.09%, which are benefiting from similar reductions in global supply from Russia (the #3 oil exporter and #5 steel exporter in 2019). Our top name on Thursday, Tesla, Inc. TSLA -0.12% is also, of course, an indirect beneficiary of higher oil prices as an electric vehicle company.

Screen capture via Portfolio Armor on 3/3/2022.

A Roller Coaster Ride For BTU Shareholders

Despite benefiting from strong demand for its commodity, Peabody Energy has tested the stomachs of its shareholders over the last several months. After spiking on its Q3 earnings in October, the stock lost more than half its value over the next two months.

Chart

For investors want to hold BTU while limiting their downside risk, below is a way to do so.

Limiting Your Downside Risk In BTU

As of Thursday's close, this was the optimal collar to protect against a greater-than-25% drop in BTU between now and October while not capping your upside at less than 30% over the same time frame.

The net cost of this collar was negative, meaning you would have collected a net credit of $1,300 when opening this hedge on Thursday, assuming, to be conservative, that you placed both trades at the worst ends of their respective spreads (buying the puts at the ask and selling the calls at the bid). In practice, of course, you can often buy and sell options at some price between the bid and ask, so your net credit would likely have been larger than $1,300 had you done that.

This article was submitted by an external contributor and may not represent the views and opinions of Benzinga.

random grab 1 wk into ukraine invasion:

Symbol Company Name Price Price Chg Price % Chg Vol % Chgcorp black

OXYOccidental Petroleum

56.19 16.54 41.72% 382.00%

MNRLBrigham Minerals Cl A

27.44 1.97 7.73% 256.00%

MOSMosaic Company

59.85 4.19 7.53% 182.00%

NOGNorthern Oil & Gas Inc

27.38 1.69 6.58% 166.00%

AAAlcoa Corporation

90.70 12.86 16.52% 149.00%

NTRNutrien Ltd

95.05 5.37 5.99% 147.00%

WHDCactus Inc Cl A

54.74 2.69 5.17% 142.00%

SQMSociedad Quimica Y Minra

78.15 12.00 18.14% 111.00%

CFC F Industries Holdings

91.24 4.14 4.75% 109.00%

CVXChevron Corp

158.65 2.43 1.56% 99.00%

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/pfizer/

profiteer, someone's mrna vacc reverse engr from open records? but still need license?!

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/big-pharma/

Dozens of vulnerable House Democrats are worried that the party's stalled spending negotiations with Joe Manchin will cost them seats in the midterms — and hand Congress to the Republicans

Democrats planned to include legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, fulfilling a campaign promise that helped them win control of the House in the "blue wave" of 2018, as part of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better legislation. The plan ran into an expensive lobbying blitz from the pharmaceutical industry, prompting Democrats to significantly water down the bill to limit the number of drugs Medicare could negotiate amid pushback from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and other industry-aligned Democrats –– and that was before Manchin blew up the Build Back Better package entirely.

"We cannot overstate the paramount urgency of fulfilling the promise of lowering drug prices now for the American people," a group of 40 House Democrats, led by Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., said in a letter to party leaders on Monday.

The letter came after pharmaceutical companies hiked prices on hundreds of medications to start the year. A recent report from the patient advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs found that drug companies have increased prices on more than 550 drugs, including 183 drugs whose prices were raised by $100 or more, and 118 drugs that now cost more than $5,000. Pfizer alone raised prices on 125 drugs, more than any company, even as it shattered profit records thanks to $36 billion in sales from its widely-used COVID vaccine.

"Even as we enter the third year of a pandemic, Big Pharma continues its practice of targeting American patients and consumers with price increases, completely undeterred by the financial and health challenges facing American families," David Mitchell, the founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, said in a statement.

"Drug corporations can do this because we let them — unlike other nations that use their purchasing power to get a better deal," said Mitchell, who suffers from an incurable blood cancer that is treated with a cocktail of drugs carrying a list price of more than $900,000 per year. The original drug-pricing agreement in the Build Back Better Act, he said, "would curb rising drug prices for millions of patients and halt abusive annual price hikes by limiting increases to the rate of inflation, which is projected to return to 2.3 percent in 2023."

Election forecasts generally suggest that Democrats will lose control of the House in the midterms, making the popular drug legislation a key priority, especially after Manchin and Sinema effectively killed off several other popular Democratic proposals, including a rollback of the Trump-era tax cuts, an extension of the expanded Child Tax Credit, and paid family leave.

A Data for Progress poll last fall found that likely voters support the Medicare legislation by a 55-point margin, including 83% of Democrats, 71% of independents, and 65% of Republicans.

"Taking action on prescription drugs is one of the most popular political issues Democrats can pursue — it's overwhelmingly supported by a bipartisan majority of voters," Sean McElwee, the founder and executive director of Data for Progress, said in an email. "Democrats need to take every opportunity to lower costs for voters and deliver popular legislation that visibly improves their lives this November."

Manchin, who walked away from Build Back Better negotiations in December after the White House called him out by name in a statement over the bill's delay, said on Tuesday that the Build Back Better bill is "dead" and any negotiations on potential spending programs would have to start from scratch. Biden has said that he hopes to include "chunks" of the original bill in a potential compromise package with Manchin.

Last year, Manchin said he supported the drug-price legislation, calling it the "one thing that should be done for sure." But the West Virginia senator appears to be prioritizing bipartisan negotiations to reform the Electoral Count Act over any would-be spending bill, leaving a key Democratic campaign promise in limbo.

"President Biden supports this plan. We support this plan," the House Democratic group said in their letter. "Every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate supports this plan. And most importantly, the American people support this plan. It is time to enact it into law. Already this year, drug corporations have raised prices on more than 400 drugs. Action can't happen soon enough to make medicines more affordable for the millions who need them."

The price increases came after the pharmaceutical lobby shattered its own record for lobbying spending as it rallied around the cause of defeating Biden's legislation. Democrats like Sinema and Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., two of the biggest recipients of Big Pharma donations, led an effort to cut the number of drugs that could be negotiated by Medicare. Even so, the compromise legislation would save taxpayers an estimated $80 billion while capping price increases on certain medications, capping out-of-pocket costs for seniors, and capping the cost of insulin at $35 for people on Medicare and on private plans.

Medicare is the only government agency that is barred from negotiating bulk pricing discounts — the result of an infamous scheme hatched by Big Pharma lobbyists and a Republican leader who rammed the provision into a bill that required Medicare to cover the cost of prescription drugs, shortly before he left Congress and became the top lobbyist for the industry. A three-year investigation by the House Oversight and Reform Committee last month found that pharmaceutical companies exploit the Medicare program to boost revenues, noting that taxpayers could have saved more than $25 billion over five years if Medicare was allowed to negotiate the cost of just seven popular drugs such as Humira and Lyrica.

The investigation also found that drug companies "aggressively raise prices" to hit revenue targets and incentives for executives and have targeted the U.S. market for higher prices while keeping costs lower overseas. The report also concluded that drug companies "abuse the patent system" to suppress competition and maintain monopoly pricing. Drug companies contend that their huge profits are necessary to fund research and development, but the investigation found that the 14 leading drug companies spent $577 billion on stock buybacks and dividends over just five years, $56 billion more than they spent on research and development over that same period.

The limited Medicare negotiation bill approved by the House last year would allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of 20 popular drugs and dozens of insulin products used by 8.5 million Medicare beneficiaries, according to a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, although many of the drugs with the highest Medicare spending would be exempt.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which pushed for a more expansive bill that would have saved taxpayers an estimated $450 billion over 10 years but ultimately agreed to back the scaled-down version, set a target date of March 1 to pass the revised spending plan ahead of Biden's State of the Union address.

"This is both achievable and necessary," CPC Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said in a statement, noting that in the weeks since negotiations had stalled out, "the case for this legislation has only become more urgent."

Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers

Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis

by John Nichols

furious denunciation of America’s coronavirus criminals

Hundreds of thousands of deaths were caused not by the vicissitudes of nature but by the callous and opportunistic decisions of powerful people, as revealed here by John Nichols.

On March 10, 2020, president Donald Trump told a nation worried about a novel coronavirus, “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” It has since been estimated that had Trump simply taken the same steps as other G7 countries, 40 percent fewer Americans would have died.

And it was not just the president. His inner circle, including Mike Pence and Jared Kushner, downplayed the crisis and mishandled the response. Cabinet members such as Betsy DeVos and Mike Pompeo undermined public safety at home and abroad to advance their agendas. Senators Ron Johnson and Mitch McConnell, governors Kristi Noem and Andrew Cuomo, judges such as Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Rebecca Bradley all promulgated public policies that led to suffering and death. Meanwhile, profiteer Pfizer (and anti-government propagandists such as Grover Norquist) fed at the public trough, while the billionaire Jeff Bezos added pandemic profits to a grotesquely bloated fortune.

John Nichols closes with a call for a version of the Pecora Commission, which took aim at what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the “speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, and profiteering” that stoked the Depression. There must be accountability.

chao and devos bailed out of apparent principle but chao never opposed trump on anything, covid mask fail; devos tried to use covid to push charters

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/corporate-scheme-biden-agenda/

common dr

Corporations threatened by the prospect of paying a slightly higher tax rate and exercising a little less power over working people are spending millions to sabotage a far-reaching Democratic reconciliation bill that would expand the social safety net and bolster climate action.

That's according to Behind the Curtain: The Corporate Plot to Upend Democracy, a new report released Wednesday by People's Action, a nationwide network of groups organizing for social justice, and Dēmos, a progressive think tank.

"While everyday people are calling on Congress to put people first and safeguard their basic rights to housing, healthcare, and a clean environment, corporations are prioritizing profits and working hard to preserve an inequitable status quo," Dēmos senior policy analyst Daniella Zessoules said in a statement. "As we've witnessed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, this greed hits Black, brown, and low-income people hardest."

The report exposes how corporations are trying to ensure that the United States' wealthiest and most powerful entities "can reap obscene profits year after year at our expense" and "keep our elected officials from taking action to restore communities."

Just 20 corporations or industry groups—keen to preserve nearly $2.3 trillion in tax cuts the GOP passed in 2017 and to make permanent billionaires' $1.8 trillion pandemic windfall—have spent more than $201 million in lobbying so far this year, the report finds. Much of that corporate cash has been aimed at derailing progressive provisions in the popular and potentially historic tax reform and spending package that would invest up to $3.5 trillion over a decade to strengthen the welfare state and decarbonize the economy.

Although the reconciliation bill encapsulates the agenda demanded by tens of millions of voters who elected President Joe Biden and put Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, an ongoing "power grab"—led by several corporations and trade associations that represent them, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the National Realtors Asscoaition, and supported by aligned right-wing lawmakers—has put its passage in jeopardy, the report notes.

"We pulled the curtain back on corporate America to find they were trying to put Congress in a headlock," People's Action campaign director Sondra Youdelman said in a statement. "Now, Congress needs to do its job, fight these bullies, and pass a budget package for the people."

While "corporate influence to stop progressive change is nothing new," the report states, "the concentration of wealth and monopoly powers in recent years has added fuel to the flame."

"Corporate America wants to keep profits high and taxes low forever," adds the report. "They simply don't want to pay their fair share. That's why they're throwing millions of dollars into lobbying, campaigns, and political advertising to divide us and get legislators to back their agenda of permanent inequality."

The report highlights anti-democratic corporate spending and opposition to the Build Back Better Act's proposed reforms in the following six key issue areas, all of which are backed by a majority in the U.S.: increasing taxes on corporations and the ultra-rich, lowering drug prices, providing affordable healthcare, investing in public and affordable housing, tackling climate change, and providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people.

For each issue area, the report explains measures included in the reconciliation package, shows polling results indicating popular support for the proposed investments and policies, and details what corporations are doing to obstruct the bill's passage.

According to the report:

Over two-thirds of voters support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations;

Nearly 90% of adults want the government to negotiate lower drug prices;

A majority of voters want the federal government to reduce healthcare costs and expand coverage;

A majority of voters want the federal government to increase the supply of nonprofit and publicly owned homes;

Two-thirds of adults think the federal government is not doing enough to mitigate the climate crisis; and

Almost 70% of voters support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

And yet—even though the Build Back Better Act would take steps toward meeting the needs of millions of Americans who are facing rampant tax injustices, the world's highest prescription drug prices, skyrocketing healthcare costs and lack of insurance, evictions and foreclosures, extreme weather disasters, or the threat of deportation—corporations have vehemently fought against the reconciliation bill.

Leading offenders include Anthem, JPMorgan Chase, FedEx, Walmart, Exxon, Amazon, Pfizer, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, the report finds. Big Pharma and private health insurance companies have spent $171 million so far in 2021 on lobbying, the most of any industry.

As the report notes:

Rich corporations are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the American people from getting what they want: a government that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few. Their massive use of corporate power to frustrate the will of the people on an issue-by-issue basis is part of a larger anti-democracy effort backed by corporate America.

As corporations seek to undermine the Biden plan's much-needed tax provisions, historic investments in drug pricing reform, healthcare, housing, climate, and immigration reform, they are also attacking our freedom to vote. Many of the same companies combating elements of the Build Back Better proposal are also bankrolling voter suppression legislation.

"Now we know who the real villains are behind the curtain, who want to keep our communities from getting what we need and deserve," the report concludes. "Corporations and the wealthy few are undermining our democracy. They are lobbying hard to preserve an unequal status quo, using money to steer government rather than allow a real democracy to bring about what the people overwhelmingly want—a country that works for all of us."

The report's publication coincides with a National Day of Action during which People's Action members plan to hold rallies denouncing opponents of the Build Back Better Act for undermining the well-being of the nation's economy and democracy.

Following Tuesday's action against JPMorgan in New York, demonstrations against these organizations are planned for Wednesday:

Greater Des Moines Partnership in Iowa;

FedEx in West Virginia;

Anthem in Indiana;

Blue Cross Blue Shield Anthem in New Hampshire;

Blue Cross Blue Shield in Illinois;

Ajax Pavement Industries: Flint Asphalt Plant in Michigan;

Amazon in Colorado;

National Realtors Association in Delaware and New York; and

PhRMA in Idaho. [vaxxers unite!]

"We can't call the U.S. the greatest democracy in the world if our legislators allow a handful of corporations to derail the critical and wildly popular provisions in the Build Back Better package," Lisa Tyson, director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, said in a statement (pdf).

"These companies are lining politicians' pockets in hopes of securing a future of extreme inequality and climate catastrophe," Tyson added. "It's time for lawmakers to grow spines and show us who they work for: the people, not massive corporations."

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/07/climate-supervillain-creating-new-tv-channel-to-report-on-weather-he-helped-fuck-up/

we’ve reached the final boss level of climate irony. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon whose News Corp. owns Fox News, plans to launch a full-time channel focused on the weather called Fox Weather.

Apparently, viewers are hungry for weather content — the Weather Channel’s viewership was up 7% in the first half of this year, while viewership fell for big cable networks. And looking at the historic heat waves gripping much of the country this summer — caused partially by stalled climate action aided by Fox News working in tandem with oil companies and the Republican Party to spread climate misinformation — it’s not hard to see why.

The irony of Fox creating a weather channel, of all things, is as deep as the rapidly heating ocean and as wide as our swiftly overheating country. As much of the rest of the world ponders how to dig ourselves out of this mess we’ve made, Fox News is still clinging desperately to denial.

Last month, star Tucker Carlson used his show to allege that climate activists want to “experiment to make children smaller” to fix global warming (spoiler alert: that is, uh, not true), while in May, climate denier Steve Koonin was invited to not one, but two Fox News programs to promote his book claiming that other scientists are getting too worked up about this global warming thing.

Even the supposedly nonpartisan evening news show hosted by Brett Baier has a distinct denier slant: A Media Matters analysis of Baier’s climate coverage from 2009 to 2021 found that a whopping 88% of it ran the gamut from misleading to promoting bad-faith narratives to flat-out lies.

“It’s not just the bigger climate denial,” said Allison Fisher, the director of the climate and energy program at Media Matters. Fox News, Fisher said, “specifically use[s] weather to push climate denial. That is a long-worn tactic of Fox News, even before Trump was tweeting out, like, ‘where’s your global warming now?’ during a snowstorm. That’s a very classic Fox move.”

Fisher pointed out that as recently as this year, Fox News contributors used an April cold snap to claim climate change was a hoax. “They’re emphatic about dismissing the relationship between climate change and weather, whether it’s during a megastorm or the wildfires last year or the record-shattering heat this week, and then also mocking the idea of global warming during moments of abnormally cold weather,” she said. “They’re the ones who have made weather political.”

News Corp owns the denier-friendly Wall Street Journal and New York Post, as well as several right-wing outlets in Murdoch’s home country of Australia. While Murdoch claims not to be a climate denier himself, there’s no question that his companies have made money — and powerful allies in the fossil fuel industry — perpetuating damaging climate “coverage.”

A Greenpeace survey released last year found that News Corp’s coverage of the devastating 2020 Australian wildfires drove a “viral misinformation campaign” intended to spread misinformation on the causes of the fire and protect the coal industry in Australia. The company’s explicit and implicit endorsement of climate denial has even led to a fracture in the Murdoch family: during the wildfires, Murdoch’s younger son, James, issued a rebuke of the company on its handling of climate, and he stepped down from the company last summer.

According to Fisher, Fox News has meteorologists on staff who report on the weather, but they mostly do “straight reporting” of what is going on. “They’re not contextualising” that weather, she said — despite the fact that other networks are letting their meteorologists discuss how extreme weather is shaped by climate change. “That contextualisation of these events as climate is what makes Fox’s entry into this space really suspect and troubling.”

All of this raises the question of how, exactly, Fox is planning to go about reporting the weather when it keeps getting more extreme thanks, in part, to a mess they helped create. As Deadline reported a few weeks ago, Fox has tapped at least six meteorologists from different local markets — Britta Merwin, Jason Frazer, Craig Herrera, Bridgit Mahoney, Stephen Morgan, and Nick Kosir — to flesh out the basis of its news team. Earther was able to find just a few tweets from three of them that mentioned climate change.

“Climate change is real and it is a fact,” Merwin, a future Fox morning host and formerly of KPRC-TV in Houston, responded in February to a Twitter user using Merwin’s report of snow on the beach to claim climate change was a hoax. “It is about science,” she wrote. Her future morning cohost, Frazer of WKYC-TV in Cleveland, thanked a meteorologist in 2017 for “sharing … expertise on climate change” and mentioned climate change in 2018 when discussing the size of a tropical storm. (“You could argue Climate Change but I am not touching that hot potato,” he wrote.) Meanwhile, Herrera, who covered weather for Seattle’s KING-TV and will serve as another coanchor, tweeted about climate in 2013 and 2014, when he covered an IPCC report and did a piece on California’s drought. “We have a long way to go but education and facts are key,” he responded to one user thanking him for his coverage. “Can’t dispute the science or numbers.”

Gizmodo reached out Frazer, Merwin, and Herrera, along with another of their future coworkers, to ask how they planned to handle climate coverage. We will update when we receive any responses.

According to the Times, Fox is dipping a toe into this space because it’s so profitable; it quotes a TV executive saying that “climate change and the environment will be the story of the next decade,” while a spokesperson for Fox told the Times the network will offer “in-depth reporting surrounding all weather conditions, and we are excited to showcase to viewers what a full-service comprehensive weather platform can deliver beginning this [spring].”

Some of Fox’s future competitors making hay out of the climate crisis could goad the network into figuring out ways to cover it: The Weather Channel, the Times reported, has a whole host of climate change programming planned, including a show about miners looking for minerals in Greenland exposed by newly melted ice (sorry, what?).

But Fisher sees a darker possibility for the new weather service.

“It’s the content they’re producing that’s going to get amplified,” she said. “If they bring on a denier like Marc Morano, if he starts to get a platform there — that content is going to go on his website, it’s going to go into other right-wing media infosphere, it’s going to bounce back on Fox, it’s going to go on social media, and they’re going to push that out in moments when everybody else is saying, ‘this is climate change’–they’re going to be able to tell this right-wing media bubble, it’s not.”

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https://theintercept.com/2020/12/08/great-reset-conspiracy/

no lnx

Back in June, the World Economic Forum, best known for its annual Davos summit, kicked off a lunge for organizational relevance at a time when it was already clear that, for the foreseeable future, packing thousands of people, injected-cheek by lifted-jowl, into a Swiss ski resort to talk about harnessing the power of markets to end rural poverty was a nonstarter.

The effort was called the Great Website — I mean the Great Reset. And through articles, videos, webinars, podcasts, and a book by WEF founder Klaus Schwab, it provided a coronavirus-themed rebranding of all the things Davos does anyway, now hastily repackaged as a blueprint for reviving the global economy post-pandemic by “seeking a better form of capitalism.” The Great Reset was a place to hawk for-profit technofixes to complex social problems; to hear heads of transnational oil giants opine about the urgent need to tackle climate change; to listen to politicians say the things they say during crises: that this is a tragedy but also an opportunity, that they are committed to building back better, and ushering in a “fairer, greener, healthier planet.” Prince Charles, David Attenborough, and the head of the International Monetary Fund all figured prominently. That kind of thing.

In short, the Great Reset encompasses some good stuff that won’t happen and some bad stuff that certainly will and, frankly, nothing out of the ordinary in our era of “green” billionaires readying rockets for Mars. Indeed, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Davos speak, and the number of times it has attempted to rebrand capitalism as a slightly buggy poverty alleviation and ecological restoration program, will recognize the vintage champagne in this online carafe. (This history is explored in an excellent new book and film by the law professor Joel Bakan, “The New Corporation: How ‘Good’ Corporations Are Bad for Democracy.”)

Through its highly influential Global Competitiveness Report, the WEF has played a leading role in the transnational campaign to liberate capital from all encumbrances (like robust regulation, protections for local industries, progressive taxation, and — heaven forbid — nationalizations). Long ago, however, Schwab realized that if Davos didn’t add some do-gooding to its well-doing, the pitchforks that had started amassing at the foot of the mountain would eventually storm the gates (as they came close to doing during the 2001 summit).

SUISSE ANTI-WEF DAVOS MANIFATTACK

[Left/Top: Demonstrators walk over a WEF logo during a rally of opponents of globalization and the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, on Jan. 24, 2003. Right/Bottom: Riot police officers attack students during a rally to protest a meeting of the World Economic Forum near the Shilla Hotel where the Geneva-based WEF opened a two-day summit in Seoul, on June 13, 2004.Photo: Martial Trezzini/Keystone/AP; Ahn Young-Joon/AP

And so the giddy sessions on new markets in Malaysia and new startups in California were complemented with somber ones on melting ice caps, United Nations development goals, “impact investing,” “stakeholder capitalism,” and “corporate global citizenship.” In 2003, Schwab introduced the tradition of each January summit having a big theme, starting with the appropriately chastened “Building Trust.” The new Davos tone, though, was truly set in 2005, when actor Sharon Stone, upon hearing Tanzania’s president speak of his nation’s need for mosquito nets to battle malaria, leapt to her feet and turned the session into an impromptu charity auction to purchase the nets. She raised $1 million in five minutes, and a new Davos era was on its way.

If Davos wasn’t “seeking a better form of capitalism” to solve the spiraling crises Davos itself systematically deepened, it wouldn’t be Davos.

The Great Reset is merely the latest edition of this gilded tradition, barely distinguishable from earlier Davos Big Ideas, from “Shaping the Post-Crisis World” (2009) to “Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild” (2010) to “The Great Transformation” (2012) and, who can forget, “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World” (2018). If Davos wasn’t “seeking a better form of capitalism” to solve the spiraling crises Davos itself systematically deepened, it wouldn’t be Davos.

And yet search for the term “global reset” and you will be bombarded with breathless “exposés” of a secret globalist cabal, headed by Schwab and Bill Gates, that is using the state of shock created by the coronavirus (which is probably itself a “hoax”) to turn the world into a high-tech dictatorship that will take away your freedom forever: a green/socialist/Venezuela/Soros/forced vaccine dictatorship if the Reset exposé is coming from the far right, and a Big Pharma/GMO/biometric implants/5G/robot dog/forced vaccine dictatorship if the exposé hails from the far left.

Confused? That’s not on you. Less a conspiracy theory than a conspiracy smoothie, the Great Reset has managed to mash up every freakout happening on the internet — left and right, true-ish, and off-the-wall — into one inchoate meta-scream about the unbearable nature of pandemic life under voracious capitalism. I’ve been doing my best to ignore it for months, even when various Reset “researchers” have insisted that all of this is an example of the shock doctrine, a term I coined a decade and a half ago to describe the many ways that elites try to harness deep disasters to push through policies that further enrich the already wealthy and restrict democratic liberties.

There has been a tsunami of examples of the real shock doctrine since the pandemic began: Trump’s attacks on Washington’s regulatory architecture; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s amped-up campaign for “school choice,” rather than, say, giving public schools the resources they need to keep children safe; Silicon Valley’s multiheaded power grab, which I wrote about as the Screen New Deal; the Modi government’s cruel attacks on price protections for India’s farmers (setting off a wave of heroic protests) — and so many more.

[US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos speaks at a school choice event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 3, 2017 in Washington, DC. / AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos speaks at a school choice event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 3, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

What Schwab and the WEF are doing with the Great Reset is both more subtle and more insidious. Schwab is, of course, absolutely right when he says that the pandemic has revealed many deadly structural failures of capitalism as usual, as does the accelerating climate crisis and the hoovering of the planet’s wealth up toward the Davos class, even in the midst of a global pandemic. But like the WEF’s earlier big themes, the Great Reset is not a serious effort to actually solve the crises it describes. On the contrary, it is an attempt to create a plausible impression that the huge winners in this system are on the verge of voluntarily setting greed aside to get serious about solving the raging crises that are radically destabilizing our world.

Why? For the same reason I keep hearing Facebook ads on NPR podcasts telling me how much Facebook wants to be regulated. Because if our corporate overlords can create this impression, it is less likely that governments will listen to the rising chorus of voices calling on them to do what is required to actually combat spiraling poverty, joblessness, climate breakdown, and informational degeneration: regulate the companies that have created these crises, and tax them, break them up, and, in some cases, put them under public control.

The Great Reset is an attempt to create a plausible impression that the huge winners in this system are on the verge of voluntarily setting greed aside to get serious about solving the raging crises that are radically destabilizing our world.

So no, the Great Reset is not just another name for the Green New Deal, as many a right-winger with a digital chalkboard and an unhealthy AOC obsession is absurdly claiming. It is, first and foremost, about blocking a real Green New Deal, which most assuredly would not have the support of BP, Mastercard, the Prince of Wales, and all of the other Great Reset partners.

And yet, in recent weeks, a slew of right-wing commentators on Fox News, as well as Brazil’s minister of foreign affairs and prominent opposition politicians in Australia and Canada, have claimed to be confused about this and are suddenly giving oxygen to what was, until recently, a marginal conspiracy. Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Ben Shapiro have all been terrifying their huge audiences with claims that green socialism is about to be forced down their throats via Schwab’s Great Reset, which, they explain, is the very same thing as President-elect Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, which is itself a thin cover for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. (Like an early fan of an indie punk band, Glenn Beck has been using his perch at The Blaze to point out that he was ranting about the Great Reset when it was just a gleam in Schwab’s eye.)

Do these people honestly think that Schwab is in cahoots with AOC and using the pandemic to put BP out of business — with the full cooperation of BP? Of course not. But President Donald Trump is on his way out, and the Green New Deal is popular — precisely because it is as far away from Davos as it could be, grounded in a polluter-pays ethos and in programs like a jobs guarantee and universal health care that enjoy broad working-class support. For right-wing politicians and the oil companies that back them, the more climate action can be conflated with an organization known for its traffic jams of private jets and its Bond villain founder, the easier it will be to resist any climate plan at all. That’s why the earliest alarmism about the Great Reset came from the Heartland Institute, ground zero of the climate change denial machine.

[Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party, speaks during a news conference in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Friday, April 5, 2019. Kenney said he would create a C$1 billion ($750 million) crown corporation to support Indigenous resource projects including pipelines if he's elected to lead Alberta's government this month, according to an emailed statement. Photographer: Todd Korol/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesJason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party, speaks during a news conference in Calgary, Canada, on April 5, 2019. Photo: Todd Korol/Bloomberg/Getty Images

This messaging is gaining traction not because people are suckers but because they are mad — and they have every right to be. Lockdown policies have demanded months of individual sacrifice for the collective good without providing the most basic collective protections to keep families from slipping into starvation and homelessness, or to keep small businesses afloat. Meanwhile, trillions have been spent to backstop markets and bail out multinationals, and pandemic profiteering is rampant. Is it any wonder that so many find it entirely plausible that the same elites who expect them to swallow all the coronavirus-related sacrifices while they party in the Hamptons and on private islands would also be willing to exaggerate the risks of the disease to get them to the accept more bitter “green” medicine, for the common good? As that first Davos theme made clear, trust between the people and the mountaintop has been broken — and it most certainly has not been rebuilt.

For a glimpse of how all of this fits together, take a look at what is going on in Alberta, Canada, under its truly reprehensible premier, one Jason Kenney. Kenney came to power pledging to serve as a shameless valet for the Alberta oil patch, specifically its extra-fast-planet-cooking tar sands. He promised to ram through all pipelines, no matter the opposition, and create a “war room” to surveil all opponents.

Back in March, in the early days of the pandemic, I observed that Kenney deserved the award for the most craven Covid-19 disaster capitalist because he had just laid off 20,000 education workers, supposedly to cover pandemic costs, even as he lavished $7 billion in public subsidies on the Keystone XL pipeline, despite the lockdowns having created a massive glut in crude oil. He followed up in the fall by laying off 11,000 health care workers, a clear effort to use the Covid-19 crisis to open the door to partial U.S.-style health care privatization.

It has surprised no one that Kenney has also presided over a U.S.-style coronavirus explosion, with the province’s positivity rate recently topping 10 percent (higher than the average south of the border). Now Kenney, a self-proclaimed big-government-bashing libertarian, has been reduced to begging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for funds to build field hospitals.

Is it any wonder he has been looking to change the subject? Last week, Kenney did exactly that, selecting a question about the Great Reset during a Facebook livestream. The premier feigned horror at the idea that Klaus Schwab could possibly see Covid-19 as an opportunity to advance policy goals, describing the plan as a “grab bag of left-wing ideas for less freedom and more government” and “failed socialist policy ideas.” Warming up to his subject, he declared: “I’m not going to be taking any policy direction from Klaus Schwab and his ilk. … Heck no! We are not going to exploit or take advantage of a crisis to advance a political agenda. … It’s very distasteful and regrettable that influential people would explicitly seek to take advantage of a crisis like this to advance their own political vision and values.”

The online right rejoiced: “Jason Kenny Shows Real Leadership Rejecting Klaus Schwab’s New World Order!” declared one outlet, and I can’t bear to link to the many, many others.

Sadly, Kenney’s aversion to crisis opportunism comes late for the thousands of newly unemployed education and hospital workers in his province, or for the hundreds of patients who will soon be getting treatment in its field hospitals. And though Kenney was quick to say that the Great Reset was not a conspiracy theory and that the coronavirus is real, his statements were immediately seized upon by the growing numbers of people who are seriously convinced that Covid-19 is a hoax cooked up by Davos globalists to eliminate their private property, poison their brains with 5G, and take away their right to go to the gym.

In Alberta, thousands of those people participated in maskless “Walk for Freedom” marches last week. I have no doubt that Kenney meant it when he told them to cut it out, just as he no doubt wants Covid-19 to stop ravaging his province, along with his reputation. But what he wants far more is to stop the momentum toward climate action in coronavirus recovery plans so the oil companies that underwrite his party and government can wring out a few more profitable quarters. And he, along with growing numbers of similarly craven politicians the world over, sees fueling the Great Reset conspiracy as the most effective means of achieving that goal.

None of this is to say that Schwab’s Reset push is benign and unworthy of scrutiny. All kinds of dangerous ideas are lurking under its wide brim, from a reckless push toward more automation in the midst of a joblessness crisis, to the steady move to normalize mass surveillance and biometric tracking tools, to the very real (though not new) problem of Bill Gates’s singular power over global health policy. The irony, though, is that the fact-Vitamix currently whirring around the Great Reset actually makes it harder to hold the Davos set accountable for any of this, since legitimate critiques have now been blended together with truly dangerous anti-vaccination fantasies and outright coronavirus denialism.

It also makes it harder to talk about the profound realignment our economies and societies desperately need, a vision a group of us laid out in the short film we released way back in October called “The Years of Repair” — because now all talk about how we change for the better in response to the cruelties that Covid-19 has unveiled is immediately smeared as part of the Great Reset. As the historian Quinn Slobodian recently wrote, years after “The Shock Doctrine” was published, “the right was now appropriating this narrative for its own ends.” Meanwhile, the less fantastical but extremely real shock doctrine maneuvers currently waging war on public schools, hospitals, small farmers, environmental protections, civil liberties, and workers’ rights receive a fraction of the attention they deserve.

Is it all a plan, another kind of elaborate conspiracy? Nothing so elegant. As Steve Bannon kindly told us, the informational strategy of the Trump era has always been to “flood the zone with shit.” Four years later, we can see what this looks like in practice. It looks like far-left and far-right conspiracists sitting down over a tray of information-shit sandwiches to talk about how the Great Reset is Gates’s plan to use the DNA from our Covid-19 tests to turn the United States into Venezuela.

It makes no sense, and that’s just fine by the likes of Bannon, and Kenney as well. Because if you want to keep waging war on the Earth’s life-supporting ecology, a great way to do it is to deliberately pollute its democracy-supporting information ecology. In fact, the pollution is the point.

DN 920

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/18/headlines/us_billionaires_added_845b_to_net_worth_since_march_as_pandemic_exposed_racial_inequities

U.S. Billionaires Added $845B to Net Worth Since March as Pandemic Exposed Racial Inequities

hard to know what to call this:

https://www.corporateaccountability.org/2020-corporate-hall-of-shame/

British American Tobacco

Big Tobacco wrote the playbook on modern corporate abuse. Literally. From spreading junk science to dividing and undermining opponents, to getting politicians to do their bidding, the tobacco industry was at the leading edge of it all.

And they’re still up to these dirty tricks. This year, British American Tobacco (BAT) has exploited the global COVID-19 pandemic to market its harmful and addictive new products by co-opting hashtags meant to spread public health information and using influencers to push its brand. BAT also helped fund a junk science study that claims tobacco consumption (which leads among other things to respiratory disease) might reduce the danger of the novel coronavirus (a respiratory disease). And cynically using a global pandemic as a marketing ploy, BAT announced it had begun researching a COVID-19 vaccine.

We nominate British American Tobacco for exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to peddle its harmful and addictive products on social media and make unproven, dangerous health claims that further undermine public health policies.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-pushes-school-privatization-but-keeps-public-schools-biggest-foe-hidden-from-sight

education Sec. Betsy DeVos has spent her life—and lots of her family’s money—pushing to destroy public education. And now the coronavirus pandemic is giving the Trump administration a tool to do just that, but DeVos is being all but erased from the public effort.

There’s a reason for that: DeVos has been unpopular from her Senate confirmation hearing on. As people struggle with school reopening plans that are confusing, inadequate, unsafe, or all of the above, it might be counterproductive to remind them that the Trump administration’s proposed answers are in fact part of the same war against public education DeVos has been waging for a long time.

“School choice,” or, in translation, funneling public money away from public schools and into private schools and privately run charter schools that don’t have to follow the same rules as public schools, was a centerpiece of the Republican National Convention (RNC). Donald Trump talked about it—lying about Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s position on charter schools—as did Melania and Don Jr., among other speakers.

But while “school choice” was everywhere at the RNC, DeVos was entirely absent, not even included in a video about women in the Trump administration. That’s a decision. Not “we didn’t have time to include her as a convention speaker” but an intentional omission of one of the highest-ranking women in the administration.

deVos may be a particularly unappealing messenger with her yachts and mansions and fumbling about “potential grizzlies.” But it’s also worth thinking about how much Team Trump is trying to use the pandemic as a stealth attack, separating DeVos’ relatively unpopular longtime efforts against public schools from the push to replace public schools with privatized options in this specific pandemic moment. The coronavirus is a chance to rebrand school privatization away from Betsy DeVos, presenting it as an answer to a specific problem now.

That two-pronged attack—the longstanding one built on DeVos’ money and the current one masquerading as a solution to a new problem—is powerful. This is an existential crisis for public education. But don’t mistake the idea that privatized education is the answer to the coronavirus crisis for anything but the same old assault on the public good of an education system that serves all kids.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/hedge-fund-3-billion-richer-thanks-to-wager-on-wildfire-insurance-claims-what-stage-of-capitalism-is-this

social and environmental toll of the unfolding fire catastrophe in California—where over 100,000 people have been displaced, seven have died, and approximately 1.2 million acres have burned since August 15—is incalculable, but hedge fund Baupost Group has found a way to turn the state’s devastating wildfire epidemic over recent years into profits for investors.

After wagering on insurance claims against PG&E, Baupost received more than $3 billion in July, Bloomberg reported Friday.

According to Bloomberg:

The payout yielded Baupost’s biggest profit generator last month and represented a sizable markup from what the firm had anticipated, it told investors Thursday. The fund bought $6.8 billion of subrogation claims against PG&E, court documents show.

Baupost acquired some of the claims at about 35 cents on the dollar, Bloomberg previously reported, so its profit on the trade could have approached $1 billion. But the gains were partly offset by losses on the firm’s equity holdings in the utility company, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

The relationship between PG&E, insurers, and investors such as Baupost began last year. PG&E’s electrical network—rendered vulnerable by a lackluster commitment to risk reduction—has been implicated in multiple fires across California in the past five years. Facing $30 billion in liabilities stemming from a series of fires in 2017 and 2018 that killed over 100 people and destroyed tens of thousands of buildings, the utility company declared bankruptcy in 2019 and announced an $11 billion settlement with a group of insurance carriers and investors, including Baupost.

insurers sell subrogation claims to investors at a discount because they enjoy the certainty of being paid right away, but in the process they also lose the right to sue to recuperate damages endured by policyholders.

While fire victims across California—and elsewhere in the country—continue to suffer the impacts of increasingly destructive wildfires, the ability of hedge funds to profit from such calamities provoked critics of the financial system and its perverse incentives. In his assessment of a situation in which Wall Street firms have perfected their lucrative approach to disaster management, journalist David Sirota tweeted:

// great recession:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/elizabeth-warren-sounds-the-alarm-on-a-mounting-housing-crisis-and-the-profiteers-who-will-take-advantage/

During her 2020 presidential primary campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren had a lot to say about the United States’ housing crisis — and after suspending her campaign and endorsing former Vice President Joe Biden (now the presumptive Democratic nominee), the Massachusetts senator continued to address the subject. Warren, in an op-ed she wrote for the Washington Post with Carroll Fife (director of the Oakland office of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), stresses that the coronavirus pandemic has made a brutal housing crisis even worse. And private equity firms, according to Warren and Fife, are hoping to cash in on the misery by gobbling up “distressed real estate.”

“The nation is facing an accelerating housing crisis,” Warren and Fife warn. “Too many people had no stable housing before the pandemic hit, and COVID-19 has made the problem even worse. Renters who were already facing an affordable housing shortage — with many spending more than half of their income on rent — now have no federal rental assistance or federal protection from eviction. Homeowners have less than a month left of foreclosure protection. And more than 30 million people receiving unemployment insurance just saw their benefits cut by $600 a week, raising the threat of a wave of defaults that could trigger a double-dip recession.”

But while “families” see as a “looming catastrophe,” they add, “private equity firms just see dollar signs.” And Warren and Fife cite a Wall Street Journal report that investors are hoping to buy “distressed real-estate assets at bargain prices.”

According to Warren and Fife, such “profiteering” is “straight out of private equity’s playbook during the 2008 financial crisis."

"Following the 2008 crash,” they explain, “corporations that grabbed up properties on the cheap, converted those homes into rentals and turned into the worst kind of slumlords — jacking up rents, neglecting maintenance requests and health and safety concerns, and eagerly assessing fines, fees and eviction notices. Other corporate-owned homes were left vacant in a hoarding of housing stock. We cannot stand by while this history repeats itself.”

Warren and Fife’s recommendations range from “strong federal legislation to guard against the coming wave of evictions and foreclosures, including emergency rental assistance” to preventing “predatory companies from further destabilizing neighborhoods and profiting off the displacement of families.”

“If we fail to prevent another private equity real estate grab,” Warren and Fife warn, “we risk allowing another massive upheaval in the housing market that could wreak more havoc on low-income Americans — especially black and brown families still recovering from losing their homes a decade ago. Against a decades-long backdrop of racist federal policies that have impeded black homeownership, lawmakers’ refusal to proactively address this problem would be an indefensible oversight that would again give Wall Street carte blanche to use a national crisis to enact a massive, generational transfer of wealth from vulnerable Americans to corporations."

disaster and surveil capitalism together at last:

https://crooksandliars.com/2020/04/meet-palantir-surveillance-company-founded

crooks no lnx

no vid

Politics 4/25/20

Meet Palantir: A Surveillance Company Founded By Trump Crony Thiel To Track COVID-19

As if we don’t have enough to worry about from Trump and the coronavirus already, there’s a data-mining company called Palantir, founded by gazillionaire crony Peter Thiel, digging up and providing information about us and COVID-19 to the federal government.

By NewsHound Ellen

Reporter Spencer Ackerman appeared on AM Joy today to expand on a frightening article in The Daily Beast about Thiel and Palantir’s involvement in the creation of a government coronavirus data platform.

A top donor to conservative causes and the first outside investor in Facebook, Thiel was, according to The Wall Street Journal, instrumental in pushing the social networking giant to allow politicians to lie in advertisements on the platform. It’s a policy that many outside observers believe will help the Trump campaign—which Thiel has again pledged to support.

Palantir, which Thiel helped found—and still retains a sizeable stake in — has watched its already-lucrative government business skyrocket in the Trump era.

Now, as Ackerman explained to host Joy Reid, Palantir is integrating data for the Department of Health and Human Services “from a staggering amount of data sets from around the country.”

ACKERMAN: Palantir isn’t saying anything on the record about this contract, Joy. What we’ve found is that Palantir is building the Department of Health and Human Services a platform to integrate data from a staggering amount of data sets from around the country. HHS says 187 data sets, basically things like supply chain management for hospitals, bed space in hospitals dealing with coronavirus, information as well on where new instances of the outbreak may be and their intensity. What we don't have a clear picture on is what access Palantir itself will have to that information.

Reid noted that Palantir has previously worked for HHS to detect Medicare fraud, for the FBI in criminal probes, the Department of Homeland Security to screen air travelers and to keep tabs on immigrants. Given Thiel’s stance against truth on Facebook, Reid pointed out, “This is not a guy who's on the side of the public.”

Ackerman agreed.

All of the data that we generate from nearly everything we do, particularly in an economic sphere these days, all of it being digital,

...ACKERMAN: Palantir is basically the weaponization of what Shoshana Zuboff at Harvard Business School calls surveillance capitalism

has a huge amount of implication for our privacy. And what that really means, it has a huge implication for our freedom.

Palantir has built, with CIA start-up money from its In-Q-Tel investment arm, a really incredible suite of tools that a variety of both law enforcement, intelligence, military, commercial and civilian government sector entities use to monitor a tremendous amount of what we do. The implications of this are really profound and they're only going to grow the more data we all generate.

…

Under Donald Trump, it's really been super-sized. They've gotten something like upwards of $800 million already in federal contracting money, and this one particular tool they're sending to HHS, this thing called Foundry, we found a contract for that basically a drop in the bucket for Palantir, $7.5 million, but now what we all have to find out is where that data actually goes and what happens to that data when they no longer need it. The history of surveillance over the past generation is that once you build these tools and the government has them, they don't want to give them up, and they migrate into being a permanent fixture of government life and activity.

That’s the same HHS, by the way, where the coronavirus response team is led by a former dog breeder and the spokesman is a racist conspiracy theorist.

What could go wrong?

see betsy no waste crisis // katrina?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/besty-devos-denounced-for-new-craven-public-school-privatization-scheme

with the Trump administration planning to demand that Congress devote a large chunk of the state and local education funding in the next Covid-19 relief package to a new grant program for private and religious schools, the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers on Thursday accused Education Secretary Betsy DeVos of attempting to exploit the pandemic to advance her privatization agenda.

“It is telling that, after spending more than three years doing nothing to help the public schools that 90 percent of children attend, Betsy DeVos races to divert resources into private hands 48 hours after the Supreme Court’s decision in Espinoza,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement, referring to the high court’s ruling Tuesday that religious schools cannot be excluded from taxpayer aid programs.

“With our country dealing with a pandemic, an economic recession, and structural racism, she’s spied an opening to exploit this crisis to resuscitate her failed agenda,” said Weingarten. “And it’s especially sickening that, in the middle of a national reckoning over race, when poor schools are in desperate need of funds to reopen safely, DeVos hijacks the anniversary of the Civil Rights Act to shift support away from where it’s needed most.”

“DeVos’ craven attempts to divide and privatize would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high,” Weingarten added.

mcClatchy reported Thursday that the Trump administration intends to ask Congress “for a ‘one-time, emergency appropriation’ for a new grant proposal” that would “be provided to states to distribute to nonprofit institutions that disburse scholarships to qualified students who want to attend non-public schools.”

“The White House is seeking to have 10% of the amount that Congress approves for state and local educational agencies set aside for the grants,” according to McClatchy. “Trump will also seek approval of $5 billion in federal tax credits for businesses and individuals who donate to the scholarship programs.”

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, warned in a statement Thursday that “Secretary DeVos and President Trump are using this pandemic as an excuse to push an ideological privatization agenda that would divert much-needed funds away from our public schools that serve approximately 90% of students across the country.”

“Right now, our public education system is facing unprecedented challenges—public schools are scrambling to implement safety protocols with limited funds, millions of education jobs are on the line due to looming budget shortfalls, and families across the country are struggling with a chaotic, uncertain reality,” Murray said.

“On the anniversary of Civil Rights Act of 1964, it’s also important to note the pandemic has exacerbated severe racial inequities that have long existed in our education system,” the Washington Democrat continued. “If Republicans have any sincere interest in addressing these inequities, they should show it by working with Democrats to invest in public education and address systemic racism rather than siphoning resources away when they’re needed more than ever.”

naomi drilled interview 6/20: kids see intersectionality vs older/boomer do you have to make this hard? about capitalism? car work is low carbon; started in climate at latrina NO dis cap'l ism research, git that floods were out future; red bait mccarthy stick used to beat up system thinking (commies want to overthrow our way of life/cap'l SYSTEM vs update the operating sysyem; puncuated transition anoshabe woman cda?0 BP rebrand docs on drilled]

GND attacked on fox but not really defended opon cnn and msnbc: rt story = loss; // Keystone XL beg for 2 min, then followed by FF greenwash ad that was LONGER?! Brazil 10 yrs ago Anjelica Navarro we need a Marshall Plan for climate;

~EJ

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04062020/trump-pipeline-sign-amid-racial-justice-coronavirus

With the nation convulsed by multiple crises, President Donald Trump returned to a favorite stand-by of his presidency—asserting his authority to sweep aside environmental restraints and speed up construction of oil and gas pipelines.

But the executive order that he signed Thursday night—the third of his presidency aimed at expediting pipelines—is destined to spur more of the type of litigation that has rendered his previous directives ineffective so far.

The White House invoked the same legal authority the president has to expedite hurricane and flood response actions to declare an "economic emergency," that requires the waiving of environmental reviews and other regulations.

"This order will be a sitting duck for the sorts of legal challenges that have been so successfully brought against other Trump environmental rollbacks," said Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. "Few developers or lenders will risk millions on starting construction in reliance on this order surviving in court."

The White House provided few details on the order before the scheduled signing at 4:30 p.m. "I can tell you it does have to do some of the permitting and energy as it relates to rebuilding this country," said presidential spokesman Hogan Gidley in a brief noon appearance before reporters.

By 6 p.m., the White House had provided no copy of the order. There was no live streaming of any signing, nor any public appearance by Trump at the White House, where workers spent the day erecting tall metal barricades around the perimeter of the complex. Outside, crowds of protestors flanked the presidential residence in one of the demonstrations for racial justice that have proliferated in cities across the nation since the police killing of George Lloyd.

Finally, after 6:15 p.m., the White House made copies of the order available.

"From the beginning of my Administration, I have focused on reforming and streamlining an outdated regulatory system that has held back our economy with needless paperwork and costly delays," Trump said in the document. "Antiquated regulations and bureaucratic practices have hindered American infrastructure investments, kept America's building trades workers from working, and prevented our citizens from developing and enjoying the benefits of world-class infrastructure. The need for continued progress in this streamlining effort is all the more acute now, due to the ongoing economic crisis."

The president's critics were quick to point out that his order was poorly timed, since minority communities would be disproportionately affected by his move to waive theenvironmental review mandated under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

"Today President Trump is dealing another blow to the Black community, during a worldwide pandemic and nearly a week into nationwide Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and structural racism," said Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, in a statement. "Gutting NEPA takes away one of the few tools communities of color have to protect themselves and make their voices heard on federal decisions impacting them."

The second executive order of Trump's presidency, issued in January 2017 (after his plan to repeal Obamacare), was a directive to expedite oil and gas pipelines. In his speeches, he often repeats a line about creating 48,000 jobs in his first week in office by reviving the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and the Dakota Access pipeline in the midwest.

In fact, environmental opponents of the Keystone project have so far been successful in preventing its advance with legal challenges to its water permit. And although the Dakota Access pipeline was completed, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in March won a court order for a sweeping new environmental review of the project; the judge is now considering whether the flow of oil should be stopped while the review is completed.

Legal experts expressed doubt that Trump's latest order could directly affect the outcomes in the Keystone XL or Dakota Access litigation. In the future, such litigation by states and tribes may be made more difficult by rules that the Environmental Protection Agency finalized this week in response to a 2019 Trump executive order.

Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.), the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement that it was clear that Trump is seeking to cut communities out of the process.

"By allowing projects to plow ahead without public engagement or input, this executive order will fast-track projects that could tear through communities, harm air quality, endanger drinking water sources, destroy critical habitats and threaten endangered species," said Carper. "Under the guise of immediate relief, this executive action will cause long-term damage that will not be easily undone."

Legal experts noted that Trump's use of the economic downturn to invoke environmental waivers was unprecedented. "These emergency exemptions have traditionally been used for necessary fast responses to disasters, such as clearing away debris after a hurricane, or building field hospitals," said Gerrard in an email. "They have not been used as a backdoor way of creating construction jobs."

Jayni Foley Hein, natural resources director at New York University Law School's Institute for Policy Integrity, said Trump's novel legal theory could have an effect that is precisely the opposite of what the White House intends. "In a strange way, this could create more uncertainty for project developers, as their approvals will be on shakier legal footing," Hein said.

"It's hard to say if it's bluster and posturing or if it's wishful thinking or some combination," Hein said.

But so far at least, despite his repeated efforts, Trump has been singularly unsuccessful in building pipelines with a stroke of his pen.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

OIL SPILLS/PIPELINES POLITICS

DONALD TRUMP PIPELINES CLIMATE CHANGE

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/jim-cramer-coronavirus-pandemic-triggered-one-of-the-greatest-wealth-transfers-in-history/

an 620

Jim Cramer: Coronavirus pandemic triggered ‘one of the greatest wealth transfers in history’

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams June 5, 2020

CNBC‘s Jim Cramer said Thursday that that coronavirus pandemic has triggered “one of the greatest wealth transfers in history.”

The remark from the network’s “Mad Money” host came amid “ominous” economic data but a rebounding stock market.

“How can the market rebound without the economy? Because the market doesn’t represent the economy; it represents the future of big business,” said Cramer. “The bigger the business, the more it moves the major averages.”

“And that matters,” he continued, ‘because this is the first recession where big business—along of course with bigger wealth, but that’s not really by show—is coming through virtually unscathed, if not going for the gold.”

In contrast, small businesses are “dropping like flies,” Cramer said, attributing those failures to the fact that smaller businesses are struggling to pay rent as “major landlords” don’t appear to be offering relief.

“That’s the thing about this pandemic,” Cramer continued, “it’s been one of the greatest wealth transfers in history.”

Cramer projected that transfer to have a “horrible effect” on the country.

Further, the CNBC host said, “we’ve barely begun to see the impacts” of the pandemic’s economic fallout. Cramer pointed to the latest corporate bankruptcy figures he said would “chill both Republicans and Democrats.”

The new comments came a day before federal data showed the nation facing a 13.3 percent unemployment rate, and as a new analysis showed the fortunes of U.S. billionaires increased by $565 billion between March 18 and June 4. That 11-week period also saw 42.6 million Americans filing jobless claims.

never waste a crisis: disaster capitalism poster child eg katrina New Orleans

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/betsy-devos-openly-admits-shes-using-the-pandemic-to-further-her-private-school-choice-agenda/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/heres-how-corporate-deals-are-making-ppe-shortages-even-worse/

Here’s how corporate deals are making PPE shortages even worse

Alex Henderson May 22, 2020

When hospitals have an insufficient amount of PPE (personal protective equipment), the chances of doctors and nurses being infected with coronavirus increases. Many hospitals in the U.S. have been complaining…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/how-do-we-escape-the-death-economy/

the coronavirus pandemic, enabled and accelerated by Donald Trump, has killed more than 60,000 Americans. At least a million Americans are known to be infected. The numbers of dead and infected are likely far higher than officially reported.

Beyond the tens of thousands already dead or who will die in the months ahead — and not including those whose lives will be shortened by the virus — the coronavirus pandemic has caused economic ruin in the United States.

At least 30 million Americans are unemployed, close to one in five adults in the workforce. Again, the real number is almost certainly much higher. Leading economists warn that this pandemic may lead to a second Great Depression — and conceivably even an economic calamity worse than the one that transformed our country and the world in the 1930s.

Note this report from Politico:

Across Wall Street and the economic world, forecasters are quickly ramping up their predictions of massive job losses and declines in economic activity by as much as an annualized 50 percent in the second quarter of the year. They’re offering estimates unseen since the Great Depression that began in 1929 and continued for a brutal decade, reshaping governments and economies across the globe.

Morgan Stanley economists on Monday said they now expect a 30.1 percent annualized decline in gross domestic product in the second quarter, the worst quarterly performance in 74 years. The firm’s estimates assume the virus peaks in April and May before growth starts to recover. But if the peak comes later and economic disruption continues in the second half of the year, they wrote, U.S. growth for even the entire year will be down to levels last seen in the early 1930s.

In total, the American economy has lost trillions of dollars because of Donald Trump’s willful, malicious, corrupt and likely intentional negligence in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

This crisis has left millions of Americans desperate for such basics as food and shelter. Many unemployed Americans — and others who have seen their salaries and work hours reduced — are either on the precipice of homelessness or are now without a stable place to live.

The richest Americans do not live in the same world as the middle class, working class or poor. They have largely insulated themselves from the impact of disasters, both manmade and natural. Moreover, the plutocrat class finds ways to profit from human misery.

As reported by Business Insider, dozens of America’s billionaires have become even more fabulously rich during the pandemic.

The “coronavirus relief bill” provided more than a trillion dollars in relief for multinational corporations and other large businesses. In that same bill, Republicans gave the very richest Americans $90 billion in tax cuts. Writing at GQ, Luke Darby explains: “The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, calculates that 80 percent of the tax cuts in the coronavirus relief legislation will go to people making more than $1 million annually — just 43,000 people — and will cost $90 billion in 2020 alone.”

Small businesses have been left unable to access promised loans and other supports. The average American will only receive $1,200 in assistance from the coronavirus relief bill.

Donald Trump has said there will be no more direct payments to the American people beyond the pittance provided so far. Yet the Trump family and his allies are evidently using this national emergency to enrich themselves.

Trump has not been subtle — or apologetic — in using the coronavirus relief money as a personal slush fund to pay off his political allies and friends and to punish his enemies and other Americans he deems disloyal.

Once again, the rich and the powerful are leveraging a human catastrophe to further empower and enrich themselves while others suffer. I recently spoke with someone who knows about this first hand: John Perkins, author of the bestselling “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.” He is an expert on how economic and political crises present unmatched opportunities for the rich and the powerful.

For several decades beginning in the 1970s, Perkins worked for multinational corporations and global finance organizations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

His job was to prey upon developing and “Third World” nations by offering “solutions” to the very economic and political crises that his employers and clients had caused. If those countries and leaders refused Perkins’ “bargain,” then the “jackals” — meaning mercenaries or foreign military forces — could be sent in to destabilize or overthrow those governments.

In this conversation, Perkins explains how the destruction caused by the coronavirus pandemic offers an illustration of why America and the world need to move beyond a “death economy” — where all areas of life are financialized and profits rule over people — and toward to a new way of thinking and living that he describes as a “life economy.” Perkins also outlines how the corporate oligarchy and its leaders plan to flourish both during and after the coronavirus pandemic.

Economic hit men like him, Perkins argues, have long operated within the United States, reducing local economies to rubble to generate profits for multinational banks and corporations.

As usual, our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Given the state of the world with the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump’s regime in the United States, how are you feeling? What is your emotional state?

It wavers. I’m a very hopeful person. I proceed from a fairly reasoned standpoint in my thinking. Over the last several decades I have been thinking and writing about how we as a species need to make changes in the way human beings relate to each other and to the planet. We need to move from what I call a “death economy” into a ‘life economy.” A life economy is one that pays people to clean up pollution and regenerate destroyed environments. A life economy also develops new technologies that do not ravage the Earth. As I travel around the world, I have seen signs that we are moving in that better direction. The coronavirus is a reminder we need to move much faster towards creating a life economy.

Given your background working as an “economic hit man” for some of the world’s largest corporations, banks, the IMF, the World Bank and other organizations, how do you make sense of this moment?

People often ask me, “In order to move from a death economy to a life economy, don’t we all need to be hit over the head by some terrible crisis?” I believe that is not necessarily the case. Half the world is already in a state of terrible crisis. We’ve been struck by hurricanes, fires, tsunamis and earthquakes. These are once-in-a-hundred-year events that are happening every year or so now.

Planetary ecosystems are changing rapidly in ways that are not conducive to life as we know it. These are also events that are local in their impact as much as they are global.

With the coronavirus the world is in crisis. No outside force is going to show up and come to the rescue, making everything better. We’re all in this together. Everyone on the planet is talking about this pandemic.

People deep in the Amazon are feeling it. People who live in the Himalayas are feeling it. People in all the major cities are feeling it. I am not sure if I really see any possibility for true recovery from this pandemic. I would not say that it is impossible. But I do believe that it is highly unlikely that there is a return to a state of “normal” as previously understood before the coronavirus pandemic. We will have to create a new type of normal — and that may be something that we will have to recreate frequently, because the health experts and scientists are warning that the coronavirus is not going to end soon. It is likely to be something recurring and may very well mutate over time.

Societies all over the world experience sudden economic change. The coronavirus is not novel in that respect. In Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and elsewhere, economies were changed, sometimes overnight and mostly for the worse, by the actions of the United States and other Western countries. The bankers and financiers have that much power. Most Americans have never experienced such shocks and do not have the vocabulary or emotional and cognitive skills to make sense of it.

I was in Ecuador when it was forced by the IMF and the World Bank to use the dollar as its currency. In that one moment everything changed. The people that had their money in sucres — which was all of the lower classes and most of the middle class — lost half their money relative to the world economy. People who had their money in dollars — the rich families and the foreign corporations in Ecuador — increased their net worth and spending power. That happened the minute, the second, the dollar was put into effect. Similar shocks are hitting the United States and parts of Europe as well as Asia, places which are not used to such sudden economic change.

How do plutocrats and other financial and economic elites make sense of a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic? How do they see crisis as an opportunity to maximize profits?

First, we have to be careful about generalizations: If you’re the executive of an oil company right now, you’re probably not feeling very good. If you’re the president of Boeing, you’re not feeling good right now. On the other hand, if you are someone like Jeff Bezos who is the CEO of Amazon, or the CEO or other senior executive of a company that deals in computers, online services and similar technologies, then there is tremendous opportunity available. Such companies are going to thrive. Universities are at a critical juncture right now because of this crisis. Their deans and presidents are saying to themselves, “OK, there’s an opportunity here for us to move more and more into online schooling and get rid of tenure, get rid of our buildings. We don’t need all this maintenance. We don’t really need all these buildings. Where are my opportunities here to cut way back on expenses, cut back on tenure, do all of our classes virtually?”

If you happen to run a grocery business or a restaurant, you are suddenly seeing the importance of being able to do things through the internet and providing services where you deliver to people’s homes or where people come up to a window and buy things. What one sees in terms of opportunity and challenges from the coronavirus is really a function of their economic and social location.

I think we do have to ask ourselves what happens if the government is not able to subsidize all these people that don’t have jobs, and they can no longer buy food? These big supermarkets that are currently thriving by selling things remotely and delivering to the home or having people come up in their cars or whatever, how are they going to protect themselves from the starving people? These are questions that are hypothetical now, but those horrible events may very well happen in the near to far future, depending on how the coronavirus pandemic continues or not.

For decades you were an economic hit man. Looking at the United States, what are some of its vulnerabilities and choke points? How has the coronavirus exposed those societal and economic weaknesses?

The coronavirus pandemic has shown the world that the United States is very ill-prepared for any real emergency. That lack of preparedness is true on any number of levels.

The Trump administration appears to be paralyzed. The national government keeps wavering on what to do. President Trump is wavering almost every day. It is hard to understand what he really wants. This is a leadership crisis at the highest levels. Trump is causing a crisis in confidence among the American people during the coronavirus crisis.

It is not just Trump. The coronavirus is really exposing many other deep problems in American society. America spends roughly $700 billion a year on weapons. The country just spent $2.2 trillion to fight this virus. Wouldn’t it have made more sense if the United States put a lot less money into the defense budget and a lot more money into preparing for emergencies such as the coronavirus? Money on a proper health care system or even a guaranteed income?

Economic hit men are now working within the United States and not ,just abroad. Predatory gangster capitalism has made the coronavirus much worse here in the United States. Flint, Michigan, is one example of that fact and its horrible outcomes for real people.

Flint is a city that at one point was the beating heart of the American car industry. Consider what the death economy does to itself. It consumes itself into a state of extinction. Here in the United States, the corporations dispatched their economic hit men to places within the country where the corporations could operate with fewer taxes, cheaper labor costs and the like. The corporations basically abandoned Flint. Production was largely moved overseas. The economic hit men and corporations also targeted the American people through debt — health care debt, college debt, credit cards.

The economic hit man has become stronger since I first wrote my book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” in 2004. Now every major corporation has its own economic hit men. They are operating both within the United States and around the world on behalf of huge multinational corporations.

You are advocating a move from a death economy to a life economy. At present, Donald Trump, the Republican Party and their propagandists and supporters are a death cult that wants older people, people with pre-existing conditions, the poor and working class and any others they deem “less than” to go out and risk their lives for “the economy.” How does that fit into your framework? Trump and his allies want exactly the opposite of a life economy.

Such encouragements are absolutely disgusting and very disturbing. One has to suspect that such behavior is being driven by the desperation of Donald Trump and his family, his son-in-law’s family and other Trump allies who have huge holdings in real estate and are probably losing enormous amounts of money because of the coronavirus pandemic. They are actively trying to figure out a way to take advantage of the pandemic. I am sure that is happening.

ref

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/27/covid-19-is-more-than-a-public-health-crisis--its-a-political-crisis-fueled-by-the-ruling-class/

COVID-19 is more than a public health crisis — it’s a political crisis fueled by the ruling class

Scarcity — and the greed of the oligarchs — have exacerbated this crisis

BOB HENNELLY

APRIL 27, 2020

The corporate news media has defined the coronavirus pandemic as merely a public health crisis. It is that, of course — but it has exposed a political crisis, too, that is making the effects of the pandemic far worse than they would be if this were merely a public health issue.

We can't cure what ails us until we figure out the disease that afflicts us. And so far, when it comes to COVID-19, the empirical science has been a moving target wrapped up in qualifications and hedges.

If A is true and B is true, all we really know is scientists are still on a scavenger hunt for clues. So, for now, your scientific take on this crisis is like a veritable Rorschach test that reflects your own fears and hopes about what you want to be true.

Back to their normal

The powers-that-be guiding our post-mortem debate frame it around whether or not we need universal testing "so we can all get back to work." Of course, this resumption of our economy will be crafted so as to maintain the same oppressive wealth pyramid that made us so vulnerable to the coronavirus in the first place. But with the desired testing protocols in place, the lower strata can worry their status as an essential worker preordains a premature demise like coal miners.

Take a look at a map of where America's wealth inequality is most pronounced and then overlay the data from the COVID19 death toll. You will see the pandemic's path through the America so many in Washington ignored for decades as they tilted the economy to favor the one percent.

Crucial to the corporatist continuity is the deliberate undercount of the dead bodies and the promotion of an image of managerial competence of a government to deliver us from a virus they ignored and then spread by fumbling their response.

Get on with it

The push to reopen without universal testing and contract tracing is coming from 21st century Malthusians, who — as their team captain in the White House has said —want to just let the virus "rip" through society. This crew doesn't want to waste any more time, because for them time is money. They argue waiting to re-open the economy until there is universal testing and contract tracing will kill more people than COVID-19 itself.

They believe from their private box seats that a mass die-off of the most vulnerable —most likely blue-state urban-dwelling Democrats or undocumented immigrants, they hope — would be an interim solution and a solid down payment on herd immunity and the establishment of the 21st century post-COVID-19 master race.

Just think of how long they could put off really taxing the rich if the weakest in society were no longer of anyone's earthly concern. And, as for the undocumented, they shouldn't have been here in the first place; and COVID-19 has the no-knock warrant that Stephen Miller wanted ICE to have.

Remember, these are the same folks that put immigrant children in cages. They have made very clear that they do not see undocumented immigrants as human beings and that in their world informed by scarcity there's barely enough to go around for American citizens.

And that was before Trump's Great Depression. You don't think Miller doesn't want to step up his game to help insulate Trump's base in the red states who are now feeling the COVID-19 heat in meatpacking plants that employed so many immigrants?

Why, for him it would be the restoration of the white America he and his boss always promised. Get rid of the immigrants first; then, thanks to the Depression 2.0, you will have red blooded Americans lining up for those same jobs they once thought beneath them.

Culling the herd

This white supremacist worldview was bluntly called out by David Frum, a former speech writer for George W. Bush, when he appeared on MSNBC with Ari Melber on April 24.

Frum observed that ProPublica had published a list of seven basic action items, like contact tracing, that should be in place before re-opening the economy. Yet, Frum rightly observed none of these public health prerequisites were in place even as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, moved to re-open the Peach Tree state's economy.

This, Frum explained was moving "toward the policy" of "let's take the punch" and reopen accepting 'that there may be hundreds of thousands, or some double hundreds of thousands, of Americans killed. They're going to be mostly poor and minorities, mostly not going to be Trump voters. Let's take that punch and push through and try to get to herd immunity as fast as possible."

Jello science

Of course, what this grand plan ignores is that it assumes that once a person has become infected with the virus, experiences a bout with it, and survives, they will be immune from contracting the virus again.

Yet, there have been cases of an individual surviving COVID 19, only to get re-infected.

NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, reported on the vexing case of a woman, in her 40s, working as a tour bus guide with tourists from Wuhan, China, in January. She had tested positive for the coronavirus on January 29 and was declared cured on February 6.

Later in the month, she started to suffer symptoms and came up coronavirus-positive a second time.

This was not a one-off instance.

There were sufficient enough cases like this for South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) to posit the recurrence of the virus in patients was evidence the virus could be "reactivated."

And if there is not global scientific consensus on if you can get re-infected, there certainly is no empirical understanding of how long such an as-of-yet-unconfirmed immunity might last.

For want of a mask…

In the fog of the viral war, commentators have lost sight of how a decades-long bi-partisan embrace of militarism against the "axis of evil" set the stage for the scarcity of basic health care equipment and the broad deterioration of public health that makes the United States such a ripe host for the coronavirus.

Early on, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued guidance which greatly eroded the occupational health protections for front line health care workers because it required them to re-use N95 masks that were supposed to be disposed of after each clinical encounter.

This guidance was issued not because COVID-19 was any less infectious or deadly, but because the agency was worried there was not enough N95 masks to go around.

Scarcity.

And just as the nurses' unions predicted the CDC "crisis" guidance was followed by healthcare workers getting sick, in some cases dying, as the virus continued to eat its way through the oldest, poorest and most vulnerable we have so long neglected.

ProPublica reported physicians and nurses "from New Jersey to California to North and South Carolina" all confirmed that hospital administrators had "normalized poor infection control practices — putting them at risk and likely spreading the virus."

As a consequence, the non-profit news source said clinicians felt conditions were "so unsafe" they were "forced to choose between their livelihoods and risking their lives" and as a result were in some instances just "walking away."

On April 17, the CDC released a study that looked at confirmed cases of COVID-19 and found that between Feb. 12 and April 9 9,282 health care workers had been infected, with 92 percent reporting at least one symptom like fever, cough, or shortness of breath. The remaining 8 percent did not report any of these symptoms.

While most health care workers tracked in the national study were not hospitalized, the CDC reported "severe outcomes, including 27 deaths occurred across all age groups" proving most lethal to older health care workers.

On April 20, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) sued the New York State's Health Department and two hospitals for allegedly failing to protect workers against the coronavirus by not providing sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) and ordering them to work prematurely after being sick with the virus.

"More than seven in 10 of our nurses are reporting exposure to COVID-19, and most are still untested. These lawsuits were filed to protect our nurses, our patients and our communities from grossly inadequate and negligent protections," NYSNA Executive Director Pat Kane said. "We cannot allow these dangerous practices to continue."

According to Crystal Lewis's reporting in the Chief-Leader, the NYSNA reported that 954 of their members tested positive for the coronavirus, and 8 have died.

A slide years in the making

As more and more health care professional succumbed to the virus, it burrowed even deeper into our nation's poorest minority neighborhoods — the same ones that had been left to rust after the Great Recession.

While experts argue over how to account for the dead bodies and what it should say on the tens of thousands of death certificates, you can be sure we won't see a reference to our society's two most enduring pre-existing conditions: greed and scarcity.

If anybody in a position of real power had bothered to notice, they would have seen just how vulnerable we were — with the average life expectancy in the U.S. on the decline for three years in a row.

Ironically, the last time that happened was back around the time of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic Woodrow Wilson did his best to ignore.

Work won't set you free

Have no fear: our 21st century essential workers, we will memorialize you in gauzy commercials with swelling sentimental music as an audio underbed as we guarantee your right to a mask a week.

You will do your patriotic part, as did your slave and indentured servant ancestors before you. With selfless zeal you will ensure that the ruling class can remain safely ensconced in their home bunker and run the world remotely — for it is your destiny to serve, and they love you for it.

BOB HENNELLY

Bob Hennelly has written and reported for the Village Voice, Pacifica Radio, WNYC, CBS MoneyWatch and other outlets. He is now a reporter for the Chief-Leader, covering public unions and the civil service in New York City. Follow him on Twitter: @stucknation

MORE FROM BOB HENNELLY

Commentary Coronavirus Covid-19 Neoliberalism Oligarchy Pandemic Trump Administration

ctr-pt:

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html

maybe accident but diff corps testing covid require other stuff from same corp? eg roche? NY gov?

kush grabbed ppe from hosp?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/chaos-kushner-commandeered-supply-chain-task-force-operates-in-the-dark-and-turned-government-into-arm-of-big-business/

no lnx

def of facsism corpism?

‘Chaos’: Kushner-commandeered supply chain task force operates in the dark — and turned government into arm of big business

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement April 13, 2020

Jared Kushner is best known for his failures, and his decision to commandeer the supply chain task force and turn it into an arm of Big Business may be his greatest.

The supply chain task force, a part of the larger coronavirus task force, should be helping the federal government procure desperately-needed personal protective equipment (PPE) including face masks and shields, along with life-saving medical equipment like ventilators, at a lower cost, and distributing it to the areas that need it the most.

But under Kushner’s manipulation, the supply chain task force has “virtually no accountability,” NBC News reports. It has “operated almost entirely in the dark, releasing few details of their arrangements with the big companies; created a new and convoluted emergency response system; and sown confusion and distrust in the states and among the people who need medical supplies.”

“Jared and his friends decided they were going to do their thing,” one senior government official told NBC News. “It cost weeks.”

Congressional officials warn the supply chain group is mired in “chaos, secrecy and ineptitude.”

NBC reports under Kushner the supply chain task force has spent about one million dollars each on 40 chartered FedEx flights in a deal for chemical giant DuPont to send its made in the USA Tyvek material over to Vietnam, where it is sown into body suits.

Those suits used to sell for $5 each. The federal government, in addition to basically donating what would amount to $40 million to DuPont, is now paying up to three times as much for the suits: $15 each, NBC News reports. To make matters worse, instead of paying FedEx $1 million per flight the federal government could have used U.S. military aircraft which would have cost less than half: $410,000 per flight.

And if all that weren’t bad enough, DuPont only sold 60 percent of the suits to the federal government.

“We actually helped get raw materials supplied from Richmond, Virginia, and we flew that s— to Vietnam, all so that DuPont could sell us” their products, said a senior federal official involved in the coronavirus effort.

President Donald Trump and HHS, which announced the deal last week, described the arrangement as one in a string of massive successes in delivering badly needed medical equipment into the U.S. in an expedited fashion.

Read the entire report here.

https://theconversation.com/going-back-to-school-to-deal-with-hard-times-for-profit-schools-could-make-things-even-harder-134872

disaster cap'lism?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/rewarding-vulture-capitalists-trump-white-house-accused-of-smash-and-grab-economics-for-weighing-tax-cut-for-rich-investors-as-workers-struggle/

no lnx

‘Rewarding vulture capitalists’: White House accused of ‘smash-and-grab economics’ for weighing tax cut for rich investors as workers struggle

President Donald J. Trump participates in a roundtable on the economy and tax reform Monday, April 15, 2019, at Nuss Truck & Equipment in Burnsville, Minn. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams April 6, 2020

As desperate workers, the unemployed, and small businesses struggle to obtain benefits authorized under the multi-trillion-dollar coronavirus stimulus package President Donald Trump signed into law late last month, the White House is reportedly considering an additional slate of aid measures that critics say would disproportionately favor the wealthy while providing little relief for those most in need.

The Washington Post, citing two anonymous officials familiar with White House discussions, reported late Sunday that the Trump administration is weighing “a payroll-tax cut, a capital-gains tax cut, creating 50-year Treasury bonds to lock in low interest rates, and a waiver that would clear businesses of liability from employees who contract the coronavirus on the job.”

Trump is also considering an infrastructure package, according to the Post, but the idea faces internal opposition from top advisers.

Slashing the capital gains tax, a move that would overwhelmingly reward rich investors, has long been an obsession of the Trump White House and congressional Republicans. Last year, as Common Dreams reported, Trump floated the idea of bypassing Congress to index capital gains to inflation, but never acted amid warnings that such a unilateral change would be illegal.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated in a 2018 analysis that 86% of the benefits of indexing capital gains to inflation would flow to the top 1%.

Capital gains tax cut. No detail. But (see above) they seem to like recycling bad ideas.

So take their last bad cap gains tax idea as an e.g. of the shape of distribution you can expect from a tax cut geared to people with cap gains. I.e., regressive.https://t.co/VZfWf4t0Mv pic.twitter.com/hy6q9VVuEI

— Chye-Ching Huang (@dashching) April 5, 2020

“A capital gains tax cut would be smash-and-grab economics with no value to the economic and medical calamity facing us,” tweeted HuffPost senior reporter Zach Carter.

Critics also took aim at the other proposals under consideration inside the Trump White House, including the waiver relieving businesses of liability for workers who get sick on the job.

“Won’t somebody please think of the employers who want to coerce their employees into accepting life-threatening workplace conditions without facing legal liability,” New York magazine’s Eric Levitz tweeted sardonically.

Freelance journalist Jon Walker called the Trump administration’s reported proposals “the worst possible set of ideas for dealing with a pandemic.”

“We are beyond parody at this point,” Walker wrote. “Making it easier for people to get sick at work. Rewarding people for going into work. Rewarding vulture capitalists profiting off a crisis.”

White House deliberations over a fresh coronavirus aid package comes as the mammoth legislation Trump signed late last month is failing to get much-needed relief into the hands of people and small businesses, vindicating progressives’ warnings that the package amounted to little more than a massive bailout for big corporations replete with goodies for the well-off.

On Friday, the Trump administration launched the $350 billion small business relief program authorized under the $4.5 trillion stimulus package. But the rollout was disastrous as small businesses struggled to apply for loans and some of the biggest banks in the country sat out the process entirely as the Treasury Department failed to provide adequate guidance.

“The estimate is there are 30 million small businesses out there,” wrote David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect. “About 4.5% of all of them will have a chance to get relief. Half of small businesses haven’t paid rent in April, which if I’m doing the math correctly is more than 4.5%. And millions of them will have no federal help, no customers, and really no hope.”

Workers and the unemployed, meanwhile, have yet to receive the one-time $1,200 cash payments and expanded unemployment benefits to which they are now entitled under law.

As the Post reported late Sunday, “the law’s provision to boost unemployment benefits has become tangled in dated and overwhelmed state bureaucracies, as an unprecedented avalanche of jobless Americans seeks aid.”

“Millions of workers are filing for unemployment and businesses around the country are struggling to stay afloat,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “This crisis isn’t going away soon. The rise in jobless claims makes it clear Congress must continue working on the next relief bill to get Americans the help they need.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said Friday that Congress—which is officially on recess until April 20—must move urgently to enact the “boldest legislation in history” to combat the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic collapse.

“We are in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that could lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans and infect millions of others, and we are entering an economic downturn that could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s,” said Sanders.

The Vermont senator proposed a number of relief measures, including $2,000 in monthly payments to every person in the U.S. for the duration of the crisis and immediate suspension of all rent and mortgage payments.

“In this unprecedented moment in modern American history,” said Sanders, “it is imperative that we respond in an unprecedented way.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/daily-caller/despite-health-care-shortages-and-pleas-daily-caller-sold-n95-masks-pricey-survival

3/26/20 2:12 PM EDT

Until just recently, an “outbreak” store operated by the Daily Caller was selling N95 respirator masks as part of a “survival kit” that retailed for up to $254.99. Health care professionals have faced a large shortage of the masks, which are not recommended for the public, and have pleaded with consumers to stop hoarding them.

As the Food and Drug Administration states, “N95 respirators and surgical masks (face masks) are examples of personal protective equipment that are used to protect the wearer from airborne particles and from liquid contaminating the face.” It adds that the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not recommend that the general public wear N95 respirators to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including coronavirus (COVID-19). The best way to prevent illness is to avoid being exposed to this virus.”

Medical professionals around the country have faced a shortage of N95 masks for various reasons, including hoarding. As a result, they have spent weeks pleading with the public to stop hoarding the masks and to donate them to medical facilities. On February 27, CDC Director Robert Redfield told a congressional subcommittee: “We need to make sure those N95 masks are available for the doctors and nurses that are going to be taking care of individuals that have this illness.”

After receiving criticism, Target recently apologized for selling N95 masks in certain stores in Washington state. 3M CEO Mike Roman, whose company is the largest manufacturer of N95 masks, said that the masks shouldn’t be sold in retail stores to the public because of the shortage.

The N95 masks were recently being sold at Outbreak Provisions, an online store which says that it wishes “to provide you and your family peace of mind by providing essential emergency supplies that can help keep your family safe in a time like this.” Fine print on the website states that it “is operated by Daily Caller Inc” and doing business as OutbreakProvisions.com. The site appears to be relatively new: Its domain name was privately registered on February 28, 2020. The Daily Caller sent a March 25 email to its list which advertised the site.

The store had been selling “N95 Respirator Dust Masks” in various “survival kits.” Those included its “Survival Kit for Children” (two versions); “1 Person Elite Survival Kit” (two versions); “2 Person Survival Kit” (two versions); “4 Person Elite Survival Kit”; “5 Person Survival Kit”; and “10 Person Survival Kit.” The 10-person kit was the most expensive, selling for $254.99.

Outbreak Provisions is no longer selling the N95 masks but the site indicated it was the supplier’s decision, stating, “Due to the increased need for N95 masks at hospitals and other institutions, our supplier has decided to donate the remaining inventory to aid those most impacted by the COVID-19 virus. All orders placed prior to 03/21/20 will still receive masks in their kits however all orders going forward will no longer have this item included.”

Despite that notice, a March 25 commerce article on the Daily Caller still claimed that the Outbreak Provisions had “N95 Respirator Dust Masks.”

The Daily Caller has frequently promoted its Outbreak Provisions store in recent days in commerce articles about the coronavirus. Those articles carry headlines like: “Stronger Together: Here’s How You Can Help Protect Your Family And Close Friends”; “As Experts Warn Covid Crisis Could Drag…Stocking Up On Essentials Remains Key”; and “Worried About Covid-19? Here Are Three Things You Should Be Doing To Prepare Right Now.”

In a February 26 article, the Daily Caller discussed N95 masks by writing that “some aspiring disaster profiteers have taken to listing masks at exorbitant rates on Ebay. Prices for these upcharged masks range from $40 to $1,000 for common 3M brand masks that can usually be had for only a few dollars.”

Update (3/27/20): The article has been updated to include additional information about the “survival kits” that included the N95 masks.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/essential-frontline-workers-in-open-revolt-over-unsafe-conditions/

no lnx

‘Essential’ frontline workers in open revolt over unsafe conditions

Written by DC Report March 28, 2020

Low-wage earners helping to keep the nation’s top retailers operating during the COVID-19 crisis are balking at the Trump administration’s bid to return to business as usual by Easter.

Frontline retail workers at Amazon and Walmart forced to work without the benefit of face masks, gloves or hand sanitizer are already afraid they are being exposed to COVID-19. They are calling on corporate CEOs to temporarily shutter their workplaces for thorough disinfection.

Earlier this month, Congress exempted large corporations including Walmart and Amazon from legislation mandating businesses provide emergency paid sick and family leave.

“I do understand the need for workers to be in the store in order for people who need medicine; for people who need supplies who have children — but there’s got be something done to help protect us,” 19-year Walmart worker Cyndi Murray told me this week.

‘Walmart hasn’t done anything to protect its employees. I watch people come in and out of our store and I worry what I’m going to do if I get sick.’

“Maybe at a point, shut down — sanitize the registers,” the Hyattsville, Maryland resident added. “Do they realize how many people come into these little self-checkouts? We have 10 registers inside one of our self-checkouts. Do you know how close people are to each other?”

Amazon warehouse worker Monica Moody, 32, told me the coronavirus pandemic has her and her North Carolina co-workers “freaked out.”

Facilities Need Cleaning

“People are probably coming to work sick and not know it,” Moody said. “We all want the same thing — we need to see the facility shut down temporarily, so it can be cleaned. And we need to be paid. Shut down with full pay.”

The last few weeks on the job have been “a blur” for El Paso Walmart employee Sanjuana Arreola.

“Customers have been rushing into the stores to stock up for weeks in isolation — rice, canned goods, and water — I’m scared,” the married mother of three said. “As a Walmart associate, I don’t get to practice social distancing. Walmart hasn’t done anything to protect its employees. I watch people come in and out of our store and I worry what I’m going to do if I get sick.”

Stacy Rowback is a struggling part-time Walmart employee from Upstate New York with a 14-month-old baby girl to care for back at home. The new mom says Walmart has provided the employees where she works with zero training and protection.

Guarding the Toilet Paper

“They’ve not changed anything in my store,” Rowback told me. “The only thing they are doing is guarding toilet paper.”

All the workers quoted above are part of the Paid Leave for All campaign — a broad coalition of organizations urging Congress to pass a stimulus package that closes loopholes exempting both very large enterprises with 500 or more employees and smaller companies with fewer than 50 workers — and extends family sick leave to all American workers.

Forcing People to Work Sick

“Our nation is only as healthy as the most vulnerable among us,” said Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of Family Values @ Work and an executive team member of the Paid Leave for All campaign. “We cannot stop a pandemic if we force people to come to work sick. Walmart has gotten away with denying sick leave, artificially keeping [employee] work hours down, for years.”

Despite increasing deaths and more confirmed cases of COVID-19 nationwide — the country’s chief executive, on March 22, sent out a tweet saying, “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself. At the end of the 15 day period, we will make a decision as to which way we want to go!”

Trump has since made further declarations indicating his administration’s eagerness to drop the social distancing Americans have been practicing the last couple of weeks to quell the economic impact of the coronavirus.

“Yeah — no. That’s not gonna work,” Moody said. “You can’t beat this thing without social distancing. If you want to ease back into it and let everybody go back to work — then just be prepared to get right back onto lockdown.”

Neither Walmart or Amazon responded to requests for comment.

‘Sanitize the Registers’

“Shut down,” a frustrated Murray continued. “Sanitize these registers, these keypads where people stick in their debit cards. What about the baskets? Sanitize them.”

According to Moody, three people from the nightshift where she works have already tested positive for COVID-19.

“I understand we’re the frontline and people are depending on us, [but] we’re human, too,” she said. “We need to be safe, too. Shut it down quick for two weeks and I’ll feel a lot safer going to work. I’m not asking for a permanent closing — I’m asking for it to be cleaned and safe for me to go to work.”

At $11.44 an hour, Arreola says she barely earns enough to put food on her table — let alone stock up for an emergency like the patrons who have stripped grocery and drug store shelves across the country.

“We’re making sure Walmart customers have everything they need — but who’s looking out for us,” she said. “We have to do this before it’s too late.”

Joe Maniscalco is a Brooklyn-based journalist who has spent the last decade covering labor unions and workplace justice issues.

disaster socialism?! ;)

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/american-capitalism-doesnt-hold-up-all-that-well-under-the-stresses-and-strains-of-a-virulent-pandemic

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American capitalism doesn’t hold up all that well under the stresses and strains of a virulent pandemic

Written by Bob Hennelly / Salon March 22, 2020

As it turns out, American capitalism doesn’t hold up all that well under the stresses and strains of a virulent pandemic.

In the face of the coronavirus, that stingy “real time delivery” dictum taught in business school to guide how we deploy labor and distribute stuff can be a recipe for needlessly high body counts and wealth destruction on the scale of the Great Depression.

Currently, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is fashioning a coronavirus pandemic stimulus package that is fashioned after the Trump/ GOP $1.7 trillion tax cut — meaning, weighted to favor corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

To be fair, this was the same impulse we saw in the Bush/Obama response to the Great Recession. Their remedy led to Wall Street’s pillaging of MLK Boulevard and Main Street, the destruction of $20 trillion in household wealth, and accelerated wealth concentration. It also left tens of millions of households in a precarious position to face this pandemic.

And while President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression in the form of the New Deal was widely praised for uplifting working-class Americans, we must remember that it left out Americans of color. Consider the Faustian bargain that FDR made with the Dixiecrats to get basic labor protections and standards for workers that expressly left out domestic and agricultural workers.

Greed dies hard.

Now that the wolf (COVID-19) is at the door, we can see the reflex that many political leaders have to put wealth preservation above the common good. Four senators, including Sen. Richard Barr (R.-NC), chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, sold off significant stock holdings after being briefed on the impending coronavirus pandemic.

These guys can’t help themselves. When destiny asks them to choose between money or life, they pause to make a trade.

This is what happens when you organize every aspect of your society to promote wealth accumulation and nothing else. It’s really just physics. You invest everything in accumulating gold or money for security and all of the sudden your life gets cut short as your lungs no longer function because you caught coronavirus from some other person who accidentally became the real sculptor of your destiny.

This will come as a real downer for the wealthy elites who have structured their lives around pre-coronavirus social distancing behind the gated walls of privilege that won’t protect them now.

But it’s our grocers, postal workers, trash collectors, nurses and emergency medical technicians who hold the jobs that are the most essential and need protecting.

Similarly, our vaunted American health care system — which is designed to maximize shareholder profits and discourage patients from using it — turns out to be antithetical to promoting the public health. This for-profit model is based on scarcity, which rations access to care, ventilators and personal protection equipment for medical staff, all to feed the insatiable bottom line.

Works great until that doomsday scenario when everybody needs it.

Our whole socioeconomic framework was predicated on the notion that our society could function and feed off vast inequality, and that the day-in and day-out misery of tens of millions of American families was their problem.

It turns out that the country’s economic deprivation — reflected in hunger and homelessness — significantly complicates our ability to end the pandemic. And as this more vulnerable cohort falls ill as a consequence the inadequacy of this existing system puts the broader society at a greater risk.

Poverty may not be contagious. But COVID-19 is.

At the end of his life, as the Vietnam War raged, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called for a “revolution of values” when he suggested that instead of the phrase “Black Power,” activists should invoke the more inclusive rallying cry “Power for Poor People” in order to build a multi-racial coalition of the impoverished and disenfranchised.

Out of that call to action, the Poor People’s Campaign was formed. Just weeks after her husband’s murder, Coretta Scott King initiated a 14 day protest in Washington, D.C. on Mother’s Day, demanding passage of an Economic Bill of Rights.

The 21st century iteration of the Poor People’s Campaign has been calling for a “national call for a moral revival” in the throes of our current pandemic.

“With its broad sweep, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us into an unprecedented national emergency,” the Poor People’s Campaign writes on their website. “This emergency, however, results from a deeper and much longer-term crisis — that of poverty and inequality, and of a society that ignores the needs of 140 million people who are poor, or a $400 emergency away from being poor.”

Long before this coronavirus pandemic, there was already an under-reported poverty pandemic that killed hundreds every day in America in the form of missed diagnoses and delayed care.

As Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis of the Poor People’s Campaign wrote, “millions of people are in dire need of critical attention immediately. We call on you to fulfill your moral and Constitutional responsibilities: expand the COVID-19 emergency provisions to care for us all and enact our Moral Agenda immediately.”

They continue: “We cannot return to normal. Addressing the depth of the crises that have been revealed in this pandemic means enacting universal health care, expanding social welfare programs, ensuring access to water and sanitation, cash assistance to poor and low-income families, good jobs, living wages and an annual income and protecting our democracy.”

And this real-time national realignment “means ensuring that our abundant national resources are used for the general welfare, instead of war, walls, and the wealthy.”

Indeed, the Poor People Campaign’s list of demands is an essential foundation for our country’s survival:

Immediate, comprehensive and permanent paid sick leave for 100% of employees for this pandemic. Paid sick leave must become standard across all sectors of the labor market.

Immediate health care for all, including 100% free COVID-19 testing, treatment and quality care to all, regardless of income, age, disability, citizenship or any other factor, and including the uninsured.

A guaranteed and adequate annual income / universal income, including rapid, direct payments to all low-wage and temporary workers, from grocery, fast food and delivery workers, care workers, and pharmacists to other workers who remain on the front lines and are severely underpaid.

A national moratorium on evictions, tax foreclosures, rent hikes, and a national rent freeze. This includes an immediate halt to encampment sweeps and towing vehicles of unhoused communities. Federal resources must be directed to local and state governments towards opening and preparing vacant and habitable buildings, properties and warehouses to house and provide adequate care for all people who are homeless. This includes ensuring education, food assistance and health care for homeless children and provisions for medical testing, treatment and respite for the homeless.

Jubilee and debt forgiveness for medical debt, student debt, water, utilities and other forms of household debt.

Protections for our democracy and the right to vote with expanded opportunities to vote during this crisis and an expanded census to ensure every person is accounted for.

And there’s more — much more.

As we refashion America, we need “a national moratorium on water and utility shut-offs, a waiver of all late-payment charges, and reinstitution of any services that have already been cut off due to nonpayment, including access to cellular and the internet.”

But this remodeling at home has to come with a recalibration of our risk threat matrix that has us spending hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowed money on further notice wars abroad.

In the shadow of COVID-19, the greatest threat to our immediate collective well- being is the miserable circumstances of our poorer neighbors we had for all too long ignored, figuring their reality had nothing to do with the rest of us.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-pandemic-profiteers-swarm-washington-as-trump-goes-off-the-deep-end/

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The pandemic profiteers swarm Washington as Trump goes off the deep end

President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, joined by White House Coronavirus Task Force Response Coordinator Ambassador Deborah Birx and U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, participate in a virtual Fox News Town Hall Tuesday, March 24, 2020, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by Jim Hightower / Creators Syndicate March 25, 2020

Wartime profiteering is an especially vile form of corporate greed, yet it has been as common in our country as war itself.

Indeed, during the American Revolution, assorted corrupt merchants and traders lined their pockets by controlling the supply and jacking up the prices of various goods they sold to the Continental Army and the general public. Often, though, feisty colonials struck back at the gougers. In 1777, for example, when a Boston merchant was found to be hoarding imports of coffee and sugar to create an artificial shortage so he could charge the area’s families exorbitant prices, a band of enraged Beantown women took matters into their own hands. They beat up the guy and confiscated his stock!

We could use a roving gang of indignant citizens today to confront the shameful greed of such corporate scammers as Boeing, American Airlines and Marriott, as well as such billionaire hucksters as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. They are among a new breed of pandemic profiteers that have rushed to Washington, shoving aside millions of workers, small businesses, poor people, students, nonprofits, farmers, cities and all other devastated victims of the COVID-19 crisis, demanding that corporations be first in line for a massive government rescue.

Take Boeing. Please! Already disgraced as a death-plane producer, its lobbyists brazenly swarmed into the White House and Congress, pleading for $60 billion from taxpayers to protect its profits. Rather than booting Boeing and other uber-rich panhandlers out the public door, President Donald Trump and GOP Congress critters obsequiously soothed the fevered brows of these champions of socialist capitalism with a half-trillion-dollar handout of the people’s money.

Which corporations would be favored? No telling. How much would each get? We’ll tell you later, maybe. What’s the criteria? Don’t ask. What about the workers and suppliers? Let them apply for food stamps. Aren’t you cutting food stamps? Shhhhh.

Luckily, enough Democrats had enough moral fortitude to block some of the grossest giveaways in the Republicans’ $500 billion corporate boondoggle, but the greedy, profiteering giants should not be given a single dime until the real and urgent needs of the people are met. Profiteers should be last in line … or turned over to descendants of those Boston women from 1777.

Meanwhile, glorious news about the coronavirus crisis itself! The renowned professor of pandemicology, Dr. Donald Trump, has found a magical medical antidote for the disease that had eluded lesser scientists: The Peter Cottontail Solution.

While sitting in the Rose Garden for a virtual Fox News town hall, the resident White House pandemicologist said that it suddenly dawned on him that, hippity-hoppity, Easter’s on its way! So, he went on to declare that he was ready to lift all those pesky health restrictions and “have the country opened up” by Easter, just two and a half weeks away.

Would our public health crisis be over then? Dr. Trump said he didn’t worry about such factual details. He explained to the Fox audience, “I just thought it was a beautiful time,” noting that all of the nation’s churches could fill up on that Sunday, bringing people together in celebration of his reawakening of the moribund economy.

But wouldn’t such a holy mass gathering actually reinvigorate the diabolical COVID-19 pathogen, spreading its destruction further, deeper and longer? Sure, said the good doctor. “You are going to lose a number of people,” he said. But Wall Street and Corporate America are crippled by employees’ staying home, so “We have to get back to work.” This rallying cry for workers to pump up the sagging stock market by promptly returning to their offices and factories amounts to a crass “Die for the Dow” ethic espoused by Wall Street barons and billionaires.

Of course, for the cold inhumanity of such a dreadful policy idea to be made clear, it needs to be officially embraced as “Texas Stupid.” Sure enough, one of my state’s right-wing politicos, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, lunged into the national spotlight of Fox News Tuesday night to one-up Trump. He blathered that returning America to full economic throttle pronto is worth sacrificing the lives of “those of us who are 70-plus” years old. “Let’s be smart about it,” Lt. Dan added, thus demonstrating to millions that he and this idea are even dumber than a dust bunny.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/we-already-paid-for-covid-19-treatments-we-cannot-let-gilead-make-us-pay-again

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We already paid for COVID-19 treatments — we cannot let Gilead make us pay again

Written by Alex Lawson / Independent Media Institute March 26, 2020

Update, March 25, 2:45 p.m.: Gilead has renounced the benefits of orphan designation, but still retains other patents that give them a five-year monopoly on remdesivir.

There’s much we don’t yet know about COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. We don’t know how long the pandemic will last, when a vaccine will be developed, or how many lives antiviral medications can save. But there’s one thing we know for sure: U.S. taxpayers have already paid for the research and testing of the most promising treatments.

These treatments should be available to everyone who needs them at no cost. But the Trump administration’s drug policy is led by two former pharmaceutical executives, and that is having devastating consequences for potential access to treatments and vaccines for the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you’ve been watching Donald Trump’s daily press briefings, that might come as a surprise. During his 2016 campaign, Trump loved to talk tough on pharma and say he would fight for lower drug prices. But then he put Alex Azar, a big pharma CEO infamous for doubling the price of insulin, in charge of regulating health care. Several weeks ago, Azar refused to guarantee that a coronavirus vaccine will be affordable for all, citing the need to protect big pharma’s profits.

Azar is now a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force, and his influence is evident during the briefings. Over and over again, Trump talks up big pharma corporations and thanks them for their work on COVID-19 treatments and a potential vaccine. He refers to them as “great companies” and their executives as “geniuses.”

trump fails to mention that taxpayers have spent nearly $700 million on coronavirus research through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Nor does he mention that big pharma corporations spend more money enriching themselves through stock buybacks than they do on research and development.

One medication currently being tested on coronavirus patients is the antiviral remdesivir. It’s still too early to say if remdesivir will prove broadly effective at helping patients with COVID-19. But if it does end up being a major part of treating the disease, it’s essential to remember who paid for the drug’s development: The American people.

Remdesivir was developed with research funded by a $37.5 million NIH grant. The NIH plans to spend at least an additional $30 million on phase II trials of the medication this year. Since we’ve all paid for remdesivir’s development through our taxpayer dollars, it should be available to everyone who needs it at no cost.

Instead, the Trump administration just granted Gilead, a giant pharmaceutical corporation, “orphan” drug status for remdesivir. That means that Gilead is free to charge outrageous prices for the drug, with their government-granted exclusivity ensuring that there will be no competition for years to come.

What makes this even more outrageous is that orphan status is designed to incentivize research and development of treatments for rare diseases. A pandemic is the opposite of rare!

We don’t know what role Joe Grogan, Gilead’s former chief lobbyist, and currently the director of Trump’s domestic policy council, played in this decision. But it seems a safe bet that such an outrageous move to profit off a pandemic had to have support from the top.

Nor is remdesivir an outlier. This is how all new medications work. Taxpayers always fund the riskiest and most crucial research and development. Then, pharma gets the patent monopolies and uses them to charge outrageous prices. American families are going bankrupt paying four- and five-figure prices for drugs that their taxpayer dollars already paid to develop!

Politicians might be tempted by a short-term solution—requiring all COVID-19 treatments, as well as an eventual vaccine, to be low-cost or cost-free. But that doesn’t go far enough. It does nothing to help the Americans with diabetes who are dying every year because they are forced to ration their outrageously priced insulin. It does nothing for seniors, who will soon be spending half their hard-earned Social Security checks on health care costs. And it will do nothing to help patients when the next pandemic comes.

We need permanent structural changes. Fortunately, we know exactly what we need to do, and the American people agree with these changes across partisan lines:

when a drug corporation is abusing their patent privilege by charging outrageous prices, revoke the privilege and allow generic competition to drive down prices. This policy is supported by 78 percent of all voters and opposed by only 10 percent.

Allow public manufacturing of drugs to alleviate shortages and eliminate bottlenecks. This policy is supported by 70 percent of all voters and opposed by only 17 percent.

Increase taxpayer funding of research and development of vaccines and pharmaceuticals by creating a “full cycle” public R&D program with no patent monopolies and immediate generic production of the results. This policy is supported by 69 percent of voters and opposed by only 15 percent.

Donald Trump wasn’t prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, but the public health community has been preparing for years. The research we’ve funded is going to be critical in the coming months. We’ve already paid for it. Let’s demand that Congress change the law so that we don’t have to pay again.

Alex Lawson is the executive director of Social Security Works, a non-profit advocacy group that supports expanding benefits to address America’s growing retirement security crisis. Lawson has appeared on numerous TV and radio outlets and is a frequent guest host of The Thom Hartmann Program, one of the top progressive radio shows in the country.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

banks Pressure Health Care Firms to Raise Prices on Critical Drugs, Medical Supplies for Coronavirus

Lee Fang

Investment bankers have been candid about the opportunity to raise drug prices on critical drugs and medical supplies.

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Martin Shkreli of the pandemic’: Company threatens to sue after Italians find way to 3D print key $11,000 Ventilator piece for $1

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/disaster-capitalism-this-is-the-glaring-culprit-behind-italys-covid-19-catastrophe/

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Disaster capitalism: This is the glaring culprit behind Italy’s Covid-19 catastrophe

Written by John Buell / Common Dreams March 18, 2020

Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein worries that the Coronavirus pandemic will provide another opportunity for neoliberal elites to impose more of their right wing agenda on a citizenry scared and confused by this mysterious and dangerous disease. Klein of course is expanding on her award winning Shock Doctrine Naomi The Shock Doctrine. Klein showed how corporate elites worldwide have repeatedly and brutally used “the public’s disorientation following a collective shock — wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes or natural disasters — to push through radical pro-corporate measures.”

Klein is surely correct to be concerned. President Trump proposed temporary cuts in the payroll tax as afiscal stimulus. This act would in effect partially defund Social Security, forcing Democrats to choose between a tax increase or reductions in or means testing the program. Turning Social Security into a means tested program would undermine its popularity and probably destroy it, a long time goal of conservative epublicans and neolibereal Democrats. Fortunately enough politicians smelled the rat and this idea does not seem to have gone far. If elites do not always get what they want, it is also the case that crisis does provide opportunities for progressive activism. Social Security itself was born out of the economic and political turmoil of the thirties. In the context of the Covid19 epidemic Medicare for All has become more widely discussed than at any point in its development. Articulating the positive contribution to everyone’s health and fending off some of its more devious opponents is especially important now.

America’s patchwork, profit oriented healthcare has already played a destructive role in the unfolding of this crisis. One of the most important factors in limiting the spread of the disease is knowledge of who is being infected and where they are infected. When patients can’t come to the doctor they can’t be treated; they are more likely to spread the disease; and the physician is deprived of valuable information about the spread of the disease, information that improves possible interventions.

Although we do not yet know the full story of the CDC’s botched rollout of the Covid19 test kits, the Washington Post, never a fan of Senator Sanders or single payer, reported:”Unlike the United States… the single-payer countries have been especially nimble at making free, or low-cost, virus screening widely available for patients with coughs and fevers.” The benefits go beyond speed. Where public programs are well respected and well funded, that respect can also be reflected in the quality of the men and women who staff them. Jorgen Kurtzhals, the head of the University of Copenhagen medical school, told the Post that the strength of Denmark’s single-payer system is that it has “a lot of really highly educated and well-trained staff, and given some quite un-detailed instructions, they can actually develop plans for an extremely rapid response.”

No one claims that any of the single payer systems is perfect. Most importantly a system that is humane, egalitarian, and efficient cannot work as well if it is underfunded. Common Dreams notes: “Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), following years of austerity imposed by Conservative governments, is facing staff and supply shortages as hospitals are being overwhelmed with patients. Canada, like the U.K., is struggling with a shortage of ventilators.”

In Italy Giacomo Gabbuti and Lorenzo Zamponi report: “The problem isn’t that this system is public and universal, but that it should be more so. Sadly, over time we have allowed the various Italian equivalents of Donald Trump and Joe Biden to make it a bit more like the American system.”(Jacobin)

This is part of the political dilemma single payer advocates face. Their systems are widely popular. Italy’s health system is so well regarded that even parties of the right and far right would not dare call for its elimination. But conservatives understand that if fiscal constraints—real or imagined–necessitate cuts in funding, the system will not perform as well. Its inadequacies can then be cited in defense of privatization and eventual dismantling of the entire system.

Italians have the fifth longest longevity in the world (the United States is a distant 35th) and their public healthcare makes a great contribution to that end. If one is looking for a culprit to blame for continuing deficiencies, start by looking at the Eurozone’s fiscal iron cage—to borrow former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis’s perfect phrase– limiting what democracies can spend on behalf of their people.

Kushner once controlled the health insurance company that has launched a coronavirus testing website

One of the major complaints about President Donald Trump’s response…

MAIN BAK CAPT

disastercap320

see TWO 3/20

see corps that profit on GW

is wider cat needed? shock doctrine?

narrower/more minor: predatory capitalism (charter/online school?)

aha chaos disruption pandemic --> extraction

promote primary 3/18 on puerto rico battlegnd

AHA PIC and MIC together at last cf 4 horse: pvtiz, military, financialization and criminalization

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/disaster-capitalism-this-is-the-glaring-culprit-behind-italys-covid-19-catastrophe

Kushner once controlled the health insurance company that has launched a coronavirus testing website

One of the major complaints about President Donald Trump’s response…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-late-stage-capitalism-primed-us-for-this-pandemic

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How late-stage capitalism primed us for this pandemic

Written by Bob Hennelly / Salon March 15, 2020

No, this not a bad dream.

You really did just wake up in these “great” United States to find that no matter where you live, your freedom of movement is now constricted. Not by the military, but by the fear of the invisible — a virus you never heard of before it shackled you and your family in a form of self-imposed lockdown.

The power dynamic here is merely a biological progression of what we feel when some malignant cyber-force zeros in on our laptop computer and takes control of it, holding us hostage.

If you are a regular consumer of the corporate news media this unprecedented national public health crisis is being covered through the partisan prism over the incompetence and malevolence of the current occupant of the Oval Office, Donald Trump.

What is being avoided meticulously is any broader and essential discussion about how this precarious planetary moment is a gift to us from late-stage vulture capitalism,

https://www.salon.com/2015/03/22/vulture_capitalists_are_picking_us_dry_why_consumer_debt_buyers_are_on_the_rise_partner/

which rents our national government as it subordinates the accumulation of wealth over every other human endeavor — including public health.

To start the coronavirus meltdown narrative with Trump’s efforts to deliberately play down the risks we faced, which hobbled the U.S. response and will lead to potentially thousands of deaths, is to miss the reality that this systemic failure has been decades in the making.

Subjugation of labor

As the concentration of wealth accelerated and the income gap opened up to a canyon, the balance of political power tilted increasingly to the forces of capital, costing organized labor its leverage. Over that time the world was increasingly made safer for U.S. multinationals who successfully played labor markets off of each other as they captured the regulatory and taxation regimes of sovereign nations.

Everything was measured and governed by what encouraged economic growth and the amassing of wealth. Other vital spheres, from the environment to the public health, became secondary to the private pursuit of profit. Consider how hard it was to overcome the entrenched interests of the tobacco industry to provide the public health warnings on cigarettes.

After the Second World War in the early fifties, over a third of the U.S. workforce was represented by a labor union. Though unions have had their issues with corruption, on the whole they offer countervailing pressure to the potential predations of capitalism.

By the time President Reagan fired all of the Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981, organized labor represented just a fifth of American workers. By 2019, it was just barely over 10 percent.

What has followed as a consequence is the massive growth of a contingent workforce hovering by the phone or checking their email to see if they have a “gig” or work for the day. This ability of capital to so greatly limit its social contract with workers creates a race to the bottom and leaves tens of millions without health care, unemployment or disability insurance.

It also puts employers and small businesses at a distinct competitive disadvantage if they choose to provide those basic benefits to their employees.

This is where there is an intersection with labor’s marginal circumstance and our current national crisis —in which so many Americans will hesitate to get tested for coronavirus or stay home if they are sick. Millions upon millions of Americans cannot afford the expense or the loss of wages; they have absolutely no safety net in the event the test comes back positive and they are sidelined without work for 14 days, much less left with a hospital bill.

The essential role of labor unions as a countervailing pressure against the predations of unfettered capital is most clearly apparent in the airline industry, which is ground zero for many pandemics including this one.

Unions in the public interest

John Samuelsen is the president of the Transport Workers Union International (TWU) that represents 150,000 members in the airline, railroad, transit, university, utilities and service sector.

Last week, TWU had to back up the decision by a flight crew for a major national air carrier to refuse the orders they were given to go right back to work after they had successfully removed a passenger who had disclosed to crew after his flight landed that he had the coronavirus.

As reported by the Daily News, a Long Island man flew from New York to Florida while he had a test pending for the coronavirus. Upon landing in West Palm Beach, he got the call informing him of his status.

“Our crew facilitated the passenger’s removal in a very sophisticated way that limited everyone’s potential exposure out the back door of the plane with the help of medical professionals that escorted him off the flight,” said Samuelsen. “But the crew was ordered back to work by the air carrier to crew up another flight and they rightfully refused because they knew they were now potentially carriers of the virus.”

He continued. “They were still in shock and understandably concerned about their own health and when they were ordered to get back on another flight, they said no. The carrier had said the crew could work because they were asymptomatic and that’s when the union stepped in.”

Samuelsen recounted how, after the union’s intervention, elected officials called the air carrier, as did the Daily News.

“We negotiated a package for the crew that guaranteed their economic security with paid sick leave. Ironically, in the process of doing what was right by our members we helped preserve the public health, which was the original goal of the flight crew. Without the union. we would have had another few planes loads of hundreds of unsuspecting members of the public exposed to the virus.”

As Samuelsen sees it, proposals that were considered as radical ideas pre-coronavirus, like Senator Bernie Sander’s universal health care plan or former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s proposal for a universal basic income, are no longer radical.

“Can you imagine how much less anxiety all American workers would feel right now if things like this were already in place,” he said. “It would be a 365 day-a-year economic stimulus plan.”

Public health versus private profit?

Such a realignment of the balance of power, where private capital’s interest and the public interest could be potentially reconciled in the face of something like our current existential crisis, is already happening elsewhere on the planet.

Professor Richard Wolff is an economist who teaches at the New School. He says there is no better example of harmonizing these tensions then in China and South Korea, which have gotten their public and private sectors to collaborate in the face of the current pandemic.

“Look at the percentage of the population that has been tested in these two places and you can see the results of the close coordination between the government and the private sector which we don’t have, and our testing numbers reflect that,” he said.

Wolff says that the current crisis brings into sharp relief the fundamental divergence between American capitalism and the public health. “There was just no profit incentive for the big drug companies to produce a million of these kinds of tests,” he added.

He continued: “Looking at the Center for Disease Control’s own press releases we see as of Jan. 17 they publicly acknowledged they were following this virus in China . . . . what we have seen since is this ad hoc, last-minute, under-the-gun response with one eye looking out for the interests of the profit making medical industrial complex and the other eye looking out for the re-election of the President.”

If there is a silver lining in the coronavirus moment, it is that it can serve as a teachable moment for our entire civilization. It can help us muster the will to make the lifestyle and economic changes required to face up to the challenge of global warming.

ref

https://www.salon.com/2015/03/22/vulture_capitalists_are_picking_us_dry_why_consumer_debt_buyers_are_on_the_rise_partner/

no lnx

Vulture capitalists are picking us dry: Why consumer debt buyers are on the rise

The great recession laid waste to the U.S. economy. Now debt collectors are feasting on the carrion

JIM HIGHTOWER

MARCH 22, 2015

Good news, people: The "boom" is back! Yes, good times are here again, thanks to an economic boom that's being generated by (of all things) bad times.

As you might know from your own experiences, tens of millions of Americans have been hit hard, knocked down and held down in recent years by the collapse of jobs and wages. This calamity has led to a second blow for millions of the same families, who find themselves suddenly buried in piles of overdue bills for credit card charges, student loans and other consumer debt.

But the good news is that there's a bright silver lining in that dark financial cloud. Only, it's not for the indebted families, but for a booming breed of finance hucksters known as consumer debt buyers. Believe it or not, in the warped world of high finance,"There's gold in them thar hills" of bad debt, and where there's gold, there are diggers.

Whenever a corporation issues a statement declaring that it's committed to "treating consumers fairly and with respect," chances are, it's not.

After all, why say such a thing, when actually practicing it would make a statement unnecessary? Indeed, with names like Encore Capital Group and Sherman Financial, these miners of human misery buy bales of these unpaid bills from banks and other lenders, paying pennies on the dollar. Then they unleash packs of their hard-nosed, aggressive collectors on the families. If they still can't extract payment, the corporate debt profiteers turn to their meanest dog: The courts.

Debt firms routinely file thousands of lawsuits a day against financially devastated Americans. They know that most debtors can't understand the legal gibberish filed against them, can't afford a lawyer, can't take time off to go to a court hearing and can't mount an effective defense against the corporate lawyers. So, some 95 percent of these lawsuits produce default judgments against hapless borrowers -- meaning debt buyers can then confiscate the wages of borrowers or freeze their bank accounts.

This boom in vulture capitalism is disgusting -- but, worse, it's subsidized by us taxpayers! We pay for the judicial system -- the judges, courtrooms and endless rounds of hearings. Predatory debt corporations have perverted our so-called justice system into their own subsidiary for squeezing profits out of destitute debtors.

This is why New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has started going after these for-profit corporate debt collectors. He found that Encore, based in San Diego, filed nearly 240,000 lawsuits against debtors in a recent four-year period, using the courts as its private collection arm. Problem is, Encore's bulk filing of lawsuits against the hard-pressed borrowers are rife with errors, out-of-date payment data, fabricated credit card statements, etc. With debt buyers scooping up millions of overdue bills each year from lenders, tons of them are missing original loan documents, payment histories and other proof of debt.

Debt predators, however, scoot around this lack of facts by simply having their employees sign affidavits asserting that the level of money owed is accurate. Judges, overwhelmed by the unending flood of lawsuits filed by Encore et al, have accepted those affidavits as true, thus ruling in favor of the corporations. But Schneiderman found that -- Surprise! -- affidavits were simply being rubber-stamped by company employees, with no effort to ensure the truth of the information. An employee of one large debt-buyer testified that his corporation ran an assembly-line scheme in which he signed about 2,000 affidavits a day.

This is no minor scam -- 1 in 7 adults in the U.S. is under pursuit by debt collectors. It's hard enough for struggling families to claw their way out from under the economic crash without having lying, cheating predator corporations twist the court system to pick their pockets and shut off their hope of recovery.

JIM HIGHTOWER

Jim Hightower's most recent book is "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush." He produces a monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown, and a syndicated daily radio commentary.

NB DESMOG TRACKING IMPENDING BANKRUPTCY? KEPT AFLOAT BY BANKS?

aha ish // disaster cap'l, never waste a crisis to dustoff wishlist

Will an oil tycoon who donated $500,000 to support Trump’s re-election get bailed out by his administration?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/will-an-oil-tycoon-who-donated-500000-to-support-trumps-re-election-get-bailed-out-by-his-administration

no lnx

Will an oil tycoon who donated $500,000 to support Trump’s re-election get bailed out by his administration?

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon March 12, 2020

With oil prices plunging during the coronavirus outbreak, the Trump administration is weighing a federal bailout for oil and natural gas companies, according to a new report.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted a fracking boom under his administration, but oil and gas companies have seen profits drop amid an oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

“Alarmed” by the prospect that some of these companies, many of which are already in debt, [see desmog] could go out of business, White House officials have pushed for a federal bailout in the form of low-interest government loans, The Washington Post reported.

Among those pushing for the bailout is Harold Hamm, a billionaire Trump adviser who owns Continental Resources, an energy company which lost half of its market value Monday.

Hamm told The Post that although he had not made “direct” contact with the president, he advised the administration to consider “any action that the administration might take to protect and preserve American interests at this time from being unfairly disadvantaged.”

Hamm has given more than $500,000 to support Trump’s re-election effort since 2017, the government watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington noted.

Some Trump advisers told The Post that the administration was eyeing “targeted assistance” for the companies. Though under consideration, another official warned that “political blowback over the idea may eventually lead campaign advisers and others in [the] administration to talk Trump out of it.”

Chris Rupkey, the chief economist at MUFG Union Bank, told the outlet that he expects significant political backlash.

“It’s difficult when governments selectively target individual industries,” he said. “And there’s going to be pushback on it, because it’s political and may be tied to the administration’s contacts and the people it knows.”

Cornell University professor Robert Hockett, who has advised Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on economic policy, added that it was ridiculous to look out for big fracking companies while millions need relief.

“We are in the midst of a crisis where people are literally having to skip work and may miss paychecks or face medical debt,” he said. “The idea you would look to help out shale companies now is like something out of a satire or a bad movie. It’s absurd.”

Trump also said that he was looking at bailing out airlines, cruise lines and the hospitality industry Tuesday, as they reel from the impact of COVID-19, the disease spread by the novel coronavirus. But the bailout proposals have received public pushback from Republicans.

“They can take care of themselves,” Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., told The Washington Examiner. “Why do you overreact just when there’s a little pain? That doesn’t make sense.”

Nick Loris, an economist at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, said such a bailout “would not sit well” with fiscal conservatives.

“Not only would it potentially put taxpayers on the hook for future potential losses and bankruptcies, it would distort the risk-taking process that is so critical in making these investments,” he told the outlet. “We’ve seen the resiliency in the industry before, and I believe we’ll see it again.”

However, Alex Doukas, the lead analyst for advocacy group Oil Change International, predicted that Trump’s big-money donors would heavily pressure the administration to ignore the criticism.

“With oil prices in free fall, expect oil companies to turn to their age-old tactic of bullying governments for even more subsidies on top of the hundreds of billions they benefit from annually,” Doukas said. “Instead of more handouts to polluters, governments should make big investments in high-quality green jobs that will put people to work and ultimately end our dependence on the volatile fossil fuels that create climate chaos.”

Journalist David Cay Johnson described the lobbying effort as “corporate socialists” seeking “welfare from the Trump administration.”

“Bailing out the oil industry won’t help the workers who have to choose between their health and their paychecks. It won’t help the people who could go into medical debt from COVID-19,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., tweeted. “We need paid family leave and Medicare expanded to every American.”

“The American people are worried about missing paychecks, affording coronavirus tests, & being able to afford healthcare period. But [Trump] wants to bail out the oil industry?” Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., added. “Leave it to Trump to prioritize his friends over the American people.”

Igor Derysh is a staff writer at Salon. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.

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https://theintercept.com/2020/02/29/cronyism-and-conflicts-of-interest-in-trumps-coronavirus-task-force/

alex AZAR, the secretary of health and human services, admitted Wednesday that a vaccine for a new coronavirus might not be affordable for all Americans. “We can’t control that price,” Azar told Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., during a congressional hearing about the novel strain, which has been spreading throughout the world and is widely expected to become a serious public health issue in the United States.

After a wave of criticism from Democrats, Azar walked the comment back the next day, saying that he would ensure public access to a vaccine for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, if one should be developed. But Azar, who served as the top lobbyist for Eli Lilly before becoming president of the drug company’s U.S. operations in 2012 and the secretary of health and human Services in 2018, knows of what he unthinkingly speaks. Exorbitant drug pricing often leaves life-saving treatment out of reach for the poorest Americans. And to the extent that Azar and the other businessmen who make up the majority of the president’s coronavirus task force have any experience with pharmaceuticals, one of the most profitable sectors of the economy, it’s been making money off the system that keeps them out of reach.

In the case of Azar, who earned nearly $2 million during his last year at Lilly, that profit came at the expense of the people who needed the drugs, according to a lawsuit filed in 2017. While Azar was leading the pharmaceutical giant, the cost of its drugs went up significantly. In particular, insulin sold by the company more than doubled in price. According to the suit, which also names Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, Eli Lilly engaged in a scheme to artificially inflate the price of its drug, leaving some diabetic people unable to pay the cost and forced to use expired insulin or none at all. Eli Lilly did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the company has told other publications that the suit has no merit and that it follows the “highest ethical standards.”

For another task force member, the profits could come from the coronavirus itself. Joseph Grogan was a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciencesbefore he joined the Trump administration as director of the Domestic Policy Council and led the Drug Pricing and Innovation Work Group. On Wednesday, after Gilead announced that it would be starting two clinical trials of an antiviral drug that could be used to treat Covid-19, the company’s stock price surged.

As a former lobbyist for a company that stands to gain big from a possible treatment for the respiratory disease, Grogan’s participation on the task force poses a host of ethical problems, according to Robert Klitzman, professor of psychiatry and director of the bioethics master’s program at Columbia University. “Does he have a conflict of interest? Yes!” said Klitzman, who points out that the government is likely to spend money on both the research and purchase of treatments for the virus. “Gilead could help shape a government request for proposals so that they could have an unfair advantage.”

While Grogan appears to have sold his Gilead stock and, according to the Office of Management and Budget, has severed all financial relationships and taken “the Trump pledge,” the situation is still problematic, according to Klitzman. “When he gets out of office, they could give him a gift for doing a good job or just hire him again. And what about his buddies? I’m sure he is still close to people who work for Gilead who will benefit. These are all major ethical concerns.”

Although Grogan and his friends may have a lot to gain from his participation on the task force, it is not clear what expertise he and most of the others serving on the group bring to it. Of the task force’s 16 members — 17, if you include Vice President Mike Pence, who is heading the effort — only four have any training in science or medicine. The others mostly hail from the business world, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, an investment banker who was sued for asset stripping; Ken Cuccinelli, a lawyer and self-described “opponent of homosexuality” now serving as acting deputy secretary of homeland security; and Christopher Liddell, a former executive at Microsoft and General Motors, who worked with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on the modernization of federal IT systems before directing the country’s response to what may be the biggest public health crisis in over a century.

Pence also named Larry Kudlow to the task force on Thursday. Kudlow, a top economic adviser to Trump who used to work for Bear Stearns, went on Fox Business to reassure the American public that reports of increasing coronavirus infections around the world don’t necessarily mean “that this thing is going to skyrocket in North America.” Kudlow then encouraged everyone to keep investing, saying, “Stocks look pretty cheap to me.”

Trump has fired many of the people who actually know how to coordinate government responses to epidemics. As Laurie Garrett reported in January, the president shut down the National Security Council’s global health security unit and cut $15 billion in national health spending, including funding for the management of infectious global diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Homeland Security, and HHS. At the CDC, the funding cuts to the global health section were so severe, Garrett wrote, that “the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10.”

While four doctors are on the task force, it’s not clear how much they will be allowed to direct the response to the virus. The White House reportedly told Anthony Fauci, an immunologist who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and has extensive experience combating infectious diseases, not to speak publicly without clearance after he said at a meeting that the virus “has adapted extremely well to human species.”

On Thursday, Deborah Birx, a physician who has served as the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator since 2014, was named as the White House coronavirus response coordinator, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams was added to the task force. Their appointments came after Sen. Bernie Sanders slammed Trump for putting “political cronies, not scientists” in charge of the government response to the virus.

micro-disaster cap'lism? scary use of AI dB? van jones free mkt evac plan katrina

Uber and Lyft price-gouge customers trying to flee Seattle shooting

120 an

Nicole Karlis / Salon

‘If you are wondering who benefits’: Weapons makers see stocks surge as Trump moves closer to war with Iran

Common Dreams

Almost immediately after the United States assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike Thursday night, major American weapons manufacturers and defense contractors—from Northrop Grumman to Lockheed Martin to

aha-let: dis cap akin to crisis mgmt? difference in intent? degree? or merely timing:

The industry is gearing up for the fight of its life, which may explain why an expert in actual warfare gave the keynote at the plastics conference.

In 2000, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold guided his crew through a terrorist attack on the USS Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed and 39 injured. Now a crisis management consultant, Lippold told the audience at the Plastics Industry Association meeting a grueling story of mass casualties, near-death experiences, and a shrapnel-filled vessel taking on water. His tale, which ended with Lippold piloting his hobbled ship back into the open seas with the national anthem blaring, suggested that with enough fierce determination, the plastics executives too might be able to sail past the threats facing them.

After Katrina, neoliberals replaced New Orleans' schools with charters, which are now failing

CORY DOCTOROW

see disaster capitalism re wildfires (toxic ash?) eg ashbritt

CORY DOCTOROW / 4:26 AM MON, AUG 12, 2019

Rule of Capture: Inside the martial law tribunals that will come when climate deniers become climate looters and start rendering environmentalists for offshore torture

In 2017, science fiction author Christopher Brown burst on the scene with Tropic of Kansas, an apocalyptic pageturner about martial law in climate-wracked America; now, with his second novel, Rule of Capture, Brown turns everything up to 11 in a militarized, oil-saturated, uninhabitable Texas where private mercs, good ole boys, and climate looters have plans to deliver a stolen election to a hyper-authoritarian president. Read the rest

/ / 9 COMMENTS

BOOKS / CLIMATE / DISASTER CAPITALISM / GIFT GUIDE / GRIFTER CAPITALISM/ GUILLOTINE WATCH / HAPPY MUTANTS / MESS WITH TEXAS / REVIEWS / SCIENCE FICTION / ZEITGEISTY AF

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/billionaires-prepping-for-an-apocalyptic-event-but-what-happens-to-everyone-else

no lnx

Billionaires prepping for an apocalyptic ‘event’ — but what happens to everyone else?

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon September 3, 2019

The Earth is in the midst of an environmental disaster. Humankind may not survive the Anthropocene.

Climatologists and other scientists are warning that if the Earth’s temperature rises more than 2 degrees Celsius that the human race may have reached a point of no return in terms of stopping global warming and the catastrophes it will cause.

Global warming is causing rising sea levels which threaten at least one billion people. Global warming is also generating a weather feedback loop which is causing hurricanes, blizzards, firestorms, and droughts to become more extreme. There is also a shortage of arable land and fresh water. Entire ecosystems are collapsing all over the planet.

The world’s militaries are preparing to fight “resource wars.” These conflicts will likely kill many thousands (if not millions of people). Resource wars will also create a global refugee crisis as entire populations are displaced. As global warming melts glaciers in Antarctica, Siberia, Greenland and elsewhere there will also be a mad scramble by the United States, Russia, China, and other nations to secure rare earth metals and other resources.

As the Earth’s climate and weather continues to worsen who will live and who will die?

The answer: the rich will find a way to survive while everyone else will experience gradations of misery and death depending on their socioeconomic status.

This is the logical and predictable result of extreme inequality where 1 percent own half the planet’s wealth. This inequality is also a function of neocolonialism where the West continues to enrich itself by siphoning a huge amount of resources and other wealth away from the Global South and the “Third World” every year. Rich countries also benefit disproportionately from destroying the world’s environment.

Neoliberal policymakers and other elites in the West and elsewhere have developed a language and ideology to justify doing everything and anything possible to survive environmental collapse and the global chaos it will cause.

Such a system of extreme self-interest is encouraged by how, at its core, neoliberalism is an example of Social Darwinism and Malthusian thinking: survival of the fittest is the guiding principle. All other people are expendable and viewed as being “surplus” under this form of human livestock management. The rich and powerful justify and naturalize such an outcome through a disproved theory known as “lifeboat ethics”.

How is “apocalyptic greed” fueling environmental disaster? What will human society look like in the aftermath of a global environmental disaster? How can we create a more humane and just society to both prevent such a dystopic outcome and/or to survive once it occurs? In what ways are human history and memory being turned into a commodity owned and controlled by the few as society becomes more digital and less analog? How are plutocrats and elites across the political spectrum working from the same playbook as they prepare for “the Event”.

In an effort answer these questions I recently spoke with Rob Sheridan. He is a futurist and former graphic designer for the band Nine Inch Nails. He is also the writer of the new science fiction graphic novel series “High Level” from DC Comics.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You are now writing a comic book. You were the web designer and artist for the bands Nine Inch Nails and How to Destroy Angels. Does the novelty and surprise of what you do for a living ever go away?

In the past I’ve worked mostly with other artists. “High Level” is my first foray into doing something that is entirely my own creatively. That has been a big career change for me. There are moments when I say to myself, “Oh my God, this is just me now.”

It is exhilarating and terrifying. There is the excitement of being able to guide a project in my own way. But there is also the terror of “now it is up to me”. You make something, you put it out into the world and you hope people like it.

Right now I’m riding on the high of feeling a sense of relief that readers have been responding so positively to the graphic novel series. I think it is really important for a creator to acknowledge that almost every artist and other creative people as well feels a certain sense of impostor syndrome. But in the end it is really satisfying to know that readers are enjoying the book.

How did you overcome the anxiety and decide to follow through on being an artist, a writer, and doing that creative work as your profession?

I don’t think I ever got over it. And I don’t think the vast majority of creative people ever truly get over that feeling. When I got asked by Nine Inch Nails if they wanted to work with me when I was a 19-year-old kid who’d only just done websites on my own in high school, there was this feeling of, “What are you talking about? I can’t do this.” But when you’re asked to take on a project, a big challenge, you can either step up and say, “Well, they asked me so there must be some value in what I’m doing and I should pursue it” or you can shrink away. I had similar feelings when DC Vertigo came to me and they said, “We like your work that you’ve done in the past. Do you have a pitch idea for a comic?”

When you are in that impostor syndrome headspace, you think immediately, I’m not a comic book writer, or I’m not this, or I’m not that, your immediate instinct is to say, “No, no, no, no, no.” But you have to overcome that voice. You have to step up to the challenge — or not. It’s very rewarding to find out that stepping up and conquering that impostor syndrome voice often works. And I think every creative person should remember that all of their heroes, all of the biggest artists, all the biggest musicians, no matter what they’ve achieved feel that way in one way or another.

What is the creative DNA of “High Level”? There is clearly some “A Boy and His Dog” in the story.

The first story arc is very much “A Boy and His Dog.” But it’s not the ultimate destination. But it is important to begin “High Level” that way for a number of what are mostly character-driven reasons. I love classic adventures where people are forced into a task they didn’t want to take on and then have to go from their small place in the world out into a much bigger and much more dangerous environment that they never wanted anything to do with. “Lone Wolf and Cub” is another example of the type of storytelling that inspires my work.

It is also my first comic book as a writer. I want to tell the type of story that I want to read. I want to tell the type of story that has inspired me since I was a kid. I’m not afraid to wear my influences on my sleeves. “High Level” is heading to a place that few readers are going to expect. I just want them to come along for the journey.

What are some of the other influences?

I’m a huge fan of 1980s retro futurism. And by that I mean specifically the way that science fiction in the 1980s and the 1970s shows how the future would be. I am specifically very interested in the predictions of the future made at the time which have now been shown to be incorrect.

For example a film such as “Blade Runner” has flying cars. But there are these tiny little boxy old televisions in the “Blade Runner” movies and that world still does not have the internet. They are still using pay phones, disks and analog hardwired technology. “Total Recall” is another film that I love which envisioned the future from an analogy perspective. The story I wanted to tell and the commentary I wanted to offer begins where we are right now in 2019.

Where are we heading as a global society? There is climate change that is going to completely disrupt society if we don’t do anything about it. Climate change impacts the power grid, infrastructure, and just about every aspect of human society. In this future I am imagining in “High Level” digital devices that rely on the cloud or other types of network connectivity are gone. They don’t exist anymore.

If human society is thrust into several generations where survival is all that matters then our technological comforts will fall by the wayside. This means that the beginning of “High Level” shows a society that is scavenger based. They’re rebuilding their own technology from old things they find from the past. This allows me to introduce a very tactile analog element to the world of “High Level.”

Because of digital technology we are going to know a lot more about the far past — paper and books will survive — than we will about the recent past. If there is a global disaster much of the digital information will be gone — or at the very least the means of accessing it will be.

That is exactly what “High Level” is grappling with. In the first issue the opening monologue is about the main character discovering a book that we, the readers, know is the Bible. But in the world of “High Level” they do not have any cultural context for what the Bible is or means. So to that character, it is just a book of gibberish.

How far are we really from that future right now? “High Level” is also about the erasure of history. All they have left are books. What if 50 years into our future there is a moment when our infrastructure and all of our digital technologies are disrupted in one way or another. As we increasingly put all of our media, all of our history, all of our thoughts, all of our memories onto the internet — we call it the cloud, but it doesn’t exist in the air. It exists on physical servers on the ground, and if the servers are destroyed we lose all of our history. Books will survive. And then maybe the only real true recorded history of what brought the world to that moment exists only for the people who had the money to preserve it. That is where “High Level’s” story is going.

Imagine how much control the very rich, the elites have over knowledge and information. If they wanted to delete all of our collective memories and history there are only so many people who really have the keys to all of that digital technology right now. And of course they are the very rich and powerful. When it comes down to who survives as Earth’s environment collapses, what are these plutocrats and other very rich and very powerful people going do? Are they going help us all or are they going to help themselves? That dichotomy about how the 1% survives versus how the 99% survives is really the core of the idea behind “High Level.”

The average person is just trying to survive under a regime of cruelty as well as distraction that is neoliberalism. Most people are not thinking about the future in a big picture way. Their lives are very much about the immediate present and getting dopamine hits to their brains from social media, smart phones, and other technology to combat their deep feelings of loneliness and social atomization. By contrast, the 1 percent and the other global plutocrats and oligarchs are planning for the future and what they see to be an inevitable calamity.

The differences between the “alt-right” conspiracy theorist types online and billionaires who are viewed as being liberal in some way or another are really not that great.

They both have a mutual priority which is survival. They want to preserve their way of life. The “alt-right” ideologically driven racial “ethno state” vision is not really that different than that of the private billionaire. They are going to keep all of their stuff and everyone else can go off and die. This is true even of those billionaires who are self-proclaimed philanthropists and who say that they’re liberal. At the end of the day when push comes to shove they are all going to preserve their way of life above anything else.

The secret billionaires— the ones who have huge sums of wealth and who keep a low profile — are now asking futurists, “What’s the best way for us to survive the Event?” They do not exactly know what the Event specifically is, as it could be global ecological disaster, mass migration, a class uprising, but the billionaires are planning for it. They feel like it’s coming. And they know that the cross-hairs are on them.

These questions include, “How do we build a super bunker? How do we hire militias to protect us and make sure that they won’t turn on us? Do we trust AI?”

If things do not change core questions of survival are going to dominate the future of humanity. That future will be very different for those who are allowed to hoard the wealth as opposed to the rest of humankind. The world is facing an apocalypse of greed, the intersection of income inequality and climate change.

What happens when there is no more arable land and readily accessible fresh water? What happens when the middle class, the lower working class and the poor can no longer access cheap consumer goods? The replacement of huge swaths of the American and European (and global) middle and professional classes with robots and AI? When global warming floods the world? These are the questions that we as a species will be forced to grapple with sooner rather than later.

Right now there is an American populace which has been convinced that they’re being betrayed somehow by immigrants or by having to pay taxes to maintain a minimum social safety net for “those people.” At the same time, these very same people are the ones who want to run out to Walmart every weekend and catch the cheapest deals on giant TVs.

So many Americans do not understand that the reason they can have all this cheap stuff is because it’s made on the backs of laborers from other countries. And if they got those precious American jobs that they want back, then those TVs at Walmart would cost three times as much — at least. Too many people in America have been conditioned to not think logically about these issues. When these huge system shocks hit it is going to be really ugly unless we can somehow turn the tide of American culture at present.

There is the Event, the global disaster. But then there is what happens after, that moment which some futurists, science fiction writers, social scientists and others have described as the “post-post-apocalypse”? How do we reestablish normalcy? What does that look like in your graphic novel series “High Level”?

For me, it is not so much about establishing normalcy as it is revolution.

“High Level” is a science fiction fantasy. But I want to draw a really strong parallel to where we as a country and species are right now. We need to take a critical look at certain aspects of our society that are working as well as the other ones which are tearing us down. There are so many people who have bought into an incorrect narrative about their own personal progress, the meaning of their lives, and ultimately what a “high level” is for them.

In “High Level” I wanted to show a world where there are people developing a community after the post-post-apocalypse. They are making things work. They are trying to solve problems and live in a communal way. They work with each other. The people in this new world are guided by communal values. The ultimate revolution is realizing that the real power is in us and it is not elsewhere in the hands of elites or some other higher system of control.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-the-teacher-movement-against-charter-schools-helped-send-puerto-ricos-governor-packing/

no lnx

How the teacher movement against charter schools helped send Puerto Rico’s governor packing

Written by Jeff Bryant / Independent Media Institute August 2, 2019

As Americans lament the current sorry state of democracy in Washington, D.C., government by the will of the people was very much alive recently in Puerto Rico, where a prolonged general strike that virtually shut down the island forced Governor Ricardo Rosselló to announce his resignation.

During the strike, huge crowds mobbed the governor’s mansion around the clock, closed highways in the capital of San Juan, and persuaded some presidential candidates in the Democratic Party to join in calling for the governor to resign.

Protesters had multiple grievances, but a “final straw” seems to have been a series of text messages leaked to an independent news organization in which the governor and his closest associates insulted political opponents and allies, members of the news media, and the LGBTQ community. Another notable target for insults in the text exchanges were the island’s public school teachers, whom the governor’s chief financial officer at the time, Christian Sobrino, called, “terrorists.” (Sobrino and other top officials participating in the chats have resigned since the messages went public.)

Puerto Rico’s school teachers have been a constant nemesis to the Rosselló regime, and the island’s largest teachers’ union, the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (AMPR), united with other labor unions on the island to organize the general strike. Randi Weingarten, the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, which AMPR is an affiliate of, joined in the calls for Rosselló’s resignation.

The teachers’ disagreements with Governor Rosselló started long before the release of the insulting texts.

“People in Puerto Rico felt betrayed by the governor,” says Myrna Ortiz-Castillo in a phone conversation. Ortiz-Castillo is a third-grade teacher and serves as finance secretary at the AMPR local in Bayamon. She insists, “He is supposed to be the person who takes care of the people. Instead he took care of his friends.”

One of the “friends” Ortiz-Castillo is referring to is the charter school industry. During his tenure, Rosselló pushed through the first law allowing charter schools on the island, and after the bill passed, he continued to press for opening more charters. Now it seems his ousting, and the legacy of corruption he leaves behind, will likely damage prospects for the charter industry in Puerto Rico for some time.

‘Friends’ of Charters Take Charge

Much of the teachers’ disillusion with Rosselló goes back at least to December 2016 when then Governor-elect Rosselló appointed Julia Keleher to be the Puerto Rico secretary of education.

Keleher, a native of Philadelphia who barely speaks Spanish, was effectively already on the government payroll, as her firm Keleher & Associates had been awarded almost $1 million in contracts to consult on the island’s education system. Her outsized salary—$250,000 to oversee a system where the average teacher pay is only $27,000—also created controversy.

Shortly after taking office, Keleher pushed for a plan to close nearly 200 public schools across the island, which would have led to thousands of teachers losing their jobs. She also pledged to decentralize the school system and delegate school services, terms often used to introduce the idea of charter schools and other forms of public-private education partnerships.

Keleher’s proposals drew immediate pushback from multiple political factions on the island, but barely nine months into her tenure, she got the perfect opportunity to turn her proposals into policies when Hurricane Maria slammed the island. The storm inflicted $142 million in damages to schools, and 40 days after the storm, only 109 of Puerto Rico’s 1,100 schools had reopened.

Keleher repeatedly referred to the catastrophe as an “opportunity.”

A New Orleans-Style Agenda

While Keleher worked the policy channels to introduce charter schools to the island, teachers were in communities delivering aid and comfort.

Ortiz-Castillo recalls being a first-line responder to the widespread destruction. In her phone call to me, she describes traveling to devastated communities as part of the union’s outreach effort to use its extensive membership network to identify where parents and their children were struggling and advise where to direct supplies, food, and drinking water. Many schools became, essentially, relief centers.

Keleher seemed to have other priorities.

As Education Week’s correspondent on the ground in Puerto Rico reported, she was “diving deep into the lessons of loss and opportunity in previous natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005.”

In a tweet, Keleher said New Orleans should be a “point of reference; we should not underestimate the damage or the opportunity to create new, better schools.”

After Katrina, a state-appointed board shut down New Orleans schools, fired over 7,000 teachers, and deposed the school board. Today, 100 percent of schools in New Orleans have been converted to privately operated charter schools.

With nearly a third of Puerto Rico’s schools still without power and hundreds more plagued with crumbling walls, leaky roofs, and spotty internet, Rosselló announced a new fiscal plan that included closing nearly 300 schools and introduced a new bill legalizing charter schools on the island.

Rachel Cohen, writing for the Intercept, described the bill as “vague,” a weakness that could invite the types of fraud and corruption that have dogged charter schools wherever they go. Cohen also noted Keleher had sought the advice of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate, to help craft the bill.

Analysts at the National Education Association had similar concerns, saying the law “left unanswered” whether for-profit companies would be allowed to manage charter schools and whether charter schools would have to serve students with disabilities—services needed by 40 percent of the island’s students.

Teachers registered their opposition to the bill by holding a one-day strike that shut down schools across Puerto Rico.

The bill passed nevertheless.

Public Funds to Private Pockets

“Teachers have had big problems with the education secretary the governor hired,” says Ortiz-Castillo. “We suggested from the very start that she be investigated. We could see that money intended for school children wasn’t arriving in the classroom.”

Teachers had good reasons to be suspicious.

After justifying her call for closing schools by claiming a savings of $7 million, Keleher signed a $16.9 million contract with the California-based Josephson Institute of Ethics to teach “values” in Puerto Rican schools—an addition to the curriculum teachers believed was not needed, especially at a time when students didn’t have adequate supplies of basic materials and textbooks.

After the storm, Keleher barnstormed the island in a relentless marketing campaign to promote charter schools at a time when, according to a survey conducted by the teachers’ union, dozens of schools still had moldy classrooms, leaky roofs, unusable bathrooms, and rat infestations.

Keleher’s intention to redirect education funds to private enterprises seemed all the more obvious when the island opened its first new charter, a comparatively gleaming facility where teachers had smaller class sizes but were being paid $13,000 more than average teacher salaries. The fact that much of the school’s funding was being provided by a nonprofit did nothing to offset the resentment many teachers felt.

“Bringing charter schools to Puerto Rico is not a good thing,” says Ortiz-Castillo. “Charter schools are a way for politicians to redirect money to their friends. The money for the school should go to the school and to the children.”

Corruption Comeuppance

The backroom collusion between the Rosselló administration and those connected with charter schools continued even when Keleher decided to resign earlier this year.

As part of her departure, her consulting company received a contract to work with a law firm assisting parties interested in participating in the establishment of charter schools in Puerto Rico. The firm also employs Governor Rosselló’s brother Jay Rosselló, who serves as “contact person” to receive the requests for advice.

The law firm’s relationship with Keleher dates back to 2017 when the Puerto Rico Education Department under her leadership hired it for legal advice and technical assistance in education policy.

Keleher’s apparent propensity to steer public dollars to friends, however, seems to have finally caught up with her.

Days before the general strike would shut down the island and force out the governor, news outlets reported Keleher had been arrested for steering $13 million of education federal money to unqualified, politically connected contractors. She is alleged to have bypassed official bidding procedures to award contracts to her friends and to have committed money laundering and fraud.

In her statement calling on Rosselló to resign, Weingarten declared, “Rossello and Keleher ignored repeated requests from the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico and the AFT to use federal recovery money to fund and restore public education on the island” and instead “diverted much-needed funding from public schools to start charter schools.”

A Lesson About Democracy

Though Keleher is out of office and Rosselló is likely heading that way, Puerto Rico’s teachers are not about to let up.

According to Ortiz-Castillo, teachers intend to meet with the new secretary of education and demand to hear what changes are being planned for the schools. They also participated in protests against a possible successor to Rosselló, Justice Secretary Wanda Vásques, who has since expressed some reluctance to occupy the position. Rosselló has recently inserted another possible successor into the mix, the island’s former representative to the U.S. Congress Pedro Pierluisi, and it’s not clear, as of press time, how teachers would receive his nomination.

But what Ortiz-Castillo and her fellow teachers want people to understand most is the teachers “demonstrated that, without guns and violence, we can hold politicians accountable to the will of the people. Now, we want voters to be more aware of who they are voting for. Candidates need to demonstrate they’re going to do what’s best for all the people and not just what’s good for themselves or their friends. We also want people to understand they should never give up.”

That seems like a lesson all Americans can benefit from.

Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm.

To learn more about school privatization, check out Who Controls Our Schools? The Privatization of American Public Education, a free ebook published by the Independent Media Institute.

Click here to read a selection of Who Controls Our Schools? published on AlterNet, or here to access the complete text.

This article was produced by Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

extraction?

ProPublica also reported this week on how electronic monitoring devices such as ankle bracelets are driving defendants into debt. Private companies charge defendants hundreds of dollars a month to wear the surveillance devices. If people can’t pay, they may end up behind bars. In Illinois, lawmakers recently passed a bill that would require the Illinois Department of Corrections and the Prisoner Review Board to collect data on how electronic monitoring devices are being used and post that information publicly. Learn more about that in this story from WILL-Illinois Public Media.

pompeo and bolton plunder anwr

omfg

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html

some lnx below

Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science

May 27, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis.

Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault.

In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.

And, in what could be Mr. Trump’s most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.

[Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter.]

Mr. Trump is less an ideologue than an armchair naysayer about climate change, according to people who know him. He came into office viewing agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency as bastions of what he calls the “deep state,” and his contempt for their past work on the issue is an animating factor in trying to force them to abandon key aspects of the methodology they use to try to understand the causes and consequences of a dangerously warming planet.

As a result, parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet and presenting a picture of what the earth could look like by the end of the century if the global economy continues to emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels.

The attack on science is underway throughout the government. In the most recent example, the White House-appointed director of the United States Geological Survey,James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist, has ordered that scientific assessments produced by that office use only computer-generated climate models that project the impact of climate change through 2040, rather than through the end of the century, as had been done previously.

Image

President Trump has pushed to resurrect the idea of holding public debates on the validity of climate science.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times]

Scientists say that would give a misleading picture because the biggest effects of current emissions will be felt after 2040. Models show that the planet will most likely warm at about the same rate through about 2050. From that point until the end of the century, however, the rate of warming differs significantly with an increase or decrease in carbon emissions.

The administration’s prime target has been the National Climate Assessment, produced by an interagency task force roughly every four years since 2000. Government scientists used computer-generated models in their most recent report to project that if fossil fuel emissions continue unchecked, the earth’s atmosphere could warm by as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That would lead to drastically higher sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, crop failures, food losses and severe health consequences.

Work on the next report, which is expected to be released in 2021 or 2022, has already begun. But from now on, officials said, such worst-case scenario projections will not automatically be included in the National Climate Assessment or in some other scientific reports produced by the government.

“What we have here is a pretty blatant attempt to politicize the science — to push the science in a direction that’s consistent with their politics,” said Philip B. Duffy, the president of the Woods Hole Research Center, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the government’s most recent National Climate Assessment. “It reminds me of the Soviet Union.”

In an email, James Hewitt, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, defended the proposed changes.

“The previous use of inaccurate modeling that focuses on worst-case emissions scenarios, that does not reflect real-world conditions, needs to be thoroughly re-examined and tested if such information is going to serve as the scientific foundation of nationwide decision-making now and in the future,” Mr. Hewitt said.

However, the goal of political appointees in the Trump administration is not just to change the climate assessment’s methodology, which has broad scientific consensus, but also to question its conclusions by creating a new climate review panel. That effort is led by a 79-year-old physicist who had a respected career at Princeton but has become better known in recent years for attacking the science of man-made climate change and for defending the virtues of carbon dioxide — sometimes to an awkward degree.

[Image

The Beaufort Sea in the Arctic, a region that is warming rapidly. The United States recently declined to sign a communiqué on protecting the Arctic unless it omitted references to climate change.CreditAndrew Testa for The New York Times]

“The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies, said in 2014 in an interview with CNBC.

Mr. Happer’s proposed panel is backed by John R. Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, who brought Mr. Happer into the N.S.C. after an earlier effort to recruit him during the transition.

Mr. Happer and Mr. Bolton are both beneficiaries of Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the far-right billionaire and his daughter who have funded efforts to debunk climate science. The Mercers gave money to a super PAC affiliated with Mr. Bolton before he entered government and to an advocacy group headed by Mr. Happer.

Climate scientists are dismissive of Mr. Happer; his former colleagues at Princeton are chagrined. And several White House officials — including Larry Kudlow, the president’s chief economic adviser — have urged Mr. Trump not to adopt Mr. Happer’s proposal, on the grounds that it would be perceived as a White House attack on science.

Even Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist who views Mr. Happer as “the climate hustler’s worst nightmare — a world-class physicist from the nation’s leading institution of advanced learning, who does not suffer fools gladly,” is apprehensive about what Mr. Happer is trying to do.

“The very idea will start a holy war on cable before 2020,” he said. “Better to win now and introduce the study in the second inaugural address.”

But at a White House meeting on May 1, at which the skeptical advisers made their case, Mr. Trump appeared unpersuaded, people familiar with the meeting said. Mr. Happer, they said, is optimistic that the panel will go forward.

[Image

William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council, is pushing to create a climate review panel that would question scientific consensus.CreditPool photo by Albin Lohr-Jones]

The concept is not new. Mr. Trump has pushed to resurrect the idea of a series of military-style exercises, known as “red team, blue team” debates, on the validity of climate science first promoted by Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator who was forced to resign last year amid multiple scandals.

At the time, the idea was shot down by John F. Kelly, then the White House chief of staff. But since Mr. Kelly’s departure, Mr. Trump has talked about using Mr. Happer’s proposed panel as a forum for it.

For Mr. Trump, climate change is often the subject of mockery. “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!” he posted on Twitter in January when a snowstorm was freezing much of the country.

His views are influenced mainly by friends and donors like Carl Icahn, the New York investor who owns oil refineries, and the oil-and-gas billionaire Harold Hamm — both of whom pushed Mr. Trump to deregulate the energy industry.

[ImageThe Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: The White House Plan to Change Climate Science]

...

aha: had not conn brexit to dereg

https://yyy.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/07/disaster-capitalists-no-deal-brexit-environment

Why disaster capitalists are praying for a no-deal Brexit

George Monbiot

They want to tear up our green regulations so they can plunder and pollute the environment for profit

in New York City, activists from over 30 groups took over the prestigious Whitney Museum Friday to call for the removal of Vice Chair Warren Kanders, CEO of tear gas manufacturer Safariland, from the museum’s board. The protest launched a 9-week series of actions organized by Decolonize This Place. Democracy Now! spoke to one of the activists at Friday’s action.

Marz Saffore: “My name is Marz Saffore, and I’m with MTL+ Collective and Decolonize This Place. Today we’re here for week three of the 'Nine Weeks of Art and Action' at the Whitney Museum, demanding the removal of Vice Chairman Warren Kanders. Warren Kanders is the CEO of Safariland, an international weapons manufacturer who manufactured the tear gas used against migrant families at the border, water protectors in Standing Rock, black folks in Ferguson, Palestine, Oakland, Turkey, Egypt, and the list goes on.”

https://news.littlesis.org/2018/12/10/chemical-weapons-profiteers-warren-kanders-and-david-rubenstein-sit-on-the-boards-of-major-art-and-cultural-institutions/

In recent weeks, a campaign organized by Decolonize This Place has emerged and gained momentum targeting multimillionaire Whitney Museum trustee Warren B. Kanders over his ownership and chief executive position at a weapons manufacturer whose tear gas product was recently used against migrants – including small children – at the United States-Mexico border. Kanders is a majority owner, and chairman and CEO, of Safariland LLC, whose 19 brands of riot gear and so-called “less lethal” weapons includes Defense Technology, the manufacturer of the tear gas canisters that Customs and Border Protection fired into Mexico against migrants seeking asylum in the US from violence in Central America.

Kanders is not the only tear gas profiteer with ties to the art world, however. David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the private equity behemoth Carlyle Group, is chairman of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, vice chair of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a trustee at the National Gallery of Art, and a member of the board of regents of the Smithsonian Institute. Carlyle Group is an owner of Combined Systems, whose armaments have also been used by security forces in conflicts worldwide.

Defense Technology and Combined Systems products are favored by police and militaries around the world. In recent years they have been used against protesters on at least four continents – from Venezuela to Ferguson and Standing Rock and from Tunisia to Palestine. Though the Geneva Gas Protocol and other international treaties prohibit the use of gas and other “riot control agents” in warfare, the line between police and military actions has grown increasingly blurry. The use of military weapons, equipment, and training by police forces has rendered the difference mostly academic.

The chairman and CEO of Defense Technology’s parent company, Safariland, is Warren B. Kanders, an investor who Forbes estimates is worth $700 million. Kanders is a major donor to the Whitney Museum in New York City and is a member of its board of trustees – a role which has drawn unwanted attention as the museum has faced escalating protests as well as a call from more than 100 workers at the museum for Kanders to step down. Kanders is also a member of the advisory board to Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, a position that drew protest from students at the school earlier in 2018.

Kanders’ partner Allison sits on the board of directors of the Aspen Music Festival.

So far, Kanders has remained unapologetic for profiting off the use of chemical weapons to attack migrants and crush political dissent. “I’m very comfortable with our business – we’re technological leaders in every aspect of what we do. We expect to continue that. I feel good about it,” he told Forbes in December 2018.

Kanders got into the weapons and armor business in the 1990s after a career in investment banking. He identified the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as a watershed moment for those hoping to profit from global conflict. From Forbes’ December 6, 2018 profile of Kanders:

“I was looking out the window. I saw the first plane coming down,” he said on Monday. “There happened to be a person in our group who was a Holocaust survivor who just ran out of the building. He thought we were all going to die. I realized at that time that we needed to be ready for this,” by which he meant more conflict.

That bet has paid off big for Warren and Allison Kanders, who now own a swanky, art-filled, five story townhouse in Greenwich Village that garnered an extravagant write up in Architectural Digest. The descriptions of the Kanders’ home, floriferous garden, and art collection offer a stark contrast to the living conditions faced by those joining the migrant caravan.

...

omfg da goyim know

https://www.alternet.org/psychologist-explains-why-so-many-rich-people-are-preparing-end-days

salon

Many of the world’s richest seem to earnestly believe that some kind of apocalyptic “event” is coming, and have prepared accordingly. You might have read about this before — such as in the New Yorker’s deep dive back in January 2017 — but billionaire doomsday preppers are back in the news again thanks to a new viral article penned by professor and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. In it, Rushkoff gives some insight on the grave manner in which some of the business elite are going about preparing for a doomsday, which he learned first-hand after receiving an invitation to speak with some one-percenters.

Rushkoff says that what was supposed to be a wholesome discussion about the “future of technology” quickly turned into a consulting session on an impending apocalypse.

As Rushkoff writes:

Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern. Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers?—?if that technology could be developed in time.

There is a lot of wealth in this world, and it is extremely unevenly distributed. According to a January Oxfam report, 82 percent of the wealth generated in 2017 went to one percent of the global population. While the fat-cats of Earth are still going about doing regular rich-guy things, it is also peculiar that so many of the one percent are spending so much time and money thinking about the apocalypse. Don’t they have better projects or companies to invest in? Is there something specific to rich dude psychology that is making them behave this way?

It’s worth noting that the fear of doomsday is not specific to the world’s financial elite. It appears in splashy headlines. It is in the science fiction we read and watch. Apocalypse anxiety seems to be on everyone’s mind lately, and some psychologists have their own theories as to why.

Clay Routledge, a researcher who studies existential anxiety and has conducted studies specifically about drivers of apocalyptic beliefs, tells Salon these apocalyptic fears can be motivated by a number of different variables — one big one being technology.

“There are, of course, some very real threats to worry about, but our always-connected digital world can heighten anxiety because it is a constant and chaotic stream of information, and is often negative, and specifically fear-focused,” he explained.

Furthermore, his research suggests that such anxieties could be linked to existential concerns and a search for meaning.

“Though we tend to think of the apocalypse as negative, the idea may counterintuitively be attractive to some,” he said. “In a world in which life feels uncertain and often unfair, in which people struggle to find a sense of personal purpose, the idea of an apocalyptic ending, though terrifying, can also feel meaningful.”

“This is obvious when we think about certain religious apocalyptic beliefs, but even among more secular types or those who do not believe in a particular religious apocalyptic narrative, apocalyptic ideas can be seductive,” Routledge added, noting that such beliefs could be a result of people dreaming of a “better world.”

“Some are attracted to these ideas because they would be tested and could find their true purpose, maybe even emerge as heroes or people of importance in a new world,” he said. “And some like to imagine the possibility of a simpler life, what might be almost a form of nostalgia.”

Nathalie Theodore, JD, LCSW, who is a psychotherapist in Chicago, said the rise in concerns about an apocalypse is likely a result of the anxiety felt from the country’s current political state.

“We don’t feel as settled, safe or secure in our everyday lives and, when this happens, our minds tend to wander to the worst case scenario—for example, the apocalypse,” Theodore told Salon. “Because we don’t feel entirely safe in our environment, we imagine doomsday scenarios in which we have no control over our surroundings, and the world around us is falling apart.”

Mike Salas, a life and professional counselor based in Texas, said he has seen a rise in clients who have fear and anxiety about the end times since the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“Where people are just in a very vulnerable place — not apocalyptic, but [not knowing] what to expect from our current governmental state,” he explained. “There are people that are worried [the state of politics] could lead to nuclear war and also the end of our democratic state, and I have a lot of clients who are fearful of that.”

Salas added that specifically his minority clients are anxious.

“There is a lot of anxiety about loss of rights and change in social structure,” he explained.

As to why, Salas explained he believes it has to do with the lack of abundance in the world.

“The theory I have on it is kind of based in scarcity,” he said. “It’s as if people feel like there isn’t enough of anything for all of us, and as if there isn’t enough equality to go around.”

Salas said he does have wealthy clients—but they appear to be anxious for other reasons.

“A lot of people I see are wealthy and conservative and many of them believe we’re on the right path with this president, and that liberals aren’t understanding of it,” he said. “When I hear the anxiety from these clients, it is about heading to the extreme left.”

https://www.alternet.org/naomi-klein-explains-how-gops-increasingly-savage-racial-and-gender-politics-will-lead-insidious-new

When Nikki Haley resigned this week as the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, seemingly the political press’ first question was whether Donald Trump would name his daughter Ivanka as her replacement. Trump did little to discourage this speculation. “[It’s] nothing to do with nepotism,” he told reporters at the White House, barely concealing a smile. “But I want to tell you that the people that know, know that Ivanka would be dynamite.”

For “The Shock Doctrine” and “No Is Not Enough” author Naomi Klein, that the president’s offspring would even be considered for such a post is evidence enough that we’ve entered a frightening new era of capitalism—one in which the 1 percent so dominate our institutions that they consider political power to be their natural birthright. In her latest essay for The Intercept, she dubs it the “Age of the Pampered Princeling”:

The Koch brothers were raised in luxury and inherited Koch Industries from their father (who built his fortune constructing refineries under Stalin and Hitler). [Richard Mellon] Scaife was an heir to the Gulf Oil, Alcoa Aluminum, and Mellon Banks fortunes and grew up in an estate so lavish it was populated with pet penguins. [The late John M.] Olin took over his father’s weapons and chemicals company.

And so it goes, right down to Betsy DeVos, who was raised by billionaire Edgar Prince and married into the Amway fortune—and who has devoted her life to dismantling public education, now from inside the Trump administration. And let’s not forget Rupert Murdoch, who inherited a chain of newspapers from his father and is in the process of handing over his media empire to his sons. Or relative newcomer Rebekah Mercer, who has chipped off a chunk of her father Robert’s hedge fund fortune to bankroll Breitbart News, among other pet projects. In short, these people are Downton Abbey lords and masters, playacting as Ayn Rand heroes.

Klein urges her readers to consider the mental gymnastics required for our nation’s scions to convince themselves not just that they’re self-made, but that their attacks on the social safety net are inherently righteous. Whether implicit or explicit, she concludes, it comes down to a belief in their own fundamental superiority: “better values, better breeding, a better religion, or as Trump so often claims, ‘good genes.’ “

“And of course the even darker side is the often unspoken conviction that the people who do not share in this kind of good fortune must possess the opposite traits—they must be defective in both body and mind,” Klein continues. “This is where the Republican Party’s increasingly savage racial and gender politics merge seamlessly with its radical wealth-stratifying economic project. Convinced that people belong where they are on the economic and social ladder, the party can keep redistributing wealth upward to the … families that fund their movement, while kicking the ladder out of the way for those reaching for the lower rungs.”

Alarmingly, money and influence are only growing more entrenched. As part of the Trump administration’s latest tax plan, the mega-rich will be able to pass up to $22.4 million to their children without paying a cent in taxes, effectively locking in another generation of dynastic wealth. The consequences will be grave for the health of our society and the planet at large, especially as climate change threatens civilizational collapse.

“This is an intensely hierarchical worldview that is completely comfortable with a minority making decisions for a majority in a rigged electoral system, just as it feels no need to reconcile two totally different visions of justice—’innocent until proven guilty’ when it comes to Brett Kavanaugh’s job application and, as Trump told a gathering of police chiefs on Monday, ‘stop and frisk’ for anyone seen as a possible criminal in Chicago (obvious code for a black person walking down the street),” Klein concludes. “This is not seen as a contradiction: There are simply two classes of people—us and them, winners and losers, people deserving of rights and everyone else.”...

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/richard-sackler-purdue-pharma-opioid-crisis

Friday, the Financial Times reported that billionaire pharmaceutical tycoon Richard Sackler has secured a patent for a new drug to treat opioid addiction.

The drug, a reformulation of buprenorphine, is essentially just a milder opioid that can blunt the symptoms of withdrawal while a person is being weaned off — competing variants of which are already generating nearly $900 million in U.S. sales.

Sackler's family also happens to own Purdue Pharma, the company that first developed OxyContin — a powerful narcotic painkiller that has been blamed for spurring the epidemic of opioid addiction that has decimated communities all across America.

In other words, Sackler made millions off of sales of a drug that caused a massive public health crisis — and now he stands to make millions more by selling the public a solution.

Purdue, one of several drug companies that made a decades-long push for liberal prescription of opioids, is currently facing a mountain of lawsuits. Prosecutors in several states allege Purdue was aware of the risk of addiction and overdose, but deceived doctors and patients and downplayed the risks to increase their sales — a charge the company denies. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey directly names several members of the Sackler family as defendants.

The National Institute of Drug Abuse estimates that up to 12 percent of patients prescribed an opioid develop an abuse disorder, and as many as 6 percent eventually switch to heroin. More than 115 people a day are now killed by opioid overdoses.

Rural areas have been especially impacted, with an astonishing 74 percent of farmers reporting they or someone they know is suffering from opioid addiction.

While increased availability of addiction treatment is a good thing, it is not a solution to the epidemic. Opioids remain a necessary tool to treat severe pain from surgery, cancer, and other serious conditions, but they must be used judiciously, and alternative therapies must be made available — particularly in lower-income rural areas where people are at higher risk.

https://www.ecowatch.com/shipping-arctic-ice-melting-2598089199.html

World's Largest Shipping Company to Send First Ship Through Melting Arctic

Denmark's Maersk Line, the world's largest shipping company, will soon be the first to send a container vessel through Russia's Northern Sea Route, as the melting Arctic opens up new trade possibilities.

The Northern Sea Route has been historically impossible or prohibitively expensive to cross due to frozen sea ice. But the Arctic is warming at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the globe due to climate change and has significantly thawed the region's ice.

The Venta Maersk, which has a capacity to carry 3,600 shipping containers, will take off on its maiden voyage in the coming days through the polar waters north of Russia. The vessel will carry a load of frozen fish from Vladivostok in Russia's far east to St. Petersburg in the west, avoiding the traditional southerly Asia to Europe route through Egypt's Suez Canal, NPR reported.

Experts say the Northern Sea Route could reduce the east-west journey by two weeks.

...

omg borders on dis cap'l, massive subsidies

PORT ARTHUR, Texas (AP) — As the nation plans new defenses against the more powerful storms and higher tides expected from climate change, one project stands out: an ambitious proposal to build a nearly 60-mile “spine” of concrete seawalls, earthen barriers, floating gates and steel levees on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Like other oceanfront projects, this one would protect homes, delicate ecosystems and vital infrastructure, but it also has another priority — to shield some of the crown jewels of the petroleum industry, which is blamed for contributing to global warming and now wants the federal government to build safeguards against the consequences of it.

The plan is focused on a stretch of coastline that runs from the Louisiana border to industrial enclaves south of Houston that are home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of petrochemical facilities, including most of Texas’ 30 refineries, which represent 30 percent of the nation’s refining capacity.

Texas is seeking at least $12 billion for the full coastal spine, with nearly all of it coming from public funds. Last month, the government fast-tracked an initial $3.9 billion for three separate, smaller storm barrier projects that would specifically protect oil facilities.

That followed Hurricane Harvey, which roared ashore last Aug. 25 and swamped Houston and parts of the coast, temporarily knocking out a quarter of the area’s oil refining capacity and causing average gasoline prices to jump 28 cents a gallon nationwide. Many Republicans argue that the Texas oil projects belong at the top of Washington’s spending list.

“Our overall economy, not only in Texas but in the entire country, is so much at risk from a high storm surge,” said Matt Sebesta, a Republican who as Brazoria County judge oversees a swath of Gulf Coast.

But the idea of taxpayers around the country paying to protect refineries worth billions, and in a state where top politicians still dispute climate change’s validity, doesn’t sit well with some.

“The oil and gas industry is getting a free ride,” said Brandt Mannchen, a member of the Sierra Club’s executive committee in Houston. “You don’t hear the industry making a peep about paying for any of this and why should they? There’s all this push like, ‘Please Senator Cornyn, Please Senator Cruz, we need money for this and that.’”

Normally outspoken critics of federal spending, Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both backed using taxpayer funds to fortify the oil facilities’ protections and the Texas coast. Cruz called it “a tremendous step forward.”

Federal, state and local money is also bolstering defenses elsewhere, including on New York’s Staten Island, around Atlantic City, New Jersey, and in other communities hammered by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Construction in Texas could begin in several months on the three sections of storm barrier. While plans are still being finalized, some dirt levees will be raised to about 17 feet high, and 6 miles of 19-foot-tall floodwalls would be built or strengthened around Port Arthur, a Texas-Louisiana border locale of pungent chemical smells and towering knots of steel pipes.

The town of 55,000 includes the Saudi-controlled Motiva oil refinery, the nation’s largest, as well as refineries owned by oil giants Valero Energy Corp. and Total S.A. There are also almost a dozen petrochemical facilities.

“You’re looking at a lot of people, a lot of homes, but really a lot of industry,” said Steve Sherrill, an Army Corps of Engineers resident engineer in Port Arthur, as he peered over a Gulf tributary lined with chunks of granite and metal gates, much of which is set to be reinforced.

The second barrier project features around 25 miles of new levees and seawalls in nearby Orange County, whereChevron, DuPont and other companies have facilities. The third would extend and heighten seawalls around Freeport, home to a Phillips 66 export terminal for liquefied natural gas and nearby refinery, as well as several chemical facilities.

The proposals approved for funding originally called for building more protections along larger swaths of the Texas coast, but they were scaled back and now deliberately focus on refineries.

“That was one of the main reasons we looked at some of those areas,” said Tony Williams, environmental review coordinator for the Texas Land Commissioner’s Office.

Oil and chemical companies also pushed for more protection for surrounding communities to shield their workforces, but “not every property can be protected,” said Sheri Willey, deputy chief of project management for the Army Corps of Engineers’ upper Texas district.

“Our regulations tell us what benefits we need to include, and they have to be national economic benefits,”Willey said.

Once work is complete on the three sections, they could eventually be integrated into a larger coastal spine system. In some places along Texas’ 370-mile Gulf Coast, 18 feet is lost annually to erosion, threatening to suck more wetlands, roads and buildings into rising seas.

Protecting a wide expanse will be expensive. After Harvey, a special Texas commission prepared a report seeking $61 billion from Congress to “future proof” the state against such natural disasters, without mentioning climate change, which scientists say will cause heavier rains and stronger storms.

Texas has not tapped its own rainy day fund of around $11 billion. According to federal rules, 35 percent of funds spent by the Army Corps of Engineers must be matched by local jurisdictions, and the GOP-controlled state Legislature could help cover such costs. But such spending may be tough for many conservatives to swallow.

Texas “should be funding things like this itself,” said Chris Edwards, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Texans are proud of their conservatism, but, unfortunately, when decisions get made in Washington, that frugality goes out the door.”

State officials counter that protecting the oil facilities is a matter of national security.

The effects of the next devastating storm could be felt nationwide,” Rep. Randy Weber, a fiercely conservative Republican from suburban Houston who has nonetheless authored legislation backing the coastal spine.

Major oil companies did not return messages seeking comment on funding for the projects. But Suzanne Lemieux, midstream group manager for the American Petroleum Institute, said the industry already pays into programs such as the federal Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund and the Waterways Trust Fund, only to see Congress divert that money elsewhere.

“Do we want to pay again, when we’ve already paid a tax without it getting used? I’d say the answer is no,” she said.

Phillips 66 and other energy firms spent money last year lobbying Congress on storm-related funding post-Harvey, campaign finance records show, and Houston’s Lyondell Chemical Co. PAC lobbied for building a coastal spine.

“The coastal spine benefits more than just our industry,” Bob Patel, CEO of LyondellBasell, one of the world’s largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies, said in March. “It really needs to be a regional effort.”

34 giants: the global power elite PP

Amazingly, TCC/Global Power Elite money managers study

the transforming environment for new investment opportuni-

ties. Climate change investing can be profitable, according to

Forbes, and getting in on low-carbon investments, and sectors

that will benefit should climate stress increase—such as defense,

health care, and property insurances—can prove lucrative.48

Increasing interest in new mining opportunities available due

to global warming is an important issue in Greenland.49 Private

investment in the control of water sources is seen as an increas-

ingly attractive opportunity for power elite speculation.50

https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-why-the-us-is-vulnerable-to-big-disasters-97592

big cities on coasts, lack of $, ...

baby jail

https://www.alternet.org/some-trumps-biggest-donors-are-profiting-big-time-immigration-detention-centers

no lnx

Some of Trump’s Biggest Donors Are Profiting Big-Time on Immigration Detention Centers

The plan to lock-up asylum-seeking migrants may seem like it happened overnight, but it has been years in the making.

By Jen Hayden / Daily Kos June 20, 2018, 1:51 AM GMT

The giant retail stores being converted into detention centers and these large tent cities cropping up to house immigrants, where did they come from? As always, it is important to follow the money. This plan to lock-up asylum-seeking migrants may seem like it happened overnight, but it has been years in the making. Only weeks after Donald Trump put his filthy hand on Lincoln’s Bible and took the Oath of Office, this was the February 24, 2017, headline at CNN Money:

The actions Donald Trump, his sycophant Stephen Miller and Minister of White Supremacy Jeff Sessions are taking today are a huge payoff to the prison lobbyists and the border security industry that spent millions helping to get Donald Trump elected. Private for-profit prison executives were furious that President Obama decided to end the practice of using private prisons. They poured everything into Donald Trump and his campaign, maxing out $250,000 donations and even helping Trump raise $100 million in sketchy, secret money for his “inauguration committee.” And it paid off, as one of the first decisions from the Trump administration was to rescind Obama’s order to phase out private prisons.

They didn’t stop there. These groups have been spending lavishly at Trump’s private business as well. The Miami New Times noted the private prison company GEO Group was one of the newest big spenders at Trump’s Doral property in Florida.

The GEO Group private-prison bash. Private-prison-company stock was cratering at the end of Barack Obama's time in office after his Department of Justice announced the federal government would no longer work with private, for-profit prison operators. But the Trump administration rapidly rolled those rules back after taking power. Then Boca Raton's GEO Group, the second-largest private-prison firm in America, moved its yearly company gathering to the Trump Doral.

At the core of it all, there are two factors that dovetail together when it comes to the immigrant detention centers: corruption and white supremacy. In fact, these are the core elements of the Trump administration overall.

In March of 2017, then Homeland Security chief John Kelly told Wolf Blitzer on CNN that he was considering a plan to separate families and detain them.

"We have tremendous experience of dealing with unaccompanied minors," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room." "We turn them over to (Health and Human Services) and they do a very, very good job of putting them in foster care or linking them up with parents or family members in the United States."

It didn’t take long for Kelly to publicly walk back that statement, denying he meant it would be a cruel, intentional warning or deterrent to others who might be thinking of seeking asylum in the U.S. But we can clearly see now, they’ve been plotting this for quite some time. The sadistic, racist voices appear to have won over Donald Trump as we can clearly see he approved this action in April 2018, when he sent his attorney general out with a public statement and then began snatching children from their parents at the border.

Later in 2017, NPR highlighted the big money to be made from putting migrants and their children into detention centers. Money siphoned from our tax dollars to pay for their private profit cruelty.

The Trump administration wants to expand its network of immigrant jails. In recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has called for five new detention facilities to be built and operated by private prison corporations across the country. Critics are alarmed at the rising fortunes of an industry that had fallen out of favor with the previous administration.

https://www.alternet.org/todays-capitalism-far-cry-what-it-was-intended-be

taher truthout

Capitalism is among the most controversial politico-economic terms to define, in part because myriad variations of “capitalism” have emerged throughout the centuries.

Neat and comprehensive definitions for any political term are either rare or defective. “Capitalism” is no exception.

To understand the theory of capitalism, we must begin with Adam Smith. In 1776, Smith authored An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, simplified as Wealth of Nations, which remains understood as the foundation for the theory of capitalism.

Wealth of Nations came to life in the era of mercantilism, a style of economy over whose every aspect government imposed strict control, both for domestic and foreign trade. Many nations, chiefly the British Empire, were mercantilist.

Previously, trade (business) between nations occurred rarely, with sharp restrictions and deep suspicions towards each other. So, Wealth of Nationssought to resolve this through a systematic approach to international trade for the benefit of all involved.

Core to the theory of capitalism in Wealth of Nations was that trade must occur free of government intervention. This is the basis of “free” within “free markets” and “free trade,” assuring that no business is “cheating” via advantages or disadvantages imposed by government, thereby allowing real competition to occur.

Also core was the philosophy that business enterprise would self-regulate out of concern for the betterment of others, including “consumers,” “landlords,” “manufacturers” and even “labourers.” This was the “natural tendency” of capitalism, which would lead to a society “of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and of perfect equality.”

Smith lived in the era of “enlightened self-interest,” in which people pursued their own wants and needs, but tied to the collective welfare of society as a whole. Therefore, he understood capitalism as an economic and moral system aimed to benefit the business class, but who would self-impose “limits” on their practices to support developing the life-quality and intellect of laborers and others. For the father of capitalism, such was prerequisite for a burgeoning economy. To this end, Smith condemned economies in which elites hoarded the “whole surplus” of earnings.But how could Smith be so naive to conceptualize capitalism as a pathway to liberty, justice and equality?

Limits imposed by government are regulations, which restrict or control the actions of a business entity to protect public interests from rapacious elites. In most cases, Smith opposed regulations as impingements on economic success.

Today, however, conservatives dogmatize the anti-regulation elements in Wealth of Nations for their agenda of deregulation to privatize ownership of everythingfor corporate profits — profits by sustaining archaic industries and subjecting workforces to uncreative, repetitive, tedious tasks with little or no worker-security, pay and hiring equity, or rights for collective-bargaining.

Never, however, does the right wing consult Wealth of Nations where Smith demands regulations against dehumanizing work conditions.

Wealth of Nationsforewarned us that the “principal architects” of the political economy were “not the consumers … whose interest has been entirely neglected,” but the wealthy “merchants and manufacturers” whose interests have “been most peculiarly attended to.”“[H]e whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations … generally becomes as … ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment … But in every … society this is the state into which … the great body of the people must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.” —Book 5. Ch. 1. Line 178.

Smith’s observations still apply. In a landmark 2014 political science study, leading researchers determined that the US is not a democracy, but a nation in which the masses of Americans are effectively disenfranchised, as “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

In condemning disproportionate power, Smith also warned that free competition can’t exist when any corporation dominates its industry, allowing them unbridled reign to set prices on the public for corporate profits, which never align with public interests.

Smith’s prescience was correct: Corporate mergers today continue toward monopolization of industry, while elites continue shaping policies in their own image, reinforcing plutocracy, since wealth dominance yields political dominance.

So, is today’s US truly an economy of capitalism?

After the final shots of the American Revolutionary War, the US consisted of only a de facto government, but no US Constitution, Bill of Rights, national economy or a common currency.

The US was pre-capitalist, an agrarian society predominated by farmers and plantations relying on chattel slavery, with the manufacturing industry grossly undeveloped. Meanwhile, the world’s superpower, the British Empire, was entering the Industrial Revolution with unprecedented industrial technology. These and other conditions left the US uncompetitive in foreign trade.

Opportunely, virtually all of the framers of the Constitution had read Smith’s Wealth of Nations, providing unprecedented research through which to create an economy of free-market capitalism.

But what course did the framers actually take?

Enter, Alexander Hamilton

To examine the origins of the American economy, we must turn to Alexander Hamilton, widely dubbed “the father of American capitalism” and financial system, and an architect of the US Constitution. What role did he play in today’s disproportionate wealth and power?

In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Hamilton endorsed a “republican government” — a representative democracy modeled after Great Britain. Yet, he believed democracy was dangerous, viewing the public as injudicious and therefore to be distrusted with wielding political power.

To check the “turbulence” and “imprudence” of the public, Hamilton advocated that first in government must be the “rich and the well born” and second in government must be everyone else.

Hamilton’s style of democracy — plutocracy in all but name — provided the framework for the financial system he was soon to build.

Once the Constitution was ratified, a paramount task was to develop the economy through a new financial design. Hamilton was assigned to that task, which he composed through three reports: “The First Report on Public Credit,” “The Second Report on Public Credit” and the “Report on the Subject of Manufacturers.”

Contrary to common belief, Hamilton had no interest in capitalism, as his plutocratic and mercantilist ideals emerged throughout his reports, which have transferred into our reality today.

Pertinent to the unfolding argument are the second and third reports.

The second report focused on the formation of a “First Bank of the United States” (FBUS) of 1791. The FBUS achieved firmly establishing the power of federal government over states; creating a national legal tender in circulation; creating a management system of Revolutionary War debts; and building the nation’s credit score.

But these achievements were notdue to free competition, despite advice to bankers in Wealth of Nations.Instead, the FBUS was a federally chartered monopoly as the only bank allowed to expand nationally.

Hamilton began planning the FBUS in 1779, 12 years before it opened. Its earliest blueprints reveal that he determined it to “link the interests of the state in an intimate connexion with those of the rich individuals belonging to it.” As such, when the FBUS came to fruition, nearly 80 percent of its seed capital derived from private investors, and “two-thirds of thebank stockwas held by British interests” and other wealthy investors, soon paving the many roads toward risky speculation, the Panic of 1819 and eventually, the Great Recession.

Almost immediately after the FBUS launched, inflation began, partly from the sudden increase in money supply — skyrocketing “wholesale prices” on “all commodities” from an index of 89.7 in 1791 to an index well-above 110 until the year 1823. Inflation continued beyond the expiration of the FBUS charter in 1811, through the opening of the Second BUS, and up to the Tariff of Abominations.

In the “Report on the Subject of Manufactures,” Hamilton delivered blistering opposition to Smith’s free-market capitalism, arguing that economic success is notbuilt through free markets and mere ownership of private property.

Instead, Hamilton consciously modeled his system on British mercantilism, reasoning that the US economy would only flourish by protecting our agricultural and industrial enterprises, and that this “protecting” mustn’t be left to Smith’s “open and free market,” but must be surgically engineered by government. This was the early economic nationalism of President Trump’s “America First” ideology.

Hamilton formulated this “protection” into government “bounties” (subsidies) for US manufacturers and tariffs on imports to the US, namely from Britain. Yet, it’s widely mythologized that Hamilton’s “Report on the Subject of Manufacturers” was never adopted by Congress. Indeed, his propositions for subsidies failed to pass. However, virtually every protective tariff he proposed was adopted in the Tariff of May 1792, within six months after submitting this report.

This myth perpetuates that agrarian economy defenders Jefferson and Madison opposed “big-government capitalists” Hamilton and Washington. Worshipers of Jefferson hail him as a champion of small government for the sake of ordinary people. Similar myths circulate regarding Madison. Meanwhile, Hamilton remains the sole aristocrat in that mythology.

In rhetoric, Jefferson and Madison despised Hamilton’s protectionism, but not in practice. In 1789, Madison proposed the Tariff of 1789, which was the first protectionist policy passed by the new Congress. Then, in 1793, 1794, 1806, 1807 and 1811, Jefferson and Madison endorsed protectionist policies and even embargoes against British goods, radically expanding Hamilton’s big government ideology.

Hamilton’s system outlived him. With its core ideas intact, it was adopted as “The American System” following the War of 1812 during the Madison administration. Henry Clay named it as such to openly distinguish it from the free-market capitalism of Adam Smith. And this very system has since continued through virtually every single administration.

Today, the US leads the world with the highest volume of protectionist trade measures. This is no capitalism.

From Smith’s Capitalism to Globalization

Smith advocated for government regulations to protect the public, not corporations, yet his warning has drowned in the roaring Republican demands for corporate deregulation, giving rise to a recent phenomenon: “regulatory capture.”

Regulatory capture occurs when regulatory agencies employ members of the very businesses that government is supposed to regulate. The business gains internal control of the agency, then severs its chief purpose of restricting corporate tyranny over the public.

Perfect examples are found in the relationship between big banks and government, wherein banking lobbyists literally write the policies that regulate them, for the benefit of the banks; as also in the recent, appalling Dodd-Frank regulation rollbacks. More are found among the Trump administration. Just examine some recent deregulatory efforts byBetsy DeVos of the Department of Education, Scott Pruittof the Environmental Protection Agency and Steven Winberg of the Department of Energy. Combined with evidence that corporations have dominant power over our political economy, this does not reveal capitalism, but corporatocracy and plutocracy.

Another vehicle for protectionism is misleadingly called “free-trade agreements” — such as the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), from which President Trump exited the US, but which he’s now interested in re-entering.

“Free-trade agreements” aren’t “free” at all. Quite the opposite. NAFTA is a generalizable example. It’s a legal agreement between nations for the protection of transnational and multinational corporations to operate in privileged conditions across foreign borders.

For example, Article 301 of Section A in NAFTA entitles corporations to “national treatment” which accords US corporations the legal rights of Mexican corporations, such as protection from taxation as a foreign entity. But corporations — “legal persons” — have far more rights than human beings. Therefore, NAFTA is legal doctrine for strengthening corporate power, not nations or human beings. Furthermore, as Corpwatch.org reports:

NAFTA includes an array of new corporate investment rights and protections that are unprecedented in scope and power. NAFTA allows corporations to sue the national government of a NAFTA country in secret arbitration tribunals if they feel that a regulation or government decision affects their investment in conflict with these new NAFTA rights. If a corporation wins, the taxpayers of the “losing” NAFTA nation must foot the bill.

In other words, “free-trade agreements” protect corporations from capitalism.

Moreover, free-trade agreements aren’t even “trade.” Most of the “trade” is actually transactions across physical borders, but through branches of the same corporation, economically termed “intra-firm transactions.”

A prominent example is the American auto industry, which has turned Mexico into an archipelago of interconnected auto assembly plants, primarily for the lower cost of labor in Mexico due to lower wages, fewer workers’ rights, and a less regulated environment and working conditions.

So, via NAFTA, American automakers manufacture their auto parts in one foreign country, send them to Mexico for assembly, then deliver finished cars to the US to be sold — all while maintaining financial transactions within their own corporation. This is neither “free” nor “trade” at all, yet it retains the label to sustain the illusion of capitalism.

This violates capitalism’s core principle of free competition, which demands a “survival of the fittest” landscape for businesses: Those that can’t compete on their own must die off.

Instead, we have welfare for corporations, in which government uses billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out private industries, as exhibited in massive automaker bailouts and the infamous Wall Street bailouts, which the American public is unknowingly still bailing out.

Old Wine, New Bottle

There’s widespread surprise at the incoherence spewing from President Trump about imposing tariffs on China in order to put “America First.” But today’s version of capitalism — which favors archaic industries, corporate behemoths and big banks — has been the US economic system since its inception.

Yet it remains misunderstood that, under capitalism as Smith intended it, the role of government is to intervene in the economy only to prevent or repair a problem, such as ending the Great Depression in the US — whose recovery was largely due to World War II — by temporarily creating a command economy to meet the sudden demand for wartime munitions. This generated widespread employment of hitherto unemployed populations. Together with multiple other factors, the war effort restored our economy.

WWII taught economists what Hamilton knew intuitively: Capitalism cannot exist; that an open, free-market system (therefore without protectionism) in the US would lead to the destruction of our economy, as US industries simply could not compete on the world stage, largely due to larger workforces with lower labor costs in nations with weaker labor rights, such as China, India and Mexico, whose weak labor rights are, in fact, pushed by US corporations.

Post-war politicians understood that if you can use government intervention for large-scale industry during wartime, then you could use it during peacetime. And the Pentagon — created during WWII — served quite useful for this endeavor.

The Pentagon has maintained two key functions: serving as headquarters for all US armed forces and their intelligence agencies, and serving as a channel for transferring public moneys into funding government research for revolutionizing high-tech industry, pharmaceutical industry, aviation industry, and so forth.

In The Entrepreneurial State, leading economist Mariana Mazzucato traces how government — not corporations or market forces — is the entrepreneurresponsible for the most impressive innovations in our economy.

Research and development (R&D) naturally demands among the largest costs for innovating high technology. But instead of corporations funding their own R&D, government does so with taxpayer dollars, often through branches of the Pentagon. Once R&D is complete, corporations cherry-pick that precious information at no cost.

As Mazzucato notes, this convoluted funneling of public funds into corporate profits enables divorcing the public from the title of “investor,” which we are in all but name. We provide the “capital base” for such innovation, but, unlike in capitalism, we “investors” receive no return-on-investment. Those gains are privatized by the corporations that cherry-pick the R&D in order to produce their products.

Although myriad examples are available, just one significant example is found in the iPhone, which Mazzucato explains in depth in her book.

In capitalism, since the public funded the iPhone’s technologies, each of us would get a check from Apple or the US government for our share of the profits. But in our actual economic system, those profits are not returned to the public, and are instead privatized by corporations.

What’s more, the public goes out and purchases the iPhone. Therefore, it’s like we pay for the iPhone twice: once when we “invest” in it, and then again when we purchase it from Apple. Unfortunately, this applies to countless other purchases we make as “consumers.”

When people understand that capitalism doesn’t exist in the US, they’re directed to discern what does, compelling us to unearth our socio-economy’s unjustness, which is vital in the pursuit to end poverty and other oppressions that intersect class oppression.

So, what exactly dowe name our economy? Whether neomercantilism, Keynesian capitalism, corporatocracy, fascism, really-existing-capitalism, or otherwise, it’s up to you, the People, who together toil, endure and persevere under the legacies of Hamilton’s system.

Hamilton understood correctly: Capitalism, as Smith intended it, could not sustain the United States in unbridled competition. This understanding diverged the US economy from the path of capitalism, not moral reasoning regarding its inherent subjugation of laborers to the capricious will of amoral “merchants and manufacturers,” nor that its envisioned outcome of “perfect equality” is unfeasibly reliant on conscientiousness from economic elites, whose modus operandi is not altruism, but profit maximization, even turning philanthropy into philanthrocapitalism. Indeed, Hamilton’s system has emerged the US as a world superpower, but it has inextricably given rise to massive unconscionable inequality, inequity and iniquity, both at home and abroad.

As such, neither system has justified existing. “We the People” must, together, move toward an economic system that coexists with democracy, designed bythe many and forthe many; the system fought for by theLowell Mill Girls, in which “those who work in the mills ought to own them, not have the status of machines ruled by private despots who are entrenching monarchic principles on democratic soil as they drive downwards freedom and rights, civilization, health, morals and intellectuality in the new commercial feudalism.”

If only we conceptualize ourselves as togetherbeneath this unjust system — with varying complexities and inequities — perhaps then we can move to aptly label it and create anew

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/6/the_battle_for_paradise_new_intercept

Part 1: Naomi Klein: 4,645 Deaths in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria Were “State-Sponsored Mass Killing”

Part 2: “The Battle for Paradise”: New Intercept Doc Goes Inside Struggle over Puerto Rico’s Future

Part 3: Puerto Rico Is a “Playground for the Privileged”: Investors Move In as Homes Foreclose & Schools Close

storming the wall bk

haiti earthquake geo built camp for detainees from sea? many CC cutters deployed [gitmo?]

http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/can-democracy-survive-global-capitalism/

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán won re-election easily in yet another affirmation of authoritarian right wing policies in Europe. It is a troubling trend, not just in Europe but of course right here in the US, in Latin America, in Asia, and elsewhere. In a world that is more inter-connected than ever and where awareness of human rights is greater than ever, how do we explain the tilting toward demagoguery?

A new book by the co-founder of The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner, attempts to answer that question by pulling together various developments into a broader economic and social picture where capitalism has run so amok that it has undermined democracy.

For more information about the book visit www.prospect.org or www.robertkuttner.com.

electric and schools close/pvtize charter

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/4/19/headlines/puerto_rico_14_million_lose_electric_power_in_island_wide_blackout

6 mos anniv

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/21/the_battle_for_paradise_naomi_klein

cryptocurrency, voucher, charter, 4% tax haven 2 hotels hank [paulsen?

agro-ecology food as buffer/resilience

ppl's platform ppl together gente

cf wage theft: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/16/hurricane-harvey-disaster-recovery-wage-theft/

ABOUT A MONTH after Hurricane Harvey, Karla Lopez saw a post on Facebook about a job repairing a flooded apartment complex in north Houston. When she called to find out more, a man named Gilberto urged her to come into work that same day.

“He said he could pay me $11 an hour for a 10-hour day for six days a week, including Saturdays, with no overtime.” Lopez recalled. “But I was OK with what he offered because I really needed the work.”

She spent the next two weeks on a crew of mostly immigrant laborers, demolishing walls and carrying out trash, then “putting up sheetrock with the guys and caulking and even cutting up siding” on buildings. A 20-year-old undocumented immigrant from Honduras, she had never worked in construction before, but she learned quickly and “just focused on getting the work done.”

Halfway into her third week on the job, Lopez fell from a ladder that shifted as she was stepping down. At the hospital, a doctor told her she had ripped the tendons in her ankle. Lopez was stuck with the bill, and then, she says, “The company didn’t want to pay me for the time I had worked.” Others at the site were also waiting to be paid; some had been waiting for more than a month.

When Lopez complained, Gilberto gave her the phone number of the subcontractor handling the project. The man who answered the phone told her “he would pay me some of the money soon,” she recalled. “But I told him I needed all of the money because I’d had an accident and had bills to pay.”

She informed him that other workers were contacting lawyers in order to get paid and says he responded, “Do what you have to do,” and hung up.

Workers like Lopez lost thousands of dollars in the first month after Hurricane Harvey, according to a report commissioned by the Fe y Justicia Worker Center and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which found that more than a quarter of laborers doing recovery work in Houston had experienced wage theft since the storm. “After a natural disaster, there’s this huge risk of not only keeping the status quo of inequalities, but actually making them a lot worse,” said Marianela Acuña-Arreaza, executive director of the Fe y Justicia Worker Center.

The survey of storm recovery workers showed they were primarily undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, although most were long-term residents of the Houston area. As The Intercept documented in November, a state law that lets police request the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest has made many workers reluctant to report abuse. This week, the U.S. 5th Circuit ruled that most of the law can take effect even while it is appealed.

In the meantime, in a rare success, Lopez actually recovered the money she was owed — about $1,000. Labor advocates helped her bypass the web of subcontractors and directly pressure the project’s general contractor, Interstate Restoration, the second-largest disaster recovery firm in North America. Now other immigrants could use the same tactic to hold businesses accountable as they continue the slow work of rebuilding Houston.

opioid addicts PIC

https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/trumps-first-year-has-been-private-prison-industrys-best

Exactly 17 months ago, in August of 2016 -- back when most election polls had Hillary Clinton clinching the 2016 presidential election -- the Obama administration announced that it would end the Justice Department’s (DOJ) reliance on private prisons. The announcement came seven days after the DOJ’s inspector general (IG) called on the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to more rigorously oversee its contracts with private prison companies. The IG’s report found that private prisons at the federal level consistently fail to measure up to federal standards in preventing dangerous conditions, intercepting contraband, and ensuring internal accountability for staff misconduct.

Shares of the private prison titans tanked.

CoreCivic and GEO Group’s stocks both ended the day down more than 35 percent and 39 percent, respectively -- an indication that the nation’s largest for-profit prison corporations' profitability might be on the wane. The day after the announcement, GEO Group CEO George Zoley stated in a conference call, “There’s been an overreaction to the news about the contracts. We think, in time, this will correct itself.” Even George Zoley couldn’t have predicted today’s turnaround.

With the election of Donald Trump to the White House a few months later, Zoley’s prescient statement of an “overreaction” made him look like a fortune teller.

On Nov. 7, 2016, when the closing bell of the American Stock Exchange rang and before any sense of who the 45th president of the United States would be, CoreCivic traded at 14.36 and GEO Group stood at 15.93. Following Trump's electoral victory, private prison company stocks skyrocketed. Today, CoreCivic is trading at 23.19 (a 61 percent increase) and GEO Group is trading at 23.03 (a 45 percent increase). And for good reason. The Trump administration is a godsend for the private prison industry.

First, there is the dangerous and misguided rhetoric that President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions constantly spew -- despite evidence to the contrary -- about how the nation’s violent crime rate is rising and America’s streets are filled with carnage. Second, along with this bombastic language are their calls for harsher sentencing and draconian enforcement of drug and immigration offenses. Third, federal spending on private prisons has remained steady, despite Republican support for across-the-board budget cuts to other federal programs. Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2018 budget calls for $1.2 billion in new spending on detention, transportation and deportation of undocumented immigrants to expand detention capacity to more than 48,000 beds a day. Finally, in February of 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked the Obama-era initiative to phase out the use of private contractors to run federal prisons, delivering the industry its biggest victory yet.

Private prison corporations have publicly expressed enthusiasm for the current administration’s aggressive stance on crime and immigration. In a 2017 third-quarter earnings call, a GEO official noted that the government’s need for additional detention space should benefit company revenues.

Here is how the private prison industry fared during Trump’s first year. Today, 65 percent of detainees held by the Department of Homeland Security are housed in privately run facilities. With the administration’s plans to increase the capacity to hold undocumented immigrants behind bars, the private prison industry’s revenues will surely follow suit. And in an unprecedented move, in late 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asked for information from contractors who can provide additional immigration detention space in the interior of the nation, in major cities such as Salt Lake City, Chicago, Detroit and St. Paul, along with an expected request for information on contractors who can provide additional capacity along the southern U.S. border in Texas.

CoreCivic’s CEO Damon Hininger publicly touted the administration’s move as a source of potential revenue to his company, noting in an August’s earnings call with investors, “ICE expects the average length of stay for detainees to increase as a result of increased interior enforcement. While immigrants arrested at the border typically are detained for 27 days, those arrested in the interior of the country are detained for roughly 52 days.” More days behind bars in their detention centers translates into more profits for the company.

The current administration and the private prison industry are also doing more than just merely talking. In April, ICE awarded GEO Group with a $110 million contract to build a new immigration detention center in Conroe, Texas, 40 miles north of Houston. At the time, the Associated Press reported that this contract award took many by surprise because GEO had “a surplus of 3,000 beds across its nationwide network of prisons.” And in December, CoreCivic filed plans with government officials in Elkhart County, Indiana, to construct an approximately $100 million detention facility. The move sparked candlelight vigils from area residents distraught by the development. CoreCivic has not yet received final approval from the Elkhart County Commissioners or ICE.

In April, the administration -- sticking to the message from Attorney General Sessions’ one-paragraph memo to the BOP reversing the Obama administration’s intent to reduce reliance on private prisons -- posted a notice requesting proposals from private prison companies to house prisoners in Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) facilities. CAR prisons are privately managed prisons. There are 11 CAR prisons across the country run by three companies: GEO Group, CoreCivic and Management & Training Corp. The solicitation signaled a planned increase of 1,607 beds over BOP’s then-current population of privately imprisoned people -- 21,287 in total, as of May 2017. And on May 26, GEO Group announced that it had been awarded renewed contracts with the BOP for CAR facilities at the company’s prison complex in Big Spring, Texas. The 10-year agreement for 3,532 beds is worth up to $664 million.

My new book, "Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration," notes that given today’s political realities, the private prison industry is not disappearing any time soon. Given the current administration’s penchant for privatizing government services -- including increasing its reliance on private prisons -- we owe the thousands of people who cycle into and out of private prisons and immigration detention centers a duty to constantly monitor their conditions and ensure that private entities that perform public functions should be subject to the same transparency, accountability and oversight as public entities. And for those worried about the private prison industry’s lack of transparency and accountability (in just one example, private prisons at the federal level are not subject to Freedom of Information Act Requests), if the first year of the Trump administration reflects the next three years, we need to act quickly to ensure that the ever-growing number of people behind bars in private prisons and immigration detention centers are the beneficiaries of improved conditions of confinement and better transparency. How? We need to ensure that state and federal laws are changed to require these corporations to comply with open records requests. And state and federal governments need to rewrite contracts with the private prison industry to require better programming, transparency, accountability and conditions of confinement.

While most of the coverage on private prisons has focused on the federal contracts, the administration’s rhetoric on reviving the war on drugs is starting to have a domino effect at the state level. Most recently, in Kentucky, the state signed a contract with CoreCivic to reopen a shuttered prison -- the Lee Adjustment Center in Beattyville -- and move about 800 inmates there. The opioid crisis in Kentucky pushed state policymakers to draft more draconian drug penalties that played a role in increasing its prison population to a record high of more than 24,000 inmates. With full prisons and jails, Kentucky felt it had no choice but to contract with CoreCivic to house almost 1,000 men it doesn’t have room to keep behind bars.

...

https://www.alternet.org/culture/visionary-sci-fi-author-sees-destruction-human-civilization-and-its-predatory-capitalism

katrina and then Puerto R

perfect storm

Representing billionaire Eli Broad, Bruce Reed celebrated the paralysis in local governance in post-Katrina New Orleans as key to pulling off the rapid expansion of charter schools, exploiting disaster without oversight by any “central office”:

“New Orleans is an amazing story?—?when you make it possible to get political dysfunction and sick a bunch of talent on the problem?—?it’s the one place where grand bargain of charters has been kept the best.”

New Orleans' "amazing" story resulted in the firing of 7,500 mostly black school employees, wiping out a substantial part of the city’s black middle class. Meanwhile, the “miracle” claims of boosters like Reed have fallen apart. A recent editorial in New Orleans’ African American newspaper called out the false promises and lack of results from the charter experiment.

bottled water shipped in after disaster

https://www.ecowatch.com/whitefish-energy-puerto-rico-2509056314.html

Congress, Trump Exploit Fire Tragedy to Promote Logging Agenda

By Chad Hanson

In the wake of the October 2017 fires in Northern California, which resulted in the loss of so many lives and homes, people affected by the tragedy are grieving and bewildered. Many people are searching for answers about what caused the fires, and a way forward to prevent similar loss of life and property.

It's frustrating, then, to watch Republican leaders in Congress and the Trump administration politicizing the recent tragedy as they push for a sweeping elimination of environmental laws on our national forests and other federal public lands to increase logging and backcountry fire suppression under the guise of community protection. On Nov. 1, the House voted 232-188 to allow for more "salvage logging" and other forms of tree-cutting on federal properties. According to the Associated Press, House Speaker Paul Ryan said the bill was needed to protect the nation's federal forests "from the kind of devastation that California experienced."

Wrong. Even a cursory examination of the science of forest ecology reveals that this plan would not only destroy vast acreages of public forests, but would also put communities at even greater risk.

The fires that occurred last month in California were in low-elevation foothill ecosystems dominated by oak woodlands and grasslands. The fires were far away from any national forests or other federal public lands. Eviscerating environmental laws on federal forestlands would do nothing whatsoever to help the affected communities now or in the future. Instead, what the tens of millions of Americans living in rural communities within fire-adapted ecosystems really need is for federal and state lawmakers to focus on directly protecting homes and lives from wildland fire.

The science is clear on how best to do this, and it involves a few basic steps. Most important, we need to help homeowners make their homes far more fire-safe. This includes measures such as using fire-resistant roofing and siding, installing rain gutter guards (to prevent flaming embers from landing in a dry bed of pine needles and leaves accumulating in rain gutters); using a fine-wire mesh on exterior vents to prevent embers from floating into interior spaces like attics; and replacing wood decks with fire-resistant composites. Homeowners also need assistance to create "defensible space" within 60 to 100 feet around their homes, which involves removing most small trees and shrubs, removing lower limbs on mature trees, and annually raking up and removing small twigs, needles and leaves from the ground. (Clearing vegetation away from larger distances from homes offers no added benefit for home protection, research shows.)

Further, we need to create an infrastructure to notify communities when wildland fires occur so that people and their animals can evacuate quickly. When these steps are properly implemented, the vast majority of homes can and do survive wildland fire, and lives are saved. Finally, we must focus wildland fire suppression and management activities around homes and communities, rather than in backcountry forests.

But the current leadership in Congress appears more interested in trying to find some kind of cover for allowing for increased logging. The recently passed bill—deceptively named the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017, and which was sponsored by one of the biggest recipients of logging-industry campaign contributions in Congress, Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican—would divert more resources away from protecting communities in order to give a windfall to logging corporations.

If the Senate passes this bill and it becomes law, the legislation would eliminate most logging regulations in national forests, and severely curtail public participation in federal forest management decisions, allowing clearcuts thousands of acres in size. What's more, the bill would prohibit federal judges from issuing temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions against illegal logging projects on our public lands, which means giant logging projects would be completed before any judge could enforce existing laws.

Unfortunately, Senate passage could happen. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) has introduced S. 2068, the so-called Wildfire Prevention and Mitigation Act. Similar to HR 2936, this bill would exempt massive logging projects from environmental laws and public participation on our national forests, and would prevent federal judges from being able to enforce environmental laws. Barrasso issued a statement misleadingly claiming that this massive rollback of environmental protections was needed to "remove excess brush" from federal forests.

Environmental leaders in Congress, including Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) who is the Ranking Member on the House Natural Resources Committee, are calling HR 2936 a shameful "giveaway" to the logging industry. "The Americans across the West whose homes burned to the ground this year aren't interested in whether Congress can make timber companies a few extra bucks," Grijalva said.

These logging bills represent both an attack on our public lands and an assault on science. Both pieces of legislation are predicated on a political tale known as the "catastrophic wildfire" narrative, which is a classic example of the politics of fear. The basic premise of this narrative is that wildland fires are "destroying" our forests—and that more intensive and widespread logging will "save" them. But the notion that fire "destroys" forests has been refuted by hundreds of scientists and peer-reviewed scientific studies. The current science tells us, for instance, that even in the same forest types, the forests with the fewest environmental protections and the most logging burn more intensely, not less.

There is now a broad consensus among forest scientists that we have considerably less fire in our forests today compared to the natural levels that occurred prior to fire-suppression policies. And, though it may seem counterintuitive, hundreds of scientific studies have concluded that, in the patches where forest fires burn more intensely and kill most of the trees, the resultant "snag forest habitat" is actually some of the best and most important wildlife habitat in the western U.S.—comparable to old-growth forest in terms of native biodiversity and wildlife abundance.

We also need our public forests to help mitigate climate change, since protected forests absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in growing trees and shrubs. In fact, if we protected our national forests from logging, it would be like taking 13 to 24 million cars off the road.

But the Trump administration and its allies in Congress don't really care about science. They live in a world of "alternative facts" in which clearcuts the size of cities are promoted as fire management, ecological restoration, and climate-resilience measures. Their proposed solution to the risks of wildfire is to destroy the forest in order to save it.

Reposted with permission from our media associate SIERRA magazine.

puerto rico maria: austerity --> fiscal control bd unelected // flint mich emergency mgr --> pvtization aha

3 Big Corporations Accused of Shamelessly Gouging Their Customers This Hurricane Season

Call it disaster capitalism in miniature.

By Jacob Sugarman / AlterNet September 8, 2017, 12:49 PM GMT

For Texas and large swaths of the Caribbean, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have proven historic human catastrophes. At least 70 people were killed in the former, while the latter is presently on a collision course with Southwest Florida after leveling Anguilla, Cuba and the Bahamas, among other island nations and commonwealths. Barbuda, which bore the brunt of the Category 5 storm Irma, has been reduced to rubble.

For a handful of corporations, the death and destruction wrought by these tempests present an opportunity to turn a tidy profit. Call it disaster capitalism in miniature. In addition, these events help illustrate just how ill-equipped private industry is to meet the demands of a public safety crisis like a natural disaster.

Here are three apparent offenders, all accused of shamelessly gouging their customers at the worst possible time.

Amazon

The online retailer has come under fire since it listed a 24-pack of bottled water for $99.99 via BestSource OfficeSupplies, a third party vendor. One shopper complained of a single gallon of distilled water being sold for $21.95. A spokeswoman for Amazon told CBS that the website's prices "do not fluctuate by region or delivery location." But the site has acknowledged that it relies on "dynamic pricing," an algorithmic model that incorporates what other merchants are charging, and tweaks its pages accordingly. During a natural disaster, when essentials like food, water and batteries are in short supply, this looks an awful lot like gouging.

Delta

With Hurricane Irma bearing down on virtually the entire state of Florida, and Governor Rick Scott urging residents in areas susceptible to storm surges to evacuate (after years of climate denialism), traffic has spiked on travel sites like Expedia and Kayak by prospective passengers hoping to make their escape. Enter Delta, which has reportedly been charging four, five and six times the normal cost of a flight out of Miami.

Leigh Dow, a public relations executive with just under 19,000 Twitter followers, went viral earlier this week when she tweeted that the price of her ticket to Phoenix had been bumped from $547.50 to $3,258.50. Snopes is careful to note that Delta ultimately helped her find more affordable airfare, and the airline announced Friday it would be capping one-way reservations to and from South Florida at $399, but it remains unclear if it was simply bowing to public pressure.

Chevron

Reuters reports that as of Thursday, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi had received 45 separate complaints of inflated prices at Chevron gas stations, despite the oil company's repeated claim that it will not tolerate price gouging. According to AAA, gas prices across the state have spiked to $2.725 per gallon, as thousands of motorists flee coastal areas before Irma makes landfall. Shortages have been especially acute in Southern Florida, one of the regions most vulnerable to the storm.

oops

... ;">over 65,000 students enrolled in New Orleans public schools, less than 1 percent in charter schools. There are now 44 governing bodies for public schools in New Orleans. There are seven types of charter schools in Louisiana. The public schools are 87 percent African American. Widespread charter school problems for students with disabilities are getting a little bit better according to a federal court monitor report. The public has very mixed feelings about the system reflected in the most recent poll, which shows 43 percent of whites think the schools are getting better, compared to 31 percent of African Americans; while 23 percent of African Americans thought schools were getting worse, in contrast to 15 percent of whites.

2,000. Black median income in New Orleans rose from $23,000 in 2005 to $25,000 eight years later, while white median income rose by $11,000 from $49,000 to $60,000 during the same time.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?328719-1/disaster-capitalism

10/15

Disaster Capitalism Antony Loewenstein talked about his book, Disaster Capitalism, in which he takes a critical look at companies like Halliburton, G4S, and Serco that make money off of natural and man-made disasters around the world.

12/16 broaden to predatory home and student loans/ online colleges