Category: Consumer Issues

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, Science, Social and Economic Justice No Comments Tagged with , , , , , ,

About fifteen years ago, reports began to show up that Monsanto was suing farmers if the ag giant’s GMO seeds showed up in neighboring fields due to wind-borne seed drift. I wondered why organic farmers weren’t banding together in class-action countersuits claiming that Monsanto was ruining their organic certification. That certification isn’t easy or cheap, and I immediately understood that GMO contamination put that certification at risk.

Some did, although I hadn’t heard. A suit by an organic farming association was dismissed because the court didn’t find any evidence of farmers being sued in this situation.

Monsanto denied doing this and claimed to be happy to support a mixed organic-chemiculture-GMO farming culture. But according to the watchdog group Center for Food Safety, the multinational corporation “Monsanto had a department of 75 employees with a budget of $10 million for the sole purpose of pursuing farmers for patent infringement,” at least as far back as 2003.

It turned out that some chemiculture (conventional-ag) wheat farmers also filed suits over non-approved GMO crops being released into the market, rather than threat to organic certification. Those suits were settled.

All this is prelude to a news story in yesterday’s Daily Hampshire Gazette (my local paper) describing a lawsuit by a local pot farmer over pesticide contamination from an adjoining chemiculture berry farm. Apparently, because Massachusetts state law prohibits any pesticide residue in pot, the farmer lost one year’s crop to contamination and at least two more years because their storage freezers were filled with the contaminated crop, which the state is requiring them to keep as evidence—leaving them no room for current crops.

First, the obvious question: if these pesticides shouldn’t be ingested by adults eating or smoking cannabis products, why are we allowing kids to eat them unwashed as they accompany their parents in the u-pick fields? Why should pesticides be allowed on fruits whose sprayed surfaces are directly consumed? While an especially thorny issue (pun intended) for berries, it’s also an issue for apples, pears, plums, cherries, etc. And frankly, even rind fruit is not necessarily uncontaminated.

Second, could this admittedly extreme case finally set legal precedent allowing farmers to sue successfully over threats to their organic status?

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Uncategorized No Comments Tagged with , , ,

If you’ve been bewailing the presidential election and wondering how the country you love could have voted to elect this monster, this may help you feel better: Maybe we didn’t! A respected commentator makes a strong case that millions of votes in heavily Democratic areas of red and purple states were not counted.

Greg Palast came to my attention in the aftermath of the 2000 election–yeah, the one that gave George W. Bush the victory, and eight years as the worst president the US had had until 2017.

Palast, an investigative journalist with a strong background in forensic economics, made a compelling case that the outcome, hanging on a margin of just 537 votes in Florida following a partial recount that was stopped by the Republican-dominated Supreme Court, may have had a lot more to do with the tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters (especially absentee voters) who were purged from the roles, often because of false reasons like their name matching or nearly matching that of some convicted felon. I remember the figure of 96,000, which was bad enough.

While I can’t find that stat right now, I found another article by Palast, from 2004, noting that 178,000 voters from heavily Black areas cast ballots that were disqualified for equally spurious reasons. It’s the one with the headline and picture about Roger Stone.

Well, what do you know! Palast is now making an equally compelling case that  “4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Election Assistance Commission data.”

He says a single Republican operative challenged the eligibility of 32,000 mostly Black voters  in her county, others challenged thousands of voters elsewhere in Georgia, and similar efforts in Wisconsin and around the country deprived those nearly 5 million people of their chance to vote. The Republicans claimed these people had moved, because they didn’t return a postcard that looked like junk mail–and in some parts of Georgia, only 1% returned the cards.

If Palast is accurate–and I believe he is–Harris would have won at least those two states, the popular vote, the Electoral College, and the presidency.  She might have even taken Texas, where a new requirement to add ID numbers raised the rejection rate on absentee ballots from just 1% to 12%. (This is the same link as the 4,776,706 voters link above.)

In order to read that post in Thom Hartmann’s Substack newsletter, I had to become a subscriber. There is a no-charge level. But if you’d rather not subscribe, Palast makes many of the same points in this video, which is freely accessible. (It’s  the same link as the “single Republican” link above.)

While this analysis makes me feel a bit better about US voters, it doesn’t talk about how to reclaim democracy. In the video, he notes that he told the Democrats what steps they needed to do to protect voters at risk of being barred from voting or having their ballots discarded, but they didn’t see a need for pre-emptive action. Perhaps if they see this new data, they could make a claim to some body like the International Court of Justice that the election was a cheat. And meanwhile, this information gives us yet more reasons to resist the coup through every nonviolent tactic we can.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Diversity, Mindset, Networking, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , ,
As the dust begins to settle and people are able to make room for action steps on the bench where our grief sits, and as I have been reading and listening and participating in several what-do-we-do now calls, I’m beginning to regain some faith in this country.

Wednesday morning, it felt like Donald Trump’s victory was all about rejection of the idea of a strong woman of color as president. I knew all along that this could motivate at least a quarter of the electorate, which is in fact pretty damn horrific. But on Wednesday morning, it felt like I had wildly underestimated that.
But I actually don’t think that’s true. The buzz is really about economic voters. Somehow, a whole lot of people bought into the idea that Trump could manage the economy better than Harris.
This is not based in fact, but as we all know, facts don’t always lead to conclusions and actions based on them.
Trump is really good at propaganda in the worst sense of the word. He blames his enemies for things he has done, makes promises he has no intention of keeping, and somehow gets people to believe he has all the answers.
Inflation hit the Democrats really hard in this election. That we had less of it in the post-COVID recovery than pretty much any other industrialized country didn’t matter to the people who felt like they were paying twice as much in the grocery store or at the gas pump.
The gas pump part is really odd to me. For the last 6 weeks or so, I have been buying gas at less than $3 a gallon here in Massachusetts. That was certainly not true in the Trump years. But inflation is real! Housing, especially, has gone way up. And with supply chain and labor shortages as we emerged from the pandemic, prices on a lot of other things went up. We had lower inflation and more job creation under Biden than any other industrialized country, but it was still grim for those who had to figure out how to keep their families fed and sheltered.
The Democrats didn’t do a sufficient job of pointing out that they have taken major steps to let people’s buying power keep up with inflation, not least by creating an economy that provided more jobs than any president I can ever remember. And Trump was able to capitalize on this.
Harris had some really good economic proposals that would create even more jobs while cleaning the environment and reducing our carbon footprint. Expect a lot of those jobs to go away as prompt dismantles the programs that put them into place. Expect prices to soar as he puts his anti-consumer tariff policies into place. Predictions from economists all over the spectrum put that hit at about $4,000 of extra costs to the typical family each year, and higher prices as businesses struggle to replace the workers–essential to our economy–who Trump deports. Unless you are a billionaire, expect higher taxes to pay for the massive amount of incarceration and deportation. Those things are not cheap! Expect further giveaways to those who already have far more than their share while the middle class and the poor suffer tax increases and service cutbacks. He may think he is president for life, but if there is the chance to vote again, and if he is still in office by then (which I doubt), he will be a one-termer again.
This still doesn’t explain the disturbing phenomenon of a 13 million drop in the number of people who voted for a Democrat for president this time despite the lunacy that obviously awaits us under Trump. But it does at least make me think that people were voting on their economic self-interest as they perceived it, rather than a desire to roll back the clock on human rights inequality. And make no mistake, human rights and equality will be on the chopping block.
But here’s something that gives me a lot of hope. Wednesday and Thursday, I attended four different calls about how we move forward and how we work to block the worst parts of Trump’s agenda. These calls were exciting and hugely attended. The one I went to yesterday had 140,000 registrants. If I’m not mistaken, that makes it the largest conference I’ve ever attended and one of the largest events I’ve been to in my 67 years, other than a few really huge public demonstrations with 800,000 to a million people. I’m attending another one this afternoon, much more niched. I imagine there will be a few thousand on that call.
Remember that we have lived through bad times before. We lived through Joe McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, Bush II, and Trump I. We lived through slavery and wars. And now, with the benefit of all the organizing of 2017, 2020, and 2024, we are prepared for action. The actions will be non-violent and effective. The Democratic Party structure is involved. Harris’s concession speech was a brilliant call to stay involved, to get back into the trenches. To recognize that we have power and that our power is not based only on who wins an election.
And how will you get involved?
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Diversity, Environment, Ethics in Government, language, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Sexuality and Gender, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Democracy itself is at stake in this election. If you choose not to vote, or you cast a vote for a 3rd-party candidate, you may never have the right to vote again. You’ve probably heard about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—but have you looked at the details? Fasten your seatbelts—this one’s scary! Heritage’s president, Kevin Roberts, actually said it out loud: he’s attempting to conduct “the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be…There are parts of the plan that we will not share with the Left: the executive orders, the rules and regulations.”

But what they did commit to paper is bad enough: an approximately 900-page blueprint for a fascist takeover of the US including an agency-by-agency roadmap for the first six months of a second Trump administration. Project 2025, written with input from somewhere between 85 and 100 senior Trump advisors and endorsed by J.D. Vance in his foreword to the main author’s book, will attack our freedom in many directions. Here are five of the awful things they are planning to do:

  1. Viciously attack immigrants with massive deportations and detentions that would be far, far worse than the criminal cruelty of Trump’s first administration (this link outlines all the immigration points I summarize below)
  2. Attack women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and women’s equality—starting with banning abortion in all 50 states.
  3. Act as if the climate crisis doesn’t exist: wildly ramp up dirty energy sources like oil, coal and nuclear while destroying green energy programs. According to the Sierra Club, “Project 2025 is essentially a death sentence for federal climate and environmental protections.”
  4. Eliminate DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs—and further enable Trump’s long history of open and blatant racism, from the 1970s right up to his recent race-based attacks on Kamala Harris, to be just the outward face of seriously cruel policies..
  5. Eliminate the right to vote for millions of people, through obscenely difficult registration procedures, reduction of polling places in areas that vote Democratic, and even bringing armed thugs to polling places to discourage voters of color—and, from all appearances, try to maintain power indefinitely. Trump even publicly told a so-called Christian Nationalist audience (if you look at what Christ said, they’re not Christians), “You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

Because this article is a project of Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice, let’s look more closely at the horror of Project 2025’s immigration proposals. You can find equally horrifying parts attacking civil rights, social equity, women’s reproductive freedom, the environment, and even education itself. According to the Niskanen Center, a centrist think-tank, Project 2025 would demolish legal immigration and make the US less safe while inflicting significant damage to the US economy

Specific policies within Project 2025 are a fascist’s dream and a progressive’s nightmare. To list just some proposals, it would:

  •       Choke off many types of legal immigration (even for survivors of crimes)
  •       Cut off federally funded student loans from up to 10.7 million US students at schools that grant in-state tuition to DACA recipients and undocumented students
  •       Ban most immigration from 13 countries that refuse to receive deported nationals
  •       Repeal ALL Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations (putting about 700,000 long-term US residents at risk of deportation)
  •       Stop processing refugee immigration applications
  •       Eliminate work permits for many immigrants, denying them jobs and creating a burden on taxpayers
  •       Require immediate expulsion if Customs and Immigration Service denies an application, even for simple paperwork errors, and even for people with valid Green Cards
  •       Force state and local governments to provide driver’s license and other data to the feds—pretty much ending Sanctuary communities around the country
  •       Eliminate ALL privacy protection for those without documents, leading to risk of harassment by private vigilantes and deportation or incarceration by federal agencies
  •       Evict from public housing mixed-status families that include citizens or green card holders and people without documents

Immigration justice activists will also be badly hurt by non-immigration-related parts of both Project 2025 and Trump’s own hate-filled speeches such as how to handle dissent and dissenters.

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections…They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream…the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within…” 
—Donald Trump, speaking at a rally in Claremont, NH, November 11, 2023

Note that the “vermin” wording is one of several times Trump has plagiarized from Adolf Hitler. That’s not a coincidence.

If Trump gets back into the White House, many progressives might have to organize from inside the walls of prisons and detention centers. Proposals to stop dissent from those who lean Democrat and other supposed “enemies” include:

Another deeply worrisome batch of proposals would centralize government power in the White House and eliminate even the weak protections against corporate greed that now exist: Project 2025 aims to:

  •       Move control of the Federal Communications Commission (which regulates TV, radio, telephone, etc.) and other public protection agencies directly under the White House while eliminating the Departments of Education and Commerce entirely
  •       Permanently eliminate career managers and replace them with political appointees loyal to Trump

Coupled with the recent Supreme Court Trump v. United States decision giving presidents they like unlimited powers to quash dissent, including even assassinating their enemies, we need to take these threats—and all the other threats wrapped up in Project 2025 and in Trump’s own words—VERY seriously.

And to those who voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary to protest Biden’s way-too-enabling response to Netanyahu’s massive crime in Gaza, let’s not forget that Trump has not only called for detaining/deporting Pro-Palestinian students and their allies but has told Israel to “finish the problem,” encouraging the Israelis to continue on the path toward genocide.

Sitting out this election or voting 3rd-party is not an option if you want to protect democracy and prevent fascism. Without ranked-choice voting, any vote other than for the Democratic nominee is a vote for Trump and his brand of fascism.  Is Harris perfect? Certainly not. But elections in a two-party, winner-take-all election are not about getting the perfect candidate. They are about who we’d rather be organizing against or trying to impact!

Although on a number of key issues–especially immigration justice and the war in Gaza–Harris is far from where we want her to be, we activists across the country will have a much better chance to extract concessions from a Harris-Walz administration than from the fascist alternative. As Abraham Josephine Riesman wrote in Slate, progressives do influence the Biden administration: “They have, at times, responded to pressure from their left wing in Congress (the so-called Squad and others), as well as pressure from unions and advocacy campaigns…”

National partners in the immigration justice movement (led by those most directly impacted) confirm that progressive organizing campaigns have led to recent wins (e.g. TPS for Haitian asylum seekers, legal paths and freedom from deportation for undocumented spouses and children of US citizens).  Currently the ACLU and immigration justice groups are suing the Biden administration for their new anti-asylum executive orders.  Under a Biden-Harris or a Harris-Walz administration, these suits and advocacy efforts can move forward.  We don’t know what repressive steps would be taken if MAGA were to win.

As we continue to fight to save lives in Gaza and on the US/Mexico border, we must be assured of the best environment possible to continue to influence legislators and the administration, speak up and speak out, and push the news media to take stands in favor of peace and justice.   With Biden and Harris, we have been able to push for better policies and we have had some wins.  We need to elect Harris and Walz so that radicals will not be hunted down as they were during the McCarthy era and so we can build our movements to be as large and inclusive as possible.  This is a long-term fight, and electing Harris and Walz is just the first step.

In fact, we urge you to vote for Democrats for every contested office this time so that Harris and Walz can get things done without getting blocked by Congress, state legislatures, governors, and judges at every turn.  The choice this time is clearer than it’s ever been.

 

Lifelong activist Shel Horowitz wrote this on behalf of Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice, which unanimously endorses it and ran an abridged version in its newsletter. An author, international speaker, TEDx Talker, and expert in turning business into a force for social justice and environmental healing, his award-winning 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. Download excerpts from the book at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com Shel acknowledges Holly Bishop and D. Dina Friedman, whose significant edits made this piece stronger.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Branding, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Innovation, language, Media Ethics, media-general, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

Ever since Biden withdrew, reporters have been kvetching that they have a hard time finding out Kamala Harris’s policy positions. This is a very dubious claim, considering she has a website, she gave a broad outline of several polices in a much-viewed speech at the Democratic Convention and regularly repeats those themes in many speeches around the country.

But I’m not here to chastise lazy journalists but to give them another great place to find her policy statements:

Kamala Harris gave a truly remarkable interview to three very tough questioners at the National Association of Black Journalists. It is so rare to see a forum of this type where the journos actually let the interviewee answer at length and with depth.

And Kamala was really impressive—not just because she gave smart and detailed answers, not just because she continues to make every appearance about uplifting everyday people—but because she takes a holistic view that has not been obvious to me in the sound-bite journalism that all-too-often passes for news. This interview makes it clear that she understands root causes, unintended consequences, and the interrelatedness of multiple issues (intersectionality, in other words).

In a campaign where one candidate makes a fetish of putting others down, vowing retribution against perceived enemies, lying his way through life, and never taking responsibility for his criminal actions or dangerous policies, where everything is only about how he personally will benefit, it’s refreshing to discover that his opponent is a deeply systemic thinker who has crafted action plans that will help ordinary people while she continues to undo the damage that Trump inflicted on this country. Biden has made good progress on undoing that damage, but we still have a long way to go. I am convinced that Harris will carry that water for us.

I was especially moved by her answers on Gaza, on the race-baiting of Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian community, and on making progress on the US’s massive problem of gun violence. But the whole thing is so worth watching that I posted it not just to my Facebook feed but also LinkedIn and several of my Facebook groups.

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By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Media Ethics, media-general, Mindset, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , ,

Yes, it’s true. Thursday’s “debate” was a debacle, an atrocity. And yes, Democrats have a right to indulge in some panic. But a more helpful response is to demand that the mainstream media start covering the real issue in this campaign: That American democracy is under threat by Donald Trump, who was the worst president in history according to experts and who has devolved into a raving lunatic who has openly talked about the totalitarian regime he would impose this time.

For months, much of the mainstream media has consistently painted Biden in a poor light while for the most part refusing to set the same standard in evaluating Trump. A particularly horrific example was the time one of the Washington Post’s newsletters made a chart that compared how old Biden would be at the END of a second term with how old Trump would be at the BEGINNING of a second term. They are only 3-1/2 years apart.

Yet, while the New York Times and Washington Post were going on about the need for Biden to step aside, the Philadelphia Inquirer was one of the few voices in the mainstream press saying that Trump, not Biden, is the one who should leave the race. Their reasons are not just the 30+ lies he confidently uttered during the event (you can’t really call it a debate). It’s everything he’s done in the last several years. The man is a felon, a self-admitted sexual predator, an inciter of a treasonous riot, an open bigot, a thuggish bully, and a narcissistic example of Id running amok with no Superego to rein it in. Trump is known for confidently putting out total bullshit—kind of like some AI tools that tell us to eat a rock every day. Trump wanted us to drink chlorine bleach during the pandemic, after all.

While under both the insurrection and incompetence clauses of the Constitution Trump shouldn’t have even been allowed on the ballot, he’s there. And if he leaves, we may not like the results. If, say, Nikki Haley were to replace him as the Republican candidate, she could actually win on the basis that she wouldn’t be as bad as Trump. And she wouldn’t–but she might very likely be as bad as or worse than the second-worst president, George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, as Lawrence O’Donnell points out, the Dems have no viable candidate in reserve. When LBJ left the race much earlier in the cycle, in March, 1968, Humphrey didn’t have enough time to gather accolades or dollars. He also notes that there was pressure on Bill Clinton to withdraw in 1992 and on Trump to do so in 2016, yet both men won. AND he faults the debate moderators for failing to ask important questions like what the heck Trump was doing during those three hours of silence on January 6, 2021, or to probe deeper on Trump’s nonsensical answers and outright lies, including his obvious lack of understanding of what a tariff is.

Seth Abramson says that getting Biden to exit would grant Trump’s deepest wish and wonders why nobody’s asking if this is a good idea, considering how much Trump and his henchmen are talking it up—and he doesn’t see any path to a victory by any other Democrat.

The Dems would start by attacking each other in a “circular firing squad” that only helps the Republicans. Any convention result will leave a wide swath of disaffected voters.  It just doesn’t make sense.

Mind, I’m no fan of Biden. There’s a long list of betrayals of progressives that I’m not at all happy with. But I believe that this race is much less about who we want to be president than whether we want democracy or fascism, and what the Supreme Court will look like. It’s also about who progressives would rather be pressuring, and there’s no question that we’d secure more wins under Biden than Trump.

And Heather Cox Richardson says Trump steamrolled Biden with a technique called the “Gish Gallop”:

It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.

So instead of trying to dump Biden, let’s demand that the media:

  1. Point out every lie either candidate utters
  2. Give some space to Trump’s crazy “word salad” campaign speeches that make absolutely no sense
  3. Examine the consequences of each of his fascist-inspired policy proposals
  4. Fact-check the next debate in REAL TIME.

And let’s remind everyone we know that this election is not about choosing a saint but choosing the better opponent who will enable the most positive change.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics in Government, Greenwashing, language, Mindset Tagged with , , , , ,
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Sign by Nancy Hodge Green, used at Seabrook by Shel Horowitz, 1977. Photo by Shel Horowitz

Of all the eamples of greenwashing I know, none is more insidious than the way the nuclear power industry pretends to be green. In reality, it’s super-dangerous, with at least a dozen serious issues that threaten our liberty,our property, and our very lives. Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomical, and is not a solution to the climate crisis. My first book was about this, and when I updated it after Fukushima for a Japanese publlisher, I saw that it was still unviable, and still a threat.

If you live in the US, the Senate and House will be going to conference committee to workout their different versions. And this is our chance to stop this horrible bill from becoming law. Below is the letter I’m sending to my Senators, which contains a lot of information about the issue. If you are moved to take action, please copy or modify it and send it it to your own Senators and Representive. You can reach them easily by clicking the Senators button at http://senate.gov and then selecting your state. You also have my permission to share it widely, including with groups you’re involved with and with the media. Don’t forget to change the blankline to the recipient’s name. I usedthe subject line, “Please STOP the Price-Anderson Act renewal–our lives depend on it”

Here it is (note that I have removed the fronts of web addresses because at least some Senators block a submission that has many hyperlinks):


Dear Senator ________:

As your constituent, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to REMOVE the giveaways to the nuclear industry from the reconciliation package. If we examine the package closely, we discover that:

1. It RENEWS the grossly inadequate and highly taxpayer-subsidized insurance “protection” of the Price-Anderson Act for 40 (House version) or 20 (Senate version) years, leaving the public almost completely unprotected from financial loss in the event of an accident. This is one of the worst bills ever signed into law, capping insurance payouts for nuclear accidents at absurdly low levels. Price-Anderson originally capped the federal share at just $500 million per accident plus another $60 million from the utilities, according to the 1969 book Perils fo the Peaceful Atom by Richard Curtis and Elizabeth Hogan, pp. 194-195. The private utility coverage has since expanded through secondary coverage, with nuclear utilities retroactively assessed to cover up to $16.097 billion per accident, according to a January 2024 report to Congress by the Congressional Research Service, crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821. By contrast, actual dollar losses from the single 2011 disaster at Fukushima are estimated at $20 trillion—more than 1000 times as much (see ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253929/#:~:text=The%20total%20cost%20of%20the,Bottom%20nuclear%20plant%20in%20Pennsylvania ). Property owners and taxpayers are expected to make up the difference. And this doesn’t even count non-dollar or indirect costs such as injury and death, loss of land for generations, forced relocations, loss of agricultural revenue, and more. According to this Newsweek report, 14,000 people were forced to relocate after the Chernobyl accident closed a 1040 square-mile area back in 1986 (38 years ago)—and scientists don’t expect that area to be safe again for at least 3000 years. See newsweek.com/chernobyl-aftermath-how-long-will-exclusion-zone-uninhabitable-1751834
2. It REMOVES much of the licensing oversight from new nuclear power plants. These are crucial protections for civilians. The nuclear power industry has had a long history of not factoring in things like earthquake faults when siting n-plants.

It is also important to note that well beyond the three catastrophic accidents (Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island) we all know about, there have been at least 133 potentially serious accidents just in the brief span since the birth of the industry in the 1950s. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country. We have been extremely lucky that only three wreaked significant damage.

Finally, the claim that nuclear is necessary as a tool to fight climate change is false on three counts:

• Clean, renewable energy can do the job better, more reliably, and MUCH faster (see sciencealert.com/here-s-why-nuclear-won-t-cut-it-if-we-want-to-drop-carbon-as-quickly-as-possible , sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629618300598 , and https://clamshellalliance.com/statements/statement/ )
• Many parts of the nuclear power cycle other than feeding radioactive materials through a reactor have a big carbon cost (see nrc.gov/docs/ML1014/ML101400441.pdf , especially Page 2)
• When something goes wrong, as noted above, the detriments far outweigh any potential benefit.

It is long past time to end the subsidies for this dangerous, economically unworkable, and poorly performing technology and turn our attention to the real solutions such as solar, wind, and geothermal—and energy conservation/efficiency, which are the low-hanging fruit (see eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/efficiency-and-conservation.php ). I urge you to not only support true green energy but to convince your colleagues to block this terrible initiative.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Media Ethics, Mindset, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I finally got around to watching Jon Stewart’s return monologue. Yuck! I was a fan of Jon Stewart but this is ageist crap! Yes, Biden is old. So is Trump, as Stewart admits. While I have plenty of bones to pick with Biden (and I’ve been in the streets protesting some of his policies, especially around immigration and the Gaza war), we don’t have ranked choice voting in US presidential elections. And that means that absent some deep and unpredicted shift in the political landscape, either Biden or Trump will be elected in November.

There are many reasons to vote for Biden over Trump. While flawed (as we all are), he’s a basically decent person who has mostly used his time in office to better the lives of ordinary USArians and to improve the condition of the world. And despite a completely dysfunctional Congress, he has still managed to:

Now, about his opponent:

 

Bias Against Biden

Biden is not an existential threat to democracy. Biden was handed a government in complete chaos that had burned bridges with many of its allies and built back a functional government that honors its promises. Biden is about the good of the country, while Trump appears to be mostly concerned with leveraging his position for profit and inflating his already overweight ego. And Biden’s record of accomplishment after three years in office far outstrips Trump’s four years. 

So please tell me why the media is constantly dissing Biden because of his age and a perceived lack of mental acuity that by any reasonable standard is in better shape than Trump’s. How is it, for example, that the Washington Post (a liberal newspaper that prides itself on good journalism) actually ran a chart comparing how old Biden would be at the END of a second term with Trump’s age at the BEGINNING of a second term. 

I have that chart in an email dated February 9, 2024 entitled “The 5-Minute Fix: How should Democrats address Biden’s unpopularity?”; I can’t find it on washingtonpost.com and therefore can’t link to it. Because it’s copyrighted material, I can’t reproduce it here, but I’d be glad to forward that newsletter to anyone who requests it through the contact form. I can also link to the February 10th Today’s Edition Substack  newsletter by Robert Hubbell that mentions this chart along with five front-page New York Times stories about Biden’s age. And these are the liberals! WTF?

 

Proof that Age Doesn’t Matter

Finally, let’s look at five among thousands of models for aging with power:

  • Grandma Moses had a 25-year career as a painter, BEGINNING AT AGE 76
  • Pete Seeger was still writing and recording songs well into his 90s
  • Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa at age 76
  • My friends Frances Crowe and Arky Markham were both still activists on their 100th birthdays
  • Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn and sexologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer were working on the sexuality of old people into their 80s (disclosure: I was a VISTA organizer for the Gray Panthers in 1979-80 and met Maggie once when she was 75)

You are never too old—or too young—to make a difference. Jon Stewart should know better, and so should we. Work to get ranked-choice voting and other reforms such as those outlined at https://www.americanprogress.org/article/its-time-to-talk-about-electoral-reform/ (scroll down to the section entitled “A range of possible electoral reforms”).

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, People Helping People, Politics, Science, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged with , , ,

This could be quite the game-changer: a new technology that turns gas piping from a useless and expensive “stranded asset” to a powerful lever to green entire business and residential districts. And New York State just passed a law to encourage it.

The article is called This Emerging Green Technology Could Decarbonize Buildings and Provide Good Union Jobs. It’s a pretty quick read, and a remarkable one.

On a quick look, I don’t see any obvious flaws. Do you? Please leave it in a comment. I’ll be taking a more in-depth look at this in my March newsletter. If you’re not a subscriber yet, please visit any page at my main website, https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/ You’ll get some nice gifts for subscribing, too.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Politics, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

The Washington Post’s Robert Kagan outlined a dismal road to fascism if DT is somehow elected in 2024. Read his piece and then come back here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/ 

DT is likely to win the nomination, yes. And should he win in November, a second DT presidency would be far, far worse than the train wreck of his 2017-2021 term. The one thing DT tends to be truthful about is his penchant for cruelty and vengeance. His own and his advisors’ statements have made it clear that they intend to destroy the surviving parts of US democracy, seek revenge on anyone they see as an enemy, and create an authoritarian state that would imprison or deport opponents.

But Kagan is forgetting something really important: Winning the nomination is not the same as winning the election.

MAGA Republicans will nominate him, but moderate Republicans, Independents, swing voters, and of course, Democrats will not support another DT presidency. Add to that the millions of new young voters since 2016, the interest groups DT continues to alienate, and those who remember the DT years for the chaos, the dysfunction, the sowing of hatred against people of color, LGBT folks, women, scientists, Muslims, and oh yes, the attempted coup. Those who value women’s reproductive rights, voting rights for urban Black voters, diversity, education, religions other than White Nationalism disguised as a warped form of Christianity, the US’s status as a world leader, a Supreme Court that values settled precedent, and even ethical capitalism can find no home in a Republican Party led by a self-admitted sexual predator, a serial liar with 30,573 documented falsehoods just during his four years in the White House, an open bigot, a man who faces 91 criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions and has already been found to have committed fraudulent business practices, a deadbeat who doesn’t pay his bills and has no loyalty to even his most loyal henchmen, a man who continuously used the presidency for his/his family’s financial gain, who even his own first Secretary of State called a moron.

It is true that Biden will be a hold-your-nose choice for many. I am not happy with his horrible immigration policies, his greenlighting of environmentally destructive fossil fuel projects, and his lack of ability to curb violence against civilians in other parts of the world. But we don’t have ranked-choice voting in the US, and until we do, a vote for a third-party or a choice not to vote is a vote for DT, for authoritarianism, and quite possibly for fascism. I think enough people will realize this truth that if voters are allowed to vote and votes are counted honestly, DT will not win.

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