'Now Fire DeJoy': Biden Moves to Replace Trump-Picked Postal Board Members

"We need a Postal Service board of governors that is committed to replacing Mr. DeJoy with a postmaster general who will protect and strengthen the Postal Service, not undermine and sabotage it."


U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General Louis DeJoy speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on February 24, 2021. (Photo: Jim Watson/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

November 19, 2021

President Joe Biden won applause Friday for moving to replace Ron Bloom and John Barger, two members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors who've shown unwavering loyalty to scandal-plagued Postmaster General Louis DeJoy even as he's dramatically worsened mail delivery performance.

"It's affirmatively good to remove Bloom and Barger from the board, men who said they were 'tickled pink' with DeJoy's actions."

But replacing Bloom—a Democrat and the USPS board's current chairman—and Barger, a Republican, is just the first step toward rescuing the mail service from the ongoing right-wing assault, progressive advocates and Democratic lawmakers stressed Friday.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) called Biden's decision to replace Bloom "great news," slamming the outgoing postal board chair as DeJoy's "chief enabler and cheerleader."

"Now fire DeJoy," Pascrell added.

On Friday, Biden nominated former General Services Administration official Daniel Tangherlini and Derek Kan—a Republican and the former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget—to replace Bloom and Barger.

If Biden's picks are confirmed by the Senate, his nominees will have a majority on the nine-member postal board—enough votes to remove DeJoy.



Bloom and Barger were both nominated to the postal board by former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly attempted to sabotage the USPS ahead of the 2020 presidential election, which relied heavily on mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic.

DeJoy—a Trump donor—was selected to head the USPS by the postal board in May of 2020. Upon taking charge of the agency in June, DeJoy wasted little time moving to overhaul mail service operations and slow package delivery.

Last month, DeJoy's decade-long plan for the USPS took effect as experts and Democratic lawmakers warned the changes would ensure the continued decline of Postal Service performance for years to come.

Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research, told Common Dreams on Friday that Bloom and Barger "disqualified themselves from serving in positions of public trust by their enthusiastic support for Trump donor Louis DeJoy despite all the ways DeJoy has harmed the American people through his dictates, including charging people more for slower and less reliable mail."

"They failed to object to his 'ten-year' plan to weaken the service standards or to DeJoy continuing to receive millions each year from an arrangement he has with his former company, a contractor of the Postal Service that got a $100+ million contract to outsource postal work, among other things," Graves noted. "It's affirmatively good to remove Bloom and Barger from the board, men who said they were 'tickled pink' with DeJoy's actions."

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While Graves expressed concern over Biden's choice to replace Bloom and Barger with Tangherlini and Kan—calling them "not the right people at all" for the roles—she said the transition will be "an opportunity for the Postal Service to move in a new direction, given the destructive path chosen by DeJoy and enabled by Trump's appointees."

The Washington Post reported Friday that Biden's decision to remove Bloom—who's currently serving a one-year holdover term that expires in December—"came as a surprise to the postal industry and policymakers in Washington."

"Bloom as recently as last week told confidants he expected to be renominated," according to the Post. "Last week, Trump appointees on the governing board reelected him as chairman over the objections of Biden-appointed Democrats."

The Post noted that at least four members of the Senate Democratic caucus—Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—have pointed to Bloom's enthusiastic support for DeJoy as a reason to oust him from the postal board.

"We need a Postal Service board of governors that is committed to replacing Mr. DeJoy with a postmaster general who will protect and strengthen the Postal Service, not undermine and sabotage it," Sanders told the Post.

In a statement on Friday, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said he's "tickled pink that two DeJoy enablers" are on the verge of being replaced.

"This action is a good thing for the Postal Service and, most importantly, a great thing for the American people," he added.

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Biden nominates two to USPS board of governors, replacing DeJoy allies


U.S. Postmaster General Louis Dejoy speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on February 24. 

File Photo by Graeme Jennings/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 19 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden on Friday nominated two Derek Kan and Daniel Tangherlini to positions on the U.S. Postal Service's governing board.

They'll replace two allies of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy whose terms are expiring -- Ron Bloom and John Barger.

The announcement comes after more than a year of scrutiny of DeJoy, whose plans to cut costs at the USPS have led to slower mail delivery times and worries over mail-in ballots ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

The FBI, meanwhile, launched an investigation over the summer into DeJoy over an alleged private sector campaign finance scheme. He was accused of pressuring employees to donate to Republican candidates in exchange for reimbursement through bonuses while he was leading North Carolina-based New Breed Logistics from 2000-14.

The USPS board of governors selects the postmaster general and even after the replacement of two of DeJoy's allies, his position is likely still secure. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that Biden doesn't have the authority to replace DeJoy, but that the administration is "deeply troubled" by the job he's doing.

Biden Applauded for Reversing Trump Assault on 'Priceless' Tongass National Forest

"The Tongass National Forest's indispensable habitats serve as home to a multitude of species and also play a vital role in helping fight global warming," said one conservation advocate.


A brown bear fishing for salmon in a creek at Pavlof Harbor in Chatham Strait, Tongass National Forest in Alaska. (Photo: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY

November 19, 2021

Environmental protection groups on Friday applauded the United States Department of Agriculture's proposal to reinstate a 20-year-old rule protecting North America's largest temperate rainforest, the Tongass National Forest in Alaska—which climate scientists say plays a crucial role in keeping carbon from entering the atmosphere.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the administration plans to restore the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, commonly known as the "roadless rule," which was originally put in place by the Clinton administration in 2001, aiming to protect about 9.3 million acres in the forest from development by loggers and other industries.

"We need to continue to protect old forests and big trees, such as those in the Tongass, to ensure our future includes essential species and a livable climate."
If finalized, the rule will protect more than half of the 17-acre forest, which contains about five million acres of old-growth trees.

Alaska Native leaders and conservation groups have long demanded the federal government maintain the roadless rule and other protections for the forest, which ensures food sovereignty for tribes including the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, and provides a habitat for more than 400 species of fish and other wildlife.

"Having protections for close to 10 million acres of old growth means that we have the resources needed to continue teaching our traditional practices, continue harvesting our traditional foods and medicines and to not only prosper as Indigenous people, but to come to the world's aid right now so people can learn our ways of living and our ways of being," Marina Anderson, tribal administrator for the Organized Village of Kasaan, told The Washington Post. "In the future, we would hope that tribal governments are listened to, and properly consulted with, in the beginning."

The roadless rule was rescinded by former President Donald Trump last fall—a decision that was condemned as "vandalism" by climate activist and author Bill McKibben. The gutting of the rule left the forest vulnerable to the pollution that comes with logging and road building as well as soil erosion and the destruction of natural habitats.

Tongass also serves as an important carbon sink for North America, with its trees absorbing 8% of the carbon stored in all of the continental United States' forests combined. More than 95% of the public comments submitted to the U.S. Forest Service regarding Trump's decision were in favor of the roadless rule.


"We applaud the Biden administration for listening to the voices of Southeast Alaska communities who have been relentless in their advocacy to protect the livelihoods, local economies, and wildlife that depend on the Tongass," said Sierra Club Alaska chapter director Andrea Feniger in a statement. "The Tongass is a priceless resource and a critical tool in the fight against climate change, and this action brings us one step closer to ensuring that our forest wildlands remain protected for good.”
Environment America said it was "thrilled" with the administration's proposal.


"We've had our fingers crossed, hoping this would be announced soon," said Ellen Montgomery, public lands director for the group. "The Tongass National Forest's indispensable habitats serve as home to a multitude of species and also play a vital role in helping fight global warming. We need to continue to protect old forests and big trees, such as those in the Tongass, to ensure our future includes essential species and a livable climate."

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Vilsack's announcement came four months after the administration said it would ban large-scale logging for the entire 16 million acres of forest and invest $25 million in sustainable community development to improve the health of the forest. Officials also announced plans in July to cancel a timber sale from three major old-growth forests, including ones on Prince of Wales Island and Revillagigedo Island in the Tongass, while continuing to auction off newer trees.

The proposal also comes days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the state of Alaska in its attempt to have the roadless rule vacated, with the court saying it would be "entirely inappropriate" to issue an opinion pushing the USDA to keep Trump's rollback of the rule intact.

By reversing the rule, Alaska Wilderness League said the administration "will preserve a natural climate solution that benefits communities around the globe," and help support Alaska's economy—contrary to claims by the logging industry and its supporters.

"The Tongass is the linchpin of Southeast Alaska's economy, supporting a $2 billion sustainable economy and more than one-quarter of jobs in the region," said Andy Moderow, Alaska director for the group. "The forest attracts people from around the world for world-class recreation, hunting, and sport and commercial salmon fishing. And it remains as essential now as it has for thousands of years to Indigenous communities that continue to rely on the forest for their cultural and subsistence traditions."

"We look forward to the upcoming public process and working with the administration to make sure the diverse constituencies of the Tongass are heard and that America's largest national forest and one of the largest remaining temperate rainforests in the world remains intact," he continued.

Vilsack's proposal kicked off a 60-day public comment period, and advocates urged Americans to speak out on behalf of the Tongass.

"We hope that Americans head to their computers and submit lots of public comments in favor of both this forest and the idea that we need more nature," said Montgomery.

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The Corporate Plan to Murder Medicare Runs Through Medicare Advantage

If they can move more than half of Americans off traditional Medicare and onto these corporate plans, it’ll provide the political cover to kill off Medicare altogether—and they're nearly there now.

George W. Bush visits New Britain, Connecticut on June 12, 2003 to Pitch a Plan to Strengthen Medicare at New Britain General Hospital. (Photo: James Devaney/WireImage)

THOM HARTMANN

November 19, 2021

In 2003, George W Bush set up the destruction and privatization of Medicare. The end of "real Medicare" is getting closer every day, and Congress and Medicare's administrators are doing nothing.

Last Friday the Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) announced a 14.5% increase in Medicare Part B premiums, raising the monthly payments by the lowest-income Medicare recipients from $148.50 a month to $170.10 a month next year.

Congress must stop these for-profit parasites who are steadily draining "real" Medicare of funds and resources while producing billions in profits and often outright stolen funds for the insurance industry.

If you're trying to live on the bottom rung of Social Security (about $365/month), that's consequential. People with Medigap policies are also seeing their policy price rises announced this month.

Two months ago I wrote about the Medicare Advantage Scam and how it can screw consumers. This price hike, though, raises the larger issue of what's happening to Medicare itself and whether the entire system may be out of business in a few years, in part because our government is being robbed blind by all these so-called "Advantage" plans.

It all began with George W. Bush, who'd spent most of his life openly and proudly campaigning to privatize Medicare and Social Security.

In 2003 Congress and the Bush administration rolled out a privatization option, allowing private for-profit insurance companies to sell policies branded as "Medicare Advantage" to gullible seniors who think they're buying the actual Medicare Parts A and B. As a result, today companies eager to rip off seniors are flooding the market, particularly with TV advertising.

As I note in considerable detail in The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich, Medicare Advantage is hurting traditional Medicare, because that system is paying the insurance companies, in most cases, far more than it would be paying to simply cover the costs of its regular Medicare recipients.

Medicare Advantage is also one of the most effective ways that insurance companies can kill a real "Medicare for All" system, since so many people who think they're on Medicare are actually on these privatized plans instead.

Nearly from its beginning, Medicare allowed private companies to offer plans that essentially compete with it, but they were an obscure corner of the market and didn't really take off until the Bush administration and Congress rolled out the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.

This was the GOP's (and a few corporate-owned Democrats') big chance to finally privatize Medicare, albeit one customer at a time.

That law legalized a brand known as "Medicare Advantage" under the Medicare Part C provision and a year later it phased in what are known as risk-adjusted large-batch payments to insurance companies offering Advantage plans.

Medicare Advantage plans are not government-provided Medicare. They're private health insurance most often offered by the big for-profit insurance companies (although some nonprofits participate, particularly the larger HMOs), and the rules they must live by are considerably looser than those for Medicare.

Even more consequential, they don't get reimbursed directly on a person-by-person, procedure-by-procedure basis. Instead, every year, Advantage providers submit a bill to the federal government based on the aggregate risk score of all their customers and, practically speaking, are paid in a massive lump sum for all of their customers.

The higher their risk score, the larger the payment. Profit-seeking insurance companies, being the predators that they are, have found a number of ways to raise their risk scores without raising their expenses.

For example, many Medicare Advantage plans promote an "annual home visit" by a nurse or physician's assistant as a "benefit" of the plan. What the companies are doing, though, is trying to upcode (raise their payments from Medicare) customers to make them seem sicker than they are.

"Heart failure," for example, can be a severe and expensive condition to treat . . . or a barely perceptible tic on an EKG that represents little or no threat to a person for years or even decades. Depression is similarly variable; if it lasts less than two weeks, there's no reimbursement; if it lasts longer than two weeks, it's called a "major depressive episode" and rapidly jacks up a risk score — and thus the payments to the insurance company, even if it provides no services.

The home health visits are so profitable that an entire industry has sprung up of companies that send nurses out on behalf of the smaller insurance companies.

In summer 2014, the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) published an in-depth investigative report titled Why Medicare Advantage Costs Taxpayers Billions More Than It Should.

They found, among other things, that one of the most common scams companies were running involved that very scoring of their customers as being sicker than they actually were, so that their reimbursements were way above the cost of caring for those people.

Here are a few quotes and summaries (in my words) from the report:

"Risk scores of Medicare Advantage patients rose sharply in plans in at least 1,000 counties nationwide between 2007 and 2011, boosting taxpayer costs by more than $36 billion over estimated costs for caring for patients in standard Medicare."

"In more than 200 of these counties, the cost of some Medicare Advantage plans was at least 25 percent higher than the cost of providing standard Medicare coverage."

The report documents how risk scores rose twice as fast for people who joined a Medicare Advantage health plan as for those who didn't.

Patients, the report lays out, never know how their health is rated because neither the health plan nor Medicare shares risk scores with them — and the process itself is so arcane and secretive that it remains unfathomable to many health professionals.

"By 2009, government officials were estimating that just over 15 percent of total Medicare Advantage payments were inaccurate, about $12 billion that year."

Based on its own sampling of data from health plans, the report shows how CMS has estimated that "faulty" risk scores triggered nearly $70 billion in what officials deemed "improper" payments to Medicare Advantage plans from 2008 through 2013.

CMS decided, according to the report, not to chase after overcharges from 2008 through 2010 even though the agency estimated through sampling that it made more than $32 billion in "improper" payments to insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage plans over those three years. CMS did not explain its reasoning.

The report documents how Medicare expects to pay the health plans more than $150 billion in 2014, the year the study was published.

Companies are almost never nailed for these overcharges, and when they are, they usually pay back pennies on the dollar.

For example, when the Office of Inspector General, Health and Human Services (which oversees Medicare), audited six out of the hundreds of plans on the market in 2007, they found that just those six companies "had been overpaid by an estimated $650 million" for that one year. As the Center for Public Integrity states, "CMS settled five of the six audits for a total repayment of just over $1.3 million."

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also, in 2012, decided to audit only 30 plans a year going forward. As CPI noted, "At that rate, it would take CMS more than 15 years to review the hundreds of Medicare Advantage contracts now in force." And that's 15 years to audit just one year's activity!

Things haven't improved since that 2014 investigative report from CPI. In September 2019, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and five Democratic colleagues sent a letter to President Donald Trump's CMS Administrator, Seema Verma.

"The recent HHS Payment Accuracy Report exposes that taxpayers have overpaid Medicare Advantage plans more than $30 billion dollars over the last three years," Brown wrote, wanting to know if the government was going to try to recover any of that essentially stolen money.

Meanwhile, during the four years of the Trump administration, CMS went out of their way to illegally promote Medicare Advantage plans.

A February 2020 report in the New York Times stated, "Under President Trump, some critics contend, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers Medicare, has become a cheerleader for Advantage plans at the expense of original Medicare."

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) compared Medicare Advantage with traditional Medicare and found the Advantage programs to be mind-bogglingly profitable: "MA insurer revenues are 30 percent higher than their healthcare spending. Healthcare spending for enrollees in MA is 25 percent lower than for enrollees in [traditional Medicare] in the same county and [with the same] risk score."

In other words, they are paid more and deliver less, keeping the balance as their profit. And it is hundreds of billions of dollars.

At the same time, Medicare Advantage often screws its customers. According to the NBER study, people with Medicare Advantage got 15 percent fewer colon cancer screening tests, 24 percent fewer diagnostic tests, and 38 percent fewer flu shots.

Today the industry is so entrenched and massively profitable it can buy off members of Congress with the loose change it finds in the couch.

Meanwhile, changes CMS made to the Medicare website during the Trump administration now direct people who want to sign up for Medicare, instead, to a page to sign up for private Medicare Advantage plans.

If they can move more than half of Americans off traditional Medicare and onto these corporate plans, it'll provide the political cover to kill off Medicare altogether—and they're nearly there right now.

While much of the media focus on Medicare's price increase has been around a single Alzheimer's drug, the simple reality is that without the Medicare Advantage scam the Medicare system would be in great shape right now.

Congress must stop these for-profit parasites who are steadily draining "real" Medicare of funds and resources while producing billions in profits and often outright stolen funds for the insurance industry.

This article was first published on The Hartmann Report.

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Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.

Progressives Slam GOP's 'Shameful' Attempt to Add Another $25 Billion to Pentagon Budget

"Congress must resist the demands of the military-industrial complex, and instead heed calls to invest taxpayer dollars into true human needs."


This picture taken on December 26, 2011 shows the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C.

 (Photo: Staff/AFP via Getty Images)

KENNY STANCIL

COMMONDREAMS

November 19, 2021

Progressive advocacy groups on Friday denounced Sen. Roger Wicker's last-minute attempt to add another $25 billion on top of the United States' already gargantuan military budget—arguing that the Mississippi Republican's proposal reflects Congress' skewed priorities and underscores the need to redirect Pentagon funding to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges in a humane, rather than violent, fashion.

"It's time to fix our broken budget priorities, and start putting human needs over Pentagon greed."

Filed earlier this week as an amendment to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which the U.S. Senate is expected to consider in the coming days, Wicker's Shipyard Act of 2021 proposes allocating an additional $25 billion for naval shipyard restoration—a move that would cause the cost of the annual bill to surpass $800 billion.

President Joe Biden's original topline military spending request for fiscal year 2022 was $753 billion​​​​—already up from the $740.5 billion approved for the previous fiscal year under the Trump administration. After the House Armed Services Committee in September approved a Republican-sponsored amendment to tack on an additional $25 billion, House lawmakers from both major parties voted 316-113 to authorize a $778 billion military budget.

As Andrew Lautz, director of federal policy at the National Taxpayers Union, pointed out Friday in a statement, Congress "already increased the defense topline by $25 billion earlier this year, going against the request of top civilian officials at the Department of Defense. They could have chosen to direct that $25 billion to naval shipyards, and they did not."

"Lawmakers shouldn't add yet another $25 billion to the defense budget during NDAA debate," he added. "The Shipyard Act in particular is irresponsible, and would give the Navy a huge pot of money with little accountability and oversight of how the money is spent."

Savannah Wooten, the #PeopleOverPentagon campaign coordinator at Public Citizen, said that "attempting to stuff an additional $50 billion, more funding than the agency itself requested, into a Pentagon budget that is already three-quarters of a trillion dollars is shameful, unjustifiable, and embarrassing."

"Congress must resist the demands of the military-industrial complex," said Wooten, "and instead heed calls to invest taxpayer dollars into true human needs like supporting global Covid-19 vaccine production, expanding healthcare access, and funding climate justice initiatives."

U.S. troops recently withdrew from Afghanistan, but "the Senate is preparing to spend over three-quarters of a trillion dollars fueling its addiction to war-making," noted Erica Fein, senior Washington director at Win Without War, even "as the pandemic rages... the rift between rich and poor widens... [and] the existential threat of the climate crisis looms."

"Sen. Wicker's proposal to add $25 billion on top of this already obscene budget may please arms industry lobbyists, but it leaves everyday people out in the cold," said Fein.

Echoing Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) recent critiques of the bipartisan penchant for greenlighting massive levels of military spending while simultaneously opposing relatively modest efforts to improve the lives of working people, she stressed that "it's time to fix our broken budget priorities, and start putting human needs over Pentagon greed."

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Alluding to the Build Back Better Act—which passed the House on Friday—Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) said that "we've had enough of ever-increasing military budgets from lawmakers who won't support basics like infrastructure, early childhood education, and dental care for our elders."

"How can we even consider allocating a sum of this magnitude to the Pentagon when our country is facing severe challenges around climate change, systemic racial oppression, growing economic inequality, and the ongoing pandemic?"

"The Wicker amendment is a shameful grab for another $25 billion, on top of the $37 billion that the [Biden] administration and Congress have already added to the military budget," said Koshgarian. "But there's another option. Senator Sanders' proposed modest cuts would begin to impose some limits on Pentagon spending for the first time in years."

Sanders, who intends to vote against the NDAA, has introduced an amendment to reduce the proposed military budget by $25 billion, down to the $753 billion first offered by the White House.

In September, House Republicans—as well as Democrats who receive significant campaign contributions from the weapons industry—teamed up to reject similar amendments to reduce Pentagon funding.

Carley Towne, national co-director of CodePink, pointed out that U.S. senators "are considering approving a whopping $800 billion" in military spending just a week after COP26, where "climate and peace activists gathered in Glasgow to demand that global leaders take bold climate action," including by accounting for the military greenhouse gas emissions that are currently excluded from decarbonization pledges.

"Instead of taking the ongoing climate emergency seriously, the U.S. is using the threat of climate change to legitimize spending even more on the Pentagon, which has the largest carbon and greenhouse gas footprint of any organization in the world," said Towne. "To add fuel to this dangerous fire, this $60+ billion increase in military spending will greatly escalate the United States' hybrid war on China, and in doing so, sabotage efforts for mutual cooperation with China on existential crises like nuclear proliferation and climate change mitigation."

Johnny Zokovitch, executive director of Pax Christi USA, said that "as the Senate deliberates on the NDAA, there is urgent need to dramatically cut the bloated Pentagon budget. Our nation's priorities, as reflected in the federal budget, are seriously misplaced."

Citing a recent IPS report, which showed that the U.S. has squandered more than $21 trillion on militarization since 9/11, Jacobin's Luke Savage argued last month that the nation's military spending—now even higher than it was at the height of the Cold War—is not only wasteful but also fundamentally anti-democratic.

The U.S. spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined, and annual spending at the Pentagon—which has never passed an audit—accounts for more than half of the federal discretionary budget. According to a 2020 Data for Progress survey, a majority of voters want to reallocate 10% of the military budget to meet human needs.

Zokovitch added that "we need to unmask the role of private military contractors, with large teams of lobbyists, who benefit from the scandalous amount of our nation's treasury spent on weapons systems."

In September, researchers at Brown University's Costs of War project estimated that as much as half of the $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon alone since its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan has gone to private military contractors. Koshgarian and her IPS colleagues, as well as Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute, meanwhile, have said that corporations gobbled up more than half.

"How can we even consider allocating a sum of this magnitude to the Pentagon when our country is facing severe challenges around climate change, systemic racial oppression, growing economic inequality, and the ongoing pandemic?" Sister Karen Donahue of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Justice Team asked Friday. "We know that a significant portion of this money will end up in the coffers of arms manufacturers and dealers where it will contribute nothing to the security of our country or world peace."

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How Many Dead Kids Before We Admit US "National Security" Is a Lie?

How many people have to die by our hands—how big do the piles of women's and children's corpses have to get—before mass murder (war) begins looming as wrong?


Smoke and fire billow after shelling on the Islamic State group's last holdout of Baghouz, in the eastern Syrian Deir Ezzor province on March 3, 2019.

 (Photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images)

ROBERT C. KOEHLER

November 19, 2021

A new defense budget looms. Maybe we're running out of wars to fight, but no matter. The proposed figure before Congress is bigger than ever: $778 billion.

How fascinating—and how irrelevant—that the vote is scheduled just a few days after the New York Times published its investigation of a U.S. airstrike in Baghuz, Syria two and a half years ago, which the Defense Department had been desperately trying to cover up.

When people are dehumanized as "the enemy," killing them, especially if powerful weapons are under your control, becomes nothing more than an abstraction.

America, America . . . shall we celebrate our country, boys and girls? Here's a passage from the story: "Civilian observers who came to the area of the strike the next day found piles of dead women and children."

One of the observers said: "There was a lot of freshly bulldozed earth and the stink of bodies underneath, a lot of bodies."

The massacre took place on March 18, 2019. The U.S. military was searching for ISIS members, who apparently were "cornered in a dirt field" just outside Baghuz. A military drone circled overhead, but its camera revealed only "a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank."

Nonetheless, to the amazement of the military personnel who were monitoring the drone, they saw a U.S. fighter jet zoom in and pummel the field with a 500-pound bomb. Another jet followed, dropping two 2,000-pound bombs on the women and children. The instant death toll was about 80 people.

Huh? What happened?

What happened was this: When people are dehumanized as "the enemy," killing them, especially if powerful weapons are under your control, becomes nothing more than an abstraction. This is the nature of war! Even those who aren't actually involved in the conflict—you know, civilians—quickly and easily become collateral damage: They were in the way. We're waging a war against evil. Killing gets easier and easier and easier, and hell remains ensconced on Planet Earth . . . thanks in large part to us, the most powerful nation on Earth, the most financially committed to a future of endless war.

Specifically, as the Times story reported: ". . . the bombing had been called in by a classified American special operations unit, Task Force 9, which was in charge of ground operations in Syria. The task force operated in such secrecy that at times it did not inform even its own military partners of its actions."

In other words, the USA and its allies are waging multiple wars in the Middle East. One of them is public and respectable: No war crimes permitted! But the other one is free of any sort of legal bureaucracy and does what it wants, claiming, whenever necessary, that it took the action it did because troops were in imminent danger. Under such circumstances, legal approval of a military strike isn't necessary. Just do it, and if there's fallout later, hide (i.e., classify) the details, minimize (lie about) the results and, if necessary, have an official spokesman express a meaningless and absolutely consequence-free token of regret and wait for everyone (except the families of the dead) to forget about it and move on, e.g.:

"We abhor the loss of innocent life and take all possible measures to prevent them," the chief spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said in a statement, according to the Times. "In this case, we self-reported and investigated the strike according to our own evidence and take full responsibility for the unintended loss of life."

Any questions?

The only questions I have feel too big, that is to say, too naïve, to ask, but let me ask them anyway, directed in particular at those members of Congress who shrug and give the military-industrialists whatever they ask for, year after year:

How many people have to die by our hands—how big do the piles of women's and children's corpses have to get—before mass murder (war) begins looming as wrong? Are you too much of a coward to demand a complete rethinking of the meaning of national defense? Are you too stupid to realize that Planet Earth is a single planet, and that security for one can only mean security for all? Are you incapable of seeing that dehumanizing people is wrong—and counterproductive—and must not be the basis of national security? As "the leader of the free world," can we not take the lead in evolving beyond war, borders and national dominance? Is the soul of the nation dead?

War dehumanizes everyone it touches, as Paul Tritschler put it, writing at Open Democracy:

"Dehumanization—the process of debasing one's perceived enemy—is not the preserve of evil people: humiliation, alienation, non-recognition, exclusion, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, and even campaigns of genocide, all fall well within the realm of possibility for the majority of human beings. There are many examples since WW2 of dehumanization at the extreme: Vietnam, Indonesia, Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria, where populations have also been described as less than human, and where civilians have been killed as a result of so-called 'precision bombing.'. . ."

At best, change comes slowly. At worst, it doesn't come at all—or rather, it comes on its own terms, as the consequence of ignorant behavior. We are at the brink of God knows what. Perhaps oblivion. All of us, you might say, are huddled in the dirt field outside Baghuz.

One way to meet this future is with these words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: "Some day, after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of Love, and then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

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


Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, "Courage Grows Strong at the Wound" (2016). Contact him or visit his website at commonwonders.com

SEE  LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

It Will Take Much More Than Electric Cars to Fix the Climate Crisis

Resolving the climate crisis isn't just about shifting from one technology to another; it's about shifting our ways of thinking and being. It’s a point that often gets missed in conversations about major greenhouse gas emission sources.

While electric vehicle sales are increasing rapidly, they're still far outnumbered by gasoline and diesel car sales. (Photo: joel-t/iStock)

DAVID SUZUKI, 

  IAN HANINGTON

November 19, 2021

 by David Suzuki Foundation

That was illustrated at the recent 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) climate summit, in Glasgow, where governments, automakers and airlines worked on deals to cut global transport emissions. Because transportation is responsible for one-fifth to one-quarter of global emissions, that seems like a good step.

But there are problems.

Shifting away from consumerism and supporting local businesses and production would go as far or farther in reducing shipping emissions, although cleaner ways to fuel ships are needed.

With aviation and shipping, the main idea is to switch from polluting fossil fuels to "biofuels." But with expected increases in both sectors, that could mean destroying more natural areas or displacing food-growing lands with crops for fuel production.

And as George Monbiot points out, "Flying accounts for most of the greenhouse gas emissions of the super-rich, which is why the wealthiest 1% generate roughly half the world's aviation emissions. If everyone lived as they do, aviation would be the biggest of all the causes of climate breakdown." Finding better fuels is important, but cutting back on flying—which would mostly affect the affluent—is just as critical. But, of course, that doesn't fit with the current growth-and-profit economic paradigm.

As for shipping, Reuters notes around 90 per cent of traded goods travel by sea, and shipping accounts for about three per cent of global emissions. Our current global economic system encourages corporations to go where resources and labour are cheap and standards are often low to maximize profits. Shifting away from consumerism and supporting local businesses and production would go as far or farther in reducing shipping emissions, although cleaner ways to fuel ships are needed.

With the automobile industry, it's all about electric vehicles. And the focus is on direct emissions rather than the many other environmental impacts, from production to massive infrastructure requirements. Few people even question car culture—why we've decided so many people should each have large machines to transport them in isolation. And why they should be provided with the massive infrastructure to make it possible, from roads and parking to malls and drive-throughs.

This idea of constant economic growth—with the excessive consumption and waste required to fuel it—has become so ingrained that we resort to incremental measures in the midst of a crisis. We just can't imagine different ways of seeing, and so we try to shoehorn solutions into an outdated system that wasn't designed to be sustainable.

As for the COP26 automakers' pledge—which would require all cars and vans sold to be zero-emission by 2040—as inadequate as it is, not everyone is on board.

Again, electric vehicles are important. They pollute far less than internal combustion engine vehicles and can last longer. But what we should really focus on is reducing private automobile use, through good public transit, active transport like cycling and walking, increasingly popular modes like e-bikes and scooters, better urban planning and design, and new technologies like self-driving vehicles that can facilitate car sharing and efficient ride-hailing services. All this would dramatically reduce congestion and pollution, and would even make it possible to convert massive amounts of road and parking to green space.

And while electric vehicle sales are increasing rapidly, they're still far outnumbered by gasoline and diesel car sales. As for the COP26 automakers' pledge—which would require all cars and vans sold to be zero-emission by 2040—as inadequate as it is, not everyone is on board. Even though Volkswagen and Toyota are major electric and hybrid vehicle manufacturers, they didn't back the commitment. The U.S., China and Germany also refused to support the pledge.

According to Reuters, "The wider lesson is that private players can't be relied on to stick their necks out if public action is absent." This shows how essential it is for society to get involved. It's mainly up to governments, business, industry and international agencies to resolve the climate crisis, but without massive public pressure, they'll continue down the status quo road until it's too late to keep the planet from heating to catastrophic levels.

Climate conferences such as COP are important, and perhaps they're more than just "blah, blah, blah," but until we replace the outdated human-invented systems that got us into this mess, we'll only be downshifting rather than putting on the brakes. That's not good enough.

© 2019 David Suzuki Foundation

David Suzuki , an award-winning geneticist and broadcaster, co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990. He was a faculty member at the University of British Columbia, and is currently professor emeritus. Suzuki is widely recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology and has received numerous awards for his work, including a UNESCO prize for science and a United Nations Environment Program medal.

IAN HANINGTON is a senior editor at the David Suzuki Foundation.

As the World Burns, Glasgow's COP26 Deemed a Failure

"We should call it the 'Glasgow suicide pact' for the poorest in the world."


Flames are visible from a flaring pit near a well in the Bakken Oil Field. 

(Photo: Orjan F. Ellingvag/Corbis via Getty Images)

AMY GOODMAN,  DENIS MOYNIHAN

November 19, 2021 by Democracy Now!

"Wildly here without control,
Nature reigns and rules the whole…"

Scotland's most famous poet, Robert Burns, wrote those lines in 1787. If only the delegates to COP26, the United Nations climate summit that wrapped up last Saturday in Glasgow, had heeded his words. The negotiations ended with a document dubbed the "Glasgow Climate Pact" which many climate activists called a failure. "We should call it the 'Glasgow suicide pact' for the poorest in the world," Asad Rehman of the COP26 Coaltion said on the Democracy Now! news hour. "It does not keep us below the 1.5 degree [Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] guard rail. In fact, it heads us closer to 3 degrees [C, or 5.4 degrees F]…They're ramming through so many loopholes that it makes a mockery of these climate negotiations."

Poor, developing nations haven't contributed significantly to the overall climate crisis, but are suffering disproportionately.

One draft of the climate pact included an historic first, calling for "the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels." Polluting nations and armies of fossil fuel industry lobbyists managed to dilute that down to "the phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels." Thus, coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, can still be burned with the promise that the resulting pollution will be "abated" with carbon capture and storage, an unproven technology. And the same fossil fuel corporations that have profited for so long while sowing disinformation about the climate will continue to enjoy lavish subsidies at taxpayer expense.

"This summit was betrayal," Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a climate justice activist from the Philippines, said on Democracy Now! "It is painful for me, knowing that the Philippines is such a vulnerable country for the climate crisis and that we know that we are hit year after year, month after month, with climate impacts." The Philippines, described as the most storm-vulnerable nation on earth, has been hard hit by a succession of especially destructive, climate change-fueled typhoons over the past decade. "All countries," she added, "should be phasing out the fossil fuel industry. That doesn't just stop at coal, but also oil and gas, which the U.S. and the U.K. conveniently took out of the text."

Indigenous land defenders from the Amazon were also in Glasgow for COP26. The world's largest rainforest is called "the lungs of the planet" for the vital role it plays in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. "We must first change our relationship to nature, change the way we think about the world, and really put at the center of our thinking our connection to life and our commitment to future generations," Domingo Peas, an Achuar indigenous leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon, said on Democracy Now! "There are 30 indigenous nations and 30 million hectares of intact forest that are at stake. We must protect this…The forest is calling on us."

The United States and European nations built their enormous wealth by burning coal with abandon for over a century and a half, a cheap but dirty way to achieve growth. The U.S. remains the single largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, with close to twice the total that China has emitted, based on 2017 data. China is now by far the largest emitter globally.

In recent years, the U.S., the U.K., and most European Union nations have been able to decrease their reliance on coal, shifting to oil, fracked gas, and renewable sources.

Poor, developing nations haven't contributed significantly to the overall climate crisis, but are suffering disproportionately. To recover from disasters, to adapt to the changing climate, and to build their economies responsibly toward a zero carbon future, these countries need money. COP26 was supposed to deliver on long-promised financing for these needs, but failed to do so.

At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, the U.S. and other developed countries pledged $100 billion per year to developing and climate-vulnerable nations from 2020 through 2025. Only a fraction of those funds have materialized, much of it as loans, not as climate aid. Meanwhile, a consortium of African nations recently estimated that the true cost for them to effectively respond to climate change would be closer to $1.3 trillion per year. Polluters should pay, and the United States should lead the way.

Robert Burns died in 1796, when the age of coal was in its infancy. The current National Poet of Scotland is Kathleen Jamie. Inspired by the River Clyde that flows through Glasgow, this week she penned "What the Clyde said, after COP26," which ends,


"sure, I'm a river,
but I can take a side.
From this day, I'd rather keep afloat,
like wee folded paper boats,
the hopes of the young folk
chanting at my bank,
fear in their spring-bright eyes
so hear this: fail them, and I will rise."

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 1,400 public television and radio stations worldwide.

Denis Moynihan is a writer and radio producer who writes a weekly column with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman.

The political economy of digital technologies

Andreas Wittel

in Koch, G. (2017), Digitisation. Routledge.

534 Views25 Pages

1 File ▾

Sociology,

Cultural Studies,

Anthropology,

Political Economy,

Media Studies

 ...more ▾

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The political economy of digital technologies is a relatively young field of research which has rapidly grown over the last two decades. I am not aware of an attempt to outline this field in a more systematic way. In fact, it might be debatable whether such an attempt makes much sense in view of the rapid growth of this field and its dynamic transformations and expansions. For this reason, the following reflections are an attempt to provide a provisional appraisal of this field. What is also debatable is the newness of this field of research. While I am claiming that the political economy of digital technologies (PEDT) is an emerging field, it does not come out of nowhere. It has a predecessor, it is emerging from another field of research, the political economy of media and communication (PEMC). I propose two things: Firstly, that PEDT has its roots in PEMC, and that it has developed from PEMC. Secondly, that PEDT has developed with a number of significant transformations and expansions. These expansions from PEMC are so profound that it is indeed legitimate to conceptualise PEDT as a new field of study, which focuses on different themes and questions, which uses and produces different theoretical concepts, and which finally embarks on a different understanding of what it means to create scholarly work.

https://www.academia.edu/35417018/The_political_economy_of_digital_technologies?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper

Rio Tinto now the sole owner of Diavik diamond mine
Cecilia Jamasmie | November 18, 2021

Aerial view of Diavik diamond mine. (Image courtesy of Dominion Diamond.)

Rio Tinto (ASX, LON, NYSE: RIO) became on Thursday the sole owner of the iconic Diavik diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories after buying the 40% share held by Dominion Diamond Mines, despite previously saying it had no plans to take full control of the aging Arctic mine.


The deal gives Rio Tinto all remaining Diavik assets held by Dominion, including unsold production and cash collateral held as security for the mine’s future closure costs. In return, the world’s second largest miner has released Dominion and its lenders from all outstanding liabilities and obligations to fund the operations or closure of the joint venture.

The transaction comes after a 19-month process triggered in April 2020 by Dominion Diamond Mines filing for insolvency protection under the Canadian Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

Dominion, which was purchased by The Washington Companies in 2017 for $1.2 billion, was once the world’s fourth largest diamond producer. Its financial troubles — which played out in court over several months last year — ultimately led it to sell in December 2020 its other Canadian mine, Ekati.

“Diavik will now move forward with certainty to continue supplying customers with high quality, responsibly sourced Canadian diamonds,” Rio Tinto Minerals boss Sinead Kaufman said in the statement.

Diavik, which faces closure by 2025 and will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up, has been in production since 2003 and is Canada’s largest diamond mine. It yielded 6.2 million carats of rough diamonds in 2020.
Sector “fully recovered”

The diamond market came to a standstill at the height of the covid-19 pandemic, increasing worries that oversupply could hurt the sector for years. But surging purchases by intermediaries who cut, polish and trade stones has all but wiped-out miners’ stockpiles, even as Alrosa (MCX: ALRS) — the world’s top diamond miner by output — and its closest competitor, Anglo American’s De Beers, have hiked prices.

Alrosa said in October it believed the industry had “fully recovered” from the effects of the the global pandemic, with sales of both roughs and diamond jewellery up this year about 23% compared to 2020 levels.

Rio Tinto becomes sole owner of Diavik Diamond Mine

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Diavik scheduled to shut down in 2025

John Van Dusen · CBC News · Posted: Nov 18, 2021 

The Diavik Diamond Mine on the edge of N.W.T.'s Lac de Gras. Rio Tinto is now the sole owner of the mine, which is scheduled to shut down in 2025. (Rio Tinto)

Rio Tinto is now the sole owner of one of Canada's biggest diamond mines.

The company announced Thursday it has completed a transaction to acquire Dominion Diamond Mine's 40 per cent share of Diavik Diamond Mine, located about 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.

The transaction was approved by the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta on Tuesday.

In a news release, Rio Tinto said it acquired all remaining Diavik assets held by Dominion, including unsold Diavik production and cash collateral held as security for Diavik's future closure costs. 

"In return, Rio Tinto has released Dominion and its lenders from all outstanding liabilities and obligations to fund the operations or closure of the joint venture," it read.

The transaction comes after Rio Tinto previously indicated it was not interested in any part of Dominion Diamond Mines.

Dominion Diamond Mines filed for insolvency protection in April 2020. 

The two companies then became entangled in a lawsuit over the mine's operating costs.

• The downfall of Dominion Diamond: How the pandemic pushed a key N.W.T. employer to the brink of collapse

A spokesperson from Rio Tinto told CBC News in an email that Diavik "continues to operate as normal."

NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines executive director Tom Hoefer says the timing of the transaction is good for Rio Tinto because the diamond market is rebounding again after a "big COVID hit last year."

"This gives [Rio Tinto] 100 per cent control of the sale of the stones and of course, they're 100 per cent responsible for cleaning up the mine site which is a work in progress as we speak," he said.

The mine is scheduled to close in 2025.

In the release, Rio Tinto's chief executive of minerals Sinead Kaufman was quoted as saying Diavik will "now move forward with certainty" while "making a significant contribution to the Northwest Territories."

The development comes a week before Diavik president and chief operating officer Richard Storrie is scheduled to deliver an update on the Diavik Mine at a virtual geoscience forum organised by the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines, the government of the Northwest Territories and the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency.  

Corrections

• A previous version of this story said Rio Tinto's chief executive Sinead Kaufman is scheduled to deliver an update on Diavik mine at a geoscience forum next week. In fact, Diavik president and chief operating officer Richard Storrie is scheduled to deliver the update.
  Nov 18, 2021 4:11 PM CT