CPS cancels classes Wednesday after 73% of teachers reject in-person learning

Chicago Teachers Union members voted Tuesday night to work remotely only starting Wednesday. CPS called the action illegal and a strike.

By Sarah Karp
Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022
Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez on Tuesday said he was trying to reach a "reasonable agreement" with the union on COVID-19 mitigation measures.

 Manuel Martinez / WBEZ

Chicago Public Schools cancelled classes Wednesday for its more than 300,000 students after the members of the Chicago Teachers Union voted Tuesday night to defy orders to teach in-person.

The union wants teachers to be able to work remotely, but the school district is calling this a “strike” and Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the union’s actions “illegal.”

“Tonight, CTU leadership is compelling its membership to make a decision that will harm hundreds of thousands of Chicago families who rely upon CPS for their daily needs, for their education, for their nutrition, for their safety,” Lightfoot said Tuesday night. “That’s real harm.”

Union leaders said not allowing for virtual teaching amounts to a “lockout.” In a statement, they said the vote to return to remote learning was made with a “heavy heart … The educators of this city want to be in their classrooms with their students. We believe that our city’s classrooms are where our students should be. Regrettably, the Mayor and her CPS leadership have put the safety and vibrancy of our students and their educators in jeopardy.”

Some 73% of the union’s more than 25,000 members Tuesday night voted to revert to remote learning. Under the measure, teachers and staff would stay remote until Jan. 18 or until the city no longer meets metrics for all schools to move to remote learning laid out in an agreement in place last school year — whichever comes first. That metric called for remote learning if, among other things, the positivity rate was above 15%. Currently, it is 23%.

The school buildings will remain open on Wednesday for essential services, such as meals. There will be no classes but CPS said staff will serve students who come.

It’s unclear what will happen after the one-day cancellation of classes. CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the district will communicate with parents about future plans on Wednesday.

The mayor and school district could lock teachers and students out of virtual classrooms, dock pay and file a grievance with the state. But that would likely prolong the fight and keep students out of classes for longer, which both sides say they don’t want. The mayor referenced “Groundhog Day” several times Tuesday night in a nod to a repeat of the late nights spent last year battling over remote learning and an agreement to return to in-person classes.

If the two sides reach a safety agreement before Jan. 18, the union’s elected representatives could vote to bring teachers back sooner.

Lightfoot on Tuesday night also issued a warning, saying the city wouldn’t stand “idly by and accept a unilateral decision [for] a work stoppage,” with a promise to share more as Wednesday unfolded. She urged teachers to come to school on Wednesday. Martinez said teachers who don’t come to work won’t be paid

The showdown puts Chicago Public Schools at the center of a roiling national debate over whether it is wise to continue in-person learning during record high COVID-19 cases. Many teachers don’t believe it is safe, especially when vaccinated people are contracting the virus and an increasing number of children are being hospitalized.

But Lightfoot, Martinez and Chicago’s public health commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady insist that schools are safe. Arwady said Tuesday that most studies show COVID spread in school is typically less than in the community.

She also said that for most children, even those unvaccinated, COVID-19 is no more severe than the flu and that hospitalization rates for children are still relatively low and comparable to what’s seen during the flu season. “And we do not close schools for the flu,” she said.

Everyone, including the Chicago Teachers Union, would like to see more children vaccinated in Chicago.

Lightfoot also stressed that remote learning was difficult for a lot of students, causing high absenteeism and an increase in failure rates. She also said it was a disaster for working families.

“If we pause, what do we say to those parents who can’t afford to hire somebody to come in and watch their kids,” Lightfoot said. “What do we say to those students who are already struggling? Why on Earth, when we don’t need to pause, would we pause and risk falling back into the same old track?”

But Martinez also said he is working to resolve issues with the teachers union.

Chicago Public Schools sent a proposal to the teachers union on Tuesday morning. It included setting a metric that would shut down in-person learning at individual schools due to a COVID outbreak. The CTU has been pushing for such a metric. But as of Tuesday evening, the two proposals were far apart.

The union had proposed moving to remote learning if 20% of staff are in isolation or quarantine. CPS is proposing that a school move to remote learning if 40% or more of a school’s classroom teachers are absent for two consecutive days because of the teachers’ documented COVID-19 cases. When it comes to students, an elementary school would go virtual if 50% of classrooms have more than 50% of students instructed to isolate or quarantine.

Martinez also is promising better quality masks for teachers, increased contact tracing and to allow schools to use a health screener before students enter if they want.

CTU officials said the CPS proposal was the first written offer they’ve received in months. Lightfoot disputed that Tuesday night, saying CPS has offered up multiple proposals in recent months. There is disagreement about whether the school district needs to even negotiate with the union. The spring COVID-19 safety agreement ran through the end of August.

The union is trying to make the case that because there is no new safety agreement, the previous one should hold. But school district officials say this is a vastly different situation: There is no longer an emergency order from the state and vaccines are available.

Meanwhile, some parents had already decided to keep their children at home.

Parent Jennifer Torres of West Ridge on the Far Northwest Side said she didn’t feel it was safe to send her children to school.

“We’re all worried about our kids’ social and emotional health and wish that they were in school,” she said. “They do so much better in person.”

Jennifer Jones said she isn’t happy about the standoff between the union and the school district. She is frustrated they aren’t working together to address unsafe conditions at schools.

“When will the two sides be able to come together and be proponents for the students and the families?” she said.

Reporter Anna Savchenko contributed reporting to this story. Follow her @WBEZeducation and @annasavchenkoo.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter

Longest nurses strike in Massachusetts history ends with concessions contract

Ben Oliver
WSWS.ORG

The historic strike by the hundreds of nurses of St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts came to an end Monday night after nurses voted to ratify a five-year contract with hospital owner Tenet Healthcare.

After 301 days on strike, the longest in the history of the Massachusetts healthcare industry, during which the workers received no strike pay from the Massachusetts Nurses Association, and facing threats of being permanently replaced by management, nurses voted 487 to 9 in favor of the agreement.

On Monday evening, standing in front of the Teamsters Local 170 headquarters, Massachusetts Nurses Association officials delivered news of the ratification to a small crowd of nurses and the media, flanked by members of the Massachusetts Democratic party, Representative Jim McGovern and Worcester mayor Joseph Petty. The union officials paid lip service to the determination of rank-and-file nurses, who rejected multiple sell-out proposals from Tenet over the ten-month period, and praised the deal as a significant gain.

Nurses on the picket line at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts (Credit: MNA Facebook)

In fact, it is nothing of the sort. Nurses will receive a measly 2 percent wage increase in each of the five years of the agreement, far below the current inflation rate of 6.8 percent. The deal also entrenches the hated tiered wage structure.

As for staffing ratios, by far the most important demand for nurses, the deal falls short of the four-to-one nurse-to-patient ratios even targeted by the MNA itself at the start of the strike. Instead, the deal contains a ‘mix’ of 4- and 5-to-1 patients-to-nurse on the majority of units, including 4-to-1 ratios for nurses on cardiac telemetry floors but 5-to-1 for behavioral health nurses. The agreement also contains vague language committing management to curb flexing in nurses’ schedules.

The deal also creates another joint labor-management committee to address workplace violence, and commits management to increase the police presence in the facility.

The strike was the culmination of years of brewing opposition to continuous overwork, even before the pandemic began. Early in the pandemic, when so many hospital staff were furloughed after more profitable elective procedures were canceled, nurses were forced into administrative and menial tasks in addition to their regular work.

Much was made by the union of the fact that the deal allows striking nurses to return to their previous positions, something which Tenet had rejected in the penultimate round of negotiations in August, after it had begun hiring hundreds of replacement nurses. In other words, the MNA’s criteria for a “victory” is a contract which does not allow management to fire striking nurses en masse. However, the deal also allows management to keep on the permanent replacements it had spent $40 million on during the strike.

The status of these scabs within the MNA under the new agreement is not immediately clear, but may be subject to intense factional squabbling. Press reports during the strike suggested that the public workers’ union AFSCME had initially considered incorporating them as part of the local Council 93, before ultimately deciding not to move forward. Richard Avola, named by MassLive.com as one of the scab nurses in contact with AFSCME, later organized a petition, with the help of the right-wing National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, to decertify the MNA. It has been filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

Understaffing has been a near-universal experience throughout the hospital system in the United States, which is once again being overwhelmed by a surge in COVID cases, as the Omicron variant continues to spread at an unprecedented rate. Nurses can expect workloads of five or more patients at a time, and to be frequently ‘flexed’ off by management, only for remaining nurses to see increased assignments with later patient admissions. Chronic understaffing undermines the effectiveness of all hospital workers, including technicians, secretaries and personal care assistants (PCAs), leading to worse patient outcomes, including avoidable deaths.

However, the strike remained isolated for its entire 10-month duration. The MNA did nothing to mobilize its statewide membership of 23,000, and kept several other bargaining units with expired contracts on the job during the strike. Earlier on in the strike, UFCW Local 1445 forced through an agreement to avert a strike by 600 other workers at the hospital, leaving nurses to fight on their own.

The strike took place amid a significant push for strike action by tens of thousands of nurses and other health care workers throughout the United States. More than 32,000 workers at Kaiser Permanente voted to authorize strike action in Southern California last November, and health care workers in Buffalo, New York struck at Mercy Hospital for more than a month. However, all of these struggles were separated from each other and betrayed by the unions—in the case of Kaiser, the strike was called off at the last minute.

In each case, the unions pushed through wage increases of three percent or less, well below inflation and even below the increase in wages for fast food workers last year as a result of the labor shortage. At the same time they did nothing to resolve the issue of staffing, outside of setting inadequate ratios, which management flaunts at will anyway, or adding even more layers of labor-management committees.

Health care workers at St. Vincent and elsewhere must draw the lessons from this experience. For their struggles to be successful, they cannot allow them to remain in the hands of the union bureaucracy. Instead, they must form new organizations, rank-and-file committees, to formulate their own demands, oppose the union's isolation of their fight and appeal to workers across the country and the world for the broadest possible support.

Lowering the Throne of America’s Delusion

The U.S. will not face reality about its foreign policy disasters but rather retreats to fantasy worlds that exist only in its own imagination, writes Michael Brenner.


The Triumph of Pompey. (Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, 1765, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

By Michael Brenner

January 5, 2022


When Pompey the Great made his triumphant return to Rome in 61 BCE from his stunning conquests in the East, a spectacular ceremony was planned. Pageantry on a grandiose scale was designed both to satisfy his outsized ego and to display superior status in his rivalry with Julius Caesar.

The centerpiece was to be a towering throne where a regally costumed Pompey would pass through a Victory arch installed for the occasion. A small problem arose, though, when a rehearsal showed that the throne was 4 feet taller than the height of the arch.

That is an apt metaphor for the uneasy position in which Uncle Sam finds himself these days. He proudly pronounces his enduring greatness from every lectern and altar in the land and pledges to hold his standing as global Number One forever and ever. Yet, America constantly bumps its head against an unaccommodating reality.

Instead of downsizing the monumental juggernaut or applying itself to a delicate raising of the arch, or lowering of the throne, the U.S. makes repeated attempts to fit through in a vain effort to bend the world to its mythology. Evocation of the concussion protocol is in order – but nobody wants to admit that sobering truth.

U.S. engagements in the world over the past 20 years reveal a grim record of failed ventures. Most have been caused by unrealistic goals, blinkered views of the field of action, overweening pride, an ignorance of foreign places and their history, and an unseemly readiness to take complacent comfort in fantasy worlds that exist only in its own imagination. In short, American foreign policy has been misguided – badly and consistently misguided.

The inevitable frustrations and failures owe equally to sheer incompetence. An endless string of errors – diplomatic, military and political – is as difficult for the nation to reconcile with its ‘can-do’ self-image as is the admission of the glaring discrepancy between the belief in the country’s providential mission and its increasingly evident ordinariness.

Vince Lombardi, the legendary American football coach, is often quoted as declaring: “Victory is not the most important thing; it’s the only thing.” That has been an implicit American motto from the beginning. However, in the global arena over the past generation, the U.S. has been setting records for failure and futility.

The Ever-Growing List of Debacles

1). The era began with the success of evicting al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and toppling their Taliban hosts. It’s been downhill ever since, at an accelerating pace – culminating with the crack-up at Kabul airport where the obtuseness and criminal irresponsibility of the Pentagon brass (abetted by the C.I.A.’s habitually faulty intelligence) produced a human and political disaster. The Taliban are back in power thanks to American misbegotten actions in seeking the liquidation of Taliban adherents who had fled their organization and retired to their homes in 2002, and our unbounded reliance on feuding clans of corrupt warlords.

Al-Qaeda evolved from a fanatical jihadist cadre numbering in the double figures to an international conglomerate with franchises in a dozen countries and a free-lance fan club operating in Western capitals. The alleged training camps and indoctrination centers had no more tangible existence than did Saddam Hussein’s WMD.

Attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad under U.S. occupation, 2003. (U.N. Photo/Timoty Sopp)

2). The Afghan fiasco pales compared to the multi-dimensional tragedy created by the Iraq invasion and occupation. The scorecard:
Hundreds of thousands dead, wounded, orphaned.
The fostering of sectarian blood-letting that institutionalizes the country’s political fragmentation.
The massive destruction of economic infrastructure.
The welding of ties between Shi’te majority governments in Iraq with Iran’s clerical regime (our avowed enemy – justified or not).
Torture and abuse in dedicated camps that permanently blemished America’s cultivated image as the champion of human rights.
The spawning of the Islamic state – conceived, organized and recruited in American prison camps – Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Camp Bucca foremost.
The resulting mayhem in Iraq and Syria with deleterious effects across the region.
One effect: the flood of refugees into Europe that fueled the rise of far-right and neo-fascist movements across Europe – disrupting political life in friendly countries and undermining the EU.
In Syria, prioritizing the overthrow of Assad’s regime over the fight against the al-Qaeda affiliates who led the insurrection (a failure that is probably a success for Syria, for America and for the region).

3). Redoubling our unqualified support for Saudi Arabia under the leadership of the cocaine-addicted, megalomaniac Mohammed bin-Salman, otherwise known as the crown prince, thereby allying ourselves with the Sunni side in the historic contest between them and their Shi’a rivals. That led to the disgraceful policy (continuing to this day) of supporting and participating in the unwarranted assault on Yemen’s Houthis which has devastated the poorest country in the region, destroying lives in what amounts to massive ‘war crimes.’ Yet, a State Department official just last month declared Saudi Arabia “a force for progress” in the Middle East. The resulting shredding of what remains of the American pretense of being the custodian of human rights globally has made risible such events as Joe Biden’s League of Democracies summit.

4). Similar suffering and destruction inflicted on Somalia by American meddling and military intervention with no discernible U.S. interest at stake.Tearing up the Iran nuclear deal – and then setting onerous, unacceptable conditions for its resurrection. Steps counter-productive whether the U.S.’s goal is foreclosing any prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon or regime change (Washington’s preferred solution).


Strategic Blindness

An abysmal record unmatched since the infamous performance of the WW I generals on the Western front – equally honored with medals and laurels.

This long litany of failure and incompetence is overshadowed by the strategic blindness of treating Russia and China as implacable enemies. By doing so, Washington has not only obviated any alternative strategy for developing a stable, long-term relationship. It has also cemented a formidable power bloc that is now well able to contest the United States in whatever sphere it wants to cross swords with.

This mosaic of misconceived strategy and rampantly amateurish maneuvers strongly suggests that America’s foreign policy elites are living in a delusional world – dissociated from reality. That raises three basic questions: 1). what are the causes?; 2). why the uniformity of attitudes towards foreign affairs by the political class?; and 3). why is there so little dissent from policies that have produced a steady stream of abject setbacks?

The Roots of Delusion

Crowd at an Obama campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa in May, 2008. (Jill Heemstra/Flickr)

Americans are struggling to draw into focus their exalted image of themselves and reality. They are not doing a very good job of it. The gap is wide and growing. That is due in good measure to what has been happening beyond the country’s shores as well as at home, and over which it lacks the skills and the means to exercise decisive influence.

The U.S. response has been one of avoidance and reaffirmation of thought and deed. It seems to fear that staring at reality squarely, will find reality staring back at it in a discomforting way.

Fading prowess is one of the most difficult things for humans to cope with – whether it be an individual or a nation. By nature, we prize our strength and competence; we dread decline and its intimations of extinction. This is especially so in the United States where for many the individual and the collective persona are inseparable.

No other country tries so relentlessly to live its legend as does the U.S. Today, events are occurring that contradict the American narrative of a nation with a unique destiny. That creates cognitive dissonance.

America’s exalted sense of self is rooted in the belief of being pace-setters and world beaters in every domain. The state of affairs sketched above — marked by impulsive enterprises that underline America’s foredoomed, audacious ambition to gain global dominance — does not represent rational strategic judgment.

It is the national equivalent of ostentatious iron-pumping by bodybuilders worried about losing muscle tone.

Psychologically, reality is avoided with overweening self-confidence coupled to material strength, perpetuating the national myths of a destiny to remain the world’s No. 1 forever, shaping the world system according to American principles and interests.

“No other country tries so relentlessly to live its legend as does the U.S. Today, events are occurring that contradict the American narrative of a nation with a unique destiny.”

President Obama declaimed: “Let me tell you something. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close. Period. It’s not even close. It’s not even close!”

Is this meant as a revelation? What is the message? To whom is it intended? Words that are neither a prelude to action nor inspire others to act – nor even impart information – are just puffs of wind. As such, they are yet another avoidance device – a flight from reality.

The tension associated with such a nation encountering objective reality does not force heightened self-awareness, nor a change in behavior, when there is no opposition. Today, there is no foreign policy debate whatsoever.

In addition, America’s vassals in Europe and elsewhere have a national interest in preserving the warped American view of the world (Israel and Poland, for instance) or have been so denatured over the decades that they are incapable of doing anything other than follow Washington obediently – despite staring at a potentially fatal abyss with China and Russia.

Reality testing, in these circumstances, leads to conformity in viewing the world through the shared delusional prism – rather than a potential corrective.

An Insecure Americanism

Americanism provides a Unified Field Theory of self-identity, collective enterprise, and the Republic’s enduring meaning. When one element is felt to be in jeopardy, the integrity of the whole edifice becomes vulnerable. In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive. Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality.

There is a muted reflection of this strained condition in the evident truth that Americans have become an insecure people. They grow increasingly anxious about who they are, what they are worth and what life will be like down the road.

This is an individual and collective phenomenon. They are related insofar as self-identity and self-esteem are bound up with the civic religion of Americanism. To a considerable degree, it’s been like this since the very beginning.

A country that was “born against history” had no past to define and shape the present. A country that was born against tradition had no rooted and common sense of meaning and value that cut deeply into the national psyche. A country that was born against inherited place and position left each individual at once free to acquire status and obliged to do so for insignia of rank were few.

That changed over the course of the 20th century. Within just a few decades, America became a great world power, a superpower, a champion of democracy and freedom and the defender of the West against Soviet-led communism. It was the “heroic” century which culminated in the triumph of victory in the Cold War.

After the collapse of Communism, the United States ruled the roost. In its own eyes, this unique hyper-power had seen history confirm its anointed role as both model and agent for the construction of a better world. American “exceptionalism” now meant emulation of America – pure and simple.

That confirmation should have strengthened the belief in the pageant of progress. It should have given a boost to self-esteem. It should have compensated for the creeping insecurities associated with socio-economic-cultural changes within the United States. That has not proven to be the case.

Strenuous displays of patriotism have a contrived cast to them. They suggest strained efforts to overcome doubt more than they do genuine pride and conviction. National self-confidence is not demonstrated by gigantic flags seen everywhere from used car lots to hot sheet motels, the ubiquitous lapel pin, the loud and gaudy demonstrations of chauvinism at sporting matches, the bombast of shock jockeys, or the belittling and condescending treatment of other peoples.

Rather, those are sure signs of weakness, doubt and insecurity. The compulsive militarization of foreign relations fits the pattern; the same psychology is at work. A society that sees reality through the screen of violent video games is juvenile and immature.

A Dissociated State of Mind

Stage-managed Bush victory speech dissociated from reality of disaster in Iraq. (Kipp Teague/Fliickr/cropped/2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

America is close to a condition that approximates what the psychologists call “dissociation.” It is marked by an inability to see and to accept actualities as they are for deep seated emotional reasons.

It is defined as:


“Dissociation … is any of a wide array of experiences, ranging from a mild emotional detachment from the immediate surroundings, to a more severe disconnection from physical and emotional experiences. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality, rather than a loss of reality as in psychosis. … Dissociation is commonly displayed on a continuum. In mild cases, dissociation can be regarded as a coping mechanism or defense mechanism in seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress – including … conflict.”

Conflicts of purpose, conflict of aims, conflict of ideas, conflict between idealized reality and actual truth. Dissociative disorders are sometimes triggered by trauma (9/11?).

This psychological appraisal of the American body politic does not explain adequately, however, either the exaggerated response to a single (if singular) event confronting it with reality, or the intensity and acuteness of the delusional thinking in the absence of evidence from the real world. The objective truth is overwhelmed by the subjective virtual truths that shape their perception of reality.

What do these developments foretell for the United States’ relations with the rest of the world? The most obvious and important implication is that Americans will be ever more dependent on maintaining that sense of exceptionalism and superiority that is the foundation of their national personality.

A fragile psyche, weak in self-esteem and prowess, is sensitive to signs of its decline or ordinariness. Hence, the obsession with curbing China. Hence, the country will continue to exert itself energetically on the global stage rather than become progressively more selective in its engagements and choice of methods for fulfilling them.

Continuity is a lot easier than reorientation. It doesn’t demand fresh thinking and different skills. Quite frankly, today, the caliber of high and mid-level personnel would have to be upgraded. Less amateurism and careerism, more experience and sophisticated knowledge.

Equally, a U.S. president would have to seek out people with a different mindset. That is to say, a more nuanced view of the world, more acute awareness of other countries’ political culture and leadership, and a talent for dealing with other states on a basis other than the assumption of American superiority and prerogative.

Attempts to dictate the internal affairs of foreign countries would become the rare exception rather than the norm. Moreover, it is necessary to loosen the hold on the nation’s mind of dogmatic ideas as deeply rooted in the American experience as they are out of synch with today’s world.

All of this is a tall order. It appears to be beyond America.

Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. mbren@pitt.edu

THE NEW PROTOCOLS OF ELDERS OF SION
Major Utah GOP donor says 'the Jews' are using COVID-19 vaccines to 'euthanize the American people'

Matthew Chapman
January 04, 2022

Vaccination

On Tuesday, Deseret News reported that Dave Bateman, the cofounder of tech company Entrata and a major financial backer of the Republican Party, mass-emailed several tech executives and elected officials claiming that COVID-19 vaccines are a Jewish plot to depopulate the world.

“I write this email knowing that many of you will think I’m crazy after reading it,” wrote Bateman. “I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people. It’s obvious now. It’s undeniable, yet no one is doing anything. Everyone is discounting their own judgement and dismissing their intuition. I believe the Jews are behind this.”

Bateman didn't stop there, expounding on his ideas of how the Pope is a Jewish agent and there is a Jewish plot to create a one world government.

“For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top,” Bateman continued. “It happened in 2013 with Pope Francis. I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule. I know, it sounds bonkers. No one is reporting on it, but the Hasidic Jews in the US instituted a law for their people that they are not to be vaccinated for any reason.”

According to the report, the email has been met with outrage from other Utah tech figures, with Elizabeth Converse of Silicon Slopes Commons stating, "This behavior and sentiment is despicable and does not reflect the attitudes of the Utah tech industry." And Adam Edmunds, the CEO of Entrata, said in statement that "We at Entrata firmly condemn antisemitism in any and all forms" and that Bateman has been removed from the board of directors

Pandemics have triggered anti-Semitic conspiracy theories throughout history, with the Black Death in Europe triggering a wave of Jewish pogroms over the bizarre belief Jews were poisoning wells. Even today, opponents of COVID-19 containment measures have been accused of anti-Semitic behavior, including using yellow Nazi patches to protest mask and vaccine rules.

JESUIT CONSPIRACY THEORY TOO

GOP Donor Claims Pope Francis Is Jewish Agent Installed to Distribute Vaccine

BY JUSTIN KLAWANS ON 1/4/22

A former Utah tech executive and prominent GOP donor said Tuesday that he believed Pope Francis was secretly a Jewish agent installed to help distribute the COVID-19 vaccine around the world in an effort to create "totalitarian rule."

Dave Bateman, co-founder of property management software brand Entrata, stated these beliefs in a mass email that was sent to numerous people within his company, as well as state officials and other tech moguls. This was first reported by the Deseret News, which was able to obtain a copy of Bateman's rant containing a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

"I write this email knowing that many of you will think I'm crazy after reading it," Bateman began. "I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people. It's obvious now. It's undeniable, yet no one is doing anything. Everyone is discounting their own judgment and dismissing their intuition. I believe the Jews are behind this."

The email then went on to describe how Bateman believed, without evidence, that Pope Francis was purposefully installed in his position by Jewish religious leaders in an effort to take over the Catholic Church.

"For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top," the email stated. "It happened in 2013 with Pope Francis. I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule."

A prominent GOP backer and tech mogul in Utah has resigned from his position following an email filled with antisemitic conspiracy theories. Among these theories was that Pope Francis was a secret Jewish agent installed to bring about a single world order through the use of vaccines. 
Bateman went on to admit that his theory was farfetched, stating "I know, it sounds bonkers."

"No one is reporting on it, but the Hasidic Jews in the US instituted a law for their people that they are not to be vaccinated for any reason."

Although some Hasidic Jews, who tend to be extremely religious, have been hesitant to receive the COVID vaccine, no such law against vaccines is known to exist. Additionally, Chabad, one of the largest Hasidic movements, states on its website that "guarding your own health doesn't only make sense, it's actually a mitzvah. That means that even if you don't want to do it, for whatever reason, you are still obligated to do so."

In the aftermath of the email, Bateman saw significant backlash from notable names across Utah.

Within hours, he had resigned from his position at Entrata and stepped down from its board of directors, according to a statement from the company's CEO, Adam Edmunds, who stated that "Dave is no longer a member of the board, effective immediately."

An additional statement posted by Edmunds on Twitter stated that Bateman's opinions "do not reflect the views or values at Entrata, the executive team, board of directors, or investors."

"We at Entrata firmly condemn antisemitism in any and all forms."

Bateman is perhaps most well known as a significant donor to Utah's Republican Party, and calls came from other political entities for the GOP to condemn the email, including the Utah Democrats and the United Utah Party. The Democrats additionally stated that the Republican Party should "return the $55,000 of donations that Entrata has directly given the party since 2017."

The United Utah Party also called for the GOP to officially sever ties with Bateman. "Utah's GOP is tied at the hip with Mr. Bateman, which means they have an ethical responsibility to disavow the poisonous rhetoric being spewed by their most prominent donor," the party said in an email.


"Anti-Semitism should be offensive to all decent people, regardless of party affiliation."

Newsweek has reached out to the Utah Republican Party for comment.

The scary truth about the media's reaction to right-wing authoritarianism

John Stoehr
January 04, 2022

Moon Township Trump rally (MSNBC)

It’s conventional wisdom among newspaper reporters that we should let readers decide. Don’t come to moral conclusions. Just present the facts neutrally, objectively. Leave the rest to the opinion pages.

But that conventional wisdom is running into trouble, namely a period in political history in which normal isn’t normal anymore. Indeed, the more we cling to the conventional wisdom – to these normal reporting conventions – the more harm we do to the people we claim to serve.

That paradox is put into sharp relief by coverage of the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. Its one-year anniversary is Thursday. The press corps had a year for soul-searching, but it’s still treating the event – still treating treason – as if there are two sides. The result is elevating lies to the level of truth, making everything seem as good or bad as everything else, and giving the impression that nothing matters.

I talked about this and more with Mark Jacob. He spent 41 years in the newspapers, mostly in Chicago. He’s the former Sunday editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune. Since retiring, he’s reinvented himself as the sharpest press critic on social media. If anyone knows how journalism should be done, it’s Mark. I began by asking if the press corps has learned anything.


Mark Jacob: They're learning slowly, too slowly. You see more instances of people saying flat-out that the Republican Party is an anti-democratic movement, which has been obvious for years. Of course, it's wrong to paint the Washington press corps with one brush, because some have been far better than others.

The Times editorial board likened the GOP to “authoritarian movements the world over.” Is that the progress you see?

Yes, that's a good example. But let's remember the Times was afraid to call Donald Trump a liar in 2015. There's really no question that the timidity and lack of truth-telling by major news outlets is partly responsible for the perilous state we're in today. I think many Washington journalists became very comfortable with the “stenographic school of journalism” and didn't want to give it up. If they quoted the Democrats and Republicans in equal numbers and acted like their comments were equally valid, they could stake out a comfortable position as "objective" and the small-talk at the cocktail parties would remain congenial.

Reporting both sides of cancer in other words.

Yep. "Melanoma might have a point there." Even when the DC news media was fact-checking Republican lies, it would do it in a tidy and ineffective manner. Often news stories would say what Trump said and then would say what the truth was. But they wouldn't start out with a direct statement saying what the truth was and that Trump was lying about it. In effect, they were laying out the facts but requiring the readers and viewers to do the math. This was a practice that worked to the benefit of lying propagandists.

You can call it “objective.” Or you could call it “irresponsible.” Can you explain to non-news people like us why it's the latter?

First, I think the news media have been misled in a quest for some mythical version of objectivity. Deciding to conduct an interview or write a story is making a value judgment. For way too long, political journalists have thought objectivity meant letting both sides have their say, even when they knew one side was lying more than the other side. They were being "objective," but they weren't being fair to their customers, who depended on them to sort out what was true.

A lot of current political reporting is a dereliction of duty. Editors and reporters should never let a lie get into their publications without it being aggressively called out as a lie. Sad to say, a lot of American political journalism has been defensive – designed to prevent the editors and reporters from getting angry phone calls from one side or the other. But of course, John, we both know that if you don't get any angry phone calls, that's a sign that you're not doing your job.

I don't think most consumers of national political reporting know how bad it is, morally and practically, compared to their hometown papers. There are just different standards in each.

Well, local political lying is often less sophisticated than national political lying. National Republicans are masters of the lie. I think a big mistake the news media have made is giving the American people too much credit. I don't mean that as an insult. I mean it as a sad fact.

When the news media carefully avoided calling Donald Trump a liar and just laid out the facts, they were assuming, or at least hoping, that the public could weigh the evidence and figure out that Trump was lying.

But large segments of the public didn't reach that conclusion. Perhaps the most important lesson of this era is propaganda works.

When the right wing repeats a lie enough times, many people believe it. Most of the news media and the Democratic Party think that if they say something once or twice, everybody gets it and they can move on. That's obviously wrong. It's why news media are ineffective and Democratic messaging gets mugged by Republican messaging. When you say the truth twice and someone else says a lie 1,000 times, it's just human nature to think the lie might be true.

One of the founding principles of the Editorial Board is that most people most of the time have something better to do than pay attention to politics. It's our responsibility to tell them what they need to know. That requires, even demands, that we be judicious.

I'm so glad you said that. I don't think everyone needs to be a political nerd like I am to be a good American. There's an elitism in politics and media that tends to exclude people who are too busy registering their kids for soccer to find the time to read a Washington Post op-ed.

The real challenge for people who want to prevent a radical fascist minority from taking over this country is to get people who "don't care about politics" to realize they need to take actions now — register to vote, give money and time to good candidates — if they don't want to see their kids grow up in a dictatorship.

In one of your recent posts, you address a thorny question among news people. What counts as newsworthy? Usually, it's what’s not normal. That judgment privileges the status quo, which is a problem for another day, but it also creates a rationale for ignoring lies.

When the Republicans flood the zone with lies, making them normal, they’re not news anymore. What can we in the craft? My two cents: stop troubling yourself with phony rules. But that's just me.

We definitely need new definitions of newsworthiness. We're living in unprecedented times, with a threat to our democracy that hasn't been this serious in a century and a half. Yet you hear people on cable news citing midterm election trends from decades past as if they're discussing the laws of gravity. Nothing is normal now.

What we need to do as a profession is identify the most admirable American values – opportunity, fairness, openness to new cultures, for example – and identify actions that most deviate from those values. Dramatic deviations from Americanism are newsworthy.

In your question, you're referring to something I call "ethics norming," which is the tendency to readjust the definition of normality based on recent events, even if recent events have been horrific.

This benefits people doing horrible things. I, for one, think that even if cannibals have devoured a classroom of children for three straight days, it's still news when it happens for a fourth day.

The Republicans have a right-wing media apparatus. Do the Democrats need their own? Would that benefit democracy?

The problem with Fox News and other propaganda outfits isn't that they speak from a Judeo-Christian view or oppose single-payer health care or want low taxes. The problem is they are systematically lying.

Another problem is that they are putting viewers in a cult-like cocoon from which they distrust everything. Their viewers are brainwashed.

It would be good to see more news organizations producing factual news from a variety of viewpoints, including from the left. As I said, objectivity is a myth. Journalists can lead with their values and still remain faithful to facts. A few organizations are doing that, such as Courier Newsroom. I'm on its advisory board. But they're way outnumbered and out-funded by the industry of untruth on the right.

I might agree with “leading with their values” if the press corps were not populated by the children of the children of the children of elites whose principal value is social status. Most seem indifferent to democracy's fall on account of being insulated from democracy's fall.

That's the scary thing – that some people in journalism today might be just fine under a dictatorship. You'd like to think they would be so vocal in their defense of democratic values that they'd be arrested if a totalitarian regime took over, not invited to an annual dinner.

When you talk about elitism, it reminds me that a big task for both journalists and pro-democracy advocates is to make it clear to regular citizens that their lives would be far worse under a totalitarian system -- that dictatorships are a way that the elite steals from the public.

This might be the most important message to get across -- that dictatorship will make everything worse for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Cheating and corruption are built into dictatorship. Opportunity dies for the talented but unconnected.

Bread and Roses: Orwell's Sumptuous Resistance

The grave of George Orwell - born Eric Blair - is marked by his beloved roses in the village of Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire. Photo by Mark Hodson/Alamy

ABBY ZIMET

January 2, 2022

At the start of a fraught new year - "Every day is Jan. 6 now" - we celebrate the act of faith and hope that are the enduring, seemingly improbable roses planted decades ago by George Orwell, that staunch, prophetic Socialist who nonetheless saw beauty as a citadel against the forces of totalitarianism we now face. In a new book - equal parts discursive biography, natural history of gardening and capitalist critique - Rebecca Solnit re-imagines the bleak author of 1984 through the prism of his love for gardening, finding an Orwell who embraced the link between our personal, political and natural worlds, cherished “the intangible, ordinary pleasures," and insisted, "Beauty is meaningless until it is shared." "In 1936, a man born Eric Blair, who had rechristened himself George Orwell, planted roses," she begins Orwell's Roses, describing a cottage in the small English village of Wallington where Orwell and his wife Eileen moved that spring; during their stay, they kept hens and goats, grew fruit and vegetables, and, she found over 80 years later, nurtured at least two rose bushes that still survive today. "What did this great prophet of totalitarianism - what the hell was he doing planting roses?" Solnit wonders. She goes on to explore the many other things that gave Orwell pleasure, even within his pessimistic political vision - his love of toads, the English countryside, a good cup of tea, "the surface of the earth" - suggesting we, too, find joy alongside "the important work we're here to do": "People think of politics as always eating your spinach, when often it's eating cream puffs and champagne."

In her habitually meandering way, Solnit's book weaves a tapestry that roves from roses to war, capitalism, Stalinism, climate change. She acknowledges the colonial history of much of what Orwell, a product of his era, loved, and travels to Colombia - which raises 80% of the roses sold in the U.S. - to visit its brutal, exploitative, "invisible factories of visible pleasure." She revisits Orwell's work to unearth a writer whose oft-unseen perspectives "counterbalance his cold eye on political monstrosity,” whose grimmest writings reveal beauty and joy. Re-reading 1984, she finds Winston Smith creates "a self that can resist" through "a world of sensory perception (to) counter the propaganda and lies"; the first thing he does is pull out "this beautiful book with luscious creamy paper" and start writing on it, relishing "the sheer pleasure of the texture of the paper." "It gave me a different Orwell," she says. "The writing had shown that all along, but we hadn't seen it." Thus does Orwell emerge as an "impeccable example" of the melding of personal and political lives: A man with a stubborn, delighted, abiding belief in "the joy available in the here and now"; who called planting a tree "a gift (to) posterity that (can) far outlive (any) other actions, good or evil"; who said, “Outside my work, the thing I care most about is gardening" - for, like the rest of us, its "beauty for today, hope for tomorrow." Orwell died at 46 of tuberculosis; he asked that roses be planted on his grave, and so they were. Like him, may we all claim both bread and roses. And may a new year bring kindness, resilience, good health, peace of mind, and many indictments.

"If you can feel that staying human is worthwhile, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them." - George Orwell



ABBY ZIMET

Abby has written CD's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.

Making a Killing: The US Opioid Epidemic

Those responsible for the opioid-related deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans are yet to be held accountable.


Tombstones honoring the victims of the overdose crisis seen planted outside the courthouse. Members of P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), Truth Pharm, and a coalition of survivors and advocacy groups working in response to the overdose crisis held a demonstration outside of The United States Bankruptcy Court in White Plains to call out the United States justice system for allowing the billionaire Sackler Family to walk away unscathed after igniting one of the worst public health care scandals in the history of the nation. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ

January 3, 2022 

by Al-Jazeera English

The other day in Mexico, I fell into conversation with an older gentleman from Virginia who had recently lost a brother to cancer. Choking up as he recalled how, as a child, his brother would approach parents on the street to compliment them on the beauty of their offspring, the gentleman added that cancer had not been his brother's only affliction. He had also, he said, been a victim of "the other epidemic"—meaning the opioid crisis that caused some 500,000 overdose deaths in the United States between 1999 and 2019, while destroying countless more lives through addiction.

The company's deflection of culpability onto the very victims of its predatory business model is furthermore symptomatic of a domestic neoliberal landscape in which poor individuals are blamed for their failure to succeed in the society that is effectively killing them.

The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated the overdose phenomenon, with deaths in the US now surpassing 100,000 per year. Approximately 75 percent of these are attributed to opioids—a class of drugs that includes heroin, synthetic fentanyl, and prescription painkillers like oxycodone.

A December op-ed in the New York Times, titled "Opioids Feel Like Love. That's Why They're Deadly in Tough Times", explains that such drugs "mimic the neurotransmitters that are responsible for making social connection comforting—tying parent to child, lover to beloved".

The article emphasises that isolation and loneliness often fuel addiction, and that a quadrupling of overdose death rates in the US over the past several decades has occurred in tandem with an increase in social isolation. A 2018 survey, for example, "found that only about half of participants felt that they had someone to turn to all or most of the time."

It is hardly surprising, then, that coronavirus stay-at-home protocols and social distancing measures would prompt many Americans to seek substitutes for human contact and affection—not that US society was ever very, um, loving.

To be sure, life can get pretty lonely in a country that prefers to spend trillions on war rather than ensuring that its citizens have adequate access to basic rights like healthcare—and where a depraved capitalist system actively thwarts inter-human solidarity in the interest of maintaining a tyranny of the elite.

Speaking of war, the figure of half a million—the number of Americans killed by opioid overdoses over two decades—happens to be the same as the number of Iraqi children reportedly killed by US sanctions alone as of 1996. When confronted with this statistic at the time, then-US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright affirmed that "we think the price is worth it", which pretty much perfectly encapsulates capitalism's lethal logic.

So, too, does the case of Purdue Pharma—manufacturer of the massively addictive prescription painkiller OxyContin—owned by the billionaire Sackler family. As was noted in a December 2020 U.S. congressional hearing on the role of Purdue and the Sacklers in the opioid epidemic, "Purdue targeted high-volume prescribers to boost sales of OxyContin, ignored and worked around safeguards intended to reduce prescription opioid misuse, and promoted false narratives about their products to steer patients away from safer alternatives and deflect blame toward people struggling with addiction."

Indeed, former Purdue executive Richard Sackler once stated in an email that "abusers" of OxyContin (a brand of oxycodone) were "the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals"—a charming assessment, no doubt, from the person overseeing the reckless flooding of US communities with dangerously addictive substances.

Purdue Pharma was dissolved in 2021 in a settlement that will render the Sacklers slightly lesser billionaires, a predictable form of "justice" in a country where poor people of colour are regularly sentenced to life in prison or forced to endure other, similarly life-shattering punishments for minor drug-related offences. The scene becomes all the more sickening when one considers that persons addicted to OxyContin often turn to heavily criminalised drugs like heroin when the so-called "legal" ones are not available.

During the aforementioned US congressional hearing, one state representative offered his straightforward opinion to David Sackler, a former member of the board of directors of Purdue Pharma: "I'm not sure that I'm aware of any family in America that's more evil than yours".

But while the Sacklers have been singled out for allegedly uniquely nefarious machinations, Purdue Pharma was merely part and parcel of the American way: making a killing from killing. Just ask the arms industry.

The company's deflection of culpability onto the very victims of its predatory business model is furthermore symptomatic of a domestic neoliberal landscape in which poor individuals are blamed for their failure to succeed in the society that is effectively killing them—and making them foot the bill for the honour.

Other US corporate actors have also faced litigation for their contributions to the opioid epidemic. In November, a federal jury in Ohio found that CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart—three of the country's most prominent pharmacy chains—had been complicit in creating a "public nuisance." And yet this is still a rather banal indictment in a criminally carceral nation where government-corporate collusion in a profitable and lethal addiction to capitalism has produced a system that is thoroughly sick.

And as long as opioids "feel like love" in an otherwise loveless panorama, there is no end in sight to the crisis.

© 2021 Al-Jazeera English



BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ

Belén Fernández is the author of "Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World" and "The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work." She is a member of the Jacobin Magazine editorial board, and her articles have appeared in the London Review of Books blog, Al Akhbar English and many other publications.

Psychopathic CEOs are quite literally committing crimes against the American people

Thom Hartmann, Independent Media Institute
January 04, 2022

Wildfire In Colorado (AFP)

Most recently, 100 mph winds swept grass-fires through Colorado, leaving thousands homeless. It was 116 degrees here in Portland last summer, as wildfires and drought ravage the West. The Gulf Coast, South and Eastern Seaboard are now annually torn apart by superstorms, while the Midwest faces mile-wide tornadoes never before seen with this ferocity and frequency.

Climate change has gone from the theoretical to slapping us in the face.

From drought and fires that killed hundreds in California, to massive tornadoes ripping apart Kentucky, to sea-level rise and flooding cities, America is being hammered and Americans are dying. Right now.

And it’s expensive. Individual families (and their insurance companies) are bearing the brunt of the burden right now, but as climate disasters continue to scale up it’s going to not only cost more and more American homes and lives, it’s also already costing the country hundreds of billions — soon to be trillions — every year.

So, who’s going to pay for this?

If an arsonist lit your house on fire, in addition to sending him to jail you could also sue his estate for damages.

In this case, we have corporations and individuals who intentionally lied to us for half a century about the impact of their fossil fuels on global warming just to enrich themselves.

Now they’re standing back with their hands in their pockets shrugging and whistling while people die and our homes are frozen, flooded or destroyed by tornadoes.


Those who perpetrated the lies that led to this must be held to account, both financially and with the force of criminal law.

On top of that, now that climate change is here and walloping us, we must harden our nation’s infrastructure and relocate both vulnerable people and those who lost their homes and communities to wild weather, drought, and floods.

Shouldn’t the fossil fuel companies and the millionaires and billionaires they’ve created pick up that bill, too?

We’ve been having a similar conversation around other 20th century corporate crime for decades, and generally we’ve screwed it up.

America is pock-marked with mansions and estates owned by families enjoying multi-generational wealth that came from their ancestors or parents lying to the American government and the public in ways that killed people.

For example, in 1943 Samac Laboratory told the nation’s largest asbestos producer, Johns-Manville, that asbestos exposure definitely and predictably caused the excruciatingly painful and always-fatal lung cancer called mesothelioma. The company’s executives made the corporate decision to cover the science up and then lied about it to their employees, customers and the government for two generations.

That was eight years before my father dropped out of college in 1950 and went to work in a Grand Rapids steel mill because Mom got pregnant with me; he was surrounded every day with a cloud of asbestos dust that his bosses told him was “safe.” Dad died of mesothelioma in 2006.

One of the best known of the many fabulously rich heirs to the Manville fortune was Tommy Manville, who became famous for marrying eleven blonde 20-something showgirls thirteen times. Seriously. The first paragraph of his obituary in The New York Times reads: “Tommy Manville, who took 11 wives in 13 marriages and was heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune, died of a heart attack yesterday at his estate in Chappaqua, N.Y. He was 73 years old.”

To this day, no asbestos fortunes have been attached and none of the criminal liars went to prison: we missed that opportunity a generation ago.

Similarly, thousands of million-dollar estates across our country are owned by heirs or current executives of the tobacco industry, which also knew their product killed Americans and lied to us. We missed that chance to do right, too: none of these wealthy executives have ever gone to prison, even though their product continues to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

When it finally came out a few years ago that Roundup causes cancer, none of the multimillionaire heirs to the Monsanto fortune lost their mansions and none of Monsanto’s executives went to jail.

Neither did the owners of chemical companies that left behind deadly Superfund sites like the one that caused birth defects and stillbirths at Love Canal; others do so to this day across the nation.

When it came out that the Sackler family decided to lie that their new Oxycontin drug was less addictive than normal opioids they walked away with billions; none have seen the inside of a jail cell for even an hour.

Owners and operators of mining operations across the country lied to communities for generations that they’d clean up their poisonous waste: instead, they routinely bankrupt their companies and walk away with millions, leaving behind moonscape-like devastation.

Even banksters like “Foreclosure King” Steve Mnuchin, who reveled in “earning” around $200 million by throwing over 36,000 of California families out of their homes while his Wall Street buddies stole trillions of dollars, continues to troll us with his twitter pontifications like he’s some kind of elder statesman worthy of our respect.

As Honoré de Balzac noted in 1834 (in slightly less compressed language), “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime”:

Americans are quick to forget about the families of the thousands of small businessmen John D. Rockefeller destroyed before Congress outlawed and Teddy Roosevelt broke up his predatory monopoly.

Seven tobacco CEOs lied to Congress and took home millions in bonuses; their families are still morbidly rich and their children and grandchildren are the toast of high society.
Defense contractors take over half of our Pentagon budget and steal billions from us every year; their mansions, complete with servants’ quarters and riding stables, still ring Washington, DC. and we literally have never been able to successfully audit them.

Historically, the only corporate criminals we hold to account are those who rip off rich people: Ken Lay, for example, defrauding his Enron investors, and Bernie Madoff scammed millions from Wall Street oligarchs.

On the other hand, if you can make billions exploiting, poisoning, misinforming, or ripping off working-class Americans you’re generally guaranteed a soft landing.

We have to change the rules.

We’re now confronted with a crisis that goes far beyond this routine orgy of corrupted capitalism: climate change isn’t just killing a few Americans; it’s threatening civilization itself and perhaps even the future of the human race.

Fossil fuel companies have known for two generations that their products would at the least disrupt society and at worst produce a great extinction on the order of what killed off the dinosaurs.

Not only did they cover it up: they actively funded climate change “disinformation” campaigns with front groups and bought-off scientists openly lying in the press and before Congress.

And now, like with asbestos, tobacco, and dozens of other known-as-deadly products, the bill is coming due.

In the face of this fossil-fueled climate change we need immediate and expensive action: America needs to harden its infrastructure, and fast.

If high-tension power lines had been buried underground in California and Colorado, for example, the worst of the wildfires would have been avoided, as they were caused by wind-downed wires.

Cities from Miami to New York are regularly crippled by sea-level-rise flooding and therefore must spend hundreds of billions on levees, pumps and reconfiguring water, power, mass transit, and sewage systems.

So many American homes have been destroyed by global-warming-worsened fires and freezes (see: “Texas”) that building materials have exploded in price and fireproof “intumescent” house paint is the hot new product.

The bad guys should be paying for this. We’ve certainly established a legal framework for it.

Before my dad died, he joined an asbestos lawsuit that, after lawyer fees, got his estate around $40,000 which eased life for my mom. Similarly, states have received compensation from tobacco companies for their costs treating lung cancers and the federal government steps in to remediate old mines and superfund sites.

While the majority of people injured by the kind of raw capitalism we practice in this country never see a penny, there is precedent for holding lying industries responsible for the harms they intentionally and knowingly cause.

At the very least, this could take the form of a carbon tax, with the revenue going to reimburse victims and harden our infrastructure.

But given how egregious these companies have behaved — and how many are still, to this day, funding climate denial and lobbying against green energy — Congress should extract restitution and recompense from the companies and punish the psychopathic executives who oversaw their campaigns of deadly lies.

This goes way beyond garden variety crime, even dwarfing the damage caused by asbestos or tobacco. These are quite literally crimes against the American people and crimes against our larger humanity.

It’s time to hold the perpetrators to account and make them pay.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare and more than 30+ other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.

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

GODFEARING COVID
Ron Johnson escalates attack on vaccines: 'Why do we think that we can create something better than God?'

David Edwards
January 04, 2022

Ron Johnson speaks to CNN (screen grab)

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) this week doubled down on his campaign to promote the so-called "natural immunity" that occurs after one has been infected by Covid-19.

During an interview with WCPT, Johnson said that vaccine scientists are wrong to think that they "can create something better than God."

The Wisconsin Republican recalled that he had tested positive for Covid-19 last year while being free of symptoms.

"Why would we just automatically assume that our natural immunity is going to be awful?" he ranted. "You would think the default position would be, if you've already had it, you ought to be pretty well protected. Why do we assume that the body's natural immune system isn't the marvel that it really is?"

"Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combatting disease?" the senator added. "There are certain things we have to do, but we have just made so many assumptions, and it's all pointed toward everybody getting a vaccine."

Public health experts recommended vaccinations for most people regardless of previous Covid-19 infections.

Listen to the audio clip below.

Navy captain becomes 1st woman to command US nuclear carrier
Jan 4, 2022



This aerial photo released by the U.S. Navy shows the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) as it deploys from San Diego on Monday, Jan. 3, 2022. The USS Abraham Lincoln deployed this week from San Diego under the command of Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, the first woman to lead a nuclear carrier in U.S. Navy history.
Mass Communication Spc. 1st Class Robert S. Price - hogp, U.S. Navy

In this photo released by the U.S. Navy, Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, left, incoming commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), reads her orders during a change of command ceremony held on the flight deck in San Diego, Calif., on Aug. 19, 2021. Capt. Walt "Sarge" Slaughter, right, successfully completed his 26 month tour as commanding officer during which Abraham Lincoln completed a 10-month combat deployment, the largest carrier work package ever completed in San Diego, and returned to sea in preparation for an upcoming deployment amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Slaughter was relieved by Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt. The USS Abraham Lincoln deployed Monday, Jan. 3, 2022, from San Diego under the command of Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, the first woman to lead a nuclear carrier in U.S. Navy history.
Mass Communication Spc. 3rd Class Jeremiah Bartelt - hogp, U.S. Navy

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) deploys from San Diego, Calif., on Jan. 3, 2022. US Navy Photo

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The USS Abraham Lincoln deployed this week from San Diego under the command of Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, the first woman to lead a nuclear carrier in U.S. Navy history.

Bauernschmidt, who previously served as the Abraham Lincoln's executive officer from 2016 to 2019, took over command from Capt. Walt Slaughter during a ceremony last August, CBS 8 in San Diego reported.

The carrier deployed Monday from Naval Air Station North Island as part of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group.

“There is no more humbling sense of responsibility than to know you are entrusted with the care of the people who have chosen to protect our nation,” Bauernschmidt said, according to a Navy news release. “Thank you, Capt. Slaughter, for turning over the finest ship in the fleet.”

Bauernschmidt previously served as the commanding officer of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 70 and the amphibious transport dock San Diego.

She has completed more than 3,000 flight hours during her career, the news station reported.

The Abraham Lincoln completed its maintenance period in April, following a 294-day, around-the-world deployment.

The Carrier Strike Group is led by the command staff of Carrier Strike Group 3 and consists of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, Carrier Air Wing 9, the guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay and the guided-missile destroyers of Destroyer Squadron 21 — USS Fitzgerald, USS Gridley, USS Sampson and USS Spruance.

The strike group is deploying with what the Navy is touting as its “most advanced air wing” and is heading to the Indo-Pacific region.

The first women to serve in the Navy were nurses in the early 20th century and the first large-scale enlistment of women came during World War II, according to an official military history website. The Navy designated the first woman as an aviator in 1974 and women were first assigned to a combat ship, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1994.

1st woman to command USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides

By The Associated Press

Tue., Jan. 4, 2022

BOSTON (AP) — A woman is taking over as the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, for the first time in the warship’s 224-year history, the Navy announced Tuesday.

Cmdr. Billie J. Farrell is scheduled to assume command at an on-board ceremony Jan. 21. She will relieve Cmdr. John Benda, who has led the ship’s crew since February 2020.

“I am honored to have the privilege to soon command this iconic warship that dates back to the roots of both our nation and our Navy and to have been afforded the amazing opportunity to serve as U.S.S. Constitution’s first female commanding officer in her 224 years,” Farrell said in a statement.

Farrell is a native of Paducah, Kentucky, a 2004 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and most recently served as the executive officer aboard U.S.S. Vicksburg, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, according to her Navy biography.

“I hope to strengthen the legacy of U.S.S. Constitution through preservation, promotion, and protection by telling her story and connecting it to the rich heritage of the United States Navy and the warships serving in the fleet today,“ she said.

The Constitution, based at Boston’s Charlestown Navy Yard, is the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat. It played a crucial role in the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812 and defended sea lanes from 1797 until 1855. The ship was undefeated in battle and destroyed or captured 33 opposing vessels. It earned the nickname Old Ironsides during the war of 1812, when British cannonballs were seen bouncing off its wooden hull.

It is crewed by active-duty sailors.

The first woman to serve on the Constitution’s crew was enlisted sailor Rosemarie Lanam in 1986. The first woman to serve as a commissioned officer on the ship was Lt. Cmdr. Claire V. Bloom, who served as executive officer and led the 1997 sail, the first time Old Ironsides had sailed under her own power since 1881.