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Spanish Stonehenge
  Follow @Uncle -Ernie Visit me on Face Book Summer 2022 Was One Climate Disaster After Another Global warming strikes again! By Ernest Stewart
Record-breaking heat waves baked India and Pakistan, then monsoon flooding left about a third of Pakistan under water, affecting an estimated 33 million people. Temperatures exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) for prolonged periods in many places, and even broke 122 F (50 C) in Jacobabad, Pakistan, in May. The Asian heat helped to melt some glaciers in the Himalayas, elevating rivers. At the same time, three times the normal annual rain fell in Pakistan during the weekslong monsoon. More than 1,500 people died in the flooding, an estimated 1.8 million homes were damaged or destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of livestock were lost. Food for the coming seasons will be in short supply. Extreme heat in Europe led to wildfires, especially in Spain and Portugal. The drought in Spain dried up a reservoir, revealing the long-submerged "Spanish Stonehenge," an ancient circle of megalithic stones believed to date back to around 5000 B.C.E. Electricity generation in France plummeted, with low rivers reducing the ability to cool nuclear power towers, and German barges had difficulty finding enough water to navigate the Rhine River. Residents fought wildfires in Spain in July 2022 that spread through dry fields and forests. In the United States, the West and the Midwest suffered through intense heat waves, and the crucial Colorado River reservoirs Lake Powell and Lake Mead hit record lows, triggering water restrictions. Yet, the country also saw major disruptive flooding in several cities and regions, from Death Valley to the mountains of eastern Kentucky. In China, heat waves and drought stretched over eight weeks and dried up parts of the Yangtze River to the lowest level since at least 1865 - until parts of the same area were inundated with flooding rains in August. Yes, these are all manifestations of global warming brought about by human activities. Global warming for the most part does not directly cause the rainfall or drought, but it makes these naturally occurring events more intense or severe. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, largely from power plants, vehicles, buildings, industry and agriculture, trap heat in the atmosphere, heating the planet. In addition to raising temperature, global warming increases evaporation of surface waters into the atmosphere, drying areas that have had little rain. Warmer air increases the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold, and the thirstier atmosphere sucks moisture from the surface. That extra moisture is carried away by winds and eventually flows into storms, often a thousand miles distant, that rain harder. Atmospheric moisture has increased by 5% to 20% in general compared with the pre-1970s. The increase in water vapor, a greenhouse gas, further amplifies warming. When water evaporates, it absorbs heat, and when it later falls as rain, that heat is released back into the atmosphere. This extra energy fuels storms, leading to more intense systems that may also be bigger and last longer, with up to 30% more rain as a consequence of warming. On average, precipitation falls on only about 8% of the land globally at any time. It is the intermittency of precipitation that leads to the exaggerated extremes, resulting in localized heavy rains and widespread dry spells.
So, with the accelerated water cycle, wet areas get wetter, and dry areas get drier, while over the oceans, this results in salty waters becoming saltier and fresh waters becoming fresher.
 07-22-1934 ~ 09-23-2022 Thanks for the film!
 03-10-1938 ~ 09-26-2022 Thanks for the film!
 11-09-1971 ~ 09-26-2022 Thanks for the articles and books!
 08-01-1963 ~ 09-28-2022 Thanks for the music
(c) 2022 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, philosopher, author, stand -up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Facebook. and like us when you do. Follow me on Twitter. |
 Poll: Most People Want Certification Process Updated To Prevent Another Jan. 6 By Chris Walker A majority of voters in the U.S. support a much-needed update to the law that defines how Congress certifies presidential elections, new polling shows. Americans back such changes by a two-to-one margin, according to a Politico/Morning Consult survey conducted from September 23-25. Asking if they'd support or oppose the passage of a bill in Congress to make it harder for that legislative body "to override presidential election results in the future," 52 percent of respondents said they'd back such an action, with only 26 percent saying they'd oppose it. Interestingly, those who voted for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election were evenly split on the question. Trump and his allies in Congress sought to exploit ambiguities in current law in order to disrupt the certification process that took place on January 6, 2021. But according to the poll, 38 percent of those who say they voted for him also believe the law needs to be updated, to make sure actions like his don't ever happen again (37 percent opposed the idea). The polling results come as lawmakers in Congress are trying to determine which path, if any, they will take on updating the Electoral Count Act, an 18th century law that directs how Electoral College votes are certified in Congress. Last week, the House passed a proposal that would make changes to that law, which was sponsored by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-California) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), two prominent members of the January 6 committee.
Their bill, the Presidential Election Reform Act, proposes a number of changes to current law, including: "The chaos that came to a head on January 6th of last year certainly underscored the need for an update," McConnell said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. "The Electoral Count Act ultimately produced the right conclusion ... but it's clear the country needs a more predictable path." A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate is pushing their own version of an update to the Electoral Count Act. The most notable difference in their bill is that the threshold for challenging electors' votes is smaller than the House bill - it would require one-fifth, not one-third, of members from both houses of Congress to begin the formal challenge process, a level that was met in the House during the January 6, 2021, certification due to Trump-aligned Republicans opposing President Joe Biden's win. Among respondents in favor of changing the process, more want the threshold to be the higher of the two. Twenty-two percent of voters overall, according to the Politico/Morning Consult poll, say the threshold should be one-third of lawmakers in each house, while 17 percent say it should be the one-fifth level. Thirty-six percent of voters didn't know or had no opinion, while 25 percent of respondents - likely those who oppose the idea of updating the law altogether - say the threshold should remain as it is, with only one lawmaker from each house needed to raise a challenge. (c) 2022 Chris Walker is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analysing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people.
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 Where Is the Mass Mobilized Movement For Medicare For All? It wouldn't take more than 1% of the U.S. population to rise up and get organized behind key popular demands to make them a reality and yet we continue to endlessly wait. By Ralph Nader Long before the Covid pandemic, it was important to ask, where are the mass movements to enact in Congress majoritarian-supported changes and reforms? Another question: Whatever happened to the mass rallies that used to command the attention of our 535 members of Congress to whom we have given our sovereign power? Let's start with universal healthcare, which President Harry Truman urged on a recalcitrant Congress in 1945. Proponents, including the labor unions, could not overcome the physicians' lobby in the form of the American Medical Association. President Lyndon Johnson wanted universal health insurance but had to settle for Medicare, with some limits, for the elderly and Medicaid for some poor families. Opponents cited the expense of the Vietnam War as the reason for such limitations. Since then, there have been no mass rallies or marches for universal healthcare. Sporadic demonstrations by a few hundred people on the Capitol steps showed insensitive members, who have their own comprehensive health insurance, the decline of civic energy. With the huge waste, gouging, corruption and preventable casualties documented in today's health delivery industry, and about 5000 people a week dying in hospitals due to what a peer-reviewed report by Johns Hopkins School of Medicine called "preventable problems" in hospitals, one would think there would be regular marches on Washington to pass Medicare-for-All. The Canadians did this nearly sixty years ago. (See, singlepayeraction.org). Too many people are suffering or ridden with anxiety, dread and fear, without adequate or any health insurance, while too few people are demanding action by Congress. Senator Bernie Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign in 2016, sabotaged from victory for the nomination by Hillary Clinton's Democratic Party apparatchiks, could be seen as a mass voter action. However, Sanders has yet to take this huge support and mailing list and convert it into a mass movement. And so, the painful years keep passing. Other majoritarian reforms and redirections have similarly failed to coalesce into mass movements, as occurred for Civil Rights and environmental protection in the Sixties and early Seventies. Reforms such as living wage, to allowing workers to more easily form unions' bargaining with big business, ending the student loan gouging and rackets, eliminating the huge tax escapes for the wealthy and corporations, investing in rebuilding communities' public works all over the country, cracking down on the corporate crooks draining consumers' pocketbooks, harming their safety and ending the corrosive impact of corporate campaign contributions. All these measures have broad public support. What are some reasons for a sedentary citizenship in a country? Remember our Constitution starts and ends with "We the People," not "We the Corporations." You, the readers, know all the ways powerful forces keep people down, feeling powerless and distracted with 24/7 so-called entertainment, plus everything in between. Many aggrieved people have a hard time just getting through the day. Imagine if, despite the obstacles to action, just one percent of the citizenry got knowledgeable and mobilized for Congressional reforms that have a quieter, large majority of the people behind them. One percent of adults is about 2.5 million Americans spread throughout 435 Congressional Districts. In the Sixties, it took a lot less than that level of organized and committed people. Someday, some leaders will emerge in the above-noted fields and other crucial areas of injustice and practice this one percent theory. I wrote a small book, Breaking Through Power: It's Easier Than We Think, to explain how optimistic critical masses throughout American history worked together to improve our society. I described the kinds of changes that one percent of the people could advance to revolutionize politics for the common good and "the pursuit of happiness." For that to happen, a sufficient number of people have to civically believe in themselves and lock arms together on actions for a change. (c) 2022 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and "Only The Super -Rich Can Save Us" (a novel). |
 Goodbye, And Good Riddance By Leonard Pitts Jr. "If you want to leave, take good care, hope you make a lot of nice friends out there." - from "Wild World" by Cat Stevens This is for those of you who've chosen to quit your jobs rather than submit to a vaccine mandate. No telling how many of you there actually are, but lately, you're all over the news. Just last week, a nearly-30-year veteran of the San Jose Police Department surrendered his badge rather than comply with the city's requirement that all employees be inoculated against COVID-19. He joins an Army lieutenant colonel, some airline employees, a Major League Baseball executive, the choral director of the San Francisco Symphony, workers at the tax collector's office in Orange County, Florida, and, incredibly, dozens of healthcare professionals. Well, on behalf of the rest of us, the ones who miss concerts, restaurants and other people's faces, the ones who are sick and tired of living in pandemic times, here's a word of response to you quitters: Goodbye. And here's two more: Good riddance. Not to minimize any of this. A few weeks ago, a hospital in upstate New York announced it would have to "pause" delivering babies because of resignations among its maternity staff. So the threat of difficult ramifications is certainly real. But on the plus side, your quitting goes a long way toward purging us of the gullible, the conspiracy-addled, the logic-impaired and the stubbornly ignorant. And that's not nothing. We've been down this road before. Whenever faced with some mandate imposed in the interest of the common good, some of us act like they just woke up on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. "There's no freedom no more," whined one man in video that recently aired on "The Daily Show With Trevor Noah." The clip was from the 1980s, and the guy had just gotten a ticket for not wearing his seatbelt. It's an unfortunately common refrain. Can't smoke in a movie theater? Can't crank your music to headache decibels at 2 in the morning? Can't post the Ten Commandments in a courtroom? "There's no freedom no more." Some of you seem to think freedom means no one can be compelled to do, or refrain from doing, anything. But that's not freedom, it's anarchy. Usually, the rest of us don't agonize over your intransigence. Often it has no direct impact on us. The guy in "The Daily Show" clip was only demanding the right to skid across a highway on his face, after all. But now you claim the right to risk the healthcare system and our personal lives. So if you're angry, guess what? You're not the only ones. The difference is, your anger is dumb, and ours is not. Yours is about being coerced to do something you don't want to do. Like that's new. Like you're not already required to get vaccinated to start school or travel to other countries. For that matter, you're also required to mow your lawn, cover your hindparts and, yes, wear a seatbelt. So you're mad at government and your job for doing what they've always done. But the rest of us, we're mad at you. Because this thing could have been over by now, and you're the reason it isn't. That's why we were glad President Biden stopped asking nicely, started requiring vaccinations everywhere he had power to do so. We were also glad when employers followed suit. And if that's a problem for you, then, yes, goodbye, sayonara, auf wiedersehen, adios and adieu. We'll miss you, to be sure. But you're asking us to choose between your petulance and our lives. And that's really no choice at all. (c) 2022 Leonard Pitts Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004. He is the author of the novel, Before I Forget. His column runs every Sunday and Wednesday in the Miami Herald. Forward From This Moment, a collection of his columns, was published in 2009. |
 Assorted Nuts By Jim Hightower Let me say one word to you: Nuts. Now, let me say one name to you: Ted Cruz. They've become synonymous, with the Texas lawmaker perennially topping national lists of goofy, right-wing political goobers. Only, Ted can't rightly be called a lawmaker, for he's not a serious participant in that process, instead devoting his senatorship to political stunts and picking silly PR fights with a growing list of enemies. Running out of people to attack, Ted has found another species for his vitriol: Fictional icons. He's been padding his right-wing credentials by going after Mr. Potato Head, Mickey and Pluto, and, believe it or not, Muppets. This US senator has dedicated the power and public resources of his office to demonize popular creatures on "Sesame Street," specifically Big Bird and loveable little Elmo. Ted rants he has proof that Muppets are covert tools of "government propaganda." So, this ridiculous excuse of a senator is saving America from... Muppets. But for a whole bag of assorted nuttiness, you can't beat Sen. Rick Scott's 11-point plan to "Rescue America." A disgraced former healthcare mogul, this mega-millionaire reinvented himself as a wingnut Florida senator, and he now chairs a policy arm of the Republican Party. In February, he set forth a stunning agenda of far-out right-wing extremism that he says his party will push if they re-take the senate this November, including: Implementing new federal taxes on the poorest half of Americans. So - as Scott puts it - they'll "have skin in the game."Fiddle-faddlers like Cruz and Scott have turned the once-proud US Senate into The Little Nut Shoppe on the Hill. (c) 2022 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates,"is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition. Jim writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America's ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org. |
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Energy and food bills are soaring. Under the onslaught of inflation and prolonged wage stagnation, wages are in free fall. Billions of dollars are diverted by Western nations at a time of economic crisis and staggering income inequality to fund a proxy war in Ukraine. The liberal class, terrified by the rise of neo-fascism and demagogues such as Donald Trump, have thrown in their lot with discredited and reviled establishment politicians who slavishly do the bidding of the war industry, oligarchs, and corporations.
The bankruptcy of the liberal class means that those who decry the folly of permanent war and NATO expansion, mercenary trade deals, exploitation of workers by globalization, austerity and neoliberalism come increasingly from the far-right. This right-wing rage, dressed up in the United States as Christian fascism, has already made huge gains in Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Bulgaria and France and may take power in the Czech Republic, where inflation and rising energy costs have seen the number of Czechs falling below the poverty line double.
By next spring, following a punishing winter of rolling blackouts and months when families struggle to pay for food and heat, what is left of our anemic western democracy could be largely extinguished.
Extremism is the political cost of pronounced social inequality and political stagnation. Demagogues, who promise moral and economic renewal, vengeance against phantom enemies and a return to lost glory, rise out of the morass. Hatred and violence, already at the boiling point, are legitimized. A reviled ruling class, and the supposed civility and democratic norms it espouses, are ridiculed.
It is not, as the philosopher Gabriel Rockhill points out, as if fascism ever went away. "The U.S. did not defeat fascism in WWII," he writes, "it discretely internationalized it." After World War II the U.S., U.K. and other Western governments collaborated with hundreds of former Nazis and Japanese war criminals, who they integrated into western intelligence services, as well as fascist regimes such as those in Spain and Portugal. They supported right-wing anti-communist forces in Greece during its civil war in 1946 to 1949, and then backed a right-wing military coup in 1967. NATO also had a secret policy of operating fascist terrorist groups. Operation Gladio, as the BBC detailed in a now-forgotten investigative series, created "secret armies," networks of illegal stay-behind soldiers, who would remain behind enemy lines if the Soviet Union made a military move into Europe. In actuality, the "secret armies" carried-out assassinations, bombings, massacres and false flag terror attacks against leftists, trade unionists, and others throughout Europe.
See my interview with Stephen Kinzer about the post-war activities of the CIA, including its recruitment of Nazi and Japanese war criminals and its creation of black sites where former Nazis were hired to interrogate, torture and murder suspected leftists, labor leaders and communists, detailed in his book Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, here.
Fascism, which has always been with us, is again ascendant. The far-right politician Giorgia Meloni is expected to become Italy's first female prime minister after elections on Sunday. In a coalition with two other far-right parties, Meloni is forecast to win more than 60 percent of the seats in Parliament, though the left-leaning 5-Star Movement may put a dent in those expectations.
Meloni got her start in politics as a 15-year-old activist for the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, founded after World War II by supporters of Benito Mussolini. She calls EU bureaucrats agents of "nihilistic global elites driven by international finance." She peddles the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants are being permitted to enter Western nations as part of a plot to undermine or "replace" the political power and culture of white people. She has called on the Italian navy to turn back boats with immigrants, which the far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini did in 2018. Her Fratelli d'Italia, Brothers of Italy, party is a close ally of Hungary's President, Viktor Orban. A European Parliament resolution recently declared that Hungary can no longer be defined as a democracy.
Meloni and Orban are not alone. Sweden Democrats, which took over 20 percent of the vote in Sweden's general election last week to become the country's second-largest political party, was formed in 1988 from a neo-Nazi group called B.S.S., or Keep Sweden Swedish. It has deep fascist roots. Of the party's 30 founders, 18 had Nazi affiliations, including several who served in the Waffen SS, according to Tony Gustaffson a historian and former Sweden Democrat member. France's Marine Le Pen took over 41 percent of the vote in April against Emmanuel Macron. In Spain, the hard-right Vox party is the third largest partyin Spain's Parliament. The far-right German AfD or Alternative for Germany party took over 12 percent in federal elections in 2017, making it the third largest party, though it lost a couple percentage points in the 2021 elections. The U.S. has its own version of fascism embodied in a Republican party that coalesces in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump, embraces the magical thinking, misogyny, homophobia and white supremacy of the Christian Right and actively subverts the election process.
Economic collapse was indispensable to the Nazis' rise to power. In the 1928 elections in Germany, the Nazi party received less than 3 percent of the vote. Then came the global financial crash of 1929. By early 1932, 40 percent of the German insured workforce, six million people, were unemployed. That same year, the Nazis became the largest political party in the German parliament. The Weimar government, tone deaf and hostage to the big industrialists, prioritized paying bank loans and austerity rather than feeding and employing a desperate population. It foolishly imposed severe restrictions on who was eligible for unemployment insurance. Millions of Germans went hungry. Desperation and rage rippled through the population. Mass rallies, led by a collection of buffoonish Nazis in brown uniforms who would have felt at home at Mar-a-Lago, denounced Jews, Communists, intellectuals, artists and the ruling class, as internal enemies. Hate was their main currency. It sold well.
The evisceration of democratic procedures and institutions, however, preceded the Nazis' ascension to power in 1933. The Reichstag, the German Parliament, was as dysfunctional as the U.S. Congress. The Socialist leader Friedrich Ebert, president from 1919 until 1925, and later Heinrich Bruning, chancellor from 1930 to 1932, relied on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to largely rule by decree to bypass the fractious Parliament. Article 48, which granted the president the right in an emergency to issue decrees, was "a trapdoor through which Germany could fall into dictatorship," historian Benjamin Carter Hett writes.
Article 48 was the Weimar equivalent of the executive orders liberally used by Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, to bypass our own legislative impasses. As in 1930s Germany, our courts - especially the Supreme Court - have been seized by extremists. The press has bifurcated into antagonistic tribes where lies and truth are indistinguishable, and opposing sides are demonized. There is little dialogue or compromise, the twin pillars of a democratic system.
The two ruling parties slavishly serve the dictates of the war industry, global corporations and the oligarchy, to which it has given huge tax cuts. It has established the most pervasive and intrusive system of government surveillance in human history. It runs the largest prison system in the world. It has militarized the police.
Democrats are as culpable as Republicans. The Obama administration interpreted the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force as giving the executive branch the right to erase due process and act as judge, jury and executioner in assassinating U.S. citizens, starting with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Two weeks later, a U.S. drone strike killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Anwar's 16-year-old son, who was never linked to terrorism, along with 9 other teenagers at a cafe in Yemen. It was the Obama administration that signed into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, overturning the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military as a domestic police force. It was the Obama administration that bailed out Wall Street and abandoned Wall Street's victims. It was the Obama administration that repeatedly used the Espionage Act to criminalize those, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, who exposed government lies, crimes, and fraud. And it was the Obama administration that massively expanded the use of militarized drones.
The Nazis responded to the February 1933 burning of the Reichstag, which they likely staged, by employing Article 48 to push through the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State. The fascists instantly snuffed out the pretense of Weimar democracy. They legalized imprisonment without trial for anyone considered a national security threat. They abolished independent labor unions, freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press, along with the privacy of postal and telephone communications.
The step from dysfunctional democracy to full-blown fascism was, and will again be, a small one. The hatred for the ruling class, embodied by the establishment Republican and Democratic parties, which have merged into one ruling party, is nearly universal. The public, battling inflation that is at a 40-year high and cost the average U.S. household an additional $717 a month in July alone, will increasingly see any political figure or political party willing to attack the traditional ruling elites as an ally. The more crude, irrational or vulgar the attack, the more the disenfranchised rejoice. These sentiments are true here and in Europe, where energy costs are expected to rise by as much as 80 percent this winter and an inflation rate of 10 percent is eating away at incomes.
The reconfiguration of society under neoliberalism to exclusively benefit the billionaire class, the slashing and privatization of public services, including schools, hospitals and utilities, along with deindustrialization, the profligate pouring of state funds and resources into the war industry, at the expense of the nation's infrastructure and social services, and the building of the world's largest prison system and militarization of police, have predictable results.
At the heart of the problem is a loss of faith in traditional forms of government and democratic solutions. Fascism in the 1930s succeeded, as Peter Drucker observed, not because people believed its conspiracy theories and lies but in spite of the fact that they saw through them. Fascism thrived in the face of "a hostile press, a hostile radio, a hostile cinema, a hostile church, and a hostile government which untiringly pointed out the Nazi lies, the Nazi inconsistency, the unattainability of their promises, and the dangers and folly of their course." He added, "nobody would have been a Nazi if rational belief in the Nazi promises had been a prerequisite."
As in the past, these new fascist parties cater to emotional yearnings. They give vent to feelings of abandonment, worthlessness, despair, and alienation. They promise unattainable miracles. They too peddle bizarre conspiracy theories including QAnon. But most of all, they promise vengeance against a ruling class that betrayed the nation.
Hett defines the Nazis as "a nationalist protest movement against globalization." The rise of the new fascism has its roots in a similar exploitation by global corporations and oligarchs. More than anything else, people want to regain control over their lives, if only to punish those blamed and scapegoated for their misery.
We have seen this movie before.
(c) 2022 Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact. His most recent book is "America: The Farewell Tour" (2019).
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When U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna toured the deindustrialized cities of the Midwest last summer to discuss his "economic patriotism" agenda for renewing American manufacturing, the California Democrat spent a lot of time listening to workers who had been displaced when distant owners decided to shutter factories across the region.
He heard poignant reports on the forces that have been tipping the balance against union workers in communities such as Janesville, where a private-equity firm bought one of the community's oldest manufacturing concerns, shuttered the factory and announced plans to offshore the jobs.
As is frequently the case, the ill-thought offshoring scheme proved to be disastrous, and Hufcor now faces bankruptcy, leaving its former employees without extended health coverage and other benefits they were promised at the time of last year's plant closing.
Khanna asked the right questions about what had happened and about what could be done to break a pattern of so-called "vulture capitalists" sweeping into towns across this country, buying up historic manufacturers, plucking away naming rights and the most profitable production lines, and then tossing aside the carcasses of once vibrant industries.
The representative came away with a lot of ideas, and now he's acting on them. He's sponsoring the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, a plan to "fundamentally reform the private equity industry and level the playing field by forcing private equity firms to take responsibility for the outcomes of companies they take over, empowering workers, and protecting investors."
Last week he announced that he would refuse contributions from OpenGate Capital CEO Andrew Nikou and the private-equity firm's employees. And he is urging fellow Democrats to do the same as part of a bold new initiative to break ties with firms that are responsible for offshoring and deindustrialization.
Khanna, a co-chair of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign who is widely recognized as a rising star in Democratic politics, said he would not take money from donors associated with a firm that "bought Hufcor, laid off workers, and looted the company before declaring bankruptcy."
Khanna learned the story of Hufcor - a manufacturer with roots going back more than 120 years in Janesville - when he visited the southern Wisconsin city of 65,000 in August.
The congressman met during that visit with some of the 166 workers who lost jobs when the company shuttered its local manufacturing operations. The workers recounted how they had, over many decades, helped a locally owned company grow into the world's largest manufacturer of folding doors, partitions and portable walls. And they explained how everything came apart when OpenGate Capital, a California-based private-equity firm, purchased Hufcor in 2017 and, after a few short years, announced plans to move its Janesville operations to Mexico.
Many told stories, like Kathy Pawluk, who worked with the company for 36 years before the plant closed in 2021. "When we were Hufcor and owned by (members of the Janesville-based Hough family), it was a wonderful family-oriented company to work for," she said. "That all changed when we were bought out by investors."
When I spoke with Khanna last week, he recalled that during his stop in Janesville: "I met with Kathy and about six others. They spoke with anger at the corporate greed and the incompetence. It took private equity to loot and bankrupt a company that had been thriving for over 100 years."
The new owners "were oblivious to the consequences of what they did to the community," Khanna said.
"I was reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald's line from 'The Great Gatsby' about Daisy and Tom Buchanan: 'They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was the kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.' That's how I felt about those running OpenGate Capital."
Khanna represents Silicon Valley, one of the wealthiest regions of the country. But he has made it his mission in recent years to go to bat for communities across the country that have been left behind amid all the deindustrialization, consolidation of wealth and growing income and wealth inequality.
The former deputy assistant secretary in the United States Department of Commerce under President Obama, Khanna argues for "a new economic patriotism" that recognizes the importance of investing in U.S. industries, promoting innovation and assuring that the jobs of the future remain in the United States. The congressman is a sharp critic of offshoring U.S. jobs, especially in essential industries. To counter the trend, he advocates for industrial policies that target investment to urban and rural areas that have been harmed by multinational corporations and private-equity firms that put profiteering ahead of sound economic development strategies.
"We should support investors who are betting on America," said Khanna, who explained, "My new economic patriotism is about supporting people and policies who will help build our country."
Very few elected officials are willing to call out big investors, or big donors.
But Khanna is doing both.
He has objected to private-equity firms that gut communities such as Janesville. And now he's calling out his fellow members of Congress, and especially his fellow Democrats. I?
"Politicians should not accept contributions from private equity firms that literally bankrupt factories and industries and destroy communities," said Khanna. "This type of predatory activity has contributed to the deindustrialization of America, and we shouldn't be associated with it."
(c) 2022 John Nichols writes about politics for The Capitol Times. His book on protests and politics, Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street, is published by Nation Books. Follow John Nichols on Twitter @NicholsUprising.
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There is an implication via daily media reports that rising values on the world stock exchanges reflects a healthy and growing economy. The stock market numbers go up when world events suggest that the big corporations will be in a position to make more profit. When the opposite is true, the value of stock plunges.
Television anchors faithfully report to us every day just what the stock markets are doing . . . as if that is news that we need to know. In truth, the only people that have an interest in the fluctuations on the stock exchanges are the few wealthy individuals who invest their money in business. Most of us are struggling to earn enough money to feed our families with nothing left to think of investing in anything.
So why does the media devote so much time to reporting on the health of Wall Street? It is because there is a constant illusion of wealth that has been drilled into our heads for years. It is all designed to make us feel secure . . . that all is well among the big corporations that control our lives. And if all is well with the people who provide our jobs, then perhaps our jobs are secure.
It is all a lie. If we would stop for a moment and think about our position in the lop-sided business ventures occurring all around us, we could easily understand the complex game of manipulation that is occurring. In truth, we are all slaves to the few people that control the money.
Even the illusion of freedom that we in the United States claim to cherish is false. While we still are relatively free to express our opinions without too much chance of being arrested and charged with sedition, terrorism or treason, we are reading stories about investigative journalists that are being jailed for refusing to name their sources, or because they publicized some "classified" secret that high government or military officials did not want the public to know. Consequently, there are not many true investigative journalists operating for the contemporary media.
The serious patriots in this country are going underground. The group known as "Anonymous" has been a perfect example of what is happening. They operate in secret and appear publicly behind the masks of Guy Fawkes, a Seventeenth Century English renegade who attempted to kill King James in 1605. The mask was popularized by the Hollywood film V for Vendetta, and has grown as a universal symbol of protest.
What is troublesome is the rapid change that has occurred in the United States since the 9-11 attack. The Bush creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the passage of the dreaded Patriot Act that gave police and federal authorities the freedom to spy on Americans at home and abroad without a court order has quickly created a police state right under our noses. The police departments were equipped with military equipment. Even the colors of their uniforms changed from friendly blues and browns to a sinister black.
Now we have a growing problem of police shooting unarmed civilians, which seems to be endorsed by the courts. These incidents have sparked mass public demonstrations from New York City to San Francisco. Should we be surprised that police officers are unexpectedly being shot to death while on the job?
The United States is no longer a Republic or even a Democracy. It has shifted to a plutocracy; a state ruled by the wealthy class.
It may be too late to fix this mess. Vermont's Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the few political figures who is standing up in support of the needs of the people, made an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2016. During his campaign Sanders called on Americans to launch a political revolution that never got off the ground.
Sanders said a grassroots political movement was needed to make things right. He called for a "radical increase and improvement in public consciousness in this country, in political consciousness."
Sanders supported a diversion of the nation's wealth from the military and big corporations to caring for the sick, homeless and hungry. He supported action to fight climate change. He wanted to see the nation's infrastructure rebuilt.
To have these things, however, Sanders called for a mass mobilization by millions of people willing to engage in "a real struggle against the billionaire class."
Unfortunately, not enough Americans listened to what Mr. Sanders was saying. While registered as an Independent, Sanders ran that year as a Democrat and was beaten back by the powerful political machinery in the Clinton camp.
Consequently, Donald Trump won the White House and the nation moved in a completely different direction. His followers were quick to accept his big lie that any move from the old form of capitalism would be a disaster.
(c) 2022 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles.
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Imagine the trash compactor scene in Star Wars running for five straight years. Now you can skip thousands of reports on the walls closing in on Trump. You've got the idea.
In 2019 at RootsAction.org we published a list of 25 proposed grounds for impeaching Trump, complete with evidence. The trouble was and remains that most of the abuses by Trump were also routine abuses by Congress Members, including Democrats. This had been the problem with Dennis Kucinich's 35 articles of impeachment for Dubya. In fact, I once wrote an article listing 27 of those 35 same offenses that had been committed by Obama.
There were other reasons, of course, for Congressional inaction, and prosecutorial inaction. But that has been a big one.
The Democrats did find two things Trump had done that they hadn't, and in the telling of which they could be seen as opposed to Trump and the victims of his abuses. They thereby impeached him twice. Some have ever since been on the prowl for anything Trump's done outside of elected office, anything the Democrats might not have had any dirty fingers in at all.
I'm 100% in favor of applying the rule of law to the rich and obnoxious. But we should be perfectly clear why it is that half the country clamoring to lock up Trump before he ushers in a fascist state must collectively wait for some state prosecutor to discover some crime that Nancy Pelosi never went near. It's because the swamp into which Trump dove like a briar patch is perfectly real.
What should have been done with Trump? He should have been impeached, tried, and removed on day 1 for some of these outrages:
Trump should also have been prosecuted.
As time went by, he should have been impeached (and in many cases prosecuted) for these, among others: (c) 2022 David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
 The world is nearing several "disastrous" tipping points and may have already passed five.
 Iceberg A-74 calved from Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf in February 2021.
 Most workers' paychecks are shrinking in terms of real purchasing power. Rather than causing inflation, wages are actually reducing inflationary pressures.
 U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and former Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, pictured on October 8, 2010 at the Supreme Court.
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