29 June 20
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29 June 20
Robert Reich | Donald Trump's Re-Election Playbook: 25 Ways He'll Lie, Cheat and Abuse His Power
Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Reich writes: "Donald Trump will do anything to be re-elected. His opponents are limited because they believe in democracy. Trump has no limits because he doesn't."
Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Reich writes: "Donald Trump will do anything to be re-elected. His opponents are limited because they believe in democracy. Trump has no limits because he doesn't."
From now until November, opponents of the most lawless president in history face a fight for democracy itself
Here’s Trump’s re-election playbook, in 25 simple steps:
1) Declare yourself above the law.
2) Use racist fearmongering. Demand “law and order” and describe protesters as “thugs”, “lowlife” and “rioters and looters”. Describe Covid-19 as “kung-flu”. Retweet posts from white supremacists. In your campaign ads, use a symbol associated with Nazis.
3) Appoint an attorney general more loyal to you than to America, and politicize the Department of Justice so it’s lenient on your loyalists and comes down hard on your enemies. Have it lighten the sentence of a crony convicted of lying under oath. Order investigations of industries you dislike.
4) Fire US attorneys who are investigating you.
5) Fire independent inspectors general who are looking into what you’ve done. Crush any whistleblowers you find.
6) Demean and ignore the intelligence community. Appoint a director of national intelligence more loyal to you than to America. Demand that the head of the FBI pledge loyalty to you.
7) Pack the federal courts with judges and justices more loyal to you than to the constitution.
8) Politicize the Department of Defense so generals will back whatever you order. Refer to them as “my generals”. Have them help clear out protesters. Order the military to surveil protesters. Tell governors you’ll bring in the military to stop protesters.
9) Purge your party of anyone disloyal to you and turn it into a mindless, brainless, spineless cult.
10) Get rid of accumulated experience and expertise in government. Demean career public servants. Hollow out the state department, the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and public health.
11) Reward donors and cronies with bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, government contracts, regulatory rollbacks and plum jobs. Put their lobbyists in charge of your agencies. Distribute $500bn in pandemic assistance to corporations in secret, without any oversight.
12) Coddle dictators. Don’t criticize their human rights abuses. Refuse to work with the leaders of other democracies. Withdraw from international treaties.
13) Create scapegoats. Demonize migrants and lock up asylum seekers at the border, even if they’re children. Put a white nationalist in charge of immigration policy. Blame Muslims, Mexicans and Chinese.
14) Denigrate and ridicule all critics. Describe opponents as “human scum”. Attack the mainstream media as purveyors of “fake news” and “enemies of the people”.
15) Conjure up conspiracies supposedly led by your predecessor and your opponent in the last election. Without any evidence, accuse your predecessor of “treason”. Fabricate a “deep state” out to get you.
16) Downplay real threats to the nation, such as a rapidly spreading pandemic. Lie about your utter failure to contain it. Muzzle public health experts. Urge people to go back to work even as the pandemic worsens in parts of the country.
17) Encourage armed supporters to “liberate” states from elected officials who disagree with you.
18) Bribe other nations to investigate your electoral opponent and flood social media with lies about him.
19) Use rightwing propaganda machines like Fox News and conspiracy-theory-peddling One America News to inundate the country with your lies. Ensure that the morally bankrupt chief executive of Facebook allows you to spread your lies on the biggest media machine in the world.
20) Suppress the votes of people likely to vote against you. Intimidate voters of color. Encourage Republican governors to purge voter rolls, demand voter ID and close polling places.
21) Seek to prevent mail-in ballots during the pandemic. Claim they will cause voter fraud, without evidence. Threaten to close the US postal service.
22) Get Vladimir Putin to hack into US election machines, as he did in 2016 but can now do with more experience and deftness. Promise him that in return you’ll further destabilize America as well as Nato. Let him even place a bounty on killing US troops in Afghanistan.
23) If it still looks like you’ll be voted out, try to postpone the election.
24) If you’re voted out of office notwithstanding all this, refuse to leave. Contest the election, claim massive fraud, say it’s a conspiracy, get your cult of a political party to support your lies, get your propaganda machine to repeat them, get your justice department to back you, get your judges and justices to affirm you, get your generals to suppress any subsequent rebellion.
25) Declare victory.
Memo to America: beware Trump’s playbook. Spread the truth. Stay vigilant. Fight for our democracy.
Representative Barbara Lee. (photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP)
Mandy Smithberger | How to Vaccinate the Military-Industrial Complex
Mandy Smithberger, TomDispatch
Smithberger writes: "Even if the rest of us remain in danger from the coronavirus, Congress has done a remarkably good job of vaccinating the Department of Defense and the weapons makers that rely on it financially."
READ MORE
Mandy Smithberger, TomDispatch
Smithberger writes: "Even if the rest of us remain in danger from the coronavirus, Congress has done a remarkably good job of vaccinating the Department of Defense and the weapons makers that rely on it financially."
READ MORE
The exterior of Fox News' headquarters in New York, bearing the faces of five of its biggest stars - Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The Data Is In: Fox News May Have Kept Millions From Taking the Coronavirus Threat Seriously
Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post
Sullivan writes: "Three serious research efforts have put numerical weight - yes, data-driven evidence - behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirus began its deadly spread."
READ MORE
Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post
Sullivan writes: "Three serious research efforts have put numerical weight - yes, data-driven evidence - behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirus began its deadly spread."
READ MORE
Police. (image: Steve Skinner Photography/Getty Images)
Inside the New Push to Expose America's White Supremacist Cops
Kelly Weill, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "Fourteen years ago, the FBI documented racist infiltration of law enforcement in America. Now members of Congress want the full story."
READ MORE
Kelly Weill, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "Fourteen years ago, the FBI documented racist infiltration of law enforcement in America. Now members of Congress want the full story."
READ MORE
A group of former slaves that gathered on the former plantation of Confederate Gen. Thomas Drayton, which they began to harvest for their own profit. (photo: Corbis/Getty Images)
How a Black Commons Could Help Build Communal Wealth
Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone, YES! Magazine
Excerpt: "Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed Black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S."
READ MORE
Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone, YES! Magazine
Excerpt: "Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed Black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S."
READ MORE
A supporter of Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, takes part in a rally in Brasília. (photo: Adriano Machado/Reuters)
Top Brazil Newspaper in Pro-Democracy Drive to Counter Bolsonaro
Tom Phillips, Guardian UK
Phillips writes: "One of Brazil's leading newspapers has launched a major pro-democracy campaign as unease grows about the threat many fear Jair Bolsonaro and his most militant supporters pose to the country's political future."
READ MORE
Tom Phillips, Guardian UK
Phillips writes: "One of Brazil's leading newspapers has launched a major pro-democracy campaign as unease grows about the threat many fear Jair Bolsonaro and his most militant supporters pose to the country's political future."
READ MORE
A plastic bag washed up on a beach. (photo: biologicaldiversity.org/Flikr)
It's Official: Reusables Are Safe During COVID-19
Joseph Winters, Grist
Winters writes: "More than 125 virologists, epidemiologists, and health experts from 18 different countries said it's clear that reusables are safe to use during the pandemic. You just have to wash them."
Joseph Winters, Grist
Winters writes: "More than 125 virologists, epidemiologists, and health experts from 18 different countries said it's clear that reusables are safe to use during the pandemic. You just have to wash them."
ince the COVID-19 pandemic began, fossil fuel and plastic industry groups have said that reusable grocery bags and food containers spread the coronavirus. To stay healthy, they’ve encouraged consumers to double down on supposedly safer single-use plastic — things like disposable cups, cutlery, and shopping bags.
“As the COVID-19 virus spreads across the country, single-use plastics will only become more vital,” wrote Plastics Industry Association president and CEO Tony Radoszewski in March. “We live longer, healthier, and better because of single-use plastics.”
But health experts don’t think that a pivot to single-use plastic is necessary. In a statement released on Monday, more than 125 virologists, epidemiologists, and health experts from 18 different countries said it’s clear that reusables are safe to use during the pandemic. You just have to wash them.
“Reusables are not the culprit of spreading coronavirus,” said Miriam Gordon, policy director for UPSTREAM, a nonprofit that seeks to reduce plastic pollution and that helped draft the health experts’ statement. She told Grist she worries that industry fearmongering has overblown the risks of transmission via surface contact — basically, the idea that reusables spread the virus onto people’s bodies and onto other surfaces. As far as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is aware, there have been no documented cases of COVID-19 caused by touching a contaminated surface.
Based on the latest available evidence, the coronavirus is mostly spread through close contact with other people via airborne droplets. These tiny, coronavirus-carrying particles exit people’s mouths when they cough, sneeze, or talk.
But according to a recent research brief from Greenpeace, which also helped organize the health experts’ statement, many think tanks and PR firms with financial connections to oil and plastic companies have tried to convince the public otherwise. Through op-eds, policy briefs, and articles published around the country, they helped spread the idea that reusables are dangerous “petri dishes” for infection.
“Reusable bags are notoriously dirty and may spread the virus,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board opined in mid-March.
Gordon says many of the arguments against reusables have been grounded in “junk science,” much of which is outdated, not related to the coronavirus, or industry-influenced. One frequently cited paper, for example, suggests that reusable bags can introduce harmful bacteria into a grocery store. But even when that paper came out roughly a decade ago, scientists were quick to raise objections, pointing out that the only bacterial strains detected on the reusable bags were common and benign.
“A person eating an average bag of salad greens gets more exposure to these bacteria than if they had licked the insides of the dirtiest bag from this study,” said Consumers Union senior staff scientist Michael Hansen after the study was published in 2010.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that paper was underwritten by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a lobbying group whose members include ExxonMobil, Dow, DuPont, and others. In 2009, the ACC was criticized for successfully pressuring California education officials to add a section called “Advantages of Plastic Shopping Bags” to high school students’ textbooks.
Duke University senior lecturing fellow Michele Okoh, who signed the new statement, worries that COVID-19 fears may have helped undo much of the past few years’ progress on reducing single-use plastics. Pre-pandemic, plastic bag bans had been implemented in dozens of U.S. cities and in eight states. But following the publication of pro-plastic op-eds, policy recommendations, and articles, an aura of uncertainty helped push many state and local governments to temporarily suspend or delay legislation banning or disincentivizing single-use plastics. These included places like Maine, New York, Denver, Albuquerque, and Boston, among others. While some of those places have recently moved forward with their bans or reinstated them, others have not, and some businesses continue to prohibit reusables in their stores.
To be sure, advocates for reusables aren’t saying there’s nothing to worry about. ”We aren’t recommending that care be thrown to the wind,” Okoh told Grist. Recent studies have shown that the virus can persist on hard surfaces for a surprisingly long time, making sanitation essential. Ironically, it lasts the longest on plastic — up to six days, according to one study. That’s about the same as on stainless steel, and much longer than on paper, cardboard, glass, or cloth.
The key to safe reusables, according to the health experts’ statement, is actually quite simple: Just employ “basic hygiene.” Spray household disinfectant on hard surfaces. For dishes and cutlery, use a dishwasher. Bags can be washed using the “warmest appropriate water setting” for all items. And of course, wash your hands and keep them off of your face.
For restaurants and industrial settings, Gordon says existing food safety codes are already sufficiently stringent to prevent the spread of coronavirus. “They are known to be incredibly health-protective,” she told Grist.
The experts’ statement comes amid increasing concern that the pandemic is causing a rapid increase in the world’s plastic consumption. Even before coronavirus, an estimated 13 million metric tons of plastic pollution flowed into the ocean annually. Now environmental advocates are worried that a spike in our use of disposables in restaurants, grocery stores, bars, hotels, and elsewhere as pandemic restrictions lift could add to the glut. Some cities in New Jersey are already saying they’ve been overwhelmed by the deluge of plastic takeout containers.
The effects of this plastic consumption won’t be felt equally. Low-income communities of color are already disproportionately impacted by pollution from plastic production and disposal. When they don’t make their way into the oceans, “these plastics and unrecyclable foodware are ending up in landfills,” Gordon explained. “Or worse: in incinerators, where the neighboring communities are being inundated with dioxins and particulate emissions that harm their health.”
Other environmental advocates fear that as states continue to reopen, state and federal guidelines will overemphasize the importance of single-use plastic. In late May, the CDC told businesses that when reopening, disposable dishes, utensils, tableware, and more should be the default option. It walked back that recommendation a few days later, but the Food and Drug Administration is still recommending that restaurants stock up on single-use carryout containers and tableware. Connecticut is telling hotels to offer disposable items wherever possible. Alaska is asking bars, restaurants, and child care centers to offer disposable food service items.
Ben Locwin, a health care executive who signed the statement, says that although misinformation has been rampant during the crisis, now is an opportunity to push back. “We can inoculate people with knowledge,” he told Grist. By educating the public and elected officials on the safety of reusables, an informed, science-based approach could protect people’s lives and the future of the planet. “We shouldn’t mortgage the future to the current panic,” he said.
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