Kochland: The Secret History Of Koch Industries

 

The annual revenue of Koch Industries is bigger than that of Goldman Sachs, Facebook, and U.S. Steel combined. Koch is everywhere: from the fertilizers that make our food, to the chemicals that make our pipes, to the synthetics that make our carpets and diapers, to the Wall Street trading in all these commodities. But few people know much about Koch Industries and that’s because the billionaire Koch brothers want it that way. Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, discusses the hidden role of Koch Industries in American life. WGBH Forum Network ~ Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Abbott Needs To Be Held Accountable For What Happened, Says Senator

 

The Senate on Thursday approved the Access to Baby Formula Act by unanimous consent, and it will now go to President Biden's desk for him to sign off. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., joins Morning Joe to discuss the bill, which she introduced, and addressing the causes of the current formula shortage.

Secret Plot Busted: New Clarence Thomas Scandal Over Wife’s Efforts To Override AZ Votes For Biden

 

Republican activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pushed Republican lawmakers in Arizona to cancel their own state’s votes for Joe Biden, arguing officials should override votes for Biden and replace them with a “clean slate of Electors,” according to emails obtained by the Washington Post. MSNBC’s Ari Melber reports on the bombshell news, explaining that “even before the violence of the insurrection, this was planned as a coup through voter fraud.”

Lawrence: ‘Fox News Has Blood On Its Hands’

 

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how Rupert Murdoch has helped make sure that America's mass murderers are still what they have always been: the best equipped mass murderers in the world.

RSN: Harvey Wasserman | Our Original Founders Were Indigenous Women Who Controlled Their Own Bodies

 

20 May 22

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RSN: Harvey Wasserman | Our Original Founders Were Indigenous Women Who Controlled Their Own Bodies
Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "Our true Original Founders were the Indigenous matriarchs who ran most of America for thousands of years before the first whites set foot here."

The real Founders of American society were not the 55 rich white male interlopers who staged a coup d’etat in 1787-9 … and whose misogynist progeny have always wanted to ban abortion.

Our true Original Founders were the Indigenous matriarchs who ran most of America for thousands of years before the first whites set foot here.

For tens of centuries they controlled their pregnancies by herbal means. The idea that any government (tribal or otherwise) could rule a woman’s uterus would evoke disbelief and contempt from men and women alike.

In fact most North American tribes were run by women. The chieftains were commonly male. But they were chosen and could be removed at will by the matriarchs, who ran the homes and gardens, raised the children and made the major decisions about the future of the tribe.

As one Indigenous matriarch has explained, the men were allowed to be chiefs because “it makes them feel important and it gives them something to do.”

There were indeed tribes where men dominated. For many white “Christian” historians, the idea that females ran any society remains impossible to comprehend.

The US Congress denied our First Peoples the right to vote until 1924. In a 1980s hearing on banning peyote, Chief Justice William Rehnquist was heard to say that the First Amendment “does not apply to Native Americans.”

No Indigenous Justice now sits on a Supreme Court hell-bent to colonize the female uterus.

Trump’s MAGA cult wallows in fear of feminism. A score of iabuse charges against him remain unresolved. A ban on abortion would force his rape victims to victim to bear his spawn.

From 800 broken treaties to eco-suicidal impositions and more, the Trump/Bannon/Putin/Tucker White Supremacists aim to obliterate our Original Indigenous rights.

But the First US Constitutionalists—-including George Washington, John Adams and Ben Franklin—-gratefully acknowledged their debt to the Indigenous. That legacy was memorialized in a 1987 Congressional Resolution approved while Nancy Reagan sat as our ruling matriarch.

The true cradle of American democracy was the Hodenosaunee nation, spread across what’s now upstate New York.

Called “Iroquois” by the French, these People of the Longhouse pioneered the world’s most advanced democracy, linking the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. Their Confederation, said Franklin, ran “better than the British Parliament.”

Their 113 Codicils—-predecessor to the Bill of Rights—-guaranteed individual rights and freedoms. A woman’s right to choose was everywhere assumed for thousands of years before the whites came.

Those rights permeate our culture. A woman’s power to control her own body is enshrined in our Indigenous Originalism. The Court of the People must finally embrace its righteous power.

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Harvey Wasserman’s People’s Spiral of US History is available via solartopia@gmail.com and at on-line publishers. He convenes the Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zoom Mondays at 5pm ET via www.electionprotection2024.org.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: Hospitals don’t need ‘surge capacity’

 

View in browser   BY JOANNE KENEN Rows of beds and their letter designations are seen in a tent used for monoclonal antibody treatment of Covid-19 patients outside of St. Claire Regional Medical Center in Morehead, Ky. | Jon Cherry/Getty Images SEEKING BED REST — The latest wave of coronavirus doesn’t seem to be as bad as others we’ve endured. But people are still getting sick. And more are ending up in hospitals. So much for a restful spring and summer for our exhausted “health care heroes.” Each time this happens, one of the “pandemic lessons” that starts circulating is that we need more hospital beds, “surge capacity” for emergencies. Guess what: We don’t. The reasons are surprising and important. Nightly talked to Katherine Baicker, a leading health economist who is now dean of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, who agreed that we need to do a whole lot of things better to prepare for the next emergency, whether it’s another bad Covid variant or something else. But having a whole lot of empty hospital beds just sitting around is not one of them. That’s because a hospital bed isn’t, as she put it, “four posts and a mattress.” A bed has a whole system around it. Medical staff. Support staff. Pricy technology. “It’s expensive to maintain buildings and beds,” Baicker said. “You don’t build a hospital, put in the beds, and lock the door until you need it. You have to be staffed up for it.” And that means that there are all sorts of incentives to fill that bed — just because it’s there. And it ends up adding expense to the health care system — without necessarily improving health. You can think of it a bit like traffic. If you build more lanes to relieve traffic jams, you often end up getting even more cars on the road. If you buy more beds in the name of “surge capacity,” you end up with more patients in them. When hospitals talk about “bed capacity” they mean the actual bed plus the medical technology and monitoring that goes with it — and that evolves quickly. “A hospital bed today doesn’t look like a hospital bed of 10 years ago,” Baicker said. The bed — including the system around it — starts to depreciate and become obsolete fast. So then there’s incentive to replace and upgrade the bed (even one that wasn’t really needed in the first place). And in addition to tech, beds need staff. That’s everything from physicians and respiratory therapists to food service and maintenance. Paying them is another incentive to fill those “surge” beds. So this cycle of adding and filling beds would add to the nation’s colossal $4 trillion of health spending — without adding to the quality of our health. In fact, doing stuff patients don’t really need done to them can harm their health (and expose them to hospital-acquired infections). Just a few days ago, the Department of Health and Human Services released a study finding that one in four Medicare patients who were hospitalized experienced some kind of harm — and a whole lot of it (43 percent) was probably preventable. And that was from 2018, before the hospitals were under the pressures of the pandemic, and the rates weren’t much better than they had been a decade earlier. Besides outright harm, hospitalization isn’t always needed anymore. The U.S. health care system has been reducing inpatient bed capacity precisely because we now have ways of treating people safely outside the hospital — which is where most people prefer to be anyway. And those who do need inpatient care generally have shorter stays than in the past, meaning fewer beds are needed. “The more beds you have, the more [patient] nights in the hospital you have,” Baicker said. And the health benefits for those are often “marginal” at best. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some specific underserved areas, including some rural communities, that need more beds. But that’s capacity — not surge capacity. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author on Twitter at @JoanneKenen.   DON'T MISS DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED:  Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today.     A medical bed is shown in a hallway at the Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images Baicker said there are many, more important, lessons from the first two years of this pandemic — including improving public health data to respond to catastrophes, or even better, to prevent problems from becoming catastrophes. Hospitals also need to deploy their resources better — to move patients or staff or personnel around more wisely (which can also mean knocking down some regulatory barriers during an emergency). Move the sickest patients to bigger, sophisticated hospitals. In the case of the coronavirus, which comes in waves that hit different parts of the country at different times, move medical staff and resources around with more agility. Telehealth, which boomed during the pandemic, can also be put to better use within clinics and hospitals. “You can stretch capacity, you can draw on personnel and expertise from across the country and across the globe in your clinic if you have the right relationships and connectivity,” Baicker said. That can be particularly valuable in rural or underserved hospitals — while reserving capacity in the most sophisticated hospitals for patients who need more complex or specialized care, like an organ transplant. Fixing everything that needs to be fixed in our health care system to avoid the “tragic shortcomings” we’ve experienced in the past two years, all takes money. And if we put all the money in loads of new beds, she said, “there’d be no money left for anything else.” WHAT'D I MISS? — San Francisco archbishop blocks Pelosi from Communion: The archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, said Speaker Nancy Pelosi may no longer receive Holy Communion in her home diocese after repeatedly defending abortion rights over the past month. “I have determined that the point has come in which I must make a public declaration that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion unless and until she publicly repudiate her support for abortion ‘rights’ and confess and receive absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of Penance,” Archbishop Cordileonesaid in a letter released today — Secret Service: 2 employees on leave after ‘off-duty incident’ before Biden’s Asia trip: The U.S. Secret Service confirmed that two of its employees have been “placed on administrative leave” following an “off-duty incident” before Biden’s trip to Asia this week. Reuters reported that a member of Biden’s advance security team had been arrested in Seoul a day before Biden arrived in the South Korean capital. The report, citing local police, stated that the security team member was accused of drunkenly assaulting a South Korean citizen. — Conservatives fume over tech industry’s ‘shadow docket’ play: Progressives outraged over the use of the Supreme Court’s emergency “shadow docket” to resolve legal fights over issues like abortion and immigration got some company this week from an unexpected group — conservative skeptics of the tech industry . The tech platforms’ foes on the right are fuming about a crush of pro-Silicon Valley lawyering that has hit the high court in the past seven days, as the industry’s allies urge Justice Samuel Alito to block a Texas law that forbids social media companies from “censoring” their users. Legal briefs from groups supporting the industry have outnumbered pro-Texas briefs by 4 to 1, leaving Republicans to complain that tech is again using its wealth and muscle to overwhelm its critics. WAIT FOR IT....CRT HYSTERIA WILL RE-WRITE HISTORY!  — Florida wants to avoid critical race theory and ‘social justice’ in social studies texts: Florida’s Department of Education is explicitly aiming to keep critical race theory and “social justice” out of social studies textbooks that the state will ultimately adopt for its new teaching standards. The agency, in recent updated guidance, asked textbook publishers to avoid those topics on top of “culturally responsive teaching, social and emotional learning, and any other unsolicited theories” as the DeSantis administration and Republicans continue to scrutinize what students are learning in public schools, especially on the issues of race and gender identity. AROUND THE WORLD British Foreign Minister Liz Truss arrives for an informal meeting of NATO members states foreign ministers in Berlin. | Hannibal Hanschke-Pool/Getty Images TOUGH TALK — Washington wants “a strategic defeat of Russia” in Ukraine, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said today, Camille Gijs and Hannah Roberts write. “We want to see a strategic defeat for Russia. We want Russia to leave Ukraine, we want Russia to stop the violence, stop these indiscriminate brutal attacks on civilians,” Smith said during the think tank-led Strategic Ark conference in Warsaw. The rhetoric against Moscow is also being ramped up on the other side of the Atlantic, with U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin “must lose in Ukraine.” Speaking on Thursday to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, in remarks that were published on Friday, she was asked about French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments on not “humiliating Putin” and whether the West should offer Putin a way out. “I don’t agree with this idea of an exit ramp. Putin must lose in Ukraine and we must see its sovereignty and territorial integrity restored, on this we are very clear,” Truss said.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     NIGHTLY NUMBER 27 percent The share of Republicans who say the United States is doing “too much” to halt Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a figure that has doubled from 13 percent in a March 5-7 survey, according to Morning Consult. WE CAN THANK FOX NEWS PROPAGANDA!  PARTING WORDS CALLING MOM AND DAD — The parents of Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti have enlisted the help of prominent lobbyists to aid their son’s beleaguered nomination to serve as U.S. ambassador to India, Hailey Fuchs writes. McGuireWoods Consulting registered to lobby on behalf of Sukey and Gil Garcetti on Thursday for the purposes of “Outreach Related to Confirmation for Ambassadorship Nomination.” The lobbyists on the account include a former chief of staff to Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) Ryan Bernstein and Garcetti’s own former deputy mayor and longtime advisor, Breelyn Pete. The registration is the latest sign that Garcetti’s allies are turning over every possible stone to get his nomination across the finish line. Bernstein did not immediately return a request for comment. That nomination has floundered amid accusations that the mayor’s top aide, Rick Jacobs, had sexually assault women on the staff. Garcetti has insisted that he knew nothing of Jacobs’ conduct, which came to light because of a whistleblower report and includes allegations from his former Communications Director Naomi Seligman that Jacobs grabbed and kissed her in front of other city staffers. Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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📰Reporting on U.S. drone wars just won a Pulitzer! Here’s a link to “The Human Toll of America’s Air Wars”

 

Win Without War is excited to extend our heartfelt congratulations to Azmat Khan for winning the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting as a Contributing Writer with The New York Times!

Azmat Khan’s work documented the deadly cost of the relentless U.S. air wars. She told stories of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and how their lives are impacted by death that falls from the skies. 

U.S. air wars are primarily waged by drones that promise precision. But in reality, they’re waged with bad intelligence and zero accountability. These inhuman killing machines are operated from thousands of miles away, and they wreck lives indiscriminately. The Pentagon knows it, we know it, and now, so does the world — thanks to Khan’s critical investigative reporting.

Will you join us and congratulate Azmat Khan on this achievement? Her revelatory work has a direct and profound impact on our work calling for accountability for the Pentagon and ending the U.S. drone wars once and for all.

Again, a heartfelt congratulations to Azmat Khan, and thank you. We will use your hard work to fight even harder to achieve accountability and justice for the victims of U.S. air wars.

Thank you for working for peace,

Abbey, Yint, Sara, and the Win Without War team

P.S. Not familiar with Khan’s reporting? Here’s a link to “The Human Toll of America’s Air Wars”

 

 

 

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Chevron has blood on its hands.

 

BREAKING NEWS: Representative James P. McGovern has issued an important video calling on President Biden to pardon Steven Donziger. Our momentum is growing in Congress. Help us keep up the pressure by contributing $30 or more so we can continue building our war chest and protect Steven while helping Indigenous Ecuadorians force Chevron to clean the ancestral lands it poisoned. →   In 2008, Representative Jim McGovern traveled with Steven Donziger to Ecuador to see Chevron’s pollution firsthand. Years after Chevron refused to comply with the rule of law and clean up its toxic mess, the stench of cancer-causing chemicals was still strong and whole communities were suffering from life-threatening health problems. Now Jim is leading the call for President Biden to immediately pardon Steven Donziger. As Jim has stated, Chevron has blood on its hands. Steven exposed the company’s deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing toxic waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands, resulting in the way of cancers and thousands of deaths. Rather than address this major human rights violation, Chevron targeted Steven with what is probably the most vicious and well-financed corporate retaliation campaign against a single individual ever seen on U.S. soil.      As Rep. McGovern pointed out, Chevron used its unchecked power to rig the U.S. justice system against Steven - making a mockery of the legal system and locking him up for nearly a thousand days after the nation’s first private corporate prosecution carried out by a Chevron law firm. Chevron has tried to use the bogus “contempt” case against Steven to try to silence his successful advocacy and to send a message of intimidation to other Earth Defenders who stand up to the Fossil Fuel industry. We cannot let this new corporate playbook succeed against Steven or anyone else. More importantly, we cannot let the U.S. become yet another nation that locks up its human rights lawyers. That this happened to Steven to serve the private interests of the fossil fuel industry makes it all the more inappropriate and illegal. We simply cannot let corporate polluters get away with breaking the law by detaining those Frontline Earth Defenders who hold them accountable. Help us continue to build strength and capacity so we can fight back against Chevron. Please contribute $2,500, $1000, $500, $250, $100, $50, $30, or whatever you can today. Thank you, The #FreeDonziger Team Steven Donziger is a U.S. human rights attorney who helped communities in Ecuador’s Amazon win a historic multibillion-dollar pollution judgment against Chevron for the dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands. Since the judgment issued in 2013, Chevron has used dozens of law firms and 2000 lawyers to carry out a demonization campaign targeting Steven to send a message of intimidation to all environmental advocates. Donate NOW to help support Steven as he and the Ecuadorian communities continue their fight for corporate accountability, environmental justice, Indigenous rights, and Free Speech. DONATE NOW Twitter Instagram Facebook Paid for by Donziger Defense Fund Our mailing address is: Frente de la Defensa de la Amazonía 245 W 104th St Apt 7D New York, NY 10025-4280

Comcast will do anything to stop this Biden appointment

 

Donald Trump's biggest gift to the telecom industry was the repeal of net neutrality, delivered courtesy of his FCC chairman, former Verizon lobbyist Ajit Pai.¹

Now we have a chance to restore net neutrality -- if the Senate confirms Gigi Sohn, President Biden's nominee for the fifth and final seat on the FCC.

That's why corporate America is going all out to smear Gigi Sohn: to kill net neutrality.²

AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and their allies want to kill the free and open internet and stick everyday Americans into an internet slow lane. They know Gigi Sohn will stop them. It's been six months since Sohn was nominated, and if we don't speak out, this corporate hit job could tank Sohn's nomination and net neutrality.

Will you make a donation to help restore net neutrality and confirm Gigi Sohn?

Net neutrality isn't the only issue on the line with Sohn's confirmation. With the FCC currently tied 2-2, it's deadlocked on nearly every issue facing the commission.

For instance, President Biden's infrastructure bill included $65 billion to bring broadband to parts of the country that still don't have it. But the FCC can't help distribute the funds until she's confirmed.³

Comcast, AT&T, and their lobbyist friends are perfectly happy to see a dysfunctional FCC if that means they have the power to keep ripping off consumers.

This is our chance to repair the damage done by Trump's FCC chairman, Ajit Pai. We can't let it slip away. Will you donate $20?

Yes, I'll donate $20 to help confirm Gigi Sohn and save the free and open internet!

Thanks for standing with us,

Robert and the team at Demand Progress

PS: Your contributions keep us nimble and prepared to take on important fights like these as they happen. Will you become a monthly donor to keep our work going?

DONATE

Sources:

1. Slate, "Goodbye, Ajit Pai," January 20, 2021.

2. The Hill, "No honest case against stalled Biden FCC nominee," May 6, 2022.

3. MarketWatch, "How the infrastructure bill’s $65 billion in broadband spending will be doled out," November 9, 2021.

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