50 YEARS AGO, THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY WAS AWARE OF THE CONSEQUENCES
OF CLIMATE CHANGE & THE HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF AIR BORNE
PARTICULATES - OPPOSED REGULATIONS & FUNDED CLIMATE DENIERS!
WE ARE WITNESSING THE CATASTROPHIC EFFECTS THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY
PREDICTED 50 YEARS AGO!
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Earthworks.org |
****CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS US ALL!
THIS HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE TO
REDUCE OUR RISKS! ****
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By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 2, 2024 ~
In the span of two business days, six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have radically altered American democracy. On Friday, those six right-wing justices gutted the ability of federal government agencies to protect the waters Americans drink, the air they breathe, their ability to impose food and drug safety rules and worker protections. On Monday, the same six effectively crowned the President of the United States a king by immunizing the President from criminal prosecution for any conduct that can be construed as official acts.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent. (Scroll down to her dissent at this link.) To drive home the hubris of the majority’s decision, she read her dissent aloud in the courtroom, boldly enunciating her weightiest words. In her dissent, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson (who also wrote her own dissent), Sotomayor wrote:
“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for ‘bold and unhesitating action’ by the President, ante, at 3, 13, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.”
Sotomayor adds that “There is a twisted irony in saying, as the majority does, that the person charged with ‘tak[ing] Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ can break them with impunity.” She underscores her point with this: “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
The majority’s fixation with a President’s need for “bold and unhesitating action” comes on the heels of a right-wing manifesto called Project 2025, which maps out a radical agenda for the next president’s first 180 days in office. Project 2025 is a coalition of dozens of nonprofit front groups funded by billionaire money. The Project is proposing to replace tens of thousands of veteran federal agency personnel with political appointees; gutting climate change research and neutering the rule-making and enforcement powers of federal agencies – exactly what the Supreme Court accomplished last Friday.
Melissa Gira Grant, writing at The New Republic, calls Project 2025 “a remarkably detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise.”
Project 2025, also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, is being spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. That’s the right-wing nonprofit that secretly paid Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, over $1 million in compensation from 1999 through 2007. Clarence Thomas was required to disclose those Heritage payments on his annual financial disclosure forms. He did not do that until January of 2011, when he filed an amended financial disclosure form after watchdog groups blew the whistle on the payments.
Charles Koch and his late brother, David Koch, and foundations and trusts tied to them, have donated millions of dollars to Heritage over the years.
Another of the nonprofits listed as a “coalition partner” to Project 2025 is the Heartland Institute. That is one of the leading climate denier groups in the country which has also received heavy funding in the past from Koch-related entities. (Charles Koch is the Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, a fossil fuels conglomerate that hides behind front groups to gut environmental protections.)
In 2012, the New York Times published documents which had been leaked from The Heartland Institute. The documents showed that the organization was planning a tailored curriculum for high schools to spread skepticism about climate change. The documents also indicated that the Charles Koch Foundation had contributed $25,000 in 2011 and was anticipated to contribute $200,000 in 2012. The Heartland Institute has also received more than $26 million from two Koch-related dark-money groups, Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust, according to the Conservative Transparency Project, which obtained the data from publicly available 990 IRS tax filings.
Charles Koch is now effectively functioning as a puppet master in Washington, pulling levers here and there and everywhere. With a net worth that Forbes puts at $59.2 billion, that’s a lot of levers that he can pull.
Senator Bernie Sanders saw the Koch threat more than a decade ago. The video below shows how Senator Sanders warned Americans from the Senate floor about the threat to democracy coming from the Koch brothers and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates to billionaires to control U.S. elections through unlimited campaign funding. (Also see our exclusive report from 2011 on the slimy background details involving Charles Koch, Justice Clarence Thomas and the Citizens United decision.)
Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Rep. Jamal Bowman’s loss to George Latimer for the 16th District of New York in the Democratic primary illustrates the destructive reach of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israel wading into American electoral politics. Their agenda is driven by a single issue, about which they are willfully ignorant and misinformed. Contrary to the allegation in the Bowman-Latimer campaign, it is not anti-Semitic to speak out and object to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Rather, it is an invocation of deeply Jewish values to do so. But things are inverted now in today’s American rabbit hole, for Jewish Republicans in particular. Likewise, turning to Democrats, it is not an “attack on Biden” to object to his timid reluctance to be more forceful with Bibi about upholding terms of the US aid, as her opponents have argued in the AIPAC-driven effort to oust Rep. Cori Bush of St. Louis, and Bowman. AIPAC has set aside $100M to unseat people they don’t like.
Republicans are spending millions of dollars to unseat progressive officials at all levels of government. It is true that sometimes Democrats have crossed the aisle, while Democrats registering as Republicans in local primaries so they can vote out a Christian Nationalist. Going to the polls to cast a vote in one’s district, however, is not the same as spending millions to manipulate a race in a district in which they don’t live. AIPAC’s manipulative presence is US politics is more wantonly destructive than ever and foreshadows the destruction that will be wrought by Bibi’s forthcoming appearance in Congress.
The difference between “progressive” and ‘centrist’ Democrats is a growing chasm, and AIPAC is one of the forces driving it, using Republican mega-donor funds to intervene in Democratic contests. Bowman said, “Unfortunately some so-called Democrats are aligning themselves with radical, racist Republicans,” which illustrates how Republicans are using Israel as a cudgel to create more conflict. The Guardian notes they spent $20 million in mailers and ads. That sum is what the entire British election to be held on July 4 has cost. It is probably true that Bowman would have lost anyway, given that his district was redrawn to include more of wealthy Westchester County and his real support was in the Bronx. But AIPAC dumping that much money into a primary made sure that Latimer did not face an upset.
16th District Democrats who voted to oust Bowman ignored the fact that AIPAC has supported over 100 climate deniers and election deniers in Congress, and does all it can to help re-elect Trump. AIPAC is a single-issue organization, with no regard for healthy government in the US. Since Reagan, Republicans have conned a portion of the US electorate into thinking that Republicans are more favorable to Israel than Democrats. Trump injected steroids into that agenda item, to where it’s become a wolf-tree, eclipsing other issues more relevant to American voters, such as preserving American democracy itself. The priority for Democrats should be closing ranks to stop Trump; not punish elected officials for taking a righteous stand on Gaza, however unpopular to some.
Congressmen from both parties need to reconsider Bibi’s July 24 invitation to Congress, considering that some of Israel’s most venerable and respected leaders have encouraged the US to “disinvite Bibi.” Their reasons include: “Inviting Mr. Netanyahu will reward his contempt for U.S. efforts to establish a peace plan . . .” By appointing David Friedman as US Ambassador to Israel, Trump began fulfilling every element of Bibi’s wish-list. Unlike President’s Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Trump did not stand against the Israeli Right’s compulsion for self-destructive myopia. Rather he ceded to every aspect of Bibi’s far right agenda with the phony Abraham Accords, which has had predictably disastrous results.
Bibi fueled Trump’s alliance with the Evangelical movement by declaring him to be a modern day King Cyrus, when he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018. Evangelical Republicans picked up on that, and really believe the phony “Trump prophecy.” Bibi embraced American Evangelicals as the new cash cow for Israeli tourism and fundraising, to replace the money from American Jews, who no longer support his brand of Zionism.
The Young Turks Video: “AIPAC Bullies Brag About Jamaal Bowman’s Primary Loss”
AIPAC has escalated its campaign to hold Netanyahu blameless, and to punish American politicians for expressing their conscience over Gaza. New York Times columnists Jesse McKinley and Nicholas Fandos observed, “In the end, the left could not compete with the other side’s vast resources, including a torrent of unprecedented spending by a super PAC tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The group attacked the two-term congressman over his criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza but also the vote he and other members of the “Squad” took against Mr. Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure plan.”
AIPAC is targeting progressives all over the country for objecting to genocide. The alienation and disenfranchisement in play was summarized in a letter sent to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries from over a dozen progressive organizations, including Center for Popular Democracy Action, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, New York Communities for Change and New York City Democratic Socialists of America. It noted that United Democracy Project (UDP), an AIPAC Super Pac, was “funded largely by Republican billionaires, to drown out Jamaal Bowman’s message of humanity, dignity, and a thriving future for all.” As a result, they unseated someone Jeffries had personally endorsed, who had earned “a deep well of support among the Black and brown communities in the district,” in favor of “a conservative politician with a history of racist remarks and governance.”
AIPAC’s ruthless agenda in support of Trump put a spin on reality to distort Bowman’s record, and condemned him for using his office to object to Bibi’s genocide in Gaza. One of Bowman’s campaign slogans was, “The Many Can Beat the Money.” LA Progressive publisher Sharon Kyle summarized the loss saying, “In a district that houses more than 725,000 people, less than 100,000 people showed up to vote. AIPAC proved that the money will always beat the many when the many stay home.”
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