When Does the Civil War Start, Again?

 

For too many, it’s not rhetorical question. If Donald Trump loses the election but refuses to vacate the White House or, worse, calls on his followers to show their support (which many would interpret at a call to arms), that could be the tipping point. If the Senate were to refuse to ratify his continued reign or the Supreme Court ruled that the ballots cast (by mail or otherwise) mandate that Mr. Trump step down and accept Joe Biden as President, Trump’s supporters could easily be incited under Trump’s “rigged election” rallying cry against mail-in ballots… a rally that would undoubtedly include some exceptionally well-armed Trumpers. After the grand debate, Trump’s Proud Boys reference and his storming about how bad the election would get, the doubts and concerns certainly escalated.

Equally, on the other hand, should a Senate or a Supreme Court decision effectively support Trump’s reelection, either by accepting his claim of fraud and election rigging or simply by cutting off the time to count the flood of mail-in ballots, you can expect massive protests, likely to turn violent, by masses of left-leaning constituents, including their most radical and equally well-armed extremists. The President’s middle son, Eric, announced to the world that his father was likely to concede only if he faced an overwhelming loss at the polls.

The Republican race to install an extreme right-wing Supreme Court justice, which if successful (probable) will almost necessitate that Democrats, should they dominate the Congress and take the presidency, stack the court quickly after the election. This just adds massive fuel to an already angry simmering political fire.

Yet Americans want an orderly transfer of power. Even right-wing Mitch McConnell pledged an orderly transition no matter who is elected. That does not, of course, exclude political manipulation and game-playing, but the words echo the majority American sentiment. That desire, while huge, is most certainly not shared among the most radical elements of the left and right, each believing that their way must be the only way.

Writing for the September 27^th Los Angeles Times, Mark Z. Barabak and Jenny Jarvie look at the numbers and the underlying beliefs: “When Jim Jackson looks ahead to November, he cringes at what he sees: a defeated President Trump refusing to leave the White House and his supporters waging war to keep him there… ‘The militias and the white supremacists ... they’re going to put out the call to arms,’ said Jackson, 73, who lives in the conservative-leaning suburbs of Milwaukee and voted Republican for 52 years, but not for Trump. ‘That’s my worst nightmare.’

“Jeanine Davis shares his concern, though for different reasons… Seated near the Huntington Beach Pier [California], wearing a red ‘Keep America Great’ hat, the Trump supporter suggested Democrats will do whatever it takes to elect Joe Biden, and riot if they fail. ‘It’s going to be like war amongst citizens,’ said Davis, an executive recruiter in her 50s.

“Candidates often say a presidential contest is the most important ever, telling voters to act as though their life depended on it and the country’s future was at stake. Dozens of conversations with voters across the nation — from the West Coast to the Upper Midwest to the East — suggest that, this time, many people really believe it .

“Punished by pandemic , buckled by economic hardship and riven by relentless partisanship , America is facing an election unlike any in modern times, a vote shadowed by menace and fringed with paranoia — much of it fed by the occupant of the Oval Office, who incessantly acts to undermine confidence in the result… ‘He’s essentially trying to pull off a coup,’ said Frank Dudek, a 70-year-old retiree, after casting his ballot at an early vote center in Arlington, Va., just outside the nation’s capital.

“Some voters worry about frayed family ties. Others see the whole country unraveling. A significant number consider threats and violence a reasonable way to solve partisan differences… ‘You have all these things — the pandemic, the protests, the counterprotests, the Black vs. white, the right against the left,’ said Allison Trammell, 60, an Atlanta social worker who supports Biden. ‘It’s almost like everything is coming up at the same time and there’s no equilibrium. There’s no middle ground.’

“What is more, many are acting on their fears, anticipating all manner of chaos, up to and including armed insurrection. They’re flooding gun stores and shooting ranges, stockpiling ammunition and provisioning for a postelection dystopia.” But how many people shooting guns, engaging in angry mass protests, does it take before an obviously deeply divided, frustrated and angry populace moves from begrudging acceptance of the political results to a full-on civil war? Most Americans assume that normalcy will return after the election, perhaps after a short period of challenges. Others… not so much.

“Ashley Avis, a 36-year-old nurse, was recently out with her father and 2-year-old son in Pinellas Park, Fla., buying plywood to board up their windows in case of civil unrest. She also plans to secure an alternative water supply, lest the public works around Tampa Bay are taken out of commission… ‘We’re hoping for the best,’ said the Trump supporter. ‘We’re preparing for the worst.’

“Across the country, in a working-class neighborhood on Las Vegas’ east side, Michael Martinez said he, too, planned to lay in extra food and water ‘just in case there’s a disruption in our food delivery systems and whatnot.’… As starkly as the country is divided, a poll for the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, a collection of experts across the political spectrum, found the overwhelming majority of Americans believe there is no place for violence in the country’s political system… (The quietude of recent decades is a relatively recent phenomenon. Violence around elections was not uncommon in the 19th century, and lynchings, to keep Black voters away from the polls, continued well into the 20th century, Bowdoin College scholar Jeffrey Selinger points out.)

“Still, 16% of those surveyed in late 2019 said the use of violence to advance political goals would be ‘a little’ justified. The number, essentially equal among Democrats and Republicans, grew to 21% when respondents were asked to consider the possibility of losing the 2020 election. That amounts to millions of Americans who would condone the use of force, even if they don’t personally act out… Given the hothouse atmosphere, some who renounce violence worry about those who won’t.

“‘If Trump gets reelected or if Biden wins, who can say what will happen?’ said Shad DeLacy, 43, a political independent who runs a menswear boutique on the main business strip in Kenosha, Wis. He gestured at buildings across the street, boarded up as a precaution after days of unrest following the August shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer.” LA Times. Nobody can really be sure, but even if civil war does not break out, how exactly are Americans going to be able to find a way to live peacefully with each other? Can Congress function without a return to the long-standing practice of political horse-trading, a world that seemed to end as the twentieth century came to an end?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and even if we get past this election without ultra-violence, are we already too deeply enmeshed in a “great unraveling” to be the United States of America ever again?

 

 

 

 

Con Artist, Liar-in-Chief, Tax Cheat, Probable Felon & President of the United States

 

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

Apr 13, 2012

@BarackObama 

who wants to raise all our taxes, only pays 20.5% on $790k salary.

http://1.usa.gov/HFZJKH Do as I say not as I do.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

Mar 28, 2013

@conservativeJT

@bluejoni

@realDonaldTrump

Trump is an American that will pay more taxes in one year than you pay in your entire life.

Despite a 2016 campaign pledge to the contrary, Donald John Trump is the only president in modern history not to reveal his income tax returns, claiming that he would as soon as his audit risk was over. The IRS says there is no reason for not revealing those returns, but Trump still refuses. From Trump University and five other major bankruptcies, Trump has extracted money over the years from consumers, students and investors, choosing instead to leave them high and dry through insolvency. Insolvency from a man who keeps claims to be so veritably successful and rich? A man who directly or through his corporate holdings has been involved in over 3500 lawsuits, more than any other US billionaire? A man who’s declared income suggests he is nowhere near the business magnate he claims to be? What’s real and what’s Trump fabrication?

Indeed, the New York Attorney General is delving into records from the “Trump organization” (there is no central “Trump organization,” by the way) for massive financial improprieties. Mostly, false information and valuations provided to banks to secure real estate loans, overstating the same values that he carried on his tax returns as massive loss-generators. Lots of felonies in that alone. State and federal. Back when he built Trump Tower, and through his attorney Roy Cohn who was also a Mafia mouthpiece, the Donald elected to go with a concrete-heavy (vs steel-heavy) design, even though the real estate world in NYC is and was quite aware that the mob totally controls(ed) the cement business in the city. For those in the know, the Donald would never have done that without an unholy alliance with the Mafia. But taxes just may be his Achilles Heel.

 

“Over the years, President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed has featured messages slamming others for not paying taxes, bragging about how rich he is, criticizing those paying taxes overseas, and even claiming he pays ‘more taxes in one year than you pay in your entire life.’

“It all reads differently now after The New York Times obtained decades of Trump’s tax information and found that he ‘has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.’… Perhaps nowhere is the disconnect between his public message and apparent private financial situation more stark than in the messages Trump has tweeted out over the years…

“The key finding in the Times report was that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency and another $750 in 2017. He also paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years….

“For the record, Trump has denied the report. ‘It’s totally fake news,’ he said Sunday [9/7] evening and added Monday morning [9/28] that he ‘paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits.’” Yahoo! News, September 28^th. Hey, Mr. Trump, if you want to refute the Times, there is only on way to do it: release your tax returns for the last decade! Trump paid far more in taxes to foreign governments than he did in the US: “$15,598 he or his companies paid in Panama, the $145,400 in India and the $156,824 in the Philippines.” Yahoo! News.

One way or another, you can pretty much expect Trump to find a way to be pardoned for federal crimes. He could try and pardon himself or resign and let minion-Pence do the dirty work for him. Not sure if that will work. But if those numbers remotely reflect what he did on his New York State tax return, where the President cannot issue a pardon, expect a sentence that Mr. Trump will not like. Will he throw his kids and their spouses under a bus to avoid jail time? If he pardons his immediate family, they lose the ability to take the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, and if they lie later, they will be committing new felonies well past daddy-Trump’s ability to pardon them. You can easily see why Trump needs to be reelected: to avoid losing control of the federal process that could send him and/or his kids away unless he can stifle the investigation.

“As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

“The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.

“The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019…

“Mr. Trump has written off as business expenses costs—including fuel and meals—associated with his aircraft, used to shuttle him among his various homes and properties. Likewise the cost of haircuts, including the more than $70,000 paid to style his hair during ‘The Apprentice.’ Together, nine Trump entities have written off at least $95,464 paid to a favorite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump…

“One Trump enterprise that has been regularly profitable, and is a persistent source of concern about ethical conflicts and national security lapses, is the Mar-a-Lago club. Profits there rose sharply after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy, as courtiers eagerly joining up brought a tenfold rise in cash from initiation fees — from $664,000 in 2014 to just under $6 million in 2016, even before Mr. Trump doubled the cost of initiation in January 2017. The membership rush allowed the president to take $26 million out of the business from 2015 through 2018, nearly triple the rate at which he had paid himself in the prior two years.” New York Times, September 27^th. 

Trump appears to be over-borrowed with repayment for massive debts looming and payable, much during the next four years.  It could get embarrassing.  “[The] tax records show that Mr. Trump has once again done what he says he regrets, looking back on his early 1990s meltdown: personally guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, a decision that led his lenders to threaten to force him into personal bankruptcy… This time around, he is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.” NY Times. This data suggests that not only is Trump a terrible businessman and a tax cheat, but he might not even be close to being the billionaire he claims to be. On September 28^th, Trump tweeted: “I have very little debt compared to the value of assets,” he tweeted. Seriously? Prove it!

The sad reality is that Trump has inflicted massive pain on the very base-constituency that needs healthcare and social services the most. The ever-fouling air they breathe and the water they drink face environmental deregulation… as climate change-induced wildfire and droughts in some areas, flooding and virulent tropical storms in others decimate their homes, farms and businesses. He’s played his base for fools and they are so loyal, they let him get away with it. The rest of us should not be so forgiving. Vote like you life depends on it. It does.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and it is deeply sad that the man in the most powerful job in the world is not just incompetent, he is an out-and-out con artist/criminal.

Addendum following the 9/29 presidential debate: Listening to the deconstructed, constant interruption (mostly, but not all, by Trump), listening to what highly-credible federal officials have already determined in direct contradiction to the President’s position, listening to a litany of repetitious Trumpian falsehoods, I was disheartened. Trump’s assault on the election process itself, however, sent quivers of fear down my spine. He rather clearly was already disavowing both the process and the results. We may indeed be on the brink of another civil war.

 

 

 

American Cultural Purity

 

The last pretense of Trump’s self-proclaimed racial neutrality vaporized when he addressed a virtually all-white rally in Minnesota on September 19^th and told the cheering crowd: “You have good genes, you know that, right?” The insistent denial – despite oceans of statistical evidence to the contrary – of discriminatory standards of social, business, economic and criminal justice applied to people of color or those of religious/ethnic diversity by the President and his Attorney General William Barr remains blatant and unrepentant. Aside from Trump’s affinity for those of Jewish faith – based on family ties and evangelical commitments to Armageddon – it is really about a white protestant ethos with a minor carve out for white, non-Hispanic Catholics. Trump draws huge waves of support from admitted white supremacists and associated fringe conspiracy groups. Non-whites are a threat, sinister “minorities” to be marginalized.

Though the Census has always measured “people” as its metric for allocation of federal resources and voting districts, the Trump administration has attempted to add “citizenship” – rejected at the federal trial and circuit court of appeals levels as an unlawful attempt to intimidate – a factor that has never been on any census since it began in 1790. From the march of torch-carrying white nationalists at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11, 2017 – “[Y]ou also had people that were very fine people, on both sides” according to the President – to the Minnesota Trump rally noted above, white evangelical values (those that do not interfere with big business profits) have become Trump’s values, mandated to “Make American Great Again.” The unambiguous cry from the 1920s – an “America First” racist slogan embraced by the Ku Klux Klan and others of that racial persuasion – became an anchor phrase in Trump’s policy-making, a factor that did not go unnoticed by Western “allies.”

In an ideal Trump world, Muslim Americans would go back to their countries of origin (ignoring that many are from families that have been citizens for generations), black Americans would simply accept that there is no racial injustice to be corrected but would preferably be kept as far from voting as possible, and anyone supportive of any Democratic candidate would be labeled as a radical and tracked by the FBI. Listen to the words of rally supporters. Listen to Trump’s praise of self-admitted racial bigots. Hear his dismissal of any notion of injustice against any minority. Watch him embrace those with extremist conspiracy beliefs.

So, what would it be like to live in an authoritarian country where anything but the government-sanctioned cultural mainstream becomes legally marginalized if not completely suppressed? Like China, where Muslim Uighurs, who have lived in western China (today, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, which is anything but autonomous) for centuries with their own language, dress and culture, are being forcibly removed from their homes, a million or more, and relocated to barbed wire “reeducation camps” (read: “concentration” camps), where their language and culture are banished and where they are allowed to return after having been cleansed of their ethnicity. Mandarin. Mainstream Chinese culture and dress.

Tibet is old news now. “The region maintained its autonomy until 1951 when, following the Battle of Chamdo, Tibet was occupied and incorporated into the People's Republic of China, and the previous Tibetan government was abolished in 1959 after a failed uprising.” Wikipedia. Its culture was then decimated when China took over and invited traditional Han Chinese to come and settle to dilute the local culture. What’s left of Tibetan traditionalism is little more than a tourist attraction today.

The pattern repeats itself. China could not accept their treaty obligations to maintain British laws and freedom in Hong Kong until at least 2047. Instead, they recently shoved a new repressive legal code down HK’s throat, arrested its activists and protestors, sentencing many to well over a decade for expressing their opposing political views. It’s happening all over China, including in what had been a politically loyal region, Inner Mongolia (formally, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), which despite its different style of dress and language, never mounted any serious challenge to Beijing’s rule. They were so compliant that they were often referred to by Chinese government authorities as a “model minority.”

Not good enough under the iron fist of Xi Jinping. Preserving the regional mother tongue as part of the regions ethnic heritage was no longer valued. Quite the opposite, as Beijing began phasing out bilingual instruction, insisting on “Chinese only” classes. There is just one acceptable Chinese culture now. Mongols were shocked and immediately protested. Alice Su, writing for the September 24^th Los Angeles Times, describes this standard Chinese program of cultural repression: “‘We have no way out. There’s nothing we can do,’ said Gangbater, a herder in Xilingol League, a central part of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where mass protests broke out three weeks ago when the government implemented a new ‘bilingual education’ program to replace the Mongolian language with Chinese in half of Mongolian school classes.

“Demonstrations against the program appear to have been largely suppressed. More than 90% of children who had boycotted school in Xilingol were back in class — including his own, said Gangbater, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of retribution from authorities… ‘If you don’t send the kids [to school], they take away your jobs,’ said Gangbater. ‘You can’t get subsidies or loans from the banks. They put you on a blacklist. They are arresting the people who signed petitions. They have all kinds of methods.’

“The Chinese government’s crackdown on Inner Mongolia has been swift and unsurprising, using a familiar arsenal of tactics — surveillance, financial and occupational threats, detention, social credit blacklisting and media control — often deployed against ethnic minorities and others deemed a threat to ‘social stability.’…

“The protests, however, have not deterred the government’s resolve to erode minority cultural identity. Last week, local authorities in the city of Xilinhot, the seat of government in Xilingol, announced via WeChat that parents who did not send their children to school by Sept. 17 would lose access to government subsidies. High schoolers who did not attend classes would be expelled and blocked from taking the college entrance exam. Banks would stop loans for the next five years to any parents who did not comply.

“A separate government notice stated that parents who did not abide would be placed on an ‘untrustworthy persons list,’ and face restrictions on jobs, special market transactions, cross-border travels, home reconstruction and other actions requiring good social credit standing.

“Xilinhot authorities announced last week that they had successfully brought all 3,469 students in the area’s Mongolian-language schools back to class. ‘Chinese ethnicities as one close family, building the China dream with one heart,’ declared bright white Chinese and Mongolian letters against a red background on top of the announcement.” Think that forced cultural exclusion cannot happen here in the United States, known as the lettuce bowl (“melting pot”) of cultural diversity? Think again.

Start with a President, quite willing to defy the Constitution, federal statutes, to use federal forces against peaceful protestors, labels cities as “anarchist” and lawless as he incites protestors to violence, applies vitriolic descriptions to anyone who opposes anything he wants to have happen (“radical Democrats,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Crooked Hillary,” etc.), calls the free press the “enemy” of the people, is threatening to overrule the FDA if it will not declare a vaccine safe within Trump’s time requirements, has the worst track record on telling the American people the truth on major issues of any American president in history, has nothing but disdain for immigrants of color or non-white-traditional cultures (remember his take on so many Mexican immigrants: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”) and who is even suggesting that he might not leave office even if the election results favor his opponent. Do you really think that if he believed he could impose his will, Trump would not reshape political, economic and cultural power to favor white traditionalists… to the exclusion of everyone else?

              I’m Peter Dekom, and for most of the 20^th and earliest 21^st centuries, we have been concerned with foreign powers destroying us or taking over our nation; today, that same horror is back, but this time the biggest existential threats to American freedom come from within.

 

 

 

 

Symptoms vs Cause – The Two Giant Elephants in the Room

 

My Parisian friend, Alexis Nolent, tells me that the French describe the explosive polarized frenzy that is leading the United States, several European nations and elsewhere in the developed world, as people who are “chauffés à blanc” (white hot, but really meaning reaching the boiling point). There is a growing feeling among Europeans that the United States is on the brink of another civil war, amplified by the proliferation of well over 300 million civilian guns (including, accorded to the NRA, 15 million AR-15 military-style semiautomatic assault rifles). Dems vs Republicans as compromise has just vaporized.

It is easy to lose yourself in the seeming immediate causes of this explosive political polarization teetering on the edge of ultra-violence. People and governments tend to be reactive, and oddly it is tyrants who take advantage and become change-driven, proactive, using fear to gain power. However, the elephants in the room are rather clearly Malthusian population growth and climate change. Everything else is derivative from those forces.

Too many people, and nature is required to cull the herd. Pandemics, war and starvation. As resources dry up, burn, get flooded, eroded or blown away, those who have circle the wagons… those who don’t migrate and/or foment wars and civil strife. It’s not TV or Social Media. They are symptoms of the fear and anger at change. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, posited in the Bible (in both the New and Old Testaments), have been a salient part of our culture for millennia.

Massive seismic change is terrifying, especially when that change defines who gets access to the dwindling resources. And who loses access. People form “them vs us” groups as a way of circling those wagons, creating identification and shared values… planning who survives and who is expendable.  The assumption is that there is not enough for everybody, so we need to define the losers and let them go. Incumbent losers, those who know their time is passed, soon see themselves as having nothing left to lose. They will follow zealots, shoot and kill those who disagree with them… but in the end will perish after wreaking their own destruction. It’s been the same story throughout history. Nature is smiling. Death works.

Population growth fuels other changes, particularly when technology is the perceived solution. Artificial intelligence, for example, is about to eliminate hundreds of millions of jobs as well. Capitalism – particularly laissez faire pro-business neoliberalism – cannot deal with that reality. A huge impact. And remember, we choose economic growth – as evidenced by a top-weighted GDP metric – as the symbol of a society that is successful. GDP aggregates economic value, pretty much ignoring what’s in the middle and at the bottom. Looking at the stock market as a metric of success is particularly strange given how few Americans actually determine their economic well-being from the market. Employment numbers rarely address those squeezed out of the job market and don’t give true average buying power any weight at all.

We govern to maximize our chosen metrics. GDP is no longer the salient metric of success, but it is still the universal measurement of winning. Climate change cannot be stopped or reversed as long as GDP is the Holy Grail. Why is economic growth good? If you are poor, you want better. If you are rich, you want to enhance your collection of successful symbols. But growth consumes resources, uses energy and accelerates climate change. We need another metric, which can include economic well-being, but which looks at other standards of sustainable quality.

Oddly, leaders who do nature’s bidding – by facilitating pandemic spread and stirring passions to the point of mass violence – are playing out the “cull the herd” scenario, even as they may believe they are simply amassing personal political power. They blame. They encourage hatred and divisiveness. Hitler blamed Jews. The Spanish Inquisition blamed heretics. Stalin blamed fifth columnists and anti-communist subversives. Mao blamed the bourgeoisie and foreign influence. Trump blames immigrants (and non-white minorities) and China.

Trump is sowing nature’s destructive seeds right on cue. He seems to be nature’s anointed killing machine, both in terms of allowing a virus to maximize the casualty rate and in terms of inciting people get to angry enough to kill each other in droves. We can also see this in Poland, Hungary and in a slowly growing way, even in France. It’s easy to blame a religious group or another country or racial/ethnic community – history always does that – but again, it is necessary to separate symptom from cause. Trump is the master of nasty labeling, blaming others, sowing distrust and dividing people who used to get along. He is a symptom, a willing soldier in nature’s quest to cull the herd, but he is hardly the cause.

You only have to watch a Trump rally to watch his malevolent and divisive message at work. But as the world slowly turns its back on the United States, Trump is making that increasingly popular international anti-US approach that much easier. Trashing Trump’s America seems to be becoming a global phenomenon, with very few exceptions. Is Trump trying to unify? To bring global forces into a coordinated effort to battle obvious enemies to all humanity? Quite the opposite; he is using global challenges to blame and further isolate the United States. To show his power to the planet. On September 22^nd, when addressing the United Nations, Trump pushed the rest of the world even farther away. It was a blame fest. Even as China’s handling of the pandemic was/is vastly more effective than that of the United States.

“As the United Nations marked its 75th anniversary with a pandemic-era summit conducted virtually, President Trump used the occasion Tuesday [9/22] to excoriate China, accusing it of ‘unleashing’ the coronavirus on the world even as U.S. deaths from the disease passed 200,000.

“Trump, who’d advertised for days on the campaign trail that he would be tough on China, took on the fellow member of the Security Council at the U.N.’s annual General Assembly, with the world’s leaders looking on via video screens. While Trump railed against Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged cooperation… Using a term widely seen as xenophobic, Trump said Beijing must be held accountable for the ‘China virus.’

“The world’s death toll is on track to reach 1 million. While one-fifth of the deaths and confirmed cases of infections are in the United States, Trump made wildly exaggerated claims about how well his administration has tackled COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus… ‘In the United States, we launched the most aggressive mobilization since the Second World War,’ Trump said in relatively brief remarks recorded at the White House and delivered remotely. He claimed, contradicting his government’s top scientists and medical experts, that a vaccine will soon be distributed and the virus ‘defeated.’” Los Angeles Times, September 23^rd. “Defeated”? Even as Trump’s own senior medical advisors say otherwise. Nature must be overjoyed. The world’s major superpower is leading the charge towards “people-culling” dissention.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and without major social adjustments and global cooperation, we can sit back and watch the violence rise, diseases spread, droughts wreak starvation and the global death toll mount… and autocracy rage.

 

Amping Up the Polarization – Big Court, Small Court

 

1937 Headline as FDR Attempted

     to Stack the Supreme Court

“The U.S. Department Of Justice on Monday [9/21] labeled New York City, Portland, and Seattle as ‘anarchist jurisdictions’ permitting violence and destruction of property.
The DOJ says the three cities have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities.” ABC News (NYC), September 21^st. That “antifa” obsession again. Three cities with Democratic mayors in blue states.

The White House has certainly deployed federal forces to provoke greater violence, and when the feds have been used in these venues, they were most certainly not welcomed. But even the FBI has officially stated that “antifa” is a philosophy and not an organized group, noting that domestic terrorism far outstrips foreign operatives as a threat to our nation.

This name-calling and labeling are nothing more than affirmation that there are two Americas, one “red,” mostly rural and heavily white America – where Trump enjoys solid support – and “blue,” mostly urban, where Trump finds strong opposition, even in red states. President Trump, by his own admission, does not represent any constituency that opposes him. Worse, he embraces notions of racial superiority, as recently and blatantly confirmed in his September 19^th rally in Minnesota, where he actually said: “You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump said during his Saturday rally in front of a nearly all-white crowd in Bemidji. “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

As noted in my recent Rules Don’t Apply to Me! blog, the Republican Party which blocked a Democratic nomination for a Supreme Court vacancy in 2016 nine months before the election on the grounds that such election year nominations should not be processed until after the election, is hell-bent on nominating and confirming a Supreme Court replacement before an election that takes place in a month and a half. Someone young enough to last decades in an appointment for life position. Should that occur, you can pretty much bet the gloves are off, thrown away, and there will be an “anything goes” bare knuckle Democratic response. Another impeachment effort? Mega-gridlock in Congress?

Or if the election goes in favor of the Democrats, despite GOP efforts to suppress any ballot effort that could even slightly favor the Democrats and is very likely looking to refuse to accept any result except Trump’s reelection? Having one more right-wing Supreme Court justice might just make that Court the arbiter of a right-wing victory, even if the votes are heavily skewed against the President. But let’s assume that, notwithstanding this blatant effort to rig the election, Democrats are so furious at what is happening that they pour out in droves and ultimately take the Presidency and both houses of Congress. And assume that that right-wing judicial appointment has taken place. What then?

First, note that there is no constitutional requirement as to the number of justices for the Supreme Court. “The U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t always had nine justices—it started with six, went briefly down to five, back to six, then seven, then nine, and, during the Civil War, ten. Now, if Trump confirms a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Democrats later regain the presidency and Senate, Democrats are threatening to change the number again.” Adele Peters, writing for FastCompany.com, September 22^nd. But adding justices by Congressional mandate is fraught with risk and longer-term issues. Peters explores history and discusses some alternatives with major legal scholars:

“The current size of the Supreme Court has been in place since 1869. During the Great Depression, after the court repeatedly struck down New Deal legislation, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed ‘packing the court’ with more justices. ‘There’s a subsurface argument that’s going to surface soon that, in fact, since the failure of the court-packing plan in 1937, a kind of constitutional convention has been created that you can’t change the size of the court merely for political reasons,’ [Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Mark] Tushnet says. Still, he says that the standard legal opinion now is that the president and Congress can choose to change the number of justices at any time they want.

“There’s no reason that nine is a magic number. ‘If you look around the world at constitutional courts, the number varies between 7 and 15,’ he says. ‘And courts with sizes larger than 9 manage to work as well as our court does. So as an issue of simply managing the institution, going from 9 to 11 or 13 probably shouldn’t be a difficulty.’

“But making the change has an obvious risk. Democrats may be able to do it next year to try to rebalance the court ideologically, as a way to help correct for the fact that Mitch McConnell blocked Barack Obama’s attempt to appoint Merrick Garland. If that happens, Republicans could later do the same thing when they regain power, and the court could swell over time… Samuel Moyn, who teaches jurisprudence at Yale Law School and history at Yale University, argues that it’s not a true solution.

“‘The first question is, what’s the goal?’ he says. ‘Court-packing, in most of its versions, is an attempt either to put the court back the way it was, before Neil Gorsuch came, or it’s more radical, like what they’re doing in Poland, taking over the court and making it like an arm of the Democratic Party. My view is that both of those are bad goals, and that what we should really want is to make the court less significant in American politics, so we don’t have to have these cycles of converting national politics into a debate about which judges are going to make policy. Maybe judges shouldn’t be making as much policy.’

“Other proposals involve adding term limits, so that each president automatically gets to make an equal number of appointments, instead of leaving that up to chance (though the Constitution says judges must serve for life, they could possibly be transferred to other courts). Moyn says this is the same kind of reform as court-packing, solving a short-term problem instead of a fundamental one: ‘They’re aimed at getting the people right. Not the institution’s power.’

“Rather than packing the court, Democrats could consider reforms such as requiring a new supermajority when the court rules that a law is unconstitutional. Six or seven justices would have to agree, instead of five, giving the court less power to invalidate laws—a power that the Constitution never explicitly gave it. ‘If we don’t like what the legislature does, we have to oppose it through getting our representatives in the legislature, not fighting over what judges have this extraordinary power to rewrite the law,’ Moyn says.”

Precipitating a Constitutional crisis with a nation as polarized as it was immediately before the Civil War, amplified by the economic and health decimation from an out-of-control pandemic, cannot be good for us. Perhaps, it will fracture the United States into smaller republics (or autocracies), which just might precipitate another Civil War. Perhaps. What will life be like after this election anyway, no matter who is elected President?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and we seem to have reached a place in history where major American political parties are so willing to take uncompromising stands that are so diametrically opposite so as to threaten the very existence of the nation state itself.

 

 

Rules Don’t Apply to Me!

 

“When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total."

“The federal government has absolute power. It has the power. As to whether or not I'll use that power, we'll see.”

Donald Trump, April 2016   

“When you have the Senate, when you have the votes, you can sort of do what you want as long as you have it.”

Donald Trump, September 21st

Repeated in the Impeachment Hearings by his chief counsel and reaffirmed by his Attorney General, a sitting president is exempt from indictment and cannot be impeached or tried for high crimes and misdemeanors by reasons of his/her decisions. Trump’s executive orders are constantly being rejected by federal courts. Trump is exceptionally put out by the US Constitution, from First Amendment rights on through the due process requirement and the separation of powers among the three branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial). He is an open admirer of autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un who rule unencumbered by statutes and constitutional restrictions. Unfortunately, the Constitution does apply here and restricts the President, and where Congress has properly enacted (or failed to enact) legislation within their constitutional mandate, his executive orders have no validity. 

The notion that “the rules do not apply to me” has apparently leaked into the ethos of the entire Republican Party, a reality that is coming home to roost with the passing of yet another Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and the opening of yet another Supreme Court vacancy literally 44 days before the next presidential election. Let’s look back at the last such vacancy that occurred in an election year. 

After US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away in February of 2016, Barack Obama nominated moderate justice Merrick Garland (Chief Justice on the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, Harvard BA, summa cum laude, Harvard law, magna cum laude) to replace him on the highest court in the land. March 16, almost 9 months before the next Presidential election. “In an unprecedented move, Senate Republicans (under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) refused to consider Garland's nomination, holding ‘no hearings, no votes, no action whatsoever’ on the nomination. The refusal was highly controversial, with some commentators saying the seat on the Court to which Garland was nominated was "stolen’. Over 170,000 people signed a White House petition asking President Obama to independently appoint Garland to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Senate had waived its advice and consent role.” Wikipedia 

Under this reasoning, the appointment of a successor justice in an election year should be deferred to whomever is elected that November. But the United States has become severely politicized, from medical matters during a pandemic to Supreme Court appointments. Thus, what was gospel blockage of a Democratic presidential Supreme Court nominee almost three quarters of a year before an election turns out not to apply where the prospective appointment is by a Republican presidential appointment with less than two months before such an election. 

Within two hours of Justice Ginsberg’s death, GOP Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell made it clear that getting a conservative justice to change the complexion of the court was an immediate priority. “Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise… President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.” 

The President was clearly of a mind to do just that. “A day after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, chants of ‘Fill that seat! Fill that seat!’ broke out during President Trump's campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C., on Saturday [9/19]… ‘That's what we're going to do. We're going to fill that seat!’ Trump said, saying his supporters should print ‘Fill that seat!’ on T-shirts. 

“The president also pledged to nominate a woman for the seat, saying ‘I actually like women much more than I like men.’ He went on to ‘poll’ the crowd about whether they'd prefer a man or a woman for the seat. The cheers were much louder for a woman nominee… ‘It will be a woman, a very talented, very brilliant woman,’ Trump then announced.” NPR.com, September 19th. 

The Democrats rightfully screamed: “‘The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,’ Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a tweet, reusing McConnell’s exact words from 2016.” TheHill.com, September 18th. 

Campaign contributions to both parties, but particularly favoring the Democrats, exploded. To Republicans, facing the reality that Democrats were unlikely to lose the House, had a slight edge to take the Senate in November and that the GOP had an increasingly unpopular Presidential nominee, the ability to take the Court would assure Republican political power for decades to come. Roe v Wade was teetering under an evangelical tsunami of support for reversal. Decisions in what was likely to be a contentious and controversial election were also in the offing. 

One interim Senate election that would replace an Arizona vacancy this year and the potential of two or three GOP Senate defections were all that stood between that judicial anomaly and application of the same GOP mandate imposed on the Garland nomination. If the Dems eventually are truly in power, they just might have the legislative power to add Supreme Court justices, which is not set in the Constitution. Rule by retaliation? Really? 

But what these exchanges point out with exceptional clarity are both the exceptional polarization, seemingly without possible compromise, that has ripped this nation apart and that we have a President who openly admits that he does not represent any Americans who disagree with his core polices… they remain without a president. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the damage from following deeply dishonest and manipulative tactics directed to disenfranchise what may well be the majority of America voters invites destructive retaliation and erodes the democratic principles upon which this republic was founded. 

Discrimination Against Mails

 

Blitheringly incompetent, malevolent political operative, liar, presidential puppet, avaricious, criminal and surrounded by conflict of interest charges, active vote suppressor or “all of the above.” Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

Let’s start with some very interesting facts that most of us are simply not aware of. You may or may not know that one of President Trump’s agendas is either to kill or privatize the United States Postal Service. Railing against what he claimed was effectively a federal subsidy, Trump also took aim specifically at Jeff Bezos, who owns the Trump-critical Washington Post, and deliveries from his main company, Amazon. There is so much wrong with the entire recent postal explosion. It stinks from the head. But the problems seem to be significantly and directly traceable to Mr. DeJoy.

From the September 14^th Forbes.com:  “Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s financial holdings in former employer XPO Logistics and other private sector firms are an ‘enormous’ financial conflict of interest that should result in his resignation or firing, experts testified to a House Oversight subcommittee Monday [9/14], as scrutiny has intensified into possible campaign finance violations before DeJoy arrived at the U.S. Postal Service and how his ties to the private sector and GOP might affect his work as postmaster general.

“DeJoy has at least $30 million invested in XPO Logistics, a USPS contractor that has been paid $14 million by the agency since DeJoy took office in June alone, and receives more than $2 million per year through warehouse and office space his LLCs lease to XPO, True North Research executive director Lisa Graves highlighted in her written opening statement to the House as a reason why DeJoy should ‘resign, or be fired.’

 

“Financial filings by DeJoy’s wife Aldona Wos also show that DeJoy has between $2 million and $11 million invested in private equity firm Warburg Pincus, which orchestrated the merger between XPO and DeJoy’s previous company, New Breed Logistics, and currently holds stakes in a number of logistics companies that Graves testified ‘could financially benefit from privatizing or parting out the U.S. Postal Service.’” Conflict that might rise to the level of a federal crime?

 

Hundreds of sorting machines and thousands of mailboxes have been removed by the USPS during DeJoy’s short tenure, and there have been significant delays in mail delivery all across the land. Seniors are not receiving their Medicare prescriptions or Social Security checks on time, shippers are finding spoilage in perishables, and there have been warnings from the USPS that people need to take extra time vis-à-vis vote-by-mail. Despite half-hearted responses to the contrary, DeJoy appears to be fulfilling the President’s belief that shutting off vote-by-mail possibilities will enhance his chances of reelection. In late August, when pressed by a Congressional committee, “Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told senators he had ‘no idea’ equipment was being removed until the public outcry, but has no plans to restore those mailboxes or sorting machines.” Christian Science Monitor, August 21^st. Few believe he did not know.

 

On September 17^th, a scathing opinion issued by a federal judge, in an action against DeJoy’s actions, may have begun the possibility of reversing some of the damage: “ A U.S. judge on Thursday [9/17]  blocked controversial Postal Service changes that have slowed mail nationwide, calling them 'a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service' before the November election… Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, said he was issuing a nationwide preliminary injunction sought by 14 states that sued the Trump administration and the U.S. Postal Service.

“The states challenged the Postal Service's so-called 'leave behind' policy, where trucks have been leaving postal facilities on time regardless of whether there is more mail to load. They also sought to force the Postal Service to treat election mail as first class mail.

“The judge noted after a hearing that Trump had repeatedly attacked voting by mail by making unfounded claims that it is rife with fraud. Many more voters are expected to vote by mail this November because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the states have expressed concern that delays might result in voters not receiving ballots or registration forms in time… 'The states have demonstrated the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service,' Bastian said.” CuzzBlue.com, September 18^th? But judge, DeJoy told us that all those moves were necessary to increase the efficiency of the USPS. We know that was false.

Writing for the September 18^th Los Angeles Times, Maya Lau and Laura J. Nelson, tell us the truth: “For new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who wanted the U.S. Postal Service to operate more efficiently, it seemed like an obvious fix: Just run the trucks on time… So in July he ordered drivers to start leaving post offices and distribution centers exactly on schedule and curtailed extra trips to pick up any mail that missed earlier cutoffs.

“The stricter deadlines sparked far less public outcry than the removal of more than 700 high-speed sorting machines at mail processing facilities around the country — but they were far more disruptive to the U.S. mail system, according to a Times investigation… Weeks-long delays began to ripple through a system already reeling from COVID-19 absences and a surge in package delivery during the pandemic, shaking Americans’ faith in one of the country’s most popular services and raising concerns about how the Postal Service will handle mail-in ballots in November.

“The abrupt scheduling move also raised more questions about DeJoy’s stewardship of the Postal Service, which has been marked by severe delivery snafus and charges by critics that he is working to slow service in order to help President Trump’s election bid by making voting by mail more difficult.

“Workers who spoke to The Times described troubling details about how the rigid schedules have played out: Some trucks have traveled empty, and mail left behind has accumulated at massive processing centers, creating backlogs in a system that is not designed to store mail. Loading dock managers have falsified records so it appears that trucks are departing earlier, some mail has been sorted twice, and in at least one case, a large shipment from Amazon was turned away because facilities had no space to process it.

“At a post office in Carmichael, Calif., near Sacramento, employees ran out of storage space and refused to accept about 1,500 packages from Amazon drivers Aug. 29, said Saintil Perry, president of the local chapter of the American Postal Workers Union… ‘That’s a no-no. That’s revenue, regardless of how heavy the shipment is,’ Perry said about refusing incoming parcels. ‘But they literally don’t have space. The letter carriers don’t have space. If they take on this mail, they won’t have time to leave because they would have to process it.’

“At a massive mail facility in Santa Ana, tractor-trailers began pulling away from the docks even if workers were in the middle of loading them, said Will Khong, president of the postal workers union’s Orange County-area chapter… That left-behind mail muddled one of the Postal Service’s key automated processes: sorting hundreds of thousands of letters into the exact order that they will be delivered along postal carriers’ routes. Workers had to sort some pieces of mail twice to ensure they were put in the proper order for the next day…

“At a sorting facility in Los Angeles, workers said that some days they missed getting mail onto trucks by a matter of minutes. Several times, they said, tractor-trailers pulled away while workers were headed toward the loading docks with cartons of sorted letters and parcels.

“Those changes, coupled with a cutback in overtime, left the facility swamped with backlogged packages for weeks. Steaks and fruit rotted inside their boxes and chicks were found dead in their packages, a Times investigation found. Conditions have gradually improved there, workers said… The effects of the change have rippled out to local post offices. Carriers across the state said they have seen outgoing mail — which is supposed to be sent for sorting the same day it is received — sitting in the post office the following morning.

“Leftover mail is disruptive to the system because postal facilities aren’t designed to store letters and packages, said Robert Fisher, a former Postal Service executive and owner of Fisher Postal Analytics, where he researches mail performance… Every day, managers specifically monitor how much mail is in a facility — known as on-hand volume — to make sure the levels do not get out of control, he said. ‘Leaving mail behind would increase on-hand volumes, disrupting the control processes and system balance,’ Fisher said.”

There’s an infection in the Trump administration: give a horrible a different name, call failure a success, deny the obvious and easily proven problems, and voila, you are done. Labels, name calling, vituperatives and denials trump obvious facts. Even if it is patently false, if you say it enough times, there is a substantial Trump constituency, bolstered by propaganda wings (like Fox News and Breitbart), that will buy it like the gospel. When the US mail is failing, as the President and his cronies hack away at the legs that hold it up, the symbolic loss of that institution that has been with us from the beginning of the republic should serve as a warning to us all. And no, Donald, it’s not a business any more than is the US Army; it’s a service for the American people.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the systematic unraveling of long-standing federal institutions and ethical practices by the Trump administration will cost billions of dollars to fix and threaten the very existence of the nation itself.

 

 

 

The Water Wars

 

Despite the Trump administration’s dismissal of the true cost of climate change, the President’s withdrawal from even the “too little, too late” Paris climate accord, climate change is already costing us life, health and trillions and trillions of dollars of losses. Oregon and California are burning up, dozens of deaths and millions of acres, hundreds if not thousands of structures gone. Fires almost impossible to contain. Thousands of firefighters doing their best. Air pollution as bad as it gets. And we know that this is hardly a one-time event.

Hurricanes sucking up overly warm waters from the Gulf, intensifying flooding and destruction for a thousand miles. Coastal erosion. Heat waves like we have never seen before. Insect migration carrying diseases where they shouldn’t be. And that’s just here.

Climate change also causes violence. War. Mass migration of those most impacted to regions that do not want them. ISIS would never have been able to take root but for never-ending drought in Sunni-held farms in Iraq and Syria. Shiite-controlled governments in Damascus and Baghdad were unwilling to come to the aid of Sunni farmers. ISIS stepped into that power vacuum. The farmers were, for the most part, horrified at that reality, but no one else came to their aid. Water wars!

The planet has at least double the number of people that it can comfortably support. We are losing land to drought, flooding, fire and erosion. When we clear land to accommodate more food production, we cut down the foliage we need to absorb carbon dioxide and generate oxygen. Global warming just gets worse. Nature is struggling to contain “too many people consuming too many resources” with her serial and roiling pandemics. And there is another ugly reality. The most valuable resource on earth just might not be oil; it is fresh water.

Looking at lakes, streams, rivers, aquifers and reservoirs, you might surmise that what really needs to happen is simply to move water from where it is to where it is needed… or perhaps simply to desalinate ocean water. A gallon of water weighs around 10 pounds. The problem is not just building pipelines or filling tankers and moving them by rail. All of this takes energy. Desalinization consumes an average of 10-13 kilowatt hours (kwh) per every thousand gallons. California has an elaborate system of aqueducts, pumping water uphill, using the downhill flow to generate electricity for pumping. But notwithstanding this seemingly efficient system, nearly 20% of the state's total electricity consumption goes toward water-related uses. And so much of our electrical power generation still relies on burning fossil fuel, which continues to exacerbate climate change.

“Solar and wind power use has grown at a rapid rate over the past decade or so, but as of 2018 those sources accounted for less than 4% of all the energy used in the U.S. (That’s the most recent full year for which data is available.) As far back as we have data, most of the energy used in the U.S. has come from coal, oil and natural gas. In 2018, those ‘fossil fuels’ fed about 80% of the nation’s energy demand, down slightly from 84% a decade earlier. Although coal use has declined in recent years, natural gas use has soared, while oil’s share of the nation’s energy tab has fluctuated between 35% and 40%.” Pew Research Center, January 15, 2020.

Think the water war violence is only “over there”? Think again. It’s right here, on our border with Mexico. “A long-simmering dispute about shared water rights between Mexico and the United States has erupted into open clashes pitting Mexican National Guard troops [pictured above] against farmers, ranchers and others who seized a dam in northern Chihuahua state… A 35-year-old mother of three was shot dead and her husband seriously wounded in what the Chihuahua state government labeled unprovoked National Guard gunfire.

“The demonstrators and state officials complain that the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is diverting water to the United States at the expense of drought-stricken Mexican farmers and ranchers… ‘We will defend our water until the end,’ said Alejandro Aguilar, 57, a Chihuahua tomato and onion grower who was among the protesters. ‘We will not end our fight, because this liquid is vital to our future.’… La Boquilla dam remained in protesters’ custody as of Saturday [9/12]...

“The conflict has escalated into a national crisis in which both sides allege rampant corruption and the meddling of shadowy provocateurs and hidden political interests in a complex scenario reminiscent of ‘Chinatown,’ the iconic film about early 20th century water battles in Southern California.

“López Obrador denies any water shortage for farmers in Chihuahua and charges that his opponents are fomenting a politically motivated ‘rebellion.’ Mexico has been sending water north in advance of an October deadline to provide the United States with a vast amount of water owed under terms of a 76-year-old treaty… ‘We have to comply with the agreement,’ López Obrador told reporters, insisting that doing so will not result in any scarcity now or in the future. ‘We will not allow that Chihuahua be left without water.’

“Mexico is playing catch-up in its water debt to the United States after falling behind on last year’s installments. Meanwhile, Chihuahua growers say they are suffering the effects of an almost decadelong drought.” Patrick McDonnell for the Los Angeles Times, September 13^th. What we know is that climate change and water shortages are simply going to get much worse unless the entire planet takes some pretty dramatic steps that are nowhere on the horizon.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and governments all over the earth, particular here in the United States, seem only to react to these environmental disasters but are unwilling to be sufficiently proactive to solve this horrifically expanding problem.