They Shall Replace Them… So Make Sure They Cannot Vote

Texas students in line to vote

They Shall Replace Them… So Make Sure They Cannot Vote

The New GOP Enemy: Educated Younger Voters




There is no question that while younger voters are leery of both mainstream political parties, they are anything but ambivalent about their issues: Unaffordable housing, unaffordable post-secondary education (and student loans), inane conspiracy theories, intolerance particularly against diversity, personal freedom, democracy killers, pervasive gun ownership and most of all: failure to address climate change. They do not love the Democratic Party, but it is the Republicans who seem to be on the wrong side of most of the issues that matter most to them. Having not lived through the era of the “red scare” and the belief in a Communist-led domino theory of global conquest, words like “creeping socialism” are not viewed as anything they should worry about.

The higher the level of education – and as I have blogged many times before, the Gen Y and Z are far and away the best educated generations in American history – the greater their commitment to the above issues. Religious teachings to the contrary, these educated rising voters know that as greenhouse gasses continue to increase in the atmosphere, year-by-year, their quality of life, perhaps their very life and health, will continue to decline from the resulting disasters they expect will define their future. Their elders will not be around to suffer as much as they expect they will.

Given the pressure from the backbone of the GOP base – fundamental religious believers and conspiracy theorists with a few greedy billionaires for good measure who oppose or marginalize those generational issues – the Republican Party cannot effectively embrace Gen Y and Z issues without losing their base. But if they do not address those issues, that mass of future voters will defy the GOP. Not a good place to be.

The GOP response: in addition to finding ways to eliminate minority voters in urban areas likely to oppose the Republican agenda – through gerrymandering, voter suppression and even election rejection – the GOP is now focusing on how to keep those younger, educated voters from casting ballots. Red state initiatives drilling down on this demographic include raising the voting age from 18 – when young men can be drafted to fight for their country – to 21 or even as late as 28.

But there is a bigger initiative to disenfranchise Gen Z by raising the voting age is an effort to target those attending college, making voting difficult for them. Since actual elections tend to take place in early November, a time when most college students are away at their schools, it would make sense for a voter suppression campaign, a uniform policy only in red states, to make it more difficult for college students to vote at all. Students have defied those barriers in the midterms, stood in long lines in bad weather to cast ballots, and those youngest voters accounted for as estimated 27% of votes cast, enough to squash the projected red wave.

In surveys taken in September, before the midterms, “A new report by Knight Foundation and College Pulse found that most college students plan to vote in November. Of the 4,000 full-time students surveyed by the organizations, 71% are ‘absolutely certain’ they will vote this year… Historically, college students haven't turned out to vote in force. But the national student voting rate jumped from 19.3% in 2014 to 40.3% in 2018, according to Tufts University's Institute for Democracy & Higher Education.” TheBestSchools.com, September 20th. They voted at higher levels than ever before, but not at the promised rates. After facing confusing instructions and barriers to voting this year, it seems that younger voters are pushing for a change. Here what they face, particularly in GOP dominant states:

Pew Charitable Trust’s Stateline (November 18th) reports: “But fluid, confusing election rules still make it hard for college students to vote, said Caroline Smith, director of programs at the Andrew Goodman Foundation, a New Jersey-based group that supports voting on college campuses… Across the country, voting rights groups and collegiate get-out-the-vote organizers documented many cases of college students who struggled to decipher confusing voter ID requirements, waited in hours-long lines at polling places or never received their absentee ballots. In some cases, college voters were even denied federally protected provisional ballots.

“While Election Day generally went smoothly for voters nationwide, these sporadic incidents may have disenfranchised some college students, youth vote advocates say. They want state lawmakers to expand same-day voter registration, better train election staff, encourage college students to serve as poll workers and work with universities to make it easier for college students to vote… Voter ID requirements were especially puzzling for many college students.

“College students are highly mobile. They might be registered to vote at their parents’ home in one state and then want to vote on their campus the next year in another state. Once in school, they rarely live in just one residence during their entire college experience, often moving to a new address every year. Still, they have the right to vote as college students living on or near campus.

“Thirty-five states require identification to vote, and seven of them do not accept student IDs as proof, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In many states, GOP legislators have opposed same-day registration, citing fears that people might vote in two states or use fake identification to commit voter fraud.

“Last year in New Hampshire, a Republican lawmaker proposed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited college students from using their address at an educational institution to register to vote. The bill died in committee… Republican state Rep. Norman Silber, the bill’s sponsor, told Stateline that current state law creates a special class for college students to register to vote in the state. He wants to eliminate that privilege and ensure that only permanent residents — for example, those with New Hampshire driver’s licenses — can vote.” This push pull might work. As students get older, the GOP may hope they meld into a conservative mindset… or these younger voters may never forget what the Republican Party tried to do to keep them from voting.

I’m Peter Dekom, and increasingly for all the major challenges we face as a nation, even as an entire planet, there are signs not only that these younger generations really care… but that they are ready to take on those challenges headlong, starting with voting!

Texas students in line to vote

They Shall Replace Them… So Make Sure They Cannot Vote

The New GOP Enemy: Educated Younger Voters

There is no question that while younger voters are leery of both mainstream political parties, they are anything but ambivalent about their issues: Unaffordable housing, unaffordable post-secondary education (and student loans), inane conspiracy theories, intolerance particularly against diversity, personal freedom, democracy killers, pervasive gun ownership and most of all: failure to address climate change. They do not love the Democratic Party, but it is the Republicans who seem to be on the wrong side of most of the issues that matter most to them. Having not lived through the era of the “red scare” and the belief in a Communist-led domino theory of global conquest, words like “creeping socialism” are not viewed as anything they should worry about.

The higher the level of education – and as I have blogged many times before, the Gen Y and Z are far and away the best educated generations in American history – the greater their commitment to the above issues. Religious teachings to the contrary, these educated rising voters know that as greenhouse gasses continue to increase in the atmosphere, year-by-year, their quality of life, perhaps their very life and health, will continue to decline from the resulting disasters they expect will define their future. Their elders will not be around to suffer as much as they expect they will.

Given the pressure from the backbone of the GOP base – fundamental religious believers and conspiracy theorists with a few greedy billionaires for good measure who oppose or marginalize those generational issues – the Republican Party cannot effectively embrace Gen Y and Z issues without losing their base. But if they do not address those issues, that mass of future voters will defy the GOP. Not a good place to be.

The GOP response: in addition to finding ways to eliminate minority voters in urban areas likely to oppose the Republican agenda – through gerrymandering, voter suppression and even election rejection – the GOP is now focusing on how to keep those younger, educated voters from casting ballots. Red state initiatives drilling down on this demographic include raising the voting age from 18 – when young men can be drafted to fight for their country – to 21 or even as late as 28.

But there is a bigger initiative to disenfranchise Gen Z by raising the voting age is an effort to target those attending college, making voting difficult for them. Since actual elections tend to take place in early November, a time when most college students are away at their schools, it would make sense for a voter suppression campaign, a uniform policy only in red states, to make it more difficult for college students to vote at all. Students have defied those barriers in the midterms, stood in long lines in bad weather to cast ballots, and those youngest voters accounted for as estimated 27% of votes cast, enough to squash the projected red wave.

In surveys taken in September, before the midterms, “A new report by Knight Foundation and College Pulse found that most college students plan to vote in November. Of the 4,000 full-time students surveyed by the organizations, 71% are ‘absolutely certain’ they will vote this year… Historically, college students haven't turned out to vote in force. But the national student voting rate jumped from 19.3% in 2014 to 40.3% in 2018, according to Tufts University's Institute for Democracy & Higher Education.” TheBestSchools.com, September 20th. They voted at higher levels than ever before, but not at the promised rates. After facing confusing instructions and barriers to voting this year, it seems that younger voters are pushing for a change. Here what they face, particularly in GOP dominant states:

Pew Charitable Trust’s Stateline (November 18th) reports: “But fluid, confusing election rules still make it hard for college students to vote, said Caroline Smith, director of programs at the Andrew Goodman Foundation, a New Jersey-based group that supports voting on college campuses… Across the country, voting rights groups and collegiate get-out-the-vote organizers documented many cases of college students who struggled to decipher confusing voter ID requirements, waited in hours-long lines at polling places or never received their absentee ballots. In some cases, college voters were even denied federally protected provisional ballots.

“While Election Day generally went smoothly for voters nationwide, these sporadic incidents may have disenfranchised some college students, youth vote advocates say. They want state lawmakers to expand same-day voter registration, better train election staff, encourage college students to serve as poll workers and work with universities to make it easier for college students to vote… Voter ID requirements were especially puzzling for many college students.

“College students are highly mobile. They might be registered to vote at their parents’ home in one state and then want to vote on their campus the next year in another state. Once in school, they rarely live in just one residence during their entire college experience, often moving to a new address every year. Still, they have the right to vote as college students living on or near campus.

“Thirty-five states require identification to vote, and seven of them do not accept student IDs as proof, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In many states, GOP legislators have opposed same-day registration, citing fears that people might vote in two states or use fake identification to commit voter fraud.

“Last year in New Hampshire, a Republican lawmaker proposed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited college students from using their address at an educational institution to register to vote. The bill died in committee… Republican state Rep. Norman Silber, the bill’s sponsor, told Stateline that current state law creates a special class for college students to register to vote in the state. He wants to eliminate that privilege and ensure that only permanent residents — for example, those with New Hampshire driver’s licenses — can vote.” This push pull might work. As students get older, the GOP may hope they meld into a conservative mindset… or these younger voters may never forget what the Republican Party tried to do to keep them from voting.

I’m Peter Dekom, and increasingly for all the major challenges we face as a nation, even as an entire planet, there are signs not only that these younger generations really care… but that they are ready to take on those challenges headlong, starting with voting!

Putin’s Energy Weapon vs European Resolve

We’re already witnessing a Republican backlash against maintaining our level of military and other aid to Ukraine as it defies the Russian invasion. There is little thought to the ramifications of appeasement, the encouragement to China to invade Taiwan, the message to Putin that his desire to reconfigure Russia with a similar territorial spread as in the Soviet era is achievable if the US and Europe can be marginalized. This truly incentivizes Russian spymasters to amp up their election interference in the US. If the US pulls back its support of Ukraine, that does not give us shelter from a potential nuclear storm. We may witness Russia’s and China’s quest for territorial expansion begin to mirror Hitler’s pre-WWII approach to regional annexation. Eventually, Hitler had to be stopped… but only after significant German conquest. WWII with nuclear weapons is particularly scary. But eventually Putin and Xi would have to be stopped too.

Europe alone cannot provide enough military aid to allow Ukraine to oust Russia from its lands. While the United States is suffering from inflationary pressures stemming from higher fuel and food shortages – hence the drivers of much higher prices – what we face is nothing compared to what Europe faces from an expected cold winter with massive shortages of natural gas for home heating. While the United States is estimated to face a winter-to-winter increase of around 20% in the cost of natural gas/electricity for heating (propane is largely unchanged), enough to outrage a lot of voters, Europe’s comparable costs, according to the November 26th The Economist, are more than double ours.

Before the Ukraine war, Russia supplied 40-50% of Europe’s natural gas supply, and as pipelines are mysteriously cut and Europeans seek alternative sources, natural gas and motor fuel are commodities that are skyrocketing across the Atlantic. In Ukraine, there are doubts that many parts of the county will have any sustainable heat at all, prompting officials to begin to move people to areas where they believe heat can be provided.

Vladimir Putin miscalculated in invading Ukraine. Yet, like China’s Xi or our own Trump, he prefers to double down rather than admit defeat. While I do not believe he is ready to resort to the provocative use of nuclear weapons, there is one weapon that his is clearly using in an effort to sow dissention among Europeans, where isolationist candidates have recently been elected (like the new right-wing PM in Italy): energy. If he can price Europeans out of a comfortable winter, even with government subsidies such as those provided in Germany, he just might persuade Europe that supporting Ukraine just isn’t worth it. Without Russian natural gas, particularly given NATO sanctions against his fossil fuel exports, global prices for such fuels will remain high, and given the difficulty of getting natural gas to Europe without those pipelines, even higher in Europe.

But that weapon has a severe lethal side. In winter, especially when temperatures plunge, the deaths rates in Europe climb too. And experts are predicting, even with a rough estimate before the actual temperature and mortality rates can be measured, that the number of additional EU and UK deaths from the cutback electricity and natural gas heating is very likely to exceed the Ukrainian losses from Russian attacks. Further, this energy rift – where the US faces lower costs and no loss in availability for winter energy demands but is still politically exercised by “inflation” under an unpopular President – just might put a new strain on our Atlantic alliance.

The Economist (November 26th) put it this way: “Our data journalists set themselves a difficult question: how many people is this weapon likely to kill outside Ukraine? The answer they came up with was alarming. Although heatwaves get more press, cold temperatures are usually deadlier than hot ones. To estimate the relationship between energy costs and deaths, we built a statistical model that predicts how many people die per winter week in each of 226 European regions. This model found that a 10% rise in electricity prices is associated with a 0.6% increase in deaths, concentrated among the elderly and infirm…

“Europe faces a crisis of energy and geopolitics that will weaken it—and could threaten its global position. If you ask Europe’s friends around the world what they think of the old continent’s prospects they often respond with two emotions. One is admiration. In the struggle to help Ukraine and resist Russian aggression, Europe has displayed unity, grit and a principled willingness to bear enormous costs. But the second is alarm. A brutal economic squeeze will pose a test of Europe’s resilience in 2023 and beyond. There is a growing fear that the recasting of the global energy system, American economic populism and geopolitical rifts threaten the long-run competitiveness of all European countries, Britain included. The worry is not just about the continent’s prosperity; the health of the transatlantic alliance is at risk, too.”

What might trigger European wrath against supporting Ukraine, handing Putin the divisive issue he needs to undercut NATO’s resolve, is how many Europeans will either sicken or die from the cold resulting from this energy shortage. The Economist continues: “To win his war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin needs the West to stop supporting his adversary… These costs pale in comparison with the horror Ukrainians have endured. But they still matter, because the colder the temperatures people experience, the more likely they are to die. And if the historical relationships between mortality, weather and energy costs continue to apply—which they may not, given how high current prices are—the death toll from Mr Putin’s ‘energy weapon’ could exceed the number of soldiers who have died so far in combat.”

These are ugly numbers and perhaps our GOP backlash will moderate. Perhaps the Europeans are stoic enough to stay the course in Ukraine. And perhaps Putin will be forced to find a path to a peaceful solution. Perhaps.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am watching the destructive power of growing nationalistic populism paralleling the rise of brutal autocrats ready to take advantage of our desire to maintain our quality of life… even if that means betraying our allies in a truly just defense of their homeland.

De Z’s that Cure They Shall Replace Us!

 

We aren’t particularly kind to those young Gen Zs. See my The Financially Crushed Generation – Gen Z blog. They must deal with cost and income issues that older generations never faced. And while they seem dramatically alienated from traditional political parties, they totally diffused the potential of the red wave in the midterms. See my recent Younger Demographics and Our Political Future blog. They are better educated, as a whole, than X and older generations, however, and most are deeply committed to values like tolerance, diversity and climate change related issues.

The antiabortion stance, the denial of truth and history embedded in the culture wars, climate change marginalization, the brutal unkindness to immigrants gathered at our southern border and the excessive linkage with conspiracy theorists, White supremacists and hypocritical evangelicals embraced by the GOP suggests that Republicans are on the wrong side of an entire generation. Add millennials to that Z cohort, and the GOP may want to restructure if they are to remain viable. But to many, Y’s and Z’s also represent hope. Hope to end the bitter polarization that defines our nation today. Hope to resurrect a viable democracy from nascent autocratic, White Christian Nationalist trends among GOP voters, MAGA extremists, armed right-wing militias.

Sarah Lawrence College Politics Professor Samuel J. Abrams, writing for the November 19th Associated Press, looks at this potential – Gen Z saviors of democracy – that he sees every day among his students. “These young voters turned out en masse for Democrats [at the midterms]; CNN House exit polls show that 63% of Gen Zers voted for Democrats, which was a much higher percentage than for older generations. Just 43% of those over 65 voted for Democrats while 55% cast ballots for Republicans.

“But this midterm outcome does not mean that voters in this new generation are dedicated Democrats. In fact, they would be better described as pragmatists and issue-oriented voters… Gen Zers showed up at the polls in large numbers and voted in 2020 to push out Donald Trump. They engaged again this year because they wanted to take a stand against extreme positions promoted by many on the right. They turned to Democratic candidates who supported abortion rights and opposed the Trumpian movement to deny election results, and they rejected a host of extreme candidates in places like Arizona and Pennsylvania.

“At the same time, this generation largely lacks strong party attachments if we look at their political and ideological attitudes. This is made quite clear by College Pulse’s Future of Politics survey, which queried 1,552 undergraduate students at 91 colleges and universities at the start of the school year… When asked about how they see the major political parties, today’s college students are anything but enthusiastic. Less than a quarter of all students (21%) — Democrats and Republicans included — believe that the Democratic Party is acting in the best interests of democracy and just 25% feel the same way about the GOP.

“And when asked whether the parties are moving in the right or wrong direction, just 18% of all college students think that the Democratic Party is moving in the right direction; the number is a bit higher for the Republican Party. Cynicism about the parties’ future is the norm, with roughly half of all students being pessimistic about both parties.

“Interestingly, a poll released in late October by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics found that 57% of young voters ages 18-29 preferred Democratic control of Congress while 31% preferred GOP control; 12% were undecided. Yet only 32% of college-age voters identify as liberal, with another 19% claiming to be conservative. The plurality of students — 48% — call themselves moderates.

“The Future of Politics survey uncovers a similar breakdown with young voter party affiliation — 31% report that they are Republican and another 33% Democrat. The remainder 37% are either unaffiliated or Independent. Gen Z looks very different from those in the Silent Generation — President Biden’s and Nancy Pelosi’s generation, which has seen a decline in Independent voters and a rise in Republican identification in 2022.

“Gallup corroborates these trends and found that younger generational groups are more likely than their older counterparts to be centrist and less partisan. Millennials appear to be fairly stable centrists, unlike earlier generations, which have become more partisan over time.” Clearly, it wasn’t party loyalty or zealous leadership cult worship that brought Gen Z’s to the polls; it was issues and revulsion at the rise of right-wing, anti-democratic extremism that pulled them in.

And as I have blogged before, and notwithstanding the above surveys, pre-election polling of Gen Z is exceptionally difficult. They resent unnecessary intrusions into their lives, don’t answer phone calls from unknown numbers and, being deluged with requests for feedback at every purchase, they tend to avoid these surveys like the plague. But they are rising fast, and while they may seem politically apathetic, cynical to the max, given a strong reason to vote, they do so en mass. 2024 looms large!

I’m Peter Dekom, and if Congressional gridlock and polarization are the disease, Gen Z just might be the cure… as possible saviors of American democracy.

China, Arrogance and COVID (UPDATED)

Based on a Reuters’ deep dive into the PRC’s National Health Bureau reports, as of Thanksgiving, China faced a huge new outbreak of the coronavirus: 31,454, out of which 27,517 are asymptomatic. China’s response to a single case of COVID is to lockdown anything that touched that victim… which has resulted in entire factories and apartment buildings going on lockdown, shops and restaurants closing, which many believe has added a continuing 20%+ crush on China’s economy. These are the highest daily figures since the virus began in Wuhan back in 2019, according to the Associated Press. Today, larger cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing, have tightened COVID-19 restrictions to control transmission. As of November 21st, CNBC reported that 412 million PRC residents were directly affected.

It was obviously galling for folks in China watching their national soccer team compete in Qatar, where massive crowds populate the stadia and surrounding areas. Chinese residents were even admonished not to gather in groups to watch their own TVs. You have to ask, if China is so set on its Zero-COVID policy, rife with severe restrictions and lockdowns, why is this happening? Simply put, COVID containment requires a balancing act, a combination of reasonable controls over human contact as well as pervasive inoculation with an effective vaccine. China’s seeming official arrogance, an unwillingness to admit that their vaccine is not up to the task, has forced them to rely on lockdowns and strict interpersonal rules instead. Adding that zero-COVID policy only made a bad situation that much worse.

We’ve known for a while that China’s single-dose vaccines, made by companies like Sinopharm and Sinovac, are vastly less effective than the two-shot mRNA products from Moderna and BioNTech-Pfizer, enhanced with reengineered boosters. In 2020, China began a campaign of contributing its vaccine to nations in desperate need of inoculations; an estimated 90 countries received some or all their vaccine needs from the PRC. Not only are new purportedly variant resistant upgrades of China’s vaccines way too slow to develop than mRNA-driven injections, their overall effectiveness remains simply below expectations… and falling as variants appear.

Even back on June 22, 2021, the New York Times looked at the challenging numbers from countries relying on the Chinese-made vaccine: “Now, examples from several countries suggest that the Chinese vaccines may not be very effective at preventing the spread of the virus, particularly the new variants. The experiences of those countries lay bare a harsh reality facing a postpandemic world: The degree of recovery may depend on which vaccines governments give to their people.

“In the Seychelles, Chile, Bahrain and Mongolia, 50 to 68 percent of the populations have been fully inoculated, outpacing the United States, according to Our World in Data, a data tracking project. All four ranked among the top 10 countries with the worst Covid outbreaks as recently as last week, according to data from The New York Times. And all four are mostly using shots made by two Chinese vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech… ‘If the vaccines are sufficiently good, we should not see this pattern,’ said Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. ‘The Chinese have a responsibility to remedy this.’” Well, they really didn’t (couldn’t), and the results, particularly in overcrowded China, have been disastrous.

Internally, Chinese residents are beginning to look at this bifurcated reality: China vs the rest of the world: “An open letter questioning the country's continued zero-Covid policies and asking if China was ‘on the same planet’ as Qatar quickly spread on mobile messenger WeChat on Tuesday [11/22], before being censored… Comments on the Twitter-like Weibo social network are rife from viewers who speak about how watching this year's matches is making them feel divided from the rest of the world.

“Some speak of their perception that it is ‘weird’ to see hundreds of thousands of people gathering, without wearing masks or needing to show evidence of a recent Covid-19 test. ‘There are no separate seats so people can maintain social distance, and there is nobody dressed in white and blue [medical] garb on the sidelines. This planet has become really divided… On one side of the world, there is the carnival that is the World Cup, on the other are rules not to visit public places for five days,’ one says… Some say they have had difficulty explaining to their children why the scenes from the World Cup are so different to those people face at home.

“There are many in China, though, who have been critical of countries overseas opening up while the World Health Organization still calls the Covid-19 virus an ‘acute global emergency.’… However, there is no end in sight to China's existing measures. This week, the National Health Commission spokesman ‘warned against any slacking in epidemic prevention and control’ and urged ‘more resolute and decisive measures’ to bring cases under control.

“Local governments in major cities have reintroduced mass testing and travel restrictions and ultimately delivered a message that people should try to stay at home… But after three years of such measures, people are frustrated, resulting in protests in the last month in both the cities of Guangzhou and Zhengzhou.” BBC.com, November 24th. In late November, the entire country erupted in massive protests (above) against COVID restrictions. Still China is becoming a veritable Petrie dish, a breeding ground for new variants that could easily spread to the rest of the world.

With an uncaring autocrat exercising total control, equally unwilling to admit that his nation’s medical scientists continue to be unable to create and distribute an effective vaccine, China’s COVID woes are far from over. Xi’s stubbornness, his arrogance, have not served his people well. But neither Xi nor his failing policies are likely to change anytime soon.

But before we cast aspersions on Beijing, stubbornness and denial have not served this country particularly well either. In a Yale University study of COVID patterns in Ohio and Florida, reported in the November 15th Yale Insights, infections among those most likely to oppose COVID controls and vaccination requirements are significantly higher than those willing to accept medical reality: “New research from Yale SOM [School of Management] points to another factor that puts people at greater risk of dying from COVID-19: party affiliation. The study finds that excess deaths during the pandemic were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in two states, Ohio and Florida. What’s more, the partisan gap in death rates increased significantly after vaccines were introduced.”

When autocrats rule or political parties define medical reality in distorted partisan terms, their followers invariably suffer… while often continuing to adhere to those distortions. This only accelerates the growth of new variants by providing a fresh and significant base in which to incubate and then spread vaccine resistant viral strains.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are no “alternative facts,” only facts, and nature truly does not respond to political pressure, distorted partisan “science” or voter preferences.

The Little Governor Who Could (or at least thought he could)

 

“No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.” 

Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution.

Yep, anything is possible in the grate state of Texas… including a Uvalde gunslinger with a semiautomatic assault rifle shooting children while good ole Texas cops stand outside waiting for orders, a Valentine’s week (2021) deep freeze as almost all of Texas loses power from a standalone power grid suffering from Texas cheap “deferred maintenance,” to sending busloads and planeloads of Venezuelan asylum-seekers (seeking escape from the repression of a left-wing dictator) to blue states for care, all to teach them blue state lefties a lesson, Texas style.

Even though most of the larger cities in Texas are blue, they have each been gerrymandered with deep stems into neighboring White or right-wing Brown surrounding suburbs to marginalize their majority blue voters. Texas is otherwise a purple state that votes redder than a stoplight. So, it cannot be a big surprise that right-wing autocratic Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, seems to have found a way effectively to declare war and deploy military forces… with a unilateral interpretation that the aggregation of asylum seekers on our southern border, which extends equally to blue New Mexico and blue California, constitutes a bona fide “border invasion.” Give me a big “yee haw,” and pass me a piece of that barbequed brisket!

On November 14th, President… er… Governor Abbott took “unprecedented measures” and prepared to deploy the Texas National Guard to repel that on-going “border invasion.” It was a nice press release, and Abbott made sure to let the various border counties in Texas know what he was planning. Apparently and joyfully usurping power normally relegated solely to the legislative and executive branches of the federal government – effectively border control, immigration and the right to deploy and control military forces against such “invaders” – Greggy-boy was also using his Vanderbilt law degree expertise to usurp the federal judicial branch to interpret the US Constitution himself.

Texas must be so lucky to have such a multifaceted governor… one who can consolidate all those branches of government under his personal control. I forget. What do we call a government leader who believes that all that power belongs exclusively to him? Debra Cassens Weiss, writing for the November 17th Journal of the American Bar Associates, tells us more: “Abbott also plans to build a border wall in multiple counties, deploy gun boats, enter into a compact with other states to secure the border, and ‘enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security.’… Abbott first authorized the National Guard and Texas police to act in July, directing them to return immigrants to ports of entry. He also referenced the invasion clause at the time.

“Joseph Nunn, counsel for the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, called the invasion clause approach ‘flagrantly unlawful’ in a post that he wrote for Just Security in July. He made a similar point in a tweet thread responding to Abbott’s latest announcement.

“Nunn said Texas was not ‘actually invaded’ and was not in ‘such imminent danger as will not admit of delay’… ‘Even if Texas were being invaded,” Nunn tweeted, ‘that would not permanently transfer any authority over national security from the president to the governor of Texas. At most, U.S. states have the power to mount an initial defense to a sudden invasion. They may not fight a war.’

“Nunn said Abbott’s actions were actually ‘a thinly veiled effort to take the reins on U.S. immigration policy.’ But that would also be unconstitutional under U.S. Supreme Court precedent holding that immigration policy is ‘unquestionably’ and ‘exclusively’ a federal power, Nunn said.” Even the rogue Trump configured US Supreme Court. Those well-armed invaders just might use explosive tamales and IED-tacos in their assault on Texas. Oh, they don’t eat tacos and tamales in Venezuela. My bad.

That we have not been able to generate a solid Congressional immigration reform bill since Ronald Reagan – with right-wing Republicans blocking even the efforts of their own GOP president (George W Bush), in addition to Democratic presidential efforts, ever since – seems irrelevant to this “my way or the highway” GOP congressional bloc. They prefer to blame Democrats for it all, no matter their own complicity in the problem. If that reform were passed, they would no longer have anyone to blame. And I am sorry Greggy-boy, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ right wing efforts seem to out-Trump even yours!

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is absolutely nothing remotely on the visible horizon that suggests that Congress will even try to tackle this border/immigration issue that has festered for over a third of a century without any progress at all.

Crime?! "Our Thoughts And Prayers..."

5 dead, 18 injured – at a Colorado Springs

LGBTQ nightclub, November 19th shooting

Crime?!

“Our thoughts and prayers….”

Legal assault weapons vs. lower violent crime rates – pick ONE

Inflation and crime rates were the hottest issues in the midterms. Protecting democracy was a major concern as well, but somehow protecting a woman’s right to an abortion slipped down the issue hierarchy but may have been that secret issue that produced an unexpected solid Gen Y and Z turnout that seems to have stopped the red wave. The Republican message on crime clearly resonated with the public, however. The pre-election polling was clear, letting Dems know their emphasis on abortion rights was not sufficient to protect the House from the shift to GOP control, however slight that majority might be. The mythology of exploding crime, fomented by “woke” prosecutors in Democratic cities, trumped all but the inflation issue.

Even in October, we knew that crime was more important than pro choice. “A Gallup poll from earlier this year found 72% of Americans were dissatisfied with the nation’s policies to reduce or control crime. Other polls, including a survey by Monmouth University released this month, have found voters see crime among the most important issues ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“In September alone, Republican campaigns and groups spent $39.8 million on 157 unique ads focused on crime, according to ad tracker AdImpact. Democratic campaigns and groups, mostly in response to the Republican attacks, spent $32.9 million on 119 distinct ads on the issue – a significant increase from the amount these groups were spending on the issue in August.” CNN.com, October 11th.

To those on the right, the BLM protests (purportedly part of some nefarious but non-existent group known as “antifa”) – as they focused on those rare instances of looting and arson – were symbolic of the Democrats’ failures against crime. That mass of insurrectionists, assembling at the then-president’s call to move on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, who broke into that sacred building and pillaged, attacked police officers, the fatalities and serious injuries to those protecting Congress, destroyed furniture, ransacked offices, helped themselves to “souvenirs” were, in official Republican documents, were declared to be “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Yet people everywhere were buying into the fear factor of a crime wave that really did not exist. That “make ‘em scared and blame liberals” political strategy seemed to be working.

If anything, with increasingly lax gun laws and judicial rulings, the only significant increase in crime was from gun-related homicides. And GOP legislators almost always opposed even common-sense gun limits. More on this later. But incenting angry citizens actually to use those guns against those liberal enemies was now one of the backbones of GOP policies. The culture wars, openly embraced by almost every GOP candidate running, attacked “woke” policies that supported diversity and challenged racism still deeply embedded in so much of America… manifest in a statutory assault on truth and increasing awareness and tolerance. That effort was punctuated with a litany of red state anti-CRT legislation, banning school recognition of gender differences or that racial, ethnic and religious discrimination is still a very big force in the United States today. The resulting crimes against those minorities, from vandalism to assault and murder, have only increased since.

Every legislator who supported this legislation, every governor who signed the bills into law, has aided and abetted – “morally” justified if you will – the litany of ultra-violent hate crimes against Blacks, Muslims, Jews, Asians and members of the LGBTQ communities. The atmosphere of hate and pointing fingers at “liberals” got Republicans elected, led by the bigotry of Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott and every other leader who has encouraged such policies to fire up the base solely for personal political gain… no matter who would be killed or injured. “Us” vs “them.” If “hating” and “blaming targeted groups” is OK, why are we remotely surprised when hating those targets turns violent?

Now for some facts. During the pandemic, the only major increase in crime was homicide. Using CDC statistics, the November 4th Washington Post told us: “[T]he most serious and most reliably measured crime — homicide — went up an estimated 31% in 2020 and another 3% in 2021, resulting in the highest national homicide rate since the 1990s.” Those rates have slipped back 5% this year, but that massive crime wave upon which the GOP was surfing did not otherwise exist.

But notwithstanding a minor congressional concession to background checks, yet to be seriously implemented, there are more guns in this country than ever before. According to Bloomberg.com (May of 2022), the United States is the only country on earth that has more guns in civilian hands than people, including over 20 million AR-15-style military-grade semiautomatic assault weapons, guns that can kill dozens of people in under minute.

When I was first inspired to write this blog, it was going to be about the Colorado Springs shooting noted above. But there have been so many such attacks, I realized that one more story about a massing shooting was pretty close to “our thoughts and prayers…” condolences from politicians who have favored or enabled both the spread of increasingly efficient “people killing guns” and sewn the hatred to motivate too many to use them against hapless minorities. Or have appointed judges at every level who condone lax gun laws and disenfranchising minorities.

No, Mr Scalia, our Founding Fathers, who lived in an era of muskets and flintlocks, did not expect legislators and judges to permit super-sophisticated weapons to be allowed to be sold to the general public. The “well regulated militia” language of the Second Amendment was not just window dressing. And no, radical White Christian Nationalists, the First Amendment did preclude our officially declaring ourselves to be a “Christian Nation,” and the Second Amendment was not a backdoor to allow disgruntled voters to have a large array of weapons to overthrow a duly elected government. And finally, those same Founding Fathers expected our leaders to be “honorable” … most certainly not immoral or amoral candidates using false information to inflame their constituency to hate and then turn on vulnerable fellow citizens… just to be elected regardless of the consequences. Want crime rates to fall? Stop teaching hate and arming the haters!

I’m Peter Dekom, and those Americans who foment hatred against fellow citizens because of their beliefs and personal reality are as un-American as it gets and devoid of the personal qualities required for someone to be declared a “patriot.”

The Great American Shot-Caller – Can Donald Trump Run and Govern from Prison?

The Great American Shot-Caller – Can Donald Trump Run and Govern from Prison?

And Did His Ploy of Running for Office Successfully Derail or Delay the DOJ Investigation?

“I have been proven innocent for six years on everything – from fake impeachments to Mueller who found no collusion, and now I have to do it more?... It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political… I am not going to partake in it…

I announce and then they appoint a special prosecutor.” 

Donald Trump on November 16th, despite never being exonerated.

“Republicans will need to refuse to appropriate any funding to Merrick Garland’s Special Counsel and defund any part of the DOJ acting on behalf of the Democrat party as a taxpayer funded campaign arm for the Democrat’s 2024 presidential nominee.” 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

“Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” 

United States Criminal Code, 18 USC §2383.

Suggesting that Donald Trump’s November 14th announcement of his formally running for president, combined with Joe Biden’s continuing statement of an “intent” to consider running for president did not look good, US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a “Special Counsel” to supervise all current possible federal criminal investigations of Donald Trump, hopefully to be perceived as a more neutral, non-partisan approach. He named Jack Smith, a former federal prosecutor, who currently works at The Hague, to begin “immediately.” A Harvard Law grad, Smith was previously the chief of the Dept. of Justice's (DOJ) Public Integrity Section, overseeing public corruption and elections-related cases, and began his career as a Manhattan prosecutor.

With statutory independence – even though any decision to indict Donald Trump would require Garland’s approval – Smith would helm the existing (and any added) DOJ staff attorneys looking at the numerous possible federal Trump crimes associated with taking classified documents, obstruction of Congress or justice, election interference and all sort of possible crimes arising from the 1/6/21 Capital insurrection… presumably to conclusion.

So let me answer the second question first: One view: YES. Trump got at least a delay. There is no outside deadline, and we are not sure if there will be a report. One more layer of supervision may not speed up the process. Garland made the DOJ look weak. The DOJ certainly was already fully empowered to proceed directly with the investigations, and if they were seeking general popular acceptance by creating “non-partisan” neutrality, that was an instant bust. No Republican would remotely accept that a Democratic AG’s appointment would be neutral and non-partisan. The elephants were instantly screaming that the radical left was amplifying a toxic witch hunt. Some in the slim GOP majority that will control the House hinted that an expected House committee investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden would now expand to include this “persecution” of Donald Trump. Summon Jack Smith? Some believe that the only delays are likely to come from congressional and judicial challenges to the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment, which are most likely to fail... except for the delaying part.

Ah, but there are many, including Trump himself, who think otherwise. Their answer would be NO. Now there is a clear leader, not distracted by other matters, with a track record of brutal efficiency. While Republicans yell and scream “bias,” Smith is profoundly apolitical. Trump, without enough time to have looked at Smith’s entire background, immediately called him a “Trump hater.” In remarks at Mar-a-Lago on November 18th, Trump labeled his appointment as “appalling” and a “horrendous abuse of power.” “This is a rigged deal,” he said, referring to Smith, whom he called the “super radical left special counsel,” telling Republicans to “fight” that appointment. Did the appointment strike a GOP nerve? He wasn’t too happy with the Supreme Court’s requiring him (on 11/22) to provide his tax returns to Congress, saying this about the Court he appointed: “The Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige, and standing….”

But did Trump in fact buy a delay, perhaps even a reprieve from prosecution? Smith is working with the same DOJ legal teams that have been on Trump matters for a while and has pledged that his presence will not delay the process. If there is no Trump indictment within the first quarter of 2023, that may well augur in Trump’s favor. If there is… well…

Now for the more fun question that toplined this blog. Aside from the question of where would the Secret Service be stationed if “convicted felon” Trump is serving time in prison, can Trump be barred from running or governing (if elected) from prison? And can he pardon himself if elected? Certainly, a US president has no power to pardon state convictions (think Georgia or New York), and it is not entirely clear that he would have an absolute right to pardon himself from federal crimes, particularly insurrection. It would put the “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort” to our enemies language (banning holding federal office) of the subsequently passed 14th Amendment in direct conflict with the right of presidents to issue pardons (Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the basic Constitution). It would certainly be an interesting Supreme Court case of first impression. And if he could not hold federal office, Trump couldn’t be elected even to exercise that right to pardon himself?!

So yes, Trump could be barred from federal office based on the language of the 14th Amendment and even criminally prosecuted under the above-cited criminal statute if he were held to have engaged in, contributed to, aided or abetted or caused the Capitol insurrection. However, would the DOJ be willing to take the heat to do that? But assume the conviction is not for insurrection, rebellion or giving aid to our enemies, then…

Except for the above, there is nothing else in the Constitution that could keep Trump from running for President, since he was born in the United States, is certainly over 35 years of age and has resided in the United States for more than 14 years. That’s all folks! He can run. In fact, it has happened before. Writing for the November 17th Journal of the American Bar Association and citing the Business Insider, Debra Cassens Weiss’ research tells us: “two presidential candidates have already run for the office while in prison: Socialist candidate Eugene Debs, who was convicted of treason for opposing involvement in World War I, and Lyndon LaRouche, who was convicted of mail fraud in 1988.”

But if there is no criminal conviction of any kind, could Trump still be deemed to have engaged in insurrection, thus barring his ascension to the presidency by a civil action filed directly under the 14th Amendment. If the Congress were the complainant, that would probably create original jurisdiction with the US Supreme Court. Interesting, but given the current complexion of Congress, don’t hold your breath. Who else could file? The DOJ? Anyone else? Hmm. So, before this sounds like a litany of questions for a final exam in constitutional law, I think I will end this. I’ve already had enough fun.

I’m Peter Dekom, and you might think that the Democrats would actually prefer to face Trump in the 2024 presidential race, either as the GOP nominee or, better yet, an independent disruptor candidate!

A-Salt with Intense

 

A-Salt with Intense

Desalination – Can we afford it… or can we afford not to afford it?

Some call it “desal” these days, but simply, it is the removal of salt from seawater or highly mineralized groundwater to make it potable and/or useable for irrigation. Nature has its own desal process: evaporation of salty water, which returns freshwater back to earth in the form of rain. Technology to implement a human-controlled desal effort on a meaningful scale is exceptionally expensive, heavily energy inefficient. Distilling is easy, but it is often based on burning fossil fuel (or very slow solar exposure) to generate the evaporation to separate water (steam which condenses) from salt. Electrolysis was the most common man-utlized process until osmosis (forcing saltwater through a membrane that is impermeable to salt) became the more efficient method. Other systems, such as forcing saltwater through nanotubes, is a similar, but today osmosis is the most common commercial application.

Absent a massive storehouse of mineral-laden groundwater, fairly rare, desal generally takes place seaside and only in regions where accessing useable freshwater faces dwindling alterntaive opportunities. Read: desperation. The processing plants are exceptionally expensive to build, maintain and operate… and energy consumption is generally their achilles heel. But as “drought” morphs into “aridification” (aka “desertification”), as food producing regions run dry and cities run out of drinking water, desal is a real solutiuon… with problems that exceed mere cost and the use of fossil fuel to generate the needed power. As alternative energy becomes more widely available, while the high cost remains, at least the greenhouse risks are mitigated. But then, there are other pipers to pay.

The November 7th Los Angeles Times addresses some of these nasty side effects, in an examination of the resurrection of a desale future for California: “Indeed, desalination is not without downsides. In addition to high energy costs, the process can harm marine life, which can get trapped in pump systems that draw ocean water.

“And then there is the brine — the salty, sludgy byproduct of desalination that typically gets released back into the ocean at the end of the process. A global survey of desalination in 2019 found that plants produce about 5 billion cubic feet of salty brine every day — 50% more than previous estimates… High concentrations of brine can reduce oxygen and increase toxicity in marine environments. That’s caused some to worry about what decades — or even centuries — of desalination could do to the ocean.” Dead zones can develop if heavy concentrations of salt are simply dumped in the ocean, separated from the water that once diluted their toxicity.

So, if you don’t really need that potable water desperately, desal is probably not the answer. But for those regions where lack of useable water is a life-or-death challenge, desal is on the table. Assuming high construction costs are an acceptable expense, sufficient electrical power can be generated by green power generation, the question comes back to all that toxic salt. Some deploy a primitive system roll out a very, very long French drain that returns salt to the ocean gradually over the length of that pipe. Australia was desperate, so a decade ago, they allocated about $14 billion to build desal plants around their massive coastline. They faced all the above issues, failing at some, succeeding at others. But they got water… and yes, consumer water rates did rise significantly.

Today, California is becoming equally desperate. And it does face those same horrific desal-related issues, but it is finally willing to resume that effort in a big way. “Although desalination requires significant energy, California’s current extended drought has revived interest in the technology. Experts are already experimenting with new concepts such as mobile desalination units and floating buoys, and at least four major plants will soon be operational along the state’s coastline…

“Experts are working to solve many of desalination’s challenges, however. The Doheny plant [slated for eco-sensitive Dana Point] for example, will draw seawater through slanted intake wells that run beneath the sea floor. Since they avoid contact with open water, officials say the wells will nearly eliminate the chances of marine life being sucked into intake pipes.

“The facility also plans [see above picture] to ‘commingle’ its brine with South Coast Water District wastewater pipes, diluting it before expelling about two miles out to sea. Though the harm from brine is not completely eliminated, the Coastal Commission said the method was environmentally preferred, and officials say it might serve as a model for future operations.” LA Times. In the end, necessity will push desal solutions to the fore. Already, massive desal facilities are operating in exceptionally arid regions, like Saudi Arabia. As climate change continues to confiscate once arable land, we can expect to see desal as a massive and pervasive technology in our existential struggle against generations of our own self-inflicted pain.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while it may seem unfair that current generations are paying for the environmental folly and excess of past generations, life is not fair!!!!

Water We Going to Do?

Today’s blog, part of my ongoing assessment of the cost of not containing and reversing climate change, is about glaciers. The above glacial map from the US Geological Survey points out the most obvious larger pockets of this form of “rivers of ice.” Some spots have glaciers (e.g., Mt. Kilimanjaro East Africa) that are too small to show up on a global map, but they are also critical water supplies.

The USGS tells us that: “Glaciers are a big item when we talk about the world's water supply. Almost 10 percent of the world's land mass is currently covered with glaciers, mostly in places like Greenland and Antarctica. You can think of a glacier as a frozen river, and like rivers, they ‘flow’ downhill, erode the landscape, and move water along in the Earth's water cycle.” Looking at our polar ice caps and glaciers, the USGS adds: “Glaciers store about 69% of the world's freshwater, and if all land ice melted the seas would rise about 230 feet (70 meters)(NSIDC – [National Snow and Ice Data Center]).” Unfortunately, that is where we are headed.

But rather than looking at the next century, it is valuable to look at what most of those alive today will actually experience. Indeed, we know that as the average global temperatures rise, most of those very slow-moving glaciers accelerate their downward flow, melting and contracting with time. Some feed traditional rivers, lakes and streams; others carry water into oceans and seas. Of the major glacial concentrations on earth, according to a report from the United Nations, here are the World Heritage glacial sites that will be completely gone within 30 years:

• Hyrcanian Forests (Iran)
• Durmitor National Park (Montenegro)
• Virunga National Park (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• Huanlong Scenic and Historic Interest Area (China)
• Yellowstone National Park (United States of America)
• Mount Kenya National Park/Natural Forest (Kenya)
• Pyrenees Mont Perdu (France, Spain)
• Rwenzori Mountains National Park (Uganda)
• Putorana Plateau (Russia)
• Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona (Switzerland)
• Nahanni National Park (Canada)
• Lorentz National Park (Indonesia)
• Natural System of Wrangel Island Reserve (Russia)
• Kilimanjaro National Park (Tanzania)
• Yosemite National Park (United States of America)
• The Dolomites (Italy)
• Virgin Komi Forests (Russia)

The November 3rd BBC.com tells us that the above list encompasses a third of all major glaciers on earth, that Africa will lose all of its glacial ice, and for those who believe that we can still save the above list by prompt action, the authors of that UNESCO report tell us: “They will melt regardless of the world's actions to combat climate change.” We’ve passed the tipping point for those precious storehouses of water… forever.

As long as burning fossil fuels dominates our production of energy, these aggregating climate change anomalies will continue and expand: desertification/drought in some regions, severe flooding in others, agricultural production will continue to be severely disrupted, diseases and insects will continue to migrate to regions with local populations are unprepared to deal with the obvious changes, wildfires will rage, tropical storms will intensify, pockets of intolerable heat will grow, warmer polar regions will push that exceptionally cold “polar vortex” southward with greater frequency and coast regions will be recaptured by rising seas.

We have lots of excuses. Germany is cold. We cannot contain Putin and his war. China is not talking to us. India does not care. And Republicans cannot justify spending money on climate change infrastructure and alternative energy. The choice is ours. We’re just making the wrong ones.

I’m Peter Dekom, that we are getting the obvious results of our failure to respond adequately to the worst calamity humanity has ever faced; nature is callously indifferent to our choice.

In Politics, A BS Is Not a College Degree

“Jay Chen invited China into our children’s classroom”   

According to this photoshopped political flyer

Embracing a very large ethnic Vietnamese community, the recently reconfigured 45th Congressional District in California’s Orange County is heavily populated with individuals and their families who escaped violent communist persecution as the Vietnam War ended in the mid-1970s. Anything that smacks of communist or Marxist/Leninist doctrine makes their blood boil, assuring instant fury and condemnation. Current congressperson from the older and now reworked 48th district, Michelle Steel, was born in South Korea and immigrated to the United States seeking the American Dream. To put it mildly, Steel is a very conservative, Trump-following, member of Congress facing a Democratic opponent, Jay Chen, in the 45th.

So, when Steel’s campaign distributed a photoshopped flyer (see above) showing her opponent teaching communism and Marxist/Leninism to young public-school children, that message hint a nerve with her constituency. “The flier highlights Chen’s previous vote to support the Confucius Institution, a popular Beijing-backed language and cultural education center, during his time at Hacienda la Puente Unified School District years ago. However, Chen has defended himself by sharing his grandmother’s escape from communist China and his status as a ‘Naval Reserve officer with top-secret security clearance.’… [The] flier’s depiction of Chen is expected to boost Steel’s campaign since many in the AAPI community hold an ingrained opposition to communism due its oppressive history in Asia.

“The strategy of red-baiting, most closely associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare periods, was first brought to the forefront when Republicans sought to undermine President Roosevelt’s New Deal by reframing it. By the end of the 1930s, the New Deal was seen as a form of ‘creeping communism,’ allowing red-baiting to be used to create negative sentiment based on cultural fears of communism.” NextShark.com, September 30th. The dramatic willingness to lie in political contests goes beyond the “Swift-boat” slam against presidential candidate John Kerry in his 2004 loss to George W Bush, which today is mild by comparison.

With about half the GOP candidates running today embracing the “stolen” 2020 election myth, there seems to be new cultural value to lie, lie really big, to win an election. While no one is ever going to find innocence among the Democratic Party when it comes to mendacity, the Trump era issued in a new open season on truth in politics. Lying frequently enough creates “alternative facts” and a new “truth” for political followers. And while the FDA and the FCC hold advertisers of commercial products to a standard of “truth in advertising,” there is zero accountability applied to political campaigns with vastly more serious consequences.

With the 2010 Supreme Court case, Citizens United vs FEC, the lid on political spending flew out the window. Political action committees exploded, the majority representing GOP values, and money poured into political campaigns like an uncontrolled tsunami. And so much of that money supported out-and-out fabrication. We live in an era of mis- and dis-information, spurred by social media and highly biased “news” telecasters. A misinformed public, almost by definition, produces a distorted political result that can feed on itself until an election is nothing more than a battle of lies. But while all of this is going, especially at the local level, we are losing that once vast array of local newspapers that addressed salient local issues.

Which is why University of San Diego associate professor in communications, Nikki Usher, contributed an OpEd to the October 24th Los Angeles Times on point targeting California politics, where the polarization of mendacity is significantly less than in many parts of the country. She wrote, in part: “That’s why it is crucial that state and federal political advertising regulations be updated to account for the loss of access to information, even as political operatives become more adept at honing misinformation tactics.

“Meaningful participation in a democracy depends on informed citizens, but many voters can’t get the kind of news and information that would enable them to do so. Since 2004, California has lost 24% of its newspapers — and 14 California counties are essentially news deserts: places that have no local news or are severely under-resourced for local news.

“At present, all that current state law generally requires is a disclosure between two and eight seconds long about who paid for the TV or radio ad. If it’s an advocacy group with an innocuous-sounding name (for instance, Citizens for Sanity, which was behind an anti-immigrant ad during a Dodgers-Padres game), such disclosures won’t tell you much.

“Television ads may be particularly problematic because people trust local news more than any other type of journalism, and most [older] Americans still get most of their local news from local TV stations. Viewers might mistakenly believe that their local network news has fact-checked the ads or that the local 6 o’clock news has approved them — giving political misinformation a veneer of legitimacy.

“This makes it even more important for voters to have a clear idea of who is behind the ads they’re seeing. More detailed disclosures could help voters better understand the organizations paying for the ads, and their motivations. Ideally, the same kind of truth-in-advertising requirements for pharmaceutical drugs might one day be applied to political ads too.

“There are changes that state and federal regulatory agencies could make to move in this direction. Currently, all that the Federal Election Commission requires for television ads funded by political action committees is what it calls a ‘disclaimer’ with ‘the name of the political committee, corporation, labor organization, individual or group who paid for the communication.’ But it could also require that the sources of the text, images or footage used in the ad be made available to the public.” Prove it or shut up?

To my mind’s eye, accountability for spreading lies has to have real world consequences. A warning, a quick administrative hearing FCC, and any additional campaign ads from a seriously mendacious candidate should add a warning like this: “This Candidate has Been Found to Use False and Misleading Statements in Campaign Advertising.” Do I see a battle over the First Amendment. Oh yeah, but then again, exactly what voters are choosing when their information is completely or significantly false? If you wonder how civil wars start….

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder if democracy is even possible where massive lies carry the weight of truth in political campaigns.

OK, We Obviously Aren’t Really Dealing with Climate Change… So

In the United States, an entire mainstream political party is dead set against funding programs dedicated to containing climate change, even as trillions of dollars of resultant damage – particularly in red states – continues to wreak havoc with “once every hundred years” natural disasters occurring monthly. We’re hardly alone in this failed effort, even with Biden squeezing some federal commitments past a highly resistant GOP congressional pushback. But we are rich enough to tackle the problem, and we absolutely know better. Yet denial still persists in the GOP!

The global response is not too far behind our own lackadaisical approach. As Max Bearak, writing for the October 26th New York Times warns: “Countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change, pointing Earth toward a future marked by more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heat waves and species extinction, according to a report issued Wednesday [10/26] by the United Nations.

“Just 26 of 193 countries that agreed last year to step up their climate actions have followed through with more ambitious plans. The world’s top two polluters, China and the United States, have taken some action but have not pledged more this year, and climate negotiations between the two have been frozen for months.

“Without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the report said, the planet is on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels, by 2100… That’s far higher than the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) set by the landmark Paris agreement in 2015, and it crosses the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts significantly increases.

“With each fraction of a degree of warming, tens of millions more people worldwide would be exposed to life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal flooding while millions more mammals, insects, birds and plants would disappear.” Most of the world is either reactive, solely to the damage from the natural disasters themselves, or simply dismissive of the suffering, the soaring food prices from agricultural disruption from what we politely refer to as “drought,” when it really is a more permanent desertification.

We do not even concern ourselves with bizarre changes in wildlife migration patterns, the disappearance of entire species – all warning us of what could easily happen to humanity as climate moves from merely disruptive to intolerable – and the spread of disease as germs attach to reflect their own climatical needs. The vicious cycle of searing seasonal heat that is simply countered by fossil-fuel-consuming air conditioning is a wild contradiction masquerading as a new basic human need. Increasingly, regions all over the world are reaching the point where they will no longer be habitable, at least by human beings.

As global threats mount, most recently the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we reprioritize our commitment to climate change accordingly. It’s now “ok” to postpone or deprioritize relying on fossil fuel during periods of conflict. Artillery and missile strikes, raising massive clouds of greenhouse gasses are just the way it is. And our inability to stop many of these “natural disasters” actually reverses large chunks of climate change progress where it has been prioritized. California, with its wildfires, saw all of its clean air initiatives vaporize as these fires dumped more carbon into the atmosphere than California’s environmental initiatives were able to remove.

“On [October 24th], the European Union said it would increase its emissions reductions pledges ‘as soon as possible’ but could not do so until its member states agreed on a number of upcoming climate laws… That delay is ‘hugely disappointing’ said Niklas Höhne, founder of the NewClimate Institute in Cologne, Germany. ‘This year we’ve seen little of the climate action governments promised at the end of Glasgow, amid a deluge of new science telling us that we have to move faster, and that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still entirely possible. We need governments to set strong targets that drive emissions down, and decarbonize their economies.’” NY Times.

China has stopped cooperating, Russia is no longer part of the climate change dialog, India is struggling with globalized inflationary distress and no longer stressing climate change, and the United States... well, as long has half of the American body politic is in denial of the problem, unwilling to commit remotely enough resources… Yeah, that!

So, we need to get used to the species loss, the migration of disease, killer storms, massive lost of productive agricultural land, extreme water and food shortages, wildfires destroying oxygen-producing forests and even human structures, coastal erosion on steroids, flooding, tornados and rising costs everywhere. We will continue pay more each year, trillions of dollars, in reaction to the “natural disasters” inexorably linked to our ignoring the obvious need to contain and stop climate change. We are already slipping past that tipping point where climate change damage becomes self-perpetuating even with containment efforts.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the laws of physics (Mother Nature if you will) cannot be repealed by referendum or stopped because we don’t like them… so why does most of humanity think or act otherwise?

And Still, They Won’t Move

And Still, They Won’t Move

A Small Story with a Big Reason

“To move somewhere else, we’d lose a part of our identity. It’s hard to see myself living elsewhere…

My home means my way of life, carried down to me by my ancestors — living off the land, the ocean, the air …the animals that are here. And it’s important to teach it to my children, to my grandchildren

so they can continue the life that we’ve known in our time and before our time.”

Ardith Weyiouanna, resident of Shishmaref, a small Inuit village on an Alaskan island.

"You know it really breaks my heart, it hurts my heart, knowing that my one and only home will

have to soon relocate, and having all the memories that I have on Shishmaref be gone when

Shishmaref is gone, and when the island is underwater."

Esau Sinnok, a younger resident.

And still they won’t move. Most say they cannot afford the cost of relocating. But even more simply cannot bring themselves to leave a land that simply cannot be separated from their cultural, historical and religious definition of who they are. Inuit, also called the Inupiat, residents are linked to their past by this sliver of contracting land by the sea. Writing for the November 5th Associated Press, describes the harsh scientific reality facing this tiny village of about 600:

“That traditional lifestyle that the Inupiat have maintained for thousands of years is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In Alaska, the average temperature has increased 2.5 degrees since 1992, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Arctic had been warming twice as fast as the globe as a whole, but now has jumped to three times as fast in some seasons, according to the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.

“Shishmaref sits on the small island of Sarichef — just a quarter of a mile wide and about three miles long. Only about half of it is habitable, but hundreds of feet of shore have been lost in past decades… A warmer climate also melts faster a protective layer of ice during the fall, making it more susceptible to storms. In October 1997, about 30 feet of the north shore eroded after a storm, prompting the relocation of 14 homes to another part of the island, according to a report by the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. Five more homes were moved in 2002.

“Today, Shishmaref is one of dozens of Alaska Native villages that face significant environmental threats from erosion, flooding or thawing permafrost, according to a report published in May by the U.S. Government Accountability Office that says climate change ‘is expected to exacerbate’ these threats… ‘I’m scared we will have to move eventually,’ said Lloyd Kiyutelluk, president of the local tribal council. ‘I don’t want it to be declared an emergency. But the way things are, you know, we’re getting storms that we’ve never seen before.’

“Ahead of a powerful storm in mid-September, officials warned that some places in Alaska could see the worst flooding in 50 years. The storm swept through the Bering Strait, causing widespread flooding in several western Alaska coastal communities, knocking out power and sending residents fleeing for higher ground… In Shishmaref, the storm wiped out a road leading to the local garbage dump and sewage lagoon, creating a health hazard for a town that lacks running water.

“Molly Snell said she prayed for a miracle that would save the village where she was born and raised from being forced to evacuate… ‘The right storm with the right wind could take out our whole island that’s more vulnerable due to climate change,’ said Snell, 35, the general manager of the Shishmaref Native Corp… ‘For someone to say that climate change is not real kind of hurts a little bit because we’re seeing it firsthand in Shishmaref,’ she said. ‘People who say that it’s not real, they don’t know how we live and what we deal with every day.’” Bottom line: Shishmaref is home… not like a house you might rent or buy after entering the workforce… home like where you belong, where you were defined and where you really feel like you belong. Where your faith, your ancestors and your culture were born, long before you were conceived.

Hurricanes decimate, most recently Ian in Florida. Wildfires destroy, most recently several mega-blazes in Northern California. Droughts have brought starvation, most recently all over Northeastern Africa. Major flooding is increasing, most recently in Tasmania and New South Wales in Australia. And coastal erosion takes its toll… like Shishmaref. I’m Peter Dekom, and every political and economic power opposing the now obvious steps we need to contain the death and destruction caused by climate change is committing major crimes against humanity… and life itself.

I’m Peter Dekom, and every political and economic power opposing the now obvious steps we need to contain the death and destruction caused by climate change is committing major crimes against humanity… and life itself.