Climate Change, Das Gift that Keeps on Giving – Tinder

In German, simply, beware of Gift-giving locals. “Das Gift,” in Germany and as used above, means “poison.” The toxicity that so many of us overlook is the devastation of climate change on our forests, before they burn away in the acceleration of wildfires around the world. A recent census in California can be multiplied in virtually every country with vast forests. From Eastern Europe to Australia to Brazil and the United States. Today’s blog will focus on the Western United States, particularly California. The rise in average temperatures everywhere not only deprives trees and other necessary vegetation of the water they need to survive, but weakened trees become vulnerable to migrating insects, and plant-driven diseases and predators. While people and even animals can migrate, trees cannot. They have to stand and take it… or die.

The West is uneasy about water and trees. California is the big water hog, and Arizona is the state with the second largest city in the West. And they are both parties to a water allocation accord that was first negotiated over a century ago. But dried out forests are happening in every Western state, and wildfires are our common signature, event-driven mega-disaster. Drought, better classified as desertification or aridification (permanent), is one of the big causes of such “events.”

But trees, those bastions of turning CO2 into oxygen, erosion prevention, shade, housing (for people and critters alike) and magnificent beauty (“I think that I shall never see….”) are dying… and humanity is killing them for more than their lumber value and paper creation. And while much of the world looks at California in terms of big cities, our magnificent forests used to be the envy of the world, from giant redwoods and sequoias to endless varieties of pine and deciduous forests. The numbers are saddening. Notwithstanding recent rains.

“Roughly 36.3 million dead trees were counted across California in 2022, a dramatic increase from previous years that experts are blaming on drought, insects and disease, according to a report by the U.S. Forest Service.

“The same survey for 2021 counted 9.5 million dead trees in the state. The effects of last year’s dramatic die-off are more severe and spread across a wider range, according to the report released Tuesday [7/7]… The aerial report paints a bleak picture of a state ravaged by drought, disease and insects that feed and nest in thirsty trees.

“From mid-July to early October, researchers surveyed nearly 40 million acres, including federal, state and private land. They found dead trees spread across 2.6 million acres… Douglas firs showed the biggest mortality rate increase. There were 3 million dead, an increase of 1,650%, counted across 190,000 acres, primarily in the central Sierra Nevada.

“There were 12 million dead white fir trees, an increase of 691%, across 1.5 million acres, and 15 million dead red firs, an increase of 242%, across 890,000 acres. The dead trees were grouped mainly around the Northern California city of Redding, including in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and surrounding areas.” Nathan Solis, writing for February 8th Los Angeles Times.

You’ll notice that the photograph above is not of a fire-decimated forest… or one where all the trees are gone. It is a picture of a not-as-slow-as-you-think dying forest, thirsty and desperate, with the silent chomping of billions of little insects, bark beetles, etc. and a whole host of plant infectious diseases. It ain’t good, and it’s getting worse. The non-predatory fauna and flora that depend on those trees are not having a good time either. Think of them as our perpetual litany of canaries in our own existential coal mine.

Indeed, as crowded forests access dwindling water supplies, the trees themselves become competitors for that precious life force. Dense forests look great, but look what happens when there is enough water for say, only 10,000 trees in a forest with 30,000. “The primary cause of mortality is drought. Roughly 80% of the state experienced severe drought conditions at the start of the year, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Thanks to a series of winter rain storms, the figure has dropped to 32%... But forest officials say that the increase in dead trees will continue to be a problem for years to come as rain levels in general remain low.

“Forest management will play a key role in how the state responds to tree mortality. The Forest Service’s 10-year plan to tackle the problem will include removing dead and dying trees in areas where they pose the most risk to surrounding communities… As residential development has moved closer to forests, wildfires fueled by dead and dying trees have destroyed more homes and structures.

“Over the last 11 years, there has been a nearly 250% increase in the number of homes and other structures that have burned in the Western U.S. as wildfires have become significantly more destructive, according to a study published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science-Nexus.” Indeed, Joyce Kilmer’s poem does not read: “I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a dead tree.” Are we next? Sooner than you might hope. Slowly.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I love the list of corporate interests that would face massive costs and profit declines, purportedly cutting jobs and taxes along the way, if indeed climate change were to be addressed as it really should!

Hey, Why Not? The Environment? Meh!

While Europe is still struggling, the United States weathered the first bout of oil and gas increases, got slammed in December/January on natural gas heating costs, which seemed to double and triple overnight. Prices at the pump came down on this side of the Atlantic but seem to be creeping up again slowly. As Vladimir Putin amps up his no-win war against Ukraine. So, you might ask yourself who exactly makes all the money when those price hit the roof. Duh. Energy extractors everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. Here are just two examples, reflective of the rest, sanctions and price caps notwithstanding. Shell reported profits of $39.9bn in 2022, the highest in its 115-year history. BP generated profits of $27.7bn in the same year, more than double what they generated in 2021.

It is so gratifying to make money on the suffering of others, but for the oil and gas industry, it is a cherished tradition. Reports that Exxon/Mobil was fully aware – better versed with scientific facts than the US government in the 1970s – that burning of fossil fuels was causing climate change, which was going to accelerate if not stopped. Very much including gasoline, kerosine and diesel-powered vehicles, ships and aircraft. They kept the information to themselves, spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars challenging all the government and academic research that later established the connection between fossil fuels and climate change. The truth was revealed recently when Exxon/Mobil’s internal research was discovered and released to the public. See also my February 7th Case Study: Why Industry Self-Regulation Almost Never Works blog for more details.

The February 2nd BBC.com noted that Shell Oil was symptomatic of oil company greed: “The price of Brent crude oil reached nearly $128 a barrel following the invasion, but has since fallen back to about $83. Gas prices also spiked but have come down from their highs… It has led to bumper profits for energy companies, but also fueled a rise in energy bills for households and businesses.

“Last year, the UK government introduced a windfall tax - called the Energy Profits Levy - on the ‘extraordinary’ earnings of firms to help fund its scheme to lower gas and electricity bills… Despite the move, Shell had said it did not expect to pay any UK tax this year as it is allowed to offset decommissioning costs and investments in UK projects against any UK profits.” Parallel windfall taxes have been proposed in various states and by the federal government. Naturally, despite the suffering of Americans forced to fund these unholy increases in profits, Republicans have no issue with the privileged or accelerated write-offs for the oil and gas industry, but they do not want to take these behemoths to pay their fair share of taxes on the windfall.

It is equally clear that BIG OIL (and gas) have put all environmental concerns on a back burner to maximize their extraction of these fossil fuels at a time when people are being forced to pay the most. Any accommodation to greenhouse emissions and pollution limits are now a matter of pledges for future years! The February 7th BBC.com looks at BP specifically, but this is the actual response of all the major oil and gas extraction mega-companies: “BP boss Bernard Looney said the British company was ‘helping provide the energy the world needs’ while investing the transition to green energy… But it came as the firm scaled back plans to cut carbon emissions by reducing its oil and gas output.

“The company - which was one of the first oil and gas giants to announce an ambition to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 - had previously promised that emissions would be 35-40% lower by the end of this decade… However, on Tuesday [2/7] it said it was now targeting a 20-30% cut, saying it needed to keep investing in oil and gas to meet current demands.

“Climate campaign group Greenpeace, whose voice the BBC has included because of the impact of oil and gas production on the environment, said BP's new strategy ‘seems to have been strongly undermined by pressure from investors and governments to make even more dirty money out of oil and gas’… Energy prices had begun to climb following the end of Covid lockdowns but rose sharply in March last year after Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking concerns about global supplies.”

I guess their fingers were crossed behind their backs when they made the pledge. Nature does not care if there is more money to be made by ignoring physical realities. BIG OIL has always known what they were doing was causing massive changes to our daily lives. Long before governments came to that conclusion. But when BIG MONEY is to be made by BIG OIL, anything that stands in their way has got to go. At the very least, the governments that are saddled with responding to the disasters climate change has already caused should be entitled to impose massive windfall taxes on the perpetrators.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder where the BIG OIL executives will be after the next spate of cyclones and hurricanes, raging wildfires, killer crop failures, intolerable heat waves, unprecedented flooding elsewhere and coastal erosion that will redefine all nations with major urban areas on or near an ocean.

Tales from the Crypto

“There’s no there there, and we have plenty of history to prove it.” 

 Lee Reiners, a crypto expert at Duke University and former regulatory Federal Reserve Bank official, testifying on Capitol Hill on February 14th

Cryptocurrencies have become the preferred transactional vehicle for sophisticated criminals the world over. Hard to trace and protected by a decentralized coding system (blockchain), what’s not to like for nefarious trades, drug money and fraudulent gains? But exactly what is the underlying value that justifies the value of a cryptocurrency? Blind faith seems like a good answer. Oh sure, there are exceptions, but most of the activity is on private exchanges with proprietary currencies. However, see my January 8th Yuan to Go Digital? blog about how the People’s Republic of China, having banned private cryptocurrencies, is creating a new government-issued crypto-platform to circumvent American-dominated financial systems and trade sanctions.

For sovereign nations, the ability to work-around monetary and fiscal policies and regulations via a parallel unregulated currency-equivalent is indeed a challenge. El Salvador took a shot at officially recognizing crypto with nasty consequences, and certain states (e.g., Florida) have bent over backwards to invite crypto traders to build their networks under their protection. Perhaps because these crypto models are relatively young and unfathomable to most of us, they were attractive as news stories about instant billionaires dominated the headlines for a long time. Fraudsters were also having a good time creating instant wealth, often siphoned off for “other purposes,” from political campaigns to funding the promoter’s private equity investment fund.

Federal regulatory agencies struggled with which, if any, federal laws applied to crypto or its “collector’s” cousin, so-called "non-fungible tokens” (NFTs). Did the “Howey Rule” (earning passive money from the efforts of others) apply, making these “securities” under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission? Perhaps they should be regulated as commodities or even under our banking laws? One group of anti-regulatory Republicans actually was proposing bills aimed at keeping crypto unregulated. That effort is fading fast, although there are diehards on the wrong side of statistics and common sense:

“At Tuesday’s [2/14 Senate] hearing, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a venture capitalist in his outside life, asked ‘how people would have described the internet in the 1970s and 1980s. ... If we had taken an overbearing approach then, we might have destroyed a lot of the upside that has come over the last three decades.’ He asked how to regulate crypto now ‘in a way that protects the upsides of the technology right now’… The flaws in this argument should be instantly apparent. One is that the virtues of any given innovation don’t validate any other claimed innovations.” Michael Hiltzik writing for the February 19th Los Angeles Times. Congress continues to hold hearings on the subject, but I doubt most in Congress have a clue what a cryptocurrency really is and how it really works. Without much digging, Crypto sure smacks of a Ponzi scheme with no tangible underlying asset base.

It took a mega-billion-dollar collapse to wake that legislative body – Congress – which is used to dealing with issues a decade or more after the technology has been implemented into common use. “The immediate trigger for the change of heart in Washington was plainly the November implosion of FTX, a crypto firm whose founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, had been a prominent advocate for looser regulations on crypto firms. Bankman-Fried is free on bail while awaiting trial on criminal charges.

“Yet FTX’s bankruptcy was only one of a string of crypto firm failures during 2022, and the precursor of further bankruptcies. Perhaps more important, many of the operational shortcomings allegedly found in FTX’s operations are common in the field, including inadequate record keeping and security arrangements, and commingling of customers’ and firms’ assets.

“Consumer interest in crypto was probably destined to wane even without the FTX collapse. Last year’s Super Bowl telecast brimmed with high-priced commercials from crypto firms featuring celebrities such as Matt Damon and Larry David. Supernovas like 2022-vintage crypto are always destined to fade to some extent; this year’s Super Bowl was crypto-free .

“In recent weeks and months, however, U.S. regulators have taken strong steps to inoculate the larger banking and financial system against contamination by crypto firm failures.” Hiltzik. Lawsuits against celebrity endorsements are rising almost as fast as crypto is falling. Yet the losses to those who joined the crypto scam late in the game or who continue to hold crypto are staggering. Many still lumber under the belief that, despite “momentary” declines in value, crypto would continue its rise as a sustainable and reliable currency. They just may have been those children who continued their belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny late into their elementary school years… or those who “know” that conspiracy theories are “true.”

“The capitalization of the crypto market, which peaked at more than $3 trillion in late 2021, is now estimated at $800 billion, implying enormous losses for late-stage investors. (Some cryptocurrencies have rallied, but the benchmark bitcoin is still down by more than 60% from its peak in November 2021.)… To critics of crypto, these developments reflect the influence of gravity on a marketplace characterized by ‘frequent instances of operational failures, market manipulation, frauds, thefts and scams, as the U.S. Treasury put it in a consumer advisory issued last September.’…

“At the hearing, committee member Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) mentioned ‘international drug traffickers who raked in over a billion dollars through crypto ... North Korean hackers, who stole $1.7 billion and funneled that money into their nuclear program ... and ransomware attackers who took in almost $500 million.’” Hiltzik. Can crypto survive amidst a global regulatory effort? This old adage seems to apply: what seems to be too good to be true usually is.

I’m Peter Dekom, a big Los Angeles sports fan, and I wonder how long our downtown venue for professional basketball and hockey will continue to carry the name “Crypto.com Arena.”

What Exactly Does Being a Republican Mean Today?

There is little doubt that the current power of elected Republicans has veered heavily towards White Christian nationalism. The efforts toward smaller government, deregulation and lower taxes – the fundamental values of the Reagan GOP – have increasingly become secondary. In fact, listening to Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ official GOP rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union speech suggests that it all about the “culture wars.” And those culture wars lean heavily in favor of White Christian supremacy – that in fact that the United States should declare itself to be a Christian nation – and against anyone or anything that deviates from that norm. Easy targets include Muslims and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Immigrants and people of color are next in that negative line. Owning guns has become the necessary hovering enforcement tool. 

As the Democrats themselves splinter between progressives and moderates, the GOP is fractured by deeper ideological chasms. The feelings within the GOP White nationalists, however, include a vastly more open embrace of political violence and authoritarianism as well as an interpretation of the First Amendment that does not preclude a national religion. They seem to have found growing support within a very conservative Supreme Court. 

While these extreme religious beliefs do not reflect the views of a majority of Americans, they have become an essential core to anyone seeking a nomination for virtually any potential GOP office. It seems to be a moral mandate from God, a holy war… an evangelical jihad. And God has always trumped “country.” To get any former GOP economic goal – that Reagan perspective – voters have to accept the religious zeal that now is ineluctably part of the Republican Party. 

The problem with religious passion is that messages “from God” cannot be subject to political compromise. There is only one perspective, and those who cannot abide by that belief system cannot be the “loyal opposition;” they are heretical apostates to be dealt with accordingly. In short, democracy cannot exist where there is only one “true path” within an unyielding religious mandate from God. Theocracy must prevail. As the Bible tells us: “No one can serve two masters.” How embedded are such extreme views in the American body politic? Writing for the Los Angeles Times (via the Associated Press), on President’s day, David Lauter looks at recent polls and what they tell us about the stability of our country:

“Democrats, whose partisans have moved sharply to the left over the last decade, seem likely to defer their debate until after the election, with President Biden on track to claim the party’s nomination without serious challenge.

“On the Republican side, by contrast, the struggles are increasingly out in the open as the party, long defined by a Reagan-era ideology of low taxes, small government and strong defense, tries to figure out what it now stands for… Many of the party’s wealthy donors favor a libertarian ideology of low taxes and small government. Other GOP activists dream of a a multiracial, multiethnic blue-collar party, hoping to peel a larger share of Black and Latino voters away from Democrats… But one of the most powerful strands within the party is Christian nationalism, the belief that the U.S. is properly a Christian nation that should be governed by followers of traditional Christian beliefs.

“Two big, new studies over the last couple of weeks shed fresh light on those internal debates. One, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for the Associated Press, examined how much confidence each party’s voters have in their leaders. The other, by the Washington, D.C.-based Public Religion Research Institute, offers a comprehensive look at Christian nationalism… Both parties suffer from a lack of leadership, the AP/NORC survey found.

“Among Democrats, just 41% cited Biden when asked whom they see as the leader of their party. Asked whom they would like to have as their party leader, only about 1 in 8 named Biden — a low number for a sitting president. But no one else was mentioned by more than 5%.

“Republicans were even more split. Just under 1 in 5 named former President Trump as their party’s leader, about 1 in 10 cited House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Nearly 4 in 10 had no answer. Asked who should lead their party, Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis each were named by about 1 in 5 Republicans, reflecting their current positions as early front-runners for the party’s presidential nomination.

“Asked if their party’s leaders share their values, about 4 in 10 Democrats said they were very or extremely confident; a slightly smaller group said they were only somewhat confident… Republicans had less confidence: Only about 2 in 10 said they were very or extremely confident that their leaders share their values, and more than half said they were somewhat confident.

“The chief reason Republicans show less confidence is that many of the party’s college-educated voters and moderates see a gap between their values and those of the party’s leaders. By contrast, those who identify as “very conservative” were the most likely to express a high level of confidence that their values are in sync with those of the party leadership… And what values do those conservative voters espouse? For many, Christian nationalism provides their ideological framework.

“To determine how many Americans share a Christian nationalist outlook, PRRI, which has done extensive work surveying Americans about their values, began by asking five questions of more than 6,000 Americans… The queries included whether ‘the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation,’ and whether ‘God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society’ as well as whether ‘U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.’.. ‘The questions we picked are pretty clear,’ said Robert Jones, the group’s president. ‘They’re not soft. They’re not easy questions to identify with.’

“Almost 70% of Americans answered no to all or most of those statements. About 10% were in very strong agreement — a group that PRRI dubbed Christian nationalism adherents. Another 19% were sympathizers — agreeing with the statements, but not always strongly agreeing… Among Republicans, the picture was very different: More than half qualified as adherents (21%) or sympathizers (33%).

“The strength of Christian nationalist sentiment can be clearly seen in a wide range of issues that Republican elected officials have stressed, including efforts to curtail the rights and visibility of transgender people, but also some less obvious topics, such as immigration… As the PRRI study found, Christian nationalist beliefs correlate strongly with anti-Muslim, anti-Black, antisemitic and anti-immigrant views.” 

Add guns, a built-in bias within our own Constitution favoring rural, more evangelical voters (resulting in heavily populated California and sparsely populated Wyoming having exactly the same representation in the Senate), and the White Christian wave has its finger on the election scale. While rising voters express more tolerance for diversity, they clearly do not have much influence within the GOP. Can such political differences exist side by side?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder why the majority of Americans continue to believe that our governance is simply the same old/same old struggle between traditional Democrats and Republicans.

The Worst Greenhouse Emitter on Earth: The US Military

The United States has the strongest and most modern military on earth. It is revered by most Americans, given high priority when it comes to federal budget decisions, and it usually exempt from the kinds of scrutiny applied to “the rest of us.” What’s more, even as Donald Trump was attempting to dissolve the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. military officially recognized that climate change is and was an “existential” threat to national security, spurring conflict and mass migration. Starving people chasing dwindling resources has been an impetus to global instability. Wars between well-armed factions, involving missile strikes, artillery, mass use of military vehicles and bombs are bad enough, but the rising smoke and toxic emissions from the smoldering targets is now a new normal.

The war in Ukraine is no exception. “The war has led directly to emissions of 33 million tons of greenhouse gases that warm the Earth's atmosphere, claimed Ruslan Strilets, Ukraine's environmental protection minister… ‘ Russia has turned our natural reserves into a military base. Russia is doing everything to shorten our and your horizons. Because of the war, we will have to do even more to overcome the climate crisis,’ he said… The amount is the equivalent of adding nearly 16 million cars to the UK's roads for two years.” BBC.com, November14th.

This disruption has forced the European Union to cut its reliance on Russian natural gas imports. As a result, the United States has become the largest net exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG) on earth. At a cost. “The United States is experiencing a liquefied natural gas export boom. Though it only started to export the fuel in 2016, the U.S. became the world’s leading exporter in 2022, amid the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine and its disruptions to global energy supplies… Today, the U.S. has seven LNG export terminals in operation, with plans for 20 more.

“These terminals, where natural gas is cooled into a liquid and loaded onto barges, could emit more than 90 million tons of greenhouse gases a year—as much pollution as about 18 million combustion-engine cars a year—according to the Environmental Integrity Project.” FastCompany.com, February 2nd. But as the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates, the United States’ existence just may rely on our military. But having a large military has a hidden cost.

Military deployment is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emission in general. Even before the Ukraine war, “The world’s militaries [were] responsible for about 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR). The U.S. military, with a $760 billion budget for 2022, [led] the pack in emissions. The Costs of War Project estimated it emitted 51 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2020—more than the emissions of most countries. The bulk of those emissions come from fuel use and maintaining more than half a million buildings.

“Those figures are just an estimate based on publicly available data from the Department of Energy and bulk fuel purchase records. They indicate the largest shares of military emissions come from fuel and powering facilities, according to [a study from Brown University]. (SGR’s analysis, which it presented in Glasgow last week, extrapolated from UK data and included indirect ‘value-chain’ emissions, putting that figure significantly higher, at 205 million tons.)

“The Defense Department does not regularly report its contributions to climate change, although that may change. [Federal budgeting has] called for the Pentagon to report on the past ten years of greenhouse gas emissions. The agency missed its July [2021] deadline.

‘In a democracy, we should have information with which to make informed decisions,’ said Neta Crawford, a political scientist at Boston University and author of the Costs of War report. ‘It is the practice of holding an institution to account and making it possible for public policymakers and interested individuals to come up with ideas which could feed into a better outcome.’… She said the military, which has reduced emissions over the last 17 years, could make further cuts by continuing to wean off coal, closing underutilized facilities, and rethinking some US operations. … ‘​​Look at the central command—do we need an aircraft carrier there 24/7, 12 months a year?’ she said. ‘You could go through the commands and their exercises and ask yourself, ‘what can be reduced or eliminated entirely and still be secure?’ ’

“In remarks at Wayne State University in Detroit [in mid-November of 2021], Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the White House set a goal for the DoD to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and that the Pentagon was developing a sustainability plan that would reduce emissions and focus on developing ‘a zero-emissions, non-tactical vehicle fleet.’ She added, ‘We also know that we need to optimize energy use in our tactical vehicles.’” Nexus Media News, 11/23/21. Is it a balancing act, or can we achieve environmental stability and continue to have a powerful military to protect our nation? Perhaps we must… or there may be nothing left to protect.

I’m Peter Dekom, and just making environmental concerns in military procurement one of our highest priorities would be a good start, and an impetus to new technology advancements that would benefit us in so many other ways.

Socially Transmitted

 

To understand the underlying passion of MAGA adherents, with claims of stolen elections and an orchestrated deep state conspiracy dedicated to their replacement, it is worth taking a step backwards to examine how and why this happens. It is hardly new. The Economist (February 4th) takes on this topic:

“Most people like to think that conspiracy theories are confined to the margins of society, but they have never been merely peripheral. They are expressions of something important about the cultures from which they emerge. From the Manchester United superfan who believes that covid-19 was engineered by global elites to the 4chan-dwelling adherents of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory, the people who invent and spread conspiracy theories are channeling the preoccupations of the societies in which they live. Three centuries ago Jonathan Swift wrote that ‘falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect.’ No-one will ever put an end to such theories—but as our coverage explains, by looking closely at them, and the reasons why some people are so keen to share them, something useful may be learned about real-world anxieties.”

A modern view of this perspective is well summarized in this 1920s book: “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy, by Lothrop Stoddard… about racialism and geopolitics, which describes the collapse of white supremacy and colonialism because of the population growth among ‘people of color’, rising nationalism in colonized nations, and industrialization in China and Japan.” Wikipedia.

The Economist tells us: “Stoddard was admired by Adolf Hitler. He argued that the ‘Nordic race that he held responsible for all world progress was being outbred by darker-skinned, supposedly inferior types. In Fitzgerald’s novel [The Great Gatsby], [Tom] Buchanan’s support for Goddard is a sign that he is a stupid, dislikeable man.” The notion of White superiority was the notion behind colonialism, a justification for the exploitation of wealth and natural resources from indigenous people all over the earth. Noblesse obliges – bringing true faith and culture to inferior peoples – drove the missionary zeal that empowered European conquests of distant lands for centuries. But when those colonial conquests showed signs of rising independence, it was very often seen as a direct attack on that axiom of White supremacy that fueled global expansion and European mega-wealth.”

In the United States, this notion the rise of these “inferior peoples” – reflected in Stoddard’s book – has come the modern backbone of “replacement theory,” where people of color push their White masters out and take over the earth. In the summer of 2017, the chants of the Charlotteville torch bearers (above) – “fine people” according to our then President – were repeated: “They shall not replace us.”

“Almost a century [after Stoddard’s book], the shooting of 13 people, 11 of them black, at a supermarket in Buffalo, a city in upstate New York on May 14th, points to the continuing popularity of such racist ideas. The suspect, Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old who streamed his massacre on Twitch, a gaming website, had apparently published a 180-page document online explaining his motivations. Much of it was copied directly from a similar ‘manifesto’ written by the man who went on a killing spree in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. In essence, it argued that there is an international Jewish conspiracy to engineer the migration of non-white people to historically white countries in an attempt to ‘replace’ whites with a more pliant, racially inferior population. This is known as the ‘Great Replacement’ theory.’…

“Such ideas are spreading beyond extremist websites like 4chani to the broadcast media and mainstream politics. Tucker Carlson, a powerful Fox News host, has argued that Joe Biden and other Democratic politicians want to replace Americans with ‘more obedient voters from the third world’. [Yale-educated] J.D. Vance, a [successful] Republican candidate for the Senate in Ohio, has claimed that Mr Biden is ‘intentional’ in encouraging Mexican traffickers to bring fentanyl, a powerful opiate, to America in order to kill Donald Trump’s voters. In France Eric Zemmour, a failed presidential candidate, said that ‘an Islamic civilisation is replacing a people from a Christian, Greco-Roman civilisation’. These ideas are nonsense. But as their persistence shows, they are powerful. And in America, the people who believe them all too often have access to guns.” The Economist.

Indeed, to generate such a mass following within the motivation of a conspiracy theory, author/ philosopher Eric Hoffman (in his book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements) explains that there must already be seeds of discontent spready widely throughout society before such theories can take root. He believes that these angry movements begin with a growing "desire for change" from discontented people who believe that they have lost power and position and who also have no confidence in existing culture or traditions.

Feeling their lives are “irredeemably spoiled" and believing there is no hope for advancement or satisfaction as an individual, true believers seek "self-renunciation" (letting go of their own wishes, desires, or ambitions) to find hope within a wider movement. These formerly empowered incumbents who believe they have been left behind are the most likely source of converts for “replacement theory” movements, for they recall their former wealth with resentment and blame others for their current misfortune. This is the roadmap for rising autocrats. They reinforce to a massive group that they have been left behind, place the blame on an easily identifiable slice of society, hammer home the “truth” of the resulting conspiracy theory and attack any effort to substitute reality for the conspiracy theory. The culture war against any opposing thought becomes an essential part of their effort.

This US effort lifted from a generic feeling of amorphous discontent into mainstream thought with Donald Trump’s presidency, was exacerbated by his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton’s reference to the Trump’s followers as “deplorables,” and accelerated through his de facto presidential legitimization of White supremacy and toxic immigration by people of color. But this MAGA platform has now shifted to Ron DeSantis, clearly evidenced by the Florida Governor’s “Stop Woke Act.” He has successfully led a large red state charge to ban teaching at all levels of education (from elementary school well into college) of any historical facts that would diminish the power of the underlying conspiracy theories and White supremacy.

As we watch the reconfigured Republican Party become nothing more than a vessel for such MAGA beliefs, we are watching a dangerous and exceptionally well-armed faction of deeply discontented White Americans, who truly believe they are being left behind.

I’m Peter Dekom, and those zealots that F Scott Fitzgerald once described as “stupid” and “dislikeable” are exceptionally angry and even more exceptionally well-armed.

Still Very Much on the GOP Table – Cutting Medicare and Social Security

They’ve gotten a tad more savvy about how they label their deep aversion to these purportedly vested federal investment programs. They call them “entitlements” still, as if no one contributed a dime of their lifetime earnings to these “giveaway” programs. Even as seniors are a mainstay of GOP support, Republicans still refer to “fiscal responsibility,” “shoring up the financial structures behind Social Security and Medicare,” having all federal statutes subject to automatic “sunset provisions” that end statutes unless renewed by Congress every five years, the superiority of private investment over federal control, etc. They do not speak of the chaos that would result from the five-year review, that these programs were passed decades ago when American birth rates far exceeded the “replacement” numbers, what the recent stock market collapse would have done to a mandated private investment plan without any Social “Security,” and how their votes have been the primary eroders of the stability of the programs.

According to a government post: “On August 14, 1935, the Social Security Act established a system of old-age benefits for workers, benefits for victims of industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, and aid for dependent mothers and children, persons who are blind, and persons with disabilities.” The system was predicated on an assumed flow of babies, so that the taxes on working Americans would easily support the oldest segment of the population.

According to Statista.com, the dip in WWII birth rates due to soldiers at war, “changed quite dramatically in the aftermath of the Second World War, rising sharply to over 3.5 children per woman in 1960 (children born between 1946 and 1964 are nowadays known as the 'Baby Boomer' generation, and they make up roughly twenty percent of today’s US population). Due to the end of the baby boom and increased access to contraception, fertility reached its lowest point in the US in 1980, where it was just 1.77. It did however rise to over two children per woman between 1995 and 2010, although it [did] drop again by 2020, to just 1.78.” The “replacement rate” is 2.1 live births per couple, so without immigration – fiercely opposed by the GOP – as with most developed countries in the world, the US population is contracting. That also means that the assumptions that accompanied the passage of Social Security and Medicare have not been valid for a while. Yes, these programs need fixing. But why not ask the mega-rich for the necessary funding for an updated program that reflects 2023 demographic realities, not outdated statistics.

Aside from the fact that GOP immigration policies and failure to understand simple demographic statistics are the major contributors to any underlying instability of underlying financing of these programs, the GOP prefers to find backdoor excuses to defund these programs… slowly if they cannot simply wipe them away. Every GOP proposal to cut these programs has met with severe resistance from seniors, and the only concession that Republicans have been able to extract when they were in complete control of the presidency and Congress has been to push retirement age back from its original 65 age trigger. But as President Joe Biden correctly pointed out in his State of the Union message, despite jeers from GOP Congresspeople, they’re baccccck! Actually, they never left.

The problem with the GOP denial that Social Security and Medicare are in the crosshairs of their budget-cutting axe: there is so much concrete evidence of their actual goals to make that denial truly “fake news.” For example, as noted, they refer to these programs as “entitlements,” so when they say they will cut “entitlements,” substitute the words “Social Security and Medicare” and reread their pronouncements. The real “entitlements” probably came in the form of a massive 2017 corporate tax rate cut from 35% to 21% that added trillions to the deficit. And when they say that Social Security should continue but be “privatized,” they are both cutting that out of the budget and turning the word “Security” into a joke. By the way, that’s the George W Bush plan that infuriated seniors and a current plank of undeclared presidential candidate Mike Pence.

Writing an OpEd for the February 15th, Michael Hiltzik adds more evidence to the fire, starting with those Republicans gathered and forced to listen to the State of the Union message who pretended they never wanted to touch these sacred programs: “Not so, they say. Never happened. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) were even caught on camera during the speech wearing ‘Who, me?’ expressions of injured innocence… Unfortunately for them, we have the evidence, as does Biden. Cutting Social Security along with Medicare has been part of the Republican platform for decades… As I’ve reported before, they often hide their intentions behind a scrim of impenetrable jargon, plainly hoping that Americans won’t do the necessary math to penetrate their subterfuge…

“They know they’re on thin ice with the public when they talk about benefit cuts, which is why Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) once recommended discussing their ideas only ‘behind closed doors.’…Now we can turn to the specifics of Lee’s and Scott’s plans. In widely circulated videos from Lee’s first successful Senate campaign in 2010 he can be seen and heard stating as follows: ‘It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it out by the roots.’ He said that was why he was running for the Senate, and added, ‘Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort. They need to be pulled up.’

“As for Scott, his 12-point ‘Rescue America’ plan, issued last year, included a proposal to sunset all federal legislation after five years. ‘If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.’ The implications for Social Security and Medicare, which were created by federal legislation, were unmistakable — so much so that the proposal made Republican officeholders’ skin crawl… McConnell disavowed the proposal on the spot and has continued to do so, telling a home-state radio host after the Biden speech that the sunset provision is ‘not a Republican plan. That was the Rick Scott plan.’…. The GOP can’t easily wriggle away from its intentions. Let’s examine the fiscal 2023 budget proposal issued by the Republican Study Committee, a key policy body, last June under the title ‘Blueprint to Save America.’

“This plan would increase the Social Security full retirement age, which today is 66 or 67 (depending on one’s year of birth), to 70 by 2040. According to Kathleen Romig, the Social Security expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this would translate into a 20% cut in lifetime benefits compared with current law.

“As I’ve reported before, raising the full retirement age is a Trojan horse that would affect all retirees across the board, but harm Black workers, lower-income workers and those in physically demanding jobs the most… It would create particular hardships for those choosing to retire early and collect their benefits prior to their full retirement age.” Ja sure, the GOP has no plans to touch Social Security and Medicare. And I am the Easter Bunny. On February 17th, under pressure, Rick Scott deleted the potential of removing these programs from his rescue plan… but trust me, it will come back… with different wording. If the GOP were to win control of Congress and the presidency…

I’m Peter Dekom, and the number of people in our workforce with zero private retirement savings (including employer pension plans) is 25%... and rising.

When a Nation State Completely Fails

 

         

Jimmy Cherizier, leader of Fòs Revolisyonè G9 an fanmi e alye

When a Nation State Completely Fails

Ukraine was attacked from the outside; Haiti is being attacked from within.

The flying distance from Miami to Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, is 709 miles. But if you take the trip and see what’s there, it seems as if you have traveled to another, ultra-violent planet. Haiti may have been the first country to ban slavery (in 1804), but it continued to make reparations to its former colonial master, France, for those lost slaves until 1947. And yes, the United States supported France. Wracked by hurricanes and earthquakes, rattled by political assassinations and effectively without a viable and functioning government, super-impoverished Haiti (the poorest in the Western hemisphere), particularly Port-au-Prince, may just be the closest to hell on earth imaginable. Despite the stiff competition from Yemen, Ukraine, and the Sudan.

The Haitian government, devoid of leadership, has long since lost control of most of the country. Gangs rule violently over their well-defended turf. Food, medicine and tolerable housing are a distant memory for most residents. But gang leadership just may be the closest force capable of a semblance of government. Slaughter is a way of life (death?) for gang members and those remaining Haitian forces and police left. Since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, the nation has unraveled into unparallel violence and chaos.

As Associated Press journalists, writing on February 2nd, Megan Janetsky and Pierre Richard Luxama single out one particular Port-au-Prince shot-caller: “Jimmy Cherizier [pictured above] zips through Haiti’s capital on the back of a motorcycle, flanked by young men wielding black and leopard print masks and automatic weapons… As the pack of bikes flies by graffiti reading ‘Mafia boss’ in Creole, street vendors selling vegetables, meats and old clothes on the curb cast their eyes to the ground or peer curiously.

“Cherizier, best known by his childhood nickname Barbecue, has become the most recognized name in Haiti… And here in his territory, surrounded by the tin-roofed homes and bustling streets of the informal settlement La Saline, he is the law… Internationally, he’s known as Haiti’s most powerful and feared gang leader, sanctioned by the United Nations for ‘serious human rights abuses,’ and the man behind a fuel blockade that brought the Caribbean nation to its knees late last year.

“But if you ask the former police officer with gun tattoos running up his arm, he’s a ‘revolutionary’ advocating against a corrupt government that has left a nation of 12 million people in the dust… ‘I’m not a thief. I’m not involved in kidnapping. I’m not a rapist. I’m just carrying out a social fight,’ Cherizier, leader of the ‘G9 Family and Allies’ [in French above] federation of nine gangs, told the Associated Press while sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty road near a home with windows shattered by bullets. ‘I’m a threat to the system.’…”

The litany of extreme poverty, the legacy of voodoo and torture from the Duvalier regime that was overthrown in 1986, the enormous government corruption, the horrific January 2010, October 2018 and August of 2021 earthquakes, interspersed and followed by massive hurricanes, a cholera epidemic plus the COVID pandemic and the 2021 Moise assassination have created a massively failed state on our doorstep. A quarter of all Haitians live in the capital city, and “In December, the U.N. estimated that gangs controlled 60% of Haiti’s capital, but nowadays most on the streets of Port-au-Prince say that number is closer to 100%.

“‘There is, democratically speaking, little to no legitimacy’ for Haiti’s government, said Jeremy McDermott, a head of InSight Crime, a research center focused on organized crime. ‘This gives the gangs a stronger political voice and more justification to their claims to be the true representatives of the communities.’… It’s something that conflict victims, politicians, analysts, aid organizations, security forces and international observers fear will only get worse. Civilians, they worry, will bear the brunt of the consequences…

“What is clear, said McDermott… is that gangs are reaping rewards from the political chaos… InSight Crime estimates that before the killing of the president, Cherizier’s federation of gangs, G9, got half of its money from the government, 30% from kidnappings and 20% from extortions. After the killing, government funding dipped significantly, according to the organization… Yet his gangs have significantly grown in power after the group blocked the distribution of fuel from Port-au-Prince’s key fuel terminal for two months late last year… The blockade paralyzed the country in the midst of a cholera outbreak and gave other gangs footholds to expand. Cherizier claimed the blockade was in protest of rising inflation, government corruption and deepening inequality in Haiti…

“In October, the U.N. imposed sanctions against Cherizier, which included an arms embargo, an asset freeze and a travel ban… The world body accused him of carrying out a bloody massacre in La Saline, economically paralyzing the country and using armed violence and rape to threaten ‘the peace, security and stability of Haiti.’…

“At the same time, despite not being elected into power and his mandate timing out, [Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who “took over” after Moise’s assassination], whose administration declined a request for comment, has continued at the helm of a skeleton government. He has pledged for a year and a half to hold general elections but has failed to do so… In early January, the country lost its final democratically elected institution when the 10 senators symbolically holding office ended their terms… It has turned Haiti into a de facto ‘dictatorship,’ said Patrice Dumont, one of the senators… He said even if the current government was willing to hold elections, he doesn’t know whether it would be possible due to gangs’ firm grip on the city.” AP.

Is there a possible “fix” that rest of the world can support? The scope of the failure and devastation is so massive that any reasonable form of international focus and support seems exceptionally unlikely. As the world focuses on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Haiti and her people are relegated to occasional stories in the back pages of international news reports.

I’m Peter Dekom, and impoverished Haiti is getting poorer, dangerous Haiti is getting much more dangerous, devasted Haiti is falling further apart, and hope has left the country.

Handcuffs for 20% of Our Workforce

Handcuffs for 20% of Our Workforce

We Call them Non-Compete Agreements

“Noncompetes harm competition in U.S. labor markets by blocking workers from pursuing better opportunities and by preventing employers from hiring the best available talent.” 

January 5th FTC Announcement

There are viable alternatives under state and federal law to protect trade secrets, but we have built an new employment system in much of the country to restrict employees from working for competing companies when they leave their existing employers: the use of non-compete clauses in employment agreements. And as the above title suggests, the practice is pervasive and has become downright abusive. While a few states have banned or placed limits on the practice, the use of non-competes at all levels of employment remains widespread.

You may have noticed a major tilt in judicial (particularly the US Supreme Court) and administrative rulings during the Trump administration, and thereafter where Trump appointees still hold position of power, favoring minority populist beliefs. Including allowing big business to restrict their workers when they move on, for whatever reason. While the Biden administration, via the Federal Trade Commission, is focused on ending some of these abuses, there is a real question on whether or not the FTC has the legal authority to restrict past and future non-compete agreements.

Leveling the playing field and encouraging competition seem like bedrock principles of American business, those with power – whether via campaign contributions or simple raw economic mega-power – are used to getting their way in Congress and so many state legislatures. There’s a reason why fund managers are taxed at vastly more favorable rates than their administrative assistants. Those “accelerated depreciation” benefits embedded in the Internal Revenue Code don’t really reduce taxes for all but the richest in the land, and the current GOP House majority’s efforts to repeal recent upgrades to the IRS budget are obviously not focused on 90% of American taxpayers. The benefits and exemptions accorded to those with true economic power is absurdly disproportionate. Call it corporate socialism if you will.

In the January 9th edition of the Journal of the American Bar Association (disclosure: I am an ABA member), Debra Cassens Weiss addresses the issues surrounding a proposed effort by the FTC to ban or limit the use of non-competes in United States: “The proposed rule would ban new noncompete agreements and require rescission of existing noncompete contracts. Generally, the rule would not ban other types of employment restrictions, unless they are so broad that they function as a noncompete agreement. The rule would also include an exemption for noncompete clauses between the seller and buyer of a business.

“The FTC is seeking comment on the proposed rule, including on these topics:

• Whether franchisees should be subject to the rule

• Whether noncompetes for senior executives should be exempted from the rule or subject to a rebuttable presumption of unlawfulness

• Whether low- and high-wage workers should be treated differently

“The FTC’s power to adopt the law will likely be challenged in court, according to Bloomberg Law. During a press briefing, Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, cited a 1975 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, National Petroleum Refiners Association v. FTC, which held that the commission may issue rules related to unfair competition.

“Richard Pierce, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, told Bloomberg Law that the decision is a weak justification… ‘It’s highly unlikely that it would be upheld by the Supreme Court today,’ Pierce said. ‘I continue to be extremely skeptical that FTC has power to use notice and comment rulemaking to define an unfair method of competition.’” Indeed, given the current configuration of the US Supreme Court, knowing that any restrictive rulemaking by the FTC in this arena would instantly be challenged in court, the ability of the FTC to act against non-competes is questionable. With Congress mired in gridlock, seeing any bills against non-competes pass is little more than a hope and a prayer. Cassen continues:

“Bloomberg Law also cited a statement by Sean Heather, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Heather said the rule would not survive because ‘Congress has never delegated the FTC anything close to the authority it would need to promulgate such a competition rule.’… One obstacle is the ‘major questions’ doctrine, which holds that courts should not defer to agency statutory interpretations on questions of ‘vast economic or political significance.’

“‘We could see a major-questions doctrine challenge arguing that whether noncompetes are good competition policy is something to be decided by Congress, not an agency,’ said Catherine Fisk, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, in an interview with Bloomberg Law… Clifford Atlas, a principal at the law firm Jackson Lewis, told Law.com that the FTC was ‘swinging for the fences,’ and there would ‘absolutely’ be legal challenge to the rule.”

The GOP has openly abandoned maintaining a political platform, now focused on culture wars, finding blame and reversing existing laws and precedents. The notion of solving this nation’s problems seems to have left the building. As the disarray in selecting the House Speaker illustrates, we have a congressional configuration that is thoroughly incapable of governing, and if there are to be any changes championed by this populist GOP congressional contingent, it is only like to favor the rich or those with evangelically-supported national beliefs. As for most of us, don’t hold your breath for any positive movement on your behalf.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in so many ways, large and small, our elected representatives and their appointees are slowly chipping away at a legal system that is supposed to treat all of us equally to be replaced with some very limited and radical minority views.

Supreme Court vs the United States: Abortion Revisited

If the massive protests and the results of the midterm “red ripple” did not tell you how American women felt about the Supreme Court’s reversal of their own precedent (Roe vs Wade) in last year’s Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, poll results make that statement very clear. Reflective of a 26% differential between Republicans and Democrats on whether religious influence in politics is a good thing, a Gallup Poll, announced on February 2nd, also tells us that only 26% of those polled are in accord with the Dobbs decision and the state of abortion rights in this country. The number approximates the number of self-identified American evangelicals.

We know that with GOP House majority, there is no real likelihood of a Congressional bill to make the prior Roe standard (or some semblance thereof) into a federal statute. As candidate Donald Trump himself has pointed out, the red state obsession with banning or limited abortion lost House seats and kept a Democratic majority in the Senate was materially responsible for that result. He obviously did not reference sentiments over his support for many losing candidates. Even the noise of rightwing voices in Congress trying to pass a national abortion ban is well drowned out by reality. The Biden administration, with full support of elected Democrats, has used its power to open as many channels as it can to women in red states seeking what would otherwise be illegal abortions.

While some of these red state efforts – such as attempting to prosecute individuals, institutions and even governmental agencies in abortion-permissive blue states for performing abortions on red state residents and banning travel from red to blue states to get an abortion – seem violative of the Constitution on their face (although with a rogue Supreme Court, one cannot be certain) – presidential executive orders, federal agency jurisdiction (e.g., the military, the Food and Drug Administration) and Department of Justice advisories, guidelines and interpretations have been crafted to open doors to red state women seeking to end unwanted pregnancies. But such federal efforts have quickly been countered by red states’ continuing to seek to impose a distinct minority view on anyone they can.

Some Republicans standing for higher office in states where anti-abortion sentiments are “light,” have often sidestepped being overtly supportive of abortion bans or simply iterated the Supreme Court’s deference to state abortion prerogatives. But the battlelines between Biden efforts to open abortion doors and red states’ trying to slam them shut are clearly escalating. As trial courts in different cities have created inconsistent decisions over the legality (often based on state or federal constitutionality) of federal administrative rulings/guidelines vs state statutes, with concomitant results beginning to reach appellate levels, its does seem as if the Supreme Court will soon have additional “abortion” refinements to review.

One of the hottest and most contentious issues surrounds the use of the US Postal Service to deliver “abortion pills” from red to blue states or for local but federally certified pharmacies to fill local red state orders for such medications, allowed under a federal ruling. “Republican attorneys general from 20 states wrote letters to executives at CVS and Walgreens warning the pharmacy chains against using the mail to dispense abortion pills in their states, in a shot against a new Biden administration policy.

“The letters rebuke recent guidance from the Justice Department – issued in an opinion from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel – that concluded the federal law did not prohibit the mailing of abortion pills. The release of the Justice Department opinion came ahead of the rollout of new rules from the Food and Drug Administration allowing certified pharmacies to dispense medication abortion with a prescription, including by mail order.

“‘We reject the Biden administration’s bizarre interpretation, and we expect courts will as well,’ the GOP attorneys general wrote, while suggesting that they may bring civil litigation to challenge the claim that federal law allows the mailing of abortion pills. CNN.com, February 1st. Clearly, women facing this toxic exchange face complicated choices that have rewritten pregnancy termination practices.

“Medication abortion – in which pregnancies are terminated with a two-pill regimen – now makes up a majority of the abortions obtained in the United States. Several states restrict medication abortion, some with blanket bans on abortion and others with specific limits on access to abortion pills. CVS and Walgreens have said that they intend to comply with federal and state law with their plans to dispense mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortion. (Pharmacies were previously allowed to distribute the second drug, misoprostol.)

“Asked about the new letter from the attorneys general, a spokesperson for Walgreens said it is not dispensing mifepristone at this time… ‘We intend to become a certified pharmacy under the program, however we fully understand that we may not be able to dispense Mifepristone in all locations if we are certified under the program,’ the spokesperson Fraser Engerman said in an email.” CNN.com. Not to mention the potential of state criminal sanctions as well.

Some blue states have opted to follow California’s model, where state law protects any woman traveling to California from any extrinsic red state legal effort to prosecute or limit that woman’s rights. These are “free choice zones,” destined to be adjudicated across the land. It does seem odd to force women into a religiously mandated practice to surrender control of their bodies… through legislation passed in legislatures overwhelmingly dominated by older White men.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect these battlelines will only grow in scope and passion, a boon to Democrats and an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party.