Egregious Essay Expressions Exceed Expectations?

   
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Egregious Essay Expressions Exceed Expectations?

Testy Test-Takers Too? AI vs AI

For as long as high schools and colleges have required take home tests and essays or even extensive reading, there have been companies focused on creating short cuts, study guides and clandestine “resources.” Young smarty-pants “entrepreneurs” have long since found ways to aggregate imported “essays” to “facilitate” students hell-bent on expediting their assigned homework burden. In my college years, Cliff Notes were a purported way to avoid reading dialect-heavy tomes, long lumbering assigned books or getting summaries of those science and math class complexities made easier to digest. Professors were on to those who tried. Tests focused on identifying writing styles without proper noun triggers, for example. Ugh.

But that seems to be such a primitive era today as content aggregators and sophisticated code writers have the self-teaching ability with increasing layers of complexity inherent in the growing world of artificial intelligence. Indeed, these self-honing programs and websites have become “resources” for homework-avoiders and terrified-test-takers. And while AI capabilities are not “all there” yet, they are self-learning very fast.

Writing for the January 26th CNN Business, Samantha Murphy Kelly writes: “ChatGPT is smart enough to pass prestigious graduate-level exams – though not with particularly high marks… The powerful new AI chatbot tool recently passed law exams in four courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, according to professors at the schools.

“To test how well ChatGPT could generate answers on exams for the four courses, professors at the University of Minnesota Law School recently graded the tests blindly. After completing 95 multiple choice questions and 12 essay questions, the bot performed on average at the level of a C+ student, achieving a low but passing grade in all four courses…

“ChatGPT fared better during a business management course exam at Wharton, where it earned a B to B- grade. In a paper detailing the performance, Christian Terwiesch, a Wharton business professor, said ChatGPT did “an amazing job” at answering basic operations management and process-analysis questions but struggled with more advanced prompts and made “surprising mistakes” with basic math… ‘These mistakes can be massive in magnitude,’ he wrote.

“The test results come as a growing number of schools and teachers express concerns about the immediate impact of ChatGPT on students and their ability to cheat on assignments. Some educators are now moving with remarkable speed to rethink their assignments in response to ChatGPT, even as it remains unclear how widespread use is of the tool among students and how harmful it could really be to learning.

“Since it was made available in late November, ChatGPT has been used to generate original essays, stories and song lyrics in response to user prompts. It has drafted research paper abstracts that fooled some scientists. Some CEOs have even used it to write emails or do accounting work.” You can be sure that the bots will find a way to correct these deficiencies. But if AI can be used as a homework/test substitute, can it also be used to detect AI-created essays and test results? The short answer is “yes,” but the AI vs AI battle is just beginning.

According to Steven Melendiz, writing for the January 25th FastCompany.com: “As concerns rise about students’ use of generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT to complete schoolwork, a pair of education nonprofits have created a free system to help teachers detect AI-assisted essays.

“The tool, called AI Writing Check, was developed by the writing nonprofits Quill and CommonLit using an open-source AI model designed to detect the output of ChatGPT and related systems. It enables teachers (or anyone else) to copy and paste text and within a few seconds receive a determination on whether the work in question was written by ChatGPT.

“AI Writing Check, which the nonprofits began to develop in December, comes as surveys indicate growing concern among teachers over machine-generated essays. Other tools, including one called GPTZero, have also been released recently to detect automated writing… ‘We need to give teachers the tools so they can preserve academic integrity in lessons, because you’re only a seventh grader once,’ says CommonLit CEO Michelle Brown. ‘It could really, really harm students if they go through even one school year not getting a chance to do the heavy lifting we did in seventh grade.’

“Concerns about AI-generated academic work include worries about honesty and integrity, with a recent Stanford Daily article explaining the unauthorized use of the tool to do student work is likely a violation of the university’s honor code. Some K-12 school districts, including New York City’s, the largest U.S. public school system, have taken steps to block ChatGPT on school devices and networks, though there’s little they can do to prevent students from accessing the tool and others like it elsewhere. ChatGPT, a free AI tool built by OpenAI, can accurately answer a wide variety of questions in a matter of seconds—including the types of prompts given to students for papers and take-home exams.

“AI Writing Check isn’t perfect: The nonprofits estimate that it’s between 80% and 90% accurate, based on a test set of about 15,000 essays, and they emphasize that teachers should take additional steps like comparing suspect work to previous student assignments before assuming a given essay is plagiarized.

“It’s also not likely the last salvo in what’s shaping up to be an arms race of sorts between those using who are using AI to generate text and those, like teachers, employers, and editors, who are looking to spot unauthorized use of such tools. Quill founder and executive director Peter Gault suggests future detection tools might look into the revision logs generated by modern word processing software like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, revealing how essays were crafted rather than just the end product. That’s something recent reports say some educators are already starting to do manually, in some cases even requiring more handwritten work.” Ready player one? Your teacher/professor might be too.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while accessing targeted content via AI is in itself a valuable skill, not really learning but rely on technology denigrates both the student and the resulting “education,” … buy it sure smacks of the same conspiracy-theory-enabling bot-explosion that is attacking our very democracy.                                      

The Hidden Threat to Coastal Erosion and Flooding: Ocean Water Pushing Groundwater Upwards

 NEEF Study of US Groundwater over a century plus

                                                                      Surfside, Florida Condominium collapse                                                              

According to the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF), with 50% of the US population living on or close to the coast, we are ignoring one huge factor from climate change: Groundwater. “The amount of water that is stored underground varies across the US depending on the geology of the area, recharge (from sources such as precipitation, snowmelt, lakes, and rivers), and withdrawal from wells. If water is discharged at a rate that is greater than recharge, it is possible for groundwater to run out or become unusable in some areas. A changing climate impacts the quantity and quality of groundwater through increased risks of drought, changes in precipitation and temperature, decreases in snowmelt, and rising sea levels.

“Groundwater in coastal regions of the US is particularly at risk due to a combination of changes in precipitation, withdrawal rates, and sea level rise. Along the coast, groundwater and saltwater from the ocean are naturally separated by the seaward movement of groundwater and a transition zone where freshwater and saltwater mix. As changes in precipitation and rises in sea level continue, the occurrence of saltwater infiltrating groundwater resources may increase and reduce the availability of freshwater for coastal communities. For example, the Biscayne Aquifer at the southern tip of Florida is the primary water source for the Florida Keys, Miami, and the lower east coast of Florida. As sea level rises, the amount of saltwater infiltrating the groundwater aquifer will increase, which can make the water too salty for human consumption.”

As we have watched a Florida coastal condominium collapse from the eroding limestone beneath (pictured above), the potential risk becomes obvious. NEEF reminds us: “Since 1880, global sea level has risen about eight inches. Scientists expect global sea level to rise another one to four feet by 2100.” Simply put, it’s happening now and getting worse. This is hardly a Florida phenomenon; it’s happening in coastal regions all over the world, though perhaps in different ways depending on the regional geology.




The recent deluge from a spate of atmospheric “rivers” that has soaked California has caused some geologists to watch groundwater rise in places like San Francisco. It’s not pretty. Rosanna Xia, writing for the January 17th Los Angeles Times explains a recent study: “The new findings are the result of an unprecedented joint effort by May, the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), UC Berkeley and a wide-ranging team of regulators, building officials and flood-control agencies to identify where the groundwater along the bay shoreline is close to, or already breaking, the surface. A set of searchable maps, available online to the public, zooms in on Alameda, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties — the first of many jurisdictions that researchers hope will undergo this intensive data-refining process…

“Amid dramatic ocean swells and drenching atmospheric rivers, a new report lays bare a hidden aspect of sea level rise that has been exacerbating flooding in the Bay Area… The report, which was released Tuesday [1/17], maps areas that could flood from groundwater hovering just a few feet or even inches below ground. This layer of water gets pushed upward as denser water from the ocean moves inland from rising tides. On its way up, even before the water breaks the surface, it can seep into the cracks of basements, infiltrate plumbing, or, even more insidiously, re-mobilize toxic chemicals buried underground.

“Communities that consider themselves ‘safe’ from sea level rise might need to think otherwise, said Kris May, a lead author of the report and founder of Pathways Climate Institute, a research-based consulting firm in San Francisco that helps cities adapt to climate change...

“When talking about groundwater, there are two types to keep in mind: One, the kind researchers are now worried about, is the unconfined water that gathers in the pore spaces of soil very close to the surface. This is the water that runs off streets and soaks into the ground. The other type, confined in aquifers many hundreds of feet deep, is the water that we tap for drinking.

“When the tide moves inland, the shallow freshwater tends to float on top of the denser saltwater — and gets pushed upward toward the surface as sea levels rise. Because the shallow groundwater is not consumed, few people have studied this layer of water in California.

“[Kristina Hill], who directs the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley, first realized almost a decade ago that this shallow groundwater layer had been overlooked in sea level rise conversations. Together with May and Ellen Plane, who is now an environmental scientist at SFEI, she analyzed data from 10,000 wells across the Bay Area and concluded more than twice as much land could flood from groundwater as the ocean continued to rise…

“Officials in San Francisco are already taking the data into account as they consider new building projects. Other cities and counties are starting to rethink their flood-protection options — a traditional levee or seawall, after all, would do nothing to stop the groundwater as it moves with the rising sea.

“Ultimately, officials need to figure out what to do with all the contaminated sites along the bay that are still awaiting cleanup — or those that need to be further remediated, said Hill, who has been finalizing another set of maps that will show where, and in which direction, rising groundwater might remobilize harmful chemicals underground. The oft-used approach of ‘capping’ a toxic waste site rather than actually removing the contamination from the soil, for example, may no longer be sufficient…

“Similar research into vulnerable communities in Southern California is now also being conducted by a team led by Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Northridge.” There are so many variables, from landfill subject to its own form of erosion, toxic waste finding new paths to spread as groundwater moves, destabilization of surface buildings by subsurface erosion… and uncontrolled flooding. And so much more!

I’m Peter Dekom, and this roiling and continuous destruction won’t stop until the world wakes up to the need to stop and reverse climate change as opposed to simply reacting to resulting “natural disasters” and only treating the symptoms.

Keep 'Em Out!

Last October, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments involving racial preferences accorded to minorities at both Harvard and UNC. The questioning was indicative of a growing proclivity of that very conservative Supreme Court’s to rule in favor of diehard MAGA values. Legal experts are predicting the end of affirmative action, at least as we know it, when the Court’s formal decision is released (most probably this June). But in the meantime, the notion of fighting a culture war appears to be atop the reconfigured MAGA-controlled Republican Party, with or without Donald Trump. No so much fixing what needs to be fixed, just forcing “right thinking” on all of us.

Nowhere are the culture war battlelines more clearly drawn than in Florida. While book-banning and disallowing so-called “critical race theories” (CRT) from being taught in public schools and universities are raging throughout red states and ultra-conservative school districts even in blue states, Tallahassee, Florida’s state capital appears to be the epicenter of pushing fundamental Christian values into the educational mainstream. And no one is more in charge of that movement than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, currently the most likely GOP candidate to unseat the aging, one-note-stolen-election Donald Trump from the titular MAGA leadership.

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday [2/1] announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory in his latest step onto the front lines of the nation’s culture wars… The Republican governor debuted the proposal as part of a larger, higher education legislative package that is expected to be taken up by the GOP-controlled statehouse when its regular session begins in March.

“The second-term governor, who is widely expected to launch a 2024 White House bid in the late spring or early summer, has emerged as a fierce opponent of so-called woke policies on race, gender and public health. Such positions endear him to the GOP’s conservative base but threaten to alienate independents and moderate voters in both parties who are influential in presidential politics.

“Critical race theory is a way of thinking about America’s history through the lens of racism. Scholars developed it during the 1970s and 1980s in response to what scholars viewed as a lack of racial progress following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions, which function to maintain the dominance of white people in society.” Associated Press, February 1st. DeSantis’ appointees of state college trustees appear to be ready to ban affirmative action, all programs that foster inclusion and diversity, as new bedrock policies. It is risky to be a teacher these days in Florida and its ilk.

DeSantis has thrown down the anti-woke gauntlet – in statute (via the “Stop Woke Act,” a thinly disguised wink to White supremacy), and in actual practice, including his successful effort to force the College Board to redefine their requirements for a high school elective advanced placement course in African American studies to eliminate topics that cover current-day racial discrimination issues. See also my recent blogs including How to Dilute the Value of a High School Education, Thou Shall Not Speak of It! , and Is Ron DeSantis the New Emperor of White Christian Nationalism?

Aside from demanding that Biden undo some of his successful legislative efforts, from funding the IRS to collect more from rich scofflaws to addressing climate change and implementing toxically-delayed infrastructure repairs and upgrades, as a condition of approving an increase to the debt ceiling, the major going-forward GOP initiatives are all driven by these culture wars. They seem hell-bent on expanding their abortion ban, further blurring the lines between church and state, ending affirmative action and protecting society from anything that diminishes the onslaught of fundamental Christian values that they believe should become embedded as the law of the land. America, so many MAGAites declare, should accept that it is a Christian nation.

Indeed, Donald Trump wannabe politicians found an opportunity to rail against their perception of deviant sexual practices and anti-Christian values with the Grammy-winning music of androgenous Sam Smith and trans Kim Petras in a devilish Grammy performance of their “Unholy.” Quick to make sure their comments were heard loud, clear and first, Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz and Georgia Republican Congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene were prominent in a litany of rightwing critics excoriating the event and its sponsor. Cruz called it “evil,” and Greene tweeted: “The Grammy’s [sic] featured Sam Smith’s demonic performance and was sponsored by Pfizer… And the Satanic Church now has an abortion clinic in NM that requires its patients to perform a satanic ritual before services… American Christians need to get to work.”

You have to wonder how they feel about professional sports teams – like the New Jersey Devils hockey franchise – or all the college teams with demonic names, including the Sun Devils (ASU), Demon Deacons (Wake Forest), Blue Devils (Duke), Delta Devils (Mississippi Valley State), most of which schools seem to appear in GOP strongholds. I am amazed that DeSantis’ allows teams with such unholy names from playing in Florida, but I seriously doubt that Miami will be hosting the Grammys anytime soon. Ah, I remember when we were free to believe what we wanted and be who we wanted to be.

I’m Peter Dekom, and one of the most ubiquitous hallmarks of every autocracy on earth, throughout history, is strict adherence to “right thinking” values, often the product of culture wars with increasingly serious consequences for those who do not tow the “right thinking” line.

Case Study: Why Industry Self-Regulation Almost Never Works

There’s a basic business reality: unless everyone in a business sector is meaningfully bound to an enforceable standard, regulation cannot work. There may be private systems where those unwilling to adhere to group rules might be excluded to their detriment – common in banking and share trading – but there are much bigger swaths of financial and environmental regulations where powerful companies, even when they know better, will simply do everything in the power to avoid regulations and will promulgate helpful myths and practices they know are toxic… simply to support profitability and minimize costs regardless of the damage they know they are causing.

As we watch wildfires, droughts, massive flooding and coastal erosion, exploding tornadoes and increasing intense storms, intensified polar vortex in winter and searing heat in summer… all but science deniers know that climate change is real. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates, we can now add inflation and political instability to the list of climate change disasters, based on continuing dependence of fossil fuel.

We’re spending billions of dollars every year in this country to pay for the ravages of “natural destruction” linked to climate change, a global reality based on carbon emissions trapped in the upper atmosphere trapping greenhouse gasses like a lid on hot kettle. The burning of fossil fuels is the greatest contributor to those emissions. Big Oil today is publicizing all those wonderful efforts they are making to reduce emissions… but their actual efforts are and always have been to ensure that their fuels always have full and ready markets.

A slow release of information, studies by academic researchers and a more in depth review of corporate documents (leaked or discovered) explains the long-term understanding by Big Oil of this rising cost of climate change… and even clearly knowing that reality… their efforts to discredit scientific studies and massive supporting data at every turn. As Tony Briscoe, writing for the January 13th Los Angeles Times, one typical example of such corporate perfidy seems to be Exxon Mobile:

“In perhaps the most unexpected twist in the field of climate science, new research suggests Exxon Mobil Corp. had keener insight into the impending dangers of global warming than even NASA experts but still waged a decades-long campaign to discredit the science on climate change and its connection to the burning of fossil fuels.

Despite its public denials, the major oil corporation worked behind closed doors to carry out an astonishingly accurate series of global warming projections between 1977 and 2003, according to a study published Thursday [1/12] in Science.

“‘Exxon didn’t just know some climate science, they actually helped advance it,’ said Geoffrey Supran, lead author of the study and former researcher in the department of the history of science at Harvard University. ‘They didn’t just vaguely know something about global warming decades ago, they knew as much as independent academics and government scientists did. And arguably, they knew all they needed to know.’

“In a review of archived documents and memos, researchers found that scientists for what was then Exxon had completed a set of 16 models that predicted global temperatures would rise, on average, about 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. Since 1981, Earth’s global average temperature has risen about 0.32 degrees per decade, according to NASA.

“Researchers at Harvard and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found most of the Exxon Mobil projections are consistent with subsequent global temperature observations, according to the study. Many of the Exxon projections proved to be more precise than those by James Hansen, then-director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who famously testified before the U.S. Senate in 1988 about the greenhouse effect.

“The analysis adds to a growing body of evidence that the nation’s largest oil producer recognized burning fossil fuels was warming Earth, even as it continued to heap doubt onto that idea publicly. The paper also shows, for the first time, just how precise and sophisticated the fossil fuel industry’s climate research was.

“In response to the study, Exxon Mobil spokesperson Todd Spitler said the company’s understanding of climate science has evolved along with that of the broader scientific community. The energy company, he said, is now actively engaged on several efforts to mitigate global warming.”

Sorry, Todd, the one “true thing” of which we can be certain: Exxon Mobile and its precursor companies, like most of Big Oil, knew better a long time ago and did everything in their power to stop/discredit the inquiry and deny what they knew to be factual. As you watch their lacky politicians, mostly Republicans, continue to fight measures to reverse the continuing damage of climate change, you know Big Oil really has not reversed course. After all, a lot of people make a lot of money extracting and selling fossil fuels, including many state treasuries that continue to depend on extraction royalties. Follow the campaign contributions and lobbying efforts!

I’m Peter Dekom, and as much as the GOP continues to wish to dismantle effective financial and environmental regulations, they only reinforce their status as paid operatives of the richest in the land.

Marketing Quagmire – Selling to Younger Generations

“They are woke, broke and complicated.” 

The Economist

The youngest in the land face cost explosions that their parents and grandparents never envisioned. For those leaving the nest, they face absurdly high post-secondary school tuition – even corrected for inflation, they are paying double or triple the costs faced by Xers and Boomers – exorbitant interest rates on mega-student loans and the soaring cost of housing. While wages are up to record levels, they do not begin to cover those higher costs of living. Younger generations are delaying or even completely avoiding marriage, having children, buying a home or even buying a car (especially in crowded cities where the hot jobs are). Their smart phones are their uncut umbilical cords, they are skeptical, worried about the future of our planet and are not exactly wanting to follow in their parents’ path.

So how do manufacturers and retailers reach these “jaded” and well-informed buyers. How do the young spend their money? I’ve spent more than a few recent blogs looking at the uncomfortable combination of rising crowded younger demographics, the unique issues that face them that their elders did not (or did at lesser level), the pressures that surround them… and money. Some these might draw you back to review what I wrote. My December 20th Stacking the Deck - A Pox on Younger Homebuyers and October 26th Generational Polarization – Investment Strategy blogs. But this mega-gaggle of rising consumers is a force to be reckoned with nonetheless.

According to the January 16th The Economist, “The European Union is home to nearly 125m people between the ages of ten (the youngest will become consumers in the next few years) and 34. America has another 110m of these Gen Zs and millennials, a third of the population. The annual spending of households headed by American Gen Zs and millennials hit $2.7trn in 2021, around 30% of the total…

“Young people have always perplexed their elders. Today’s youngsters are no different; indeed, they are baffling. They have thin wallets and expensive tastes. They prize convenience and a social conscience. They want shopping to be at once seamless and personal. They crave authenticity while being constantly immersed in an ersatz digital world. As they start spending in earnest, brands are trying to understand what these walking paradoxes want and how they shop. The answers will define the next era of consumerism.” While the United States may inject more issues from high levels of student loans and as most urban Europeans tend to rent and not buy homes, there are more than a few socioeconomic realities that have impacted both sides of the Atlantic. They both seem to see a bleaker view of the future.

“A good place to start dissecting the psyche of young consumer is to consider the economy that has moulded them. At one end of the scale, today’s 30-somethings came of age in the midst of the global financial crisis of 2007-09 and the ensuing recession. Their younger peers had a bit more luck, beginning their careers in years when tightening labour markets had pushed up wages. Until, that is, the covid-19 pandemic upended many of their lives.

“These two big shocks have fostered pessimism among the young people who experienced them. A study by McKinsey, a consultancy, published in 2022, found that a quarter of Gen Zs doubted they would be able to afford to retire. Less than half believed they would ever own a home.

“Uncertainty about the future may be encouraging impulsive spending of limited resources in the present. The young were disrupted more by covid than other generations and are now enjoying the rebound. According to McKinsey, American millennials (born between 1980 and the late 1990s) spent 17% more in the year to March 2022 than they did in the year before. Despite this short-term recovery from the dark days of the pandemic, their long-term prospects are much less good. American millennials and Gen Zs have accumulated less wealth than Gen X or Boomers at the same age.” The Economist. And just as their buying power was rising, prices soared even higher, and central banks – led by the US Federal Reserve – began a highly flawed policy of “containing inflation” by raising interest rates to their highest levels in decades.

At the core of these spending habits is a falling belief in the future combined with limited money in the present. The first chart above is reflection of that reality, as the second chart notes where the younger cluster. Add that factor to the speed and young buyers expect of their retailers. “According to another survey by McKinsey in October, 45% of Europeans in their teens and early 20s planned some kind of splurge in the next three months whereas 83% of Boomers, born before 1964, said ‘No’ to such profligacy. Forrester, a market-research firm, found that most users of ‘buy now, pay later’ apps are around 20. Megan Scott, a 20-year-old student from London, speaks for many of her peers by admitting that, when shopping, she has no restraint—until, she chuckles, the bill arrives.

“In many ways youngsters’ shopping habits, like their lives, are defined by the ‘attention economy’—buying stuff online is far quicker and easier than a trip to the shops. The proliferation of social media means there are many new ways of attracting consumers’ eyeballs. Young shoppers never knew a world without smartphones. More than two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-old Americans spend four hours or more on their devices each day. A heightened expectation of convenience comes with being raised in the age of Airbnb, Amazon and Uber. Young people want their shopping to be totally hiccup-free.

“The light-speed online world also appears to have lowered tolerances for long delivery times. A study by Salesforce, a business-software giant, found that Gen-z Americans are the likeliest of all age groups to want their groceries delivered within an hour. They are more likely than the rest of the population to use their phones to pay for shopping, says Forrester.” The Economist.

Sure, there are many young success stories in the mostly highly educated segments of society combined with a small coterie of successful young entrepreneurs that reflect a new layer of upper middle class and higher. But their numbers are not particularly significant compared with the masses of rising demographics whose real, inflation correct earnings are equal to or even lower than their elders’ buying power from the 1970s. Not to mention how income inequality has accelerated during their lifetimes. They are equally certain that they will bear the increasing cost of unchecked climate change, which their elders seem to have heaped upon them.

As much as manufacturers and retailers need to adjust their marketing strategies to accommodate younger buyers, politicians should be on red alert to the underlying pessimism that seems to define these rising voters and consumers.

Challenging the Legitimacy of this Supreme Court: Part II

Despite Chief Justice John Robert’s calls for public respect for the Supreme Court, even when the decisions are unpopular, methinks the Justice doth protest too much. I have struggled with the creeping-to-overwhelmingly-rightwing bias the Court has adopted – including my recent blogs on November 9th Is the United States Supreme Court a Legitimate Tribunal?, November 26th When Legal Books Are Trumped by History Books, an December 5th Schencks for the Memories – The Continuing Delegitimization of the US Supreme Court  – but as more information about the Court spills into the public eye, it is difficult to maintain a notion the Court’s legitimacy.

Applying an absurd notion of “originalism” – that constitutional interpretation must be relegated solely to the time the constitutional provision was enacted (Second Amendment cases, thus, must be decided within the context of flintlocks and muskets) – conservative justices have made a mockery of the Constitution as a living breathing document for the ages. Playing fast and loose with “stare decisis” (the power of judicial precedents), the Court blithefully delegitimizes its own decisions. As Court reporters have noted, there is personal discord among the sitting justices; vitriol is perhaps a better term.

In a January 16th article in the Atlantic, entitled The Supreme Court Justices Do Not Seem to Be Getting Along (subtitled Collegiality is scarce, and tensions are apparent), journalist Steven Mazie notes: “Only the justices are privy to the mood in their private conference room where cases are discussed after the hearings. But what I have seen this term on open display inside the courtroom is an obvious departure from the collegiality of years past.

“The breaking point was clearly Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling in June that overturned Roe. Several long-standing precedents have fallen in recent years at the hands of the Court’s conservative majority. But in overturning 50 years of abortion rights, the Court was split—and not amicably. The minority did not dissent ‘respectfully’ in Dobbs. Instead the three justices dissented with ‘sorrow’ for the women of America and ‘for this Court.’

Over the summer, discord stemming from the Dobbs decision was apparent in comments by Elena Kagan, Samuel Alito and the chief justice, John Roberts. Roberts responded to charges that the Court was risking its legitimacy by arguing that mere disagreement with a ruling ‘is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the Court.’ Two weeks later, Kagan seemed to reply to her colleague, saying Americans are bound to lose confidence in a Court that looks ‘like an extension of the political process.’ Then, days before the 2022–23 term, Alito said suggestions that SCOTUS is ‘becoming an illegitimate institution’ amount to questioning the justices’ ‘integrity’ and cross ‘an important line.’”

But this searing negativity also seems to have pivoted to the inner workings of the Court. Gone are the days when conservative Antonin Scalia and liberal Ruth Bader Ginsberg would vacation together. We are told now of personal slights between the justices, closed doors that used to be open and even hostility among their respective clerks. The three liberal justices, all women, and the balance of the Court just plain do not like each other. The Court has also fallen in the eyes of the public:

“Public trust in America’s courts has fallen to an all-time low, and just 40% of Americans say they approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing, according to a [recent Gallup poll]… Only 47% say they have a ‘great deal’ or a ‘fair amount’ of trust in the judiciary — a 7 percentage-point slide from last year and 33 percentage points below the all-time high of 80% in 1999, a Gallup poll found.

“Along with the erosion in trust, 58% of Americans say they disapprove of the way the Supreme Court is handling its job, while just 40% say they approve… The court’s approval rating tumbled from 58% in July 2020, a period during which the court refused to block a controversial Texas law banning almost all abortions and overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision from 1973 that held women have a constitutional right to the procedure.” NY Post (9/29/22)

But as delegitimization of the Supreme Court may be challenged by the Chief Justice, the obvious lack of ethical standards – there are currently no ethical rules for this particular court – seems to sink the very soil upon which this Court is built. Justice Clarence Thomas has no issue ruling on “stolen election,” Presidential exemption from prosecution and required testimony and related criminal cases and investigations, notwithstanding his wife’s direct participation with Trump’s White House effort to overturn the results of the 2020 vote.

The Chief Justice ordered an investigation of the leak of pre-release version of Samuel Alito’s Dobbs majority opinion (reversing Roe vs Wade). Investigators were deep and thorough when it came to administrative workers and law clerks at the Court… but the “investigation” of the justices themselves was casual and merely conversational. A puzzling approach, since the leading supposition of who leaked the document seemed to center on Mr. and Mrs. Alito’s attendance at a dinner of donors to a conservative cause near and dear to the rightwing justices. But it may well have been because the Chief Justice was himself in a precarious ethical challenge.

Writing for the January 31st New York Times, Steve Eder noted: “The chief justice’s wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, has made millions in her career recruiting lawyers to prominent law firms, some of which have business before the court. Now, a letter sent to Congress claims that may present a conflict of interest… Now, a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicating Mrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.

“In his letter last month, Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, argued that the justices should be required to disclose more information about their spouses’ work. He did not cite specific Supreme Court decisions, but said he was worried that a financial relationship with law firms arguing before the court could affect justices’ impartiality or at least give the appearance of doing so… ‘I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms,’ Mr. Price wrote.” Well, at least we now know why Roberts did not demand more on the Alito leak.

There is no question that an enforceable body of ethical rules, perhaps those that apply to every other federal judge in the nation, are desperately needed for the Supreme Court. Since what has devolved with the current panel – a de facto legislature with no oversight or appeal – will never generate the required Senate vote for a removal after a House judicial impeachment, a more objective standard for discipline and recusal is required. After all, since the Court is effectively passing rightwing rulings that could not otherwise pass the Senate, it is all but unlikely that a Senate vote to remove would ever generate the necessary participation of GOP Senators to remove a sitting conservative justice.

I’m Peter Dekom, a lawyer with almost half a century of practice, and, as currently administered, I cannot consider the current United Supreme Court as a legitimate and bona fide court of law.

A Deep Seated Question or Stand Your Ground

Ever notice that most cashiers/checkers you see in this country are standing? They almost never have any form of seating, choose the most comfortable shoes they can find… and way too often have issues with varicose veins and muscle aches. Ask grocery store designers why swivel or other kinds of chairs are not made available. If they can even venture an answer, they might tell you that standing checkers are more productive and more responsive to customers. Really? We just don’t do that here! Why?

There are supermarkets all over the planet these days, and if you have visited a such a grocery store in Europe… and have the slightest memory of that experience… you just might remember that almost all the cashiers all have chairs. We have visions of French or Italian shoppers wending their way through massive open air farmers’ markets or local specialty shops – like boulangeries or charcuteries – but the convenience of big supermarkets is exceptionally common even there. The above photograph of a caissière de supermarché (supermarket cashier) was taken at a French grocery store. Notice that red thing in the background? We call that a “chair.”

We always think that when it comes to business, retailing included, America does it best. This commercial arrogance has been with us a long time. As President Calvin Coolidge said almost a century ago, “The business of America is business.” The notion stuck; we tend to think that if we do it, that has to be the best business way to do it. But even in simple things like seating or standing cashiers, we just might not have it right. Writing for the January 19th FastCompany.com, Talib Visram explored this American assumption about seated cashiers:

“While researching for a chapter of a book on low-wage work, Françoise Carré, research director at the Center for Social Policy at UMass Boston, had invited European colleagues to her city to observe at a Target store. When the visitors came to the cashiers standing at their registers, the guests, Carré says, ‘kept saying: ‘Why are they standing?’’

“Meanwhile, Chris Tilly, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, noticed the same was true of the reverse. Showing photo slides of seated European cashiers to an American audience once prompted laughter. ‘It’s like, what’s wrong with this picture?’

“In America, cashiers stand. That’s due to managerial expectations of customer service and buying into myths about productivity—and customers who have never seen anything else simply accepting it. But in Europe and the U.K., though responsibilities somewhat differ, cashiers are seated, and productivity is often higher. In recent years, U.S. cashiers have filed lawsuits citing age-old ‘right to sit’ laws, with mixed results. But grocery companies continue to fight hard against such regulations, and there’s a lack of union strength to counter it.

“Together, Carré and Tilly were part of a research team for a 2012 study that compared cashier work models in the U.S. and France, considering aspects like pay, productivity, and physical working position, using interviews and observations at various grocery chains. They found the main reason American managers prefer the seated position is job function: Because American cashiers tend to bag items. Standing is thought to provide more flexibility, to swivel and pivot from the till to the customer and to the bags. In Europe, bagging is the customer’s responsibility.

“Managers also claimed standing leads to better productivity, given the greater freedom of movement to do more tasks. But the researchers found that the seated French cashiers scanned more items than their U.S. counterparts: The highest rates of scanning in the U.S. lined up with the lowest in France. (Partly, this was because the clock stops when the American cashier starts to bag.)”

There are all kinds of efforts by American workers to create safer and more comfortable working conditions these days. Unions are focused heavily these days on organizing workers at Starbucks and Amazon. Indeed, in New York Amazon facilities there are recent charges that the workplace focus is “efficiency over safety.”

While standing vs sitting does not rise to the top of labor union targets, perhaps it should. “Culture may explain the bagging trend. Early in the 20th century, grocery stores functioned like ‘general stores,’ where a worker would fetch, bag, and ring up items. As supermarkets gradually emerged, followed by big-box stores, customers expected the service—versus in Europe, where the jump from corner stores to hypermarkets was comparatively sudden, allowing a reset of expectations. Retail labor is also cheaper in the U.S., and stores hire more part-time workers, making that added service more feasible.

“They also noted the seated French workers complained as the American cashiers did of the strain of repetitive motions. But health research has shown that standing for long periods can cause problems from back pain to leg swelling—and may even carry a higher risk of heart disease than among those who mainly sit. Extended sitting is bad, too, and can lead to risks like high blood pressure and diabetes. Ergonomic studies have shown that, like office workers, cashiers should ideally rotate between sitting and standing. ‘No country seems to have adopted that as a standard,’ Tilly says.

“But American workers are clearly feeling the strain of standing. Many have filed class-action lawsuits, citing century-old ‘right to sit’ laws, existing in almost every state, which guarantee the right to sit during employment when standing is not necessary. They emerged during the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century, largely driven by women workers in the labor movement—which explains why many of the laws are gendered: In 19 states, they still apply only to women.

“In California, lawsuits against CVS in 2016 and Walmart in 2018 were successful; the latter paid out $65 million to 100,000 workers. But there’s a loophole in the laws: Companies have to only show that workers are expected to do other tasks that require them to stand—for cashiers, that could be restocking or cleaning up. That has meant some more recent lawsuits to fail, including a recent one where the California court ruled that Ralph’s did not have to provide chairs to employees.” Visram. Hmmm. More than you wanted to know or an interest possibility for future efforts to make a workplace more comfortable, especially in an era of worker shortages.

I’m Peter Dekom, and what do we tell US grocery checkers with sore backs: if you can’t stand the job, get out of the store?

When Politicians Dictate Medical Treatments & Appropriate Cultural Relevance

There's battle lines being drawn

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Young people speaking' their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind…

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you're always afraid

Step out of line, the man come and take you away

For What It’s Worth anti-Vietnam War anthem written and performed by Buffalo Springfield

Successful autocracy requires uniform thinking, strict obedience to the party line, control of individual choices and severe consequences for deviating from the required “norm.” You can look at Iran’s theocracy or Russia’s dictatorship, or reach into history and watch how Hitler and Mussolini controlled their people, and recognize how these precepts are the essential symptoms of creeping and then full-on autocracy. While the United States is hardly at such extremes, the rising popularization of uniform “correct” thought and control over very personal individual decisions should serve as a warning to all of us.

That medical decisions are now being imposed on large political constituencies by elected American leaders is a flashing red light. Literally. That you could be forced to earn a very essential living in your home state, during a pandemic, in workplace where contagious co-workers could pass a viral nightmare to you because of a mandate that no one could force common sense preventative measures… well there is a plague of antivaxxers and “we’re tired of masks” individuals who do not care if they infect others.

They are also the parents of young children who send their children to school with your kids, who – under color of law – will not allow their brood to accept vaccinations that have been routinely required of public school-aged students for almost three-quarters of a century. The abortion reversal (under Dobbs vs Women’s Health) is another determination by elected and appointed officials imposing their religious beliefs over women who used to have constitutionally protected control over their bodies in matters of pregnancy.

For those who cry “freedom” and “patriotism” who demand and enforce these mandates are making a mockery of constitutional personal liberties. To make matters worse, a misguided 2008 Supreme Court decision (Heller vs DC, filled with incorrect citations) has effectively armed the extremists hell-bent on imposing their belief systems on the entire nation, by violence and intimidation. For well over 200 years, there was no constitutional interpretation of a ubiquitous right for virtually all adult US citizens to bear arms. Now open carry laws, the right to own a military grade assault rifle (once a Navy Seal standard weapon), the aggregation of formal militias ready to back right-wing politicians, increasingly embracing White Christian nationalism and the litany of armed confrontations mostly perpetrated by right-wing extremists, are now admittedly the source of the greatest terrorism threat faced today according to the FBI.

Is there a constitutional “right to infect others”? I haven’t seen any rulings to this effect, but the current Supreme Court’s vision of personal freedom appears to be one that allows religious conservatives to inflict their beliefs on others, but offers no protections to those who disagree with those beliefs from the consequences of being forced to accommodate highly intrusive, personal impositions from conservative beliefs. There’s also something fiercely wrong when politicians to step into medical fields and dictate medical mandates based on their political beliefs. Where do doctors fit into this decision?

Off-the-rails Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seems to have embraced a Trumpian posture that denigrating your opponents with makeshift insults – the word “woke” is now the White Christian nationalist meme for liberal thought – is how you rally voters. Without any medical credentials, he also is pressing his sheep-like legislature to pass a law “that would prohibit vaccine and mask requirements in schools, mask requirements at businesses and the so-called vaccine passports showing proof of vaccinations. It would also bar employers from hiring or firing employees based on whether they have been vaccinated, and would prohibit the firing or de-licensing of medical professionals who might disagree on Covid protocols.

“‘When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,’ DeSantis said in a press release. ‘These measures will ensure Florida remains this way and will provide landmark protections for free speech for medical practitioners.’” NBC News, January 18th. He’s also restricting Florida state agencies with investment accounts to avoid businesses and funds that support woke “ESG” practices, like investing in green tech and companies that prioritize diversity.

As part of his culture war, his local anti-CRT legislative triumph, he is insinuating himself in public school education when it speaks of slavery and racial discrimination in history and civics classes. To him, racism died with the civil right legislation of the 1960s, which has result in his administration’s blocking a new Florida “Advanced Placement course on African American studies from being taught in high schools, saying it violates state law and is historically inaccurate… The state education department rejected the program in a letter last week to the College Board, which oversees AP classes.

“Florida education officials did not specify exactly what content the state found objectionable but said, ‘As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value…In the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, (the education department) will always be willing to reopen the discussion’…” Associated Press, January 20th.

As I said in my opening line above, successful autocracy requires uniform thinking, strict obedience to the party line, control of individual choices and severe consequences for deviating from the required “norm.” Truth is an inconvenience that is easily sacrificed.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think DeSantis’ autocratic view could never happen here, note that there are several polls out there that push him ahead of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden in a head-to-head popular vote.

Death by Traffic Stop

One of the realities of the United States that both fascinates and repels countries around the world is the American obsession with guns. Even though the United States evolved from a nation that was 94% rural when the Second Amendment was passed – to enable militia to keep their guns in peacetime in an era of flintlocks and muskets – that firearm love affair, now with increasingly efficient semiautomatic military-grade firearms, continues into a modern America that is almost 90% urban. This ubiquitous right to “bear arms” was never interpreted as part of the Second Amendment until a 2008, 5-4 Supreme Court decision (Heller vs DC). People outside the US remain mostly aghast at the fact that we have more guns than people including tens of millions of semiautomatic weapons.

But what is particularly repugnant to foreigners is a combination of mass shootings, many at schools and colleges, and so many that arise from mere traffic stop, usually involving fatalities of people of color. Until the recent advent of smartphone and officer-carriers body and police car cameras, these blue-on-Black/Brown killings were simply stories carried on the back pages of local newspapers. The gun deaths of police officers were also buried in those back pages. The international press, not surprisingly, often reported how America cherished guns over the lives of its children.

The recent alleged second-degree murder of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the Memphis, Tennessee police department after a traffic stop (see above crime scene photo) has grabbed headlines all over the world. A special tactical police force – here the Scorpion unit (an acronym for “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods”) created last year – was responsible for Nichols’ death. Scorpion was immediately disbanded, but such aggressive crime-stopping units proliferate in urban police forces all over the United States. Officers assigned to this Memphis force were given a couple of days training and then turned loose on the public.

It seems odd that in a nation with so many firearms, average municipal and state police and sheriff officers are among the least trained law enforcement specialists in the developed world. See my recent Untrained, Unprepared and Unleashed? blog for the nasty details. And increasingly, red state legislatures (with Supreme Court approval) are making the right to carry a concealed weapon without a special license a fundamental right. Louisiana is the latest state to join this parade. It is a most volatile mix.

That African American Tyre Nichols’ purported killers were Black cops did not seem to change the equation. Because of this growing international revulsion to America’s gun culture, I thought it would be useful to look at a European perspective on this recent event. The February 1st BBC.com article – Why do so many police traffic stops turn deadly? – by Bernd DeBusmann, Jr: “The death of Mr Nichols in Memphis has highlighted how one of the most common interactions the public has with police - the traffic stop - can turn deadly… Last year, at least 86 people were killed by police in interactions that began as traffic stops. In 2021 it was 117, according to the Mapping Police Violence database… That figure includes people of all races but experts say that black Americans are disproportionately stopped by officers in cities across the country…

“Since 2017, more than 800 people have been killed after being pulled over in the US, according to statistics from the Mapping Police Violence database… Last year, traffic stops led to roughly 7% of all [US] police killings nationwide… Larry James, general counsel of the National Fraternal Order of Police, told the BBC that the dangers of a stop - when an officer doesn't know who, or what, is in a vehicle - mean they must exercise caution… ‘There have been situations where officers have been shot, just flat out killed or seriously injured, in traffic stops. That's the bottom line. So they're extremely cautious,’ he said.” In fairness to our nation’s police, police murders have also soared 59% over that last several years as well. Guns.

There is a price to be paid for an over-armed cadre of undertrained law enforcement officers assigned to “protect and serve” in a nation with a massive proliferation of firearms, many legally carried as concealed weapons. There was a common refrain from specialized anti-crime units around the United States: that overly aggressive response to Mr. Nichols’ traffic stop is not representative of these specialized police units as a whole. But the statistics cited above suggest it is hardly an uncommon reality. The BBC report also suggests police are often rewarded for behavior that creates these harsh results:

“Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a law professor and co-director of the Social Justice Institute at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said that a lot of police training for traffic stops is ‘antiquated’… ‘[Officers] are trained, basically, that a traffic stop is the most dangerous thing an officer might engage in on any particular day,’ she said… Traffic stops, Ms Bell Hardaway explained, also pose a danger to those being pulled over, with statistics showing that civilians are more likely than law enforcement officers to die in traffic stops. .. ‘As dangerous as police officers are taught it is for them, we know that civilians are killed at a far greater rate by police officers than in reverse,’ she said.

“Police departments also give officers incentives to pull people over, seeing traffic stops as a way to fill city coffers or using them as a metric for officers to be evaluated… Jennifer Hicks, a former Utah police officer, recalled that in the departments in which she worked, individual traffic stop statistics were put up on a board for all to see, with officers rewarded for giving out tickets… ‘I remember that very clearly, as I was always at the bottom, because I hated giving out tickets,’ she said… ‘It was always pointed out in front of everyone that I had the lowest citation numbers.’

“That's beginning to change. Several jurisdictions across the country have announced prohibitions on quotas among other changes to their traffic stop policies… Last March, Philadelphia began implementing new rules mandating that drivers can no longer be stopped for minor infractions, such as missing brake lights or items hanging from the rear view mirror.

“A similar move was announced in Los Angeles, where - in response to complaints that traffic stops were disproportionately affecting black and Latino drivers - the LAPD ordered that officers not conduct stops unless they have reason to believe a more serious crime has taken place… In cases when they do stop someone, officers must record the interaction with their body cameras… A Los Angeles Times analysis of LAPD statistics, published in November, found that the policy led to a drastic reduction - over 40% - in stops for minor violations.

“Still, it's ‘too early’ to tell whether such policies have a significant impact on the outcome of traffic stops, said Ed Obayashi, a California-based police officer and training expert who helps departments across the US carry out use-of-force investigations… ‘There's no guarantee that it's going to result in less incidents of violence between police and individuals,’ he said.” But when you dig every so slightly beneath the surface of these killings, you find one common denominator: fear of being shot… on both sides. Too many guns with too many under-trained officers.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while more practical police pursuit policies and better “de-escalation” training should make a difference, we all know that this carnage will not seriously reduce until the United States finds an overall path to commonsense gun control.

The Behind-the-Scenes Climate Change Enablers

Whether it’s a crime show, valuation strategy or political corruption, the basic admonition is always the same: “Follow the money.” If extracting fossil fuels and running businesses that emit greenhouse gas or down and very dirty pollution weren’t so profitable, you can bet corporate American would not do it. But from savvy investors to risk-averse lenders, betting on these climate change killers has generally been good business. Sure, there is a trend towards “green” with those embracing ESG (environment, social and governance) styled stocks, but as oil and gas prices skyrocketed by reason of the sanctions and realities of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the financial world slorped at the resulting trough.

After all, under virtually all state and federal US corporate regulations and statutes, unless there is a governmental regulation or law to the contrary, corporate boards of directors and officers have one simple primary fiduciary duty: to shareholder values. Even when public companies are charitable or embrace positive social values, the underlying justification is that such efforts paint the company in a more favorable light, making dealing with buyers and clients easier and more productive.

While laws in other developed nations often create a statutory duty to other stakeholders – like local communities, national social policy, and employees – the United States has no such requirements. Anywhere. In those specific foreign venues that have such stakeholders beyond shareholders, that is often manifest in the composition of the boards of directors and in reporting and disclosure obligations under law. Indeed, where US regulations do apply, such reporting and disclosure obligations might apply, but statutory attempts to force public company board membership are seldom enforced (except to the extent “independent” board members may be required). Even California’s attempt to require a proportionate number of women board members on public companies in that state was successfully challenged in court.

We watch as GOP-controlled oil and gas states, even red states that do not have a significant fossil fuel base (like Florida), are forcing state agencies with investment strategies to curtail doing business with major funds that have adopted ESG policies. That’s viewed as part of the culture war against “woke” corporations who are not willing to play the red state game of marginalizing or even dismissing the ravages of climate change, a reality that will continue cost this country trillions of hard dollars over the near-term, foreseeable future.

But many of us, even simple depositors into bank accounts, may not be aware that the aggregation of such deposits is very frequently used as the basis for mega-loans to some of the biggest corporate contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. As Kat Taylor, board chair, co-founder and former CEO of Beneficial State Bank, and Bill McKibben, organizer of a planned March bank protest, writing for the January 18th Los Angeles Times/Associated Press, explain: “As the world warms, expect a lot more heat aimed at global banks, in particular at the biggest American ones. That’s because they’ve allowed themselves to become the ultimate and most powerful enablers of the fossil fuel industry — and because, in recent weeks, some of their peers in the rest of the world have begun to move in the right direction.

“It’s easy to see that Exxon has been on the wrong side of the climate equation, but you have to dig deeper to see why JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Citi share a similar responsibility. Basically, it’s because the money in their charge — your money if you’re a customer — is lent to the oil and gas industry, and because these banks, with assets of about $10 trillion, use their underwriting capabilities to issue corporate debt to these companies.

“Sustainability and energy-finance scholars in the United Kingdom and Ireland calculate that 90% of new capital for fossil fuel companies derives from debt finance — bank loans and bond issuances… And banks have that money to lend thanks in part to the support of our government — of all of us. All banks rely on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., for instance, a guarantee backed by the American taxpayer that their depositors’ money is safe up to $250,000.

“But here’s where the carbon math gets interesting. Crunching numbers from a 2021 report calculating bank-financed emissions, it works out that $62,500 in one of the big American banks could produce as much carbon (about 8 tons) as all the heating, driving, flying, cooling and cooking an average American does in six months.

“Your bank account — because it’s used to expand pipelines, frack wells and the like — could represent the heaviest part of your climate footprint. And of course, it’s not just individuals: American corporations with billions in their corporate coffers deposit and invest those monies in ways that finance emissions and add to their carbon footprint.” With Federal Reserve being the backstop of federally insured big banks and given the uniform “shareholder as the primary stakeholder” statutory reality, our government is the great enabler, supplier of liquidity, that makes it so easy for our financial institutions to step in where foreign banks cut back their toxic lending practices. It doesn’t have to be that way for US banks.

“There are many financial service providers that behave responsibly: local banks, credit unions and the like that are focused close to home, not off in the oil fields of the Siberian Arctic. Money, liquidity, credit — these can be forces for good empowering people to avoid existential peril and to realize important dreams.

“But even the banks focused on making money globally could easily get out of the climate destruction business. Environmentalists aren’t asking for much: only that banks stop lending for the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. In December, Europe’s biggest bank — HSBC, with $3 trillion in assets — pledged to do that, announcing it would cease lending for the development of new oil and gas fields, in line with the recommendations of the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The French banking giant Credit Agricole took similar steps earlier in the year.

“If these European banking giants can do it, so can Chase and Citi, Wells Fargo and BofA. Remember, these are the very same banks that enjoy the prerogatives the American people bestow on them by insuring their deposits. And these money center banks — having grown ‘too big to fail’ because they present a risk to the whole banking system if they do — get especially cheap money from the Federal Reserve…

“And this year we’ve seen that the biggest banks, because of their fossil fuel investments, are deeply entwined with Putin’s Russia. According to LINGO, the Leave It In the Ground Initiative, they provide nearly half the capital for the massive Russian oil and gas projects that climate scientists call ‘carbon bombs,’ projects whose revenue pays for the real bombs falling on Kyiv.” LA Times. Why should the United States de facto support these major lenders, with statutes and Federal liquidity, when those loans create death and destruction, accelerating climate devastating change?

I’m Peter Dekom, and turning a blind eye to the easily controlled but toxic capitalism is a bad habit that needs to end.