A Little Movement

As indicated below, we have to expect an all out assault on this from the Dirty Fuels Cartel, as well as the Private-Profit-At-Public-Expense gang.

Make this one stick, and the next five get really hard. But make those stick, it should get a little easier.

Maine Will Vote In November On Creating Non-Profit Power Utility

The move was spurred by citizen concerns about climate change.

Maine residents are about to be bombarded with a public relations campaign aimed at saving the state’s two dominant electric utilities from being voted out of existence this November.

Via The Guardian:

If Mainers vote yes, they will make history – endorsing a first-of-its-kind plan to create a state-level, public power company through a hostile takeover.

But the parent companies of the existing utilities are spending millions to try and stop that.

It’s a vote which experts say could reverberate around the country as legacy, investor-owned utilities are being challenged to decarbonize while state officials adopt more aggressive climate agendas amid customer frustration at high rates and outages.

“This is one ship they don’t want to see launched,” said Kenneth Colburn, a former consultant with the global energy policy firm Regulatory Assistance Project, speaking about investor-backed utilities across the US. “Because it could turn into an armada.”

If the issue passes, things won't change anytime soon:

But how voters cast their ballots may come down to an article of faith. That’s because voters won’t have a definite date for the creation of the new entity, nor certainty on how it would affect their electric bills. If the ballot initiative to create Pine Tree Power wins, that’s just the beginning. Next, the value of each utility’s assets must be calculated and paid to the companies. The companies are currently worth some $5.4bn, according to their latest company reports. But CMP says the ultimate sales figure could jump to $13.5bn.

And no one can be sure how many years it could take for the inevitable legal challenges to play out. Our Power estimates three-to-four years. Maine Affordable Energy says 10 years is more likely.

As part of their influence campaign, the utilities are paying three former Maine legislators to persuade Mainers to vote “no” on the Pine Tree Power plan, public records and interviews show.

3.5%

Don't let the gun nuts fool ya.

The 2nd amendment is not - and has never been - about an armed citizenry being able to resist its own tyrannical government.

Non-cooperation:

They can have my dead broken body, but not my obedience.

The Virtue Challenge

The New Colossus --Emma Lazarus 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, 

With conquering limbs astride from land to land; 

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand 

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, 

and her name Mother of Exiles. 

From her beacon-hand 

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command 

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. 

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she 

With silent lips. 

“Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

#ThisIsVirtue

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years.
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.
America. America.
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

Back Off, Lady

Social media is a good thing - when it's a platform for good things to be done.

CNN:

About 1,700 decks of cards have been delivered to the office of a Washington state senator who said nurses "probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day," the senator said in a statement Wednesday.

Republican state Sen. Maureen Walsh apologized on Monday after facing a backlash for comments she made debating a bill, HB 1155, that would provide uninterrupted meal and rest breaks and mandatory overtime for nurses and certain health care employees.
Walsh said last Tuesday on the senate floor, "By putting these types of mandates on a critical access hospital that literally serves a handful of individuals, I would submit to you those nurses probably do get breaks. They probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day."

An open letter posted by Facebook user Shy Braaten called for people to send a deck of cards to the senator, and included her PO Box.
The letter reads, "I don't know any nurses who play cards, Senator Walsh. I know nurses who care for babies who were born with their spines on the outside of their bodies and brains that won't stop bleeding. I know nurses who hold infants that can't stop crying because they were born addicted to heroin and methamphetamines."

The letter is signed, "One of the millions of people who love a nurse."

Walsh issued a lengthy statement on Monday apologizing and said, "I was tired, and in the heat of argument on the Senate floor, I said some things about nurses that were taken out of context -- but still they crossed the line."

Gotta love the bullshit these "conservative" assholes are always willing to shovel when they issue the non-apology-apology for having said things that reveal what they really think: "...taken out of context..." - and - "...in the heat of the moment..."

If we check her donor list, do you suppose we might find a check from the hospital business group that stands to lose leverage over their nursing staff if things change a bit?

Maureen Walsh is too fucking typical of the system of Coin-Operated Politicians that we're allowing to kill our democracy.

https://ecuactionfund.org

A Little History

Mary G Harris-Jones (Mother Jones) was a badass in the best traditions of American Baddassery.

Union organizer, civil rights warrior, and all around champion of getting what you want by standing up and speaking truth to power - and being willing to take the hit because of it.

During the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912 in West Virginia, Mary Jones arrived in June 1912, speaking and organizing despite a shooting war between United Mine Workers members and the private army of the mine owners. Martial law in the area was declared and rescinded twice before Jones was arrested on 13 February 1913 and brought before a military court. Accused of conspiring to commit murder among other charges, she refused to recognize the legitimacy of her court-martial. She was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary. During house arrest at Mrs. Carney's Boarding House, she acquired a dangerous case of pneumonia.

After 85 days of confinement, her release coincided with Indiana Senator John W. Kern's initiation of a Senate investigation into the conditions in the local coal mines. Mary Lee Settle describes Jones at this time in her 1978 novel The Scapegoat. Several months later, she helped organize coal miners in Colorado. Once again she was arrested, served some time in prison, and was escorted from the state in the months prior to the Ludlow Massacre. After the massacre, she was invited to meet face-to-face with the owner of the Ludlow mine, John D. Rockefeller Jr. The meeting prompted Rockefeller to visit the Colorado mines and introduce long-sought reforms.

Today's Tweet

"I want you to be nice. Until it's time to not be nice." --Dalton, in Roadhouse

Just gonna say it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with confronting elected officials in public. Nothing. Zero. We should do more of it.

It is who we are as Americans.

Channel Thoreau. Do it.

No politician was conscripted to serve. They asked for the opportunity.

— David Jolly (@DavidJollyFL) October 21, 2018

 

Up On Your Hind Legs

Now This - a constituent in NJ-03 (Tom McArthur- R):

From a town hall meeting in 2017:

Liberty Hill

The women will save us - from ourselves - again.

Karen Collins is a grandmother, and award-winning quilter with deep Texas roots. She never cared much about politics until the 2016 election. Now her retirement has a new sense of purpose.

Liberty Hill from K&A on Vimeo.

Shenanigans

Seems like an idea whose time has come.

But, as always, we have to understand that civil disobedience and political mischief of this kind are illegal, so be ready. 

You can't very well stand up to the law if you're not equally willing to stand up for the law.

You don't throw rocks and then hide your hands.

This is the difference between living democratic principles and the kind of mob rule currently on display at any given Hillbilly Nuremburg Rally.

Virginia Law:

§ 46.2-832. Damaging or removing traffic control devices or street address signs.Any person who intentionally defaces, damages, knocks down, or without authorization interferes with the effective operation of, or removes any traffic control device or a street address sign posted to assist in address identification in connection with enhanced 9-1-1 service as defined in § 56-484.12 is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

§ 18.2-11. Punishment for conviction of misdemeanor.
(a) For Class 1 misdemeanors, confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500, either or both.

Paraphrasing that strange little brown man in the funny clothes:

"They can arrest me. They can beat me. They can kill me. They will then have my dead broken body, but they will never have my obedience."

It's The Money, Stupid

Because it's always the money.

Here's another little "Holy Fuck Moment" for today.

"Unrelated" to the Mueller probe, a Russian citizen inside the US has been arrested and charged under a criminal indictment.

That's kind of a big fuckin' deal, kids.

Again - it's not simple. There are no 10-word bumper stickers that explain it all. But if you want the basics, then just assume everything is being driven by one scheme or another to launder (mostly Russian) money, and usually thru the Trump organization in some way.

The Maria Butina issue shows a wrinkle that uses American naïveté regarding our willingness to accept bizarre contortions like:

"Money is speech, so huge campaign contributions are protected under the 1st amendment, and the 2nd amendment is what makes the 1st amendment possible"

Also again, there are no simple solutions, but a good place to start is to get serious about Campaign Finance.

Fuck Citizens United.

Today's Tweet

This is resistance.

WHAT A HERO:

"Hi, (to Scott Pruitt)

I just wanted to urge you to resign...

This is my son, he loves animals....

He loves clean air...

He loves clean water...

**reads list of Pruitt's crimes/failures**

So, I would urge you to resign

before your scandals push you out." pic.twitter.com/CRETdb13sB

— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) July 3, 2018

Dark Money

There is such a thing as a Reasonable Republican - honest there is. I know it's a little jarring these days to think those two words could be contained in the same thought without causing real damage to your brain, but some Repubs really are pretty reasonable.

Or rather they were pretty reasonable until they started to realize how fucked they're going to be as we find out that a good bit of the blood money they've collected as campaign contributions over the last several years has been coming from Russian oligarchs and laundered thru the NRA.

Vanity Fair:

The F.B.I. and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between N.R.A. officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romney in 2012. The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal. One encounter of particular interest to investigators is between Donald Trump Jr.and a Russian banker at an N.R.A. dinner.

The Russian wooing of N.R.A. executives goes back to at least 2011, when that same banker and politician, Alexander Torshin, befriended David Keene,who was then president of the gun-rights organization. Torshin soon became a “life member,” attending the N.R.A.’s annual conventions and introducing comrades to other gun-group officials. In 2015, Torshin welcomed an N.R.A. delegation to Moscow that included Keene and Joe Gregory, then head of the “Ring of Freedom” program, which is reserved for top donors to the N.R.A. 

Among the other hosts were Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month was the deputy prime minister overseeing Russia’s defense industry, and Sergei Rudov,head of the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, one of Russia’s wealthiest philanthropies.

It’s possible that the men were merely bonding over a shared love of firearms. Mike Carpenter, a Russian specialist who worked in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, laughs at the notion. “The Russian state is run by a K.G.B. elite that wants nothing less than to have an armed citizenry,” Carpenter says. “Rogozin is a heavyweight in Russian politics. . . . Torshin has a direct line to Putin . . . and also has possible ties to organized crime. Rudov is the right-hand man of Konstantin Malofeev, who is sort of a paleo-conservative, ultra-nationalist figure who bankrolls a lot of projects involving mercenaries in Ukraine.” Carpenter sees how a dark money trail could connect the Kremlin to the gun lobby. “Those three would only meet with N.R.A. officials if there were some concerted effort by senior members of the Russian government to try and co-opt the N.R.A. politically,” he continues. “And they are all money men. They can throw tens of millions around.” (Efforts to reach Torshin, Rogozin, Rudov, and Malofeev were unsuccessful. Malofeev has denied aiding the invasion of Ukraine.)

There are some very nervous politicians in Washington.

If there was ever a time to get serious about turning Citizens United upside down, this is it.

All About The Garbage

Laura Henry, The Conversation:

A steady stream of garbage-laden trucks moves the waste of Russia’s capital to landfills in the surrounding region. The resulting mountains of refuse emit noxious fumes and leach pollutants into nearby waters, endangering the residents of the region around Moscow.

Citizens living near these landfills have had enough.

Protests against garbage dumps have erupted in at least eight towns and villages around Moscow in the last six months. As a scholar who studies contemporary Russian politics, I believe these garbage protests reveal a crisis of basic governance that potentially poses a greater challenge to Putin’s government than pro-democracy activism.

'Scuse me, ma'am - not to get too nit-picky - but I'm thinking that when you turn people out for a public protest, that's what "Pro-Democracy Activism" actually is.

But, please continue.

Russian activists have come under increasing pressure since Putin returned to office in 2012. Protests have been relatively scarce after the 2011-2012 Bolotnaya demonstrations in response to election fraud. Long-standing nongovernmental groups working on environmental and human rights issues, which relied in part on funding from abroad, have been labeled “foreign agents” by Russia’s Ministry of Justice.


- and -

Since 2010, under the leadership of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow has transformed into a dynamic global city, fueled by oil wealth and urban redevelopment. Moscow’s growing population and unfettered consumption mean increased waste. A report by the environmental group Greenpeace calculates that Moscow is responsible for 11 million tons of trash annually, approximately one-fifth of all waste in Russia. Only 4 percent of Moscow’s waste is recycled.

To preserve quality of life in the capital, the Moscow’s government sends streams of municipal waste into the surrounding regions. Greenpeace reports that 90 percent of Moscow’s waste goes to landfills in Moscow’s suburban region. Landfills created in the Soviet and early post-Soviet period, when there was little consumer waste, have been expanded, often with no community notification and despite being in close proximity to homes and schools. Air quality suffers as the dumps release fumes from decomposing waste.

In addition to established landfills, 52 illegal dumps were identified in the Moscow region in the first half of 2017.

As the stench rises and the public health risks – such as respiratory diseases that most acutely affect children – mount, citizen appeals to regional and national government officials have had little effect.

Local people are left with few options but protest. Demonstrations of more than 1,000 people occurred in at least eight towns and villages near Moscow. Citizens also have organized groups on VKontakte, a Russian social media platform, to coordinate petitions, block roads and even mount hunger strikes.

There' s always a link between individual commercial interests and the destruction of the commons, which is always brings the erosion of people's political and civil rights, so it always ends up having something to do with a small group of power-drunk people rationalizing the use of government force against its own citizens.

If an Unfettered Free Market System is great and beautiful and fair, then you don't need a large militarized police force to keep people in line.

As the USSR was falling apart, Poppy Bush sent Robert Strauss to Moscow to help them with "democratization", and whole platoons of Free Market True Believers went with him - to teach those silly Commies about good ol' western capitalism.

All the state-owned entities were sold off, which gave us Russian Oligarchs, which eventually gave us a "term-limited Russian presidency" that's been held by Vladimir Putin for 20 fuckin' years.

Some of the big problems we have with Russia now are at least partly due to our own meddling, as well-intentioned as it may have been.

(I'm not saying we had it coming, and I'm not saying our fiddling with the Russian economy is the same as Russian rat-fucking in the 2016 elections. Don't be daft.)

The point here is that when it's obvious that privatizing government leads to extremely bad outcomes, we need to call it out. Unfettered Free Market economic policies hurt people, and they lead us to the Daddy State.

Let's also be sure to remind ourselves that it didn't get all fucked up yesterday, and we're not going to get unfucked by tomorrow.

Yesterday

First this:

Then this:

NBC29 WVIR Charlottesville, VA  News, Sports and Weather

So maybe ol' Pete was just fuckin' with me - dunno - but at least he reported it pretty well once he got it on the air.

Today's Tweet

They're not making demands for some unattainable absolute safety - they want nothing more than to stop having to worry quite so much about being shot to pieces.

They want to be free.

"I'm supposed to be recovering ... and I can't do that if these things are still going to be happening."

Using cell phones, six Parkland survivors chronicled their lives in the weeks after the shooting. Their stories tonight, 9p ET on CNN #ParklandDiaries https://t.co/FHVLh5RY5K pic.twitter.com/7NBh50lY3Z

— CNN (@CNN) March 23, 2018

 

Good Guy Punished

Houston Chronicle, Jay Jordan:

Police in Amarillo shot an innocent man who helped foil a possible church shooting.

The shooting happened shortly after 9 a.m. Feb. 14 at the Faith City Mission, a faith-based outreach organization. Police said Joshua Len Jones, 35, of Amarillo, barged into a church building at Faith City Mission, pulled out a gun and was holding about 100 congregants and church staff hostage.

In the time between when police were dispatched and when officers arrived, a handful of churchgoers wrestled Jones to the ground. One of the congregants was able to grab Jones' gun.

Officers entered the building and saw the churchgoer holding the gun and opened fire, according to the Amarillo Police Department. The churchgoer was hospitalized in stable condition.

The victim, who spoke to ABC 7 Amarillo, has since been released and told the station he would do it all over again despite being shot by police.

"There were other people there," Tony Garces said. "I just took the gun away from him. I got shot. I got the bad part. It's life."

The weird part (which isn't weird at all): He started out as a good guy without a gun, but by the time the cops got there, he was the good guy with a gun, and the cops shot him because he was the guy with the gun.

Weird part #2 (which also isn't weird at all): I'm wondering if this is going to make NRA-TV.

At first I tho't they wouldn't wanna be anywhere near this one. But those guys are pretty remarkably good at selling, so I think we can fully expect a Turnaround. 

"If Mr Garces had been appropriately armed, then the would-be shooter is the only one to have been shot."

But it still comes down to this: Gun violence in this case was thwarted by unarmed people - and we don't know that the perp really intended to shoot anybody in the first place.

Of Guns And Skateboards

I don't know what to make of this.

Bad guys good guys pic.twitter.com/jAwmoii0q7

— someone (@Sadenss) February 12, 2018

 

Turnout

I was a little worried that this year's Women's March numbers might be down, and it would indicate that we're sliding into normalization due to Trump Fatigue.

Looks like I didn't have to be concerned at all - except that I haven't seen a great level of solid confirmation, but that could be a priority conflict with the Press Poodles having to decide between the protests and the shutdown.

Still, marches went off as planned, and (apparently) exceeded my expectations.

Vox:

Crowd estimates from Women’s Marches on Saturday now tally over 4 million and political scientists think we may have just witnessed the largest day of demonstrations in American history.

According to data collected by Erica Chenoweth at the University of Denver and Jeremy Pressman at the University of Connecticut, marches held in more than 600 US cities were attended by at least 4.2 million people.

- and -

The turnout at events outside the US was significant, too. Chenoweth and Pressman have recorded over 200 international Women’s Marches with an estimated attendance of more than 307,000.

Half the town of Stanley, Idaho (pop. 63) came out in a snowstorm to march in peace & solidarity w/ men, women, & children on 7 continents. pic.twitter.com/tLPCognu2t

— Carole King (@Carole_King) January 22, 2017

The Nation, John Nichols (pay wall):

A review of the president’s approval ratings from the states that provided Trump with the narrow margin he gained in the Electoral College found across-the-board evidence of decay in enthusiasm. With 55 percent disapproval of Trump in Michigan, 53 percent disapproval in Wisconsin, and 51 percent disapproval in Pennsylvania, a credible case could be made that, were Trump on the ballot today, he would lose both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote by considerable margins.

But Trump is not on the ballot today, or even this year.

If Trump is ever on the ballot again, it will not be until 2020.

What matters now is who else is on the ballot. The 2018 mid-term elections will be a critical test for the president’s Republican Party and, if patterns hold, they could see a turn in the electoral math sufficient to check and balance the president in Washington while removing his allies in the states. That’s an essential combination because it is not just Trump but Trumpism–as practiced by presidential allies such as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker–that must be addressed if the crisis of conservative hegemony is going to ease.

Get Goin'

Dems aren't going to get over any particular hump in 2018 by just being Anti-45*. Yeah, OK - it worked pretty well for the Repubs, but that's kinda how we got into this mess. Let's do it better.

A Press Release

Badass Teachers Association:

The Badass Teachers Association, a grassroots national education activist organization with over 200,000 teachers and education activists in their network, strongly condemn Sec. DeVos for rescinding special education guidance documents. Guidance documents are the federal interpretation of regulations that make it easier for states and districts to understand, and to help them draft policy. BATs has stated before and will reiterate, that federal guidance is needed to ensure that all children receive a free and appropriate education. Federal guidance is needed so that education is rooted in equity, equality, and fairness for all children regardless of zip code or capability.

“Knowledge is power- DeVos has chosen to keep parents in the dark about the educational and legal rights of their children with disabilities. In rescinding USDOE guidelines, she is allowing states and local districts to interpret the law in their interest without consistency, thus abandoning a commitment to equity of protection for all children. This decision sets us back to the days when parents were on their own in securing a free, appropriate public education for their disabled children.” ~ Terry Kalb, Co-Director BATs Special Education Committee, and Special Education Advocate

“As a lifelong special educator and parent of a child with a disability, rescinding these guidance documents create roadblocks that will deny our children services, while we engage in the impartial hearing process to reinstate them, at great taxpayer expense. Lawyers will be the only people to benefit from this shameless action. Our children will continue to grow - time doesn’t stop for them. They will lose services, and they will suffer, and lose precious time in their education. My child is college-bound thanks to great special education and support services. Without them, he would have no skills and would never be able to realize his dreams.” ~Lorri Gumanow, Co-Director BATs Special Education Committee, and Special Education Teacher

"As the mother of a child with special needs and as an educator of children in this country, I am beyond disgusted. Children with disabilities rely on federal guidance to protect them and what DeVos has now done is say to millions of children with disabilities that we are not going to take care of you. Rest assured that parents and school leaders will be challenging this in court.” ~Marla Kilfoyle, Executive Director, The Badass Teachers Association (BATs).

“Whatever gains we fought so hard to win in the hopes of improving the education for all students, are disappearing before our very eyes. She is not a Secretary of Education; she is the harbinger of the destruction of Public Education.” ~Gus Morales, Board Member, The Badass Teachers Association (BATs)

"The so-called Education Department is once again victimizing our most vulnerable students. This time they are rescinding documents that help parents advocate for the rights of children with disabilities and guide schools on how to spend federal funding. How can we allow these billionaires in Washington to abuse our special needs children? This is an outrage that will not stand. " ~Dr. Michael Flanagan, Co-Director BATs Action Team, and Public School Educator

“I teach students with special needs. I am disgusted with Secretary DeVos' lack of a conscience. How can someone placed in a position to protect children be allowed to do so much harm to our most vulnerable population? What shall I tell my students? Perhaps Betsy would like to face my special needs students and their parents to tell them their nation doesn't give a damn about them anymore. I cannot support a government that treats children like this. Betsy DeVos must be removed from her position. Our children are counting on us to rise up together.”~Jamy Brice-Hyde, Director of BATs Quality of Work Life Team and Public School Educator

“Regulations are a necessity to create an equitable interpretation of the law for all students. The dismissal of these regulations by Betsy DeVos shows her total lack of understanding of the Individuals with Disabilities Act. Haphazard interpretation from states and districts will open up the floor for numerous lawsuits that will further divert money from the classroom. We hope that NEA and AFT will engage in a legal battle to protect our students.”~Melissa Tomlinson, Asst. Executive Director BATs and Public School Educator.

Parents, educators, children, and the disability community call on Sec. DeVos to end her attack on our children. School districts rely on guidance documents to frame their policies, and without that guidance, our children with disabilities could fall victim to education policies that do not provide them with a free and appropriate education.