environment Politics: assholes greed idiots lawsuits
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 5: Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
The New York Times notes that post-election, we’re likely to see more lawsuits challenging climate change laws at the state level, as corporate players are emboldened to act even more stupidly.
If the business community’s attention span was somewhat longer, many of the lawsuits aimed at neutralizing state climate change laws would be seen for what they are: desperate attempts to change the subject. The truth is simple: global warming is real and humans are responsible; the planet is already experiencing its effects everywhere from Moscow to Manhattan, and things are going to get worse before they get better no matter what we do. The orchestra of chaos is only tuning up, and if we don’t cut our carbon emissions drastically and immediately, we’re in for a world of hurt. Prioritization of short-term profits will play a major part in the demise of many corporate players over the coming decades. It is a sad commentary on our country when both the investment and manufacturing sectors have replaced fact-based institutional policy with petulant demands that reality be repealed.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Arnold Schwarzenegger Proposition 23
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 4: NOW You Tell Us?
I’m glad Jerry Brown won in CA. I’ve always liked him, and Meg Whitman’s plans to sell off the state on Ebay were hard to swallow.
The San Francisco Chronicle posts an AP article which carries the somewhat hard-to-believe news that Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Schultz are going to try and persuade Republicans to do something about climate change. They also quote the big cheese from the NPRA about how Proposition 23 was badly misunderstood and all the environmentalists were mean to them:
The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, which contributed $100,000 to the yes vote, called the measure’s defeat “tragic.” The association blamed it partly on the voter wave that elected Jerry Brown governor, re-elected Barbara Boxer to the U.S. Senate and sent their fellow Democrats to several other statewide offices.
The association’s president, Charles Drevna, also accused the measure’s opponents of leading a “sophisticated multimillion-dollar misinformation campaign” that he said would ultimately drive companies out of the state.
Schwarzenegger and Schultz both agree that climate change is real, and they think this is the perfect time to bring it back on the national stage.
Good luck with that, guys. I’m afraid that your party may have gone too far in deliberately cultivating stupidity as an ideology for that to work. But if you try, I’ll write letters in support, OK?
It is a glimpse into true bizarro-world when the head of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association can state with a straight face that the opponents of Proposition 23 ran a “misinformation campaign.” The initiative’s resounding defeat is more than just good news for California; it’s a rebuke to the anti-science agenda promoted by the Koch brothers and their associates. Governor Schwarzenegger and Secretary Schultz are members of an increasingly small and exclusive group: Republicans who recognize the severity of the threat posed by global warming. It is heartening to hear that they’re planning on pushing for legislative action on climate change at the national level. However, given the House takeover by GOP legislators who reflexively dismiss scientific expertise when it is inconvenient to their ideology, the “Governator” is going to have his hands full. Meanwhile, steadily increasing atmospheric CO2 is bringing the planet ever closer to the precipice.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Darryl Issa idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 3: This Is Awful.
In the wake of the bloodbath, I wrote the following to the Boston Globe, hanging it on a generic article about how having a Republican-controlled house will slow President Obama’s agenda.
Gee, ya think?
The bright spots are few and far between. As of this writing it looks like California is safe and the odious Proposition 23 has gone down. But given the post- Citizens United climate in our country, I am not sanguine about our future. If you thought the last two years were ugly, just watch the next two.
With the Republican takeover in the House of Representatives, we can look forward to a long two years of show trials from luminaries like Darryl Issa and James Sensenbrenner. These two worthies have already announced their intentions to hold hearings into the multiply-debunked “Climategate” non-scandal; like the rest of the GOP caucus, they are ideologically wedded to the notion that climate change is a liberal conspiracy cooked up by Al Gore and his henchmen in the scientific establishment. The climatologists who are working around the clock on the dimensions of global warming (arguably the worst threat humanity has ever faced) are now going to have their time squandered on empty theatrics by a group of anti-science congressmen. It would be nice to imagine that these politicians could have their minds changed by scientific evidence, but given the troubled relationship between reality and these Republicans, I wouldn’t count on it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Deepwater Horizon EPA idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 2: An Election Day Letter
The Guardian comments on the expected barrage of Republican idiots investigating things. If I were a believer, I’d be praying. If you’re a believer, please pray…but GOTV either way! I’ll probably be driving people to the polls tomorrow at some point…not sure how that’s going to work with a kid in tow, but wotthehell.
It is surreal to imagine Republican congressional inquiries into the Obama administration’s inept handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. How would these anti-environmental zealots keep the scope of their investigations from moving back to the Bush-era EPA’s carefully nurtured culture of incompetence and corruption? Given that the Tea Party Republicans are overwhelmingly ready to reject scientific evidence, it should be no surprise that they are anti-reality in other areas as well. While their handling of the Gulf catastrophe was hardly the Obama team’s finest hour, it’s incontrovertible that the Bush/Cheney administration laid the foundation for BP’s destructive and callous behavior. The spill in the Gulf may have poisoned multiple ecosystems beyond recovery, but the behavior of Republican politicians demonstrates that oil kills rationality, logic and accountability just as thoroughly as it wipes out fish, turtles and sea birds.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes climate zombies idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 1: Evidence? We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Evidence!
The L.A. Times runs an article by Neela Banerjee noting that the Republican climate zombies are in a position to screw everything up should they (as seems distressingly likely) gain power in this election.
GOTV! GOTV!
When Republican congresspeople dismiss the scientific consensus on the role of carbon dioxide in global climate change, they selfishly sacrifice the long-term health of the country and the planet for the sake of immediate political expediency. Their readiness to declare that climate science is not “settled” demonstrates a distrust of expertise that runs counter to their ideological slant — and they’ve been equally ready to dismiss expert information in other areas — as in the run-up to the Iraq war, where the Bush administration and their enablers in the Republican caucus systematically cherry-picked intelligence to support their predetermined policy objectives. That debacle cost us the lives of thousands of soldiers, countless Iraqi civilians, and our country’s credibility in the eyes of the world. It’s time for climate deniers to listen to the experts: the evidence for human causes of global warming is far, far stronger than that for Iraqi WMDs.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Citizens United climate zombies corporate irresponsibility
by Warren
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Month 10, Day 31: It’s Halloween! I’m Going As David Koch!
Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times about the corporate role in creating the current army of climate zombies who threaten to derail our already pitiful progress on getting a law in place to deal with GHG emissions.
Voters are regularly told that experience in business is a political plus; the notion of running the state or the country “like a company” is extolled. But tobacco companies conspired to hide a fact: their product killed people who used it, and oil companies have likewise conspired, hiding the reality that their product is rendering our planet uninhabitable. Apparently corporations are not only prepared to ignore facts if they get in the way of a healthy quarterly report, but they haven’t yet figured out that killing your customers is bad for business. If we elect corporate CEOs to public office, we should not be surprised if they behave like corporations, employing mendacity, avarice, and short-sightedness to the detriment of our common welfare. The fossil fuel interests’ fixation on denying the existence of the gravest threat humanity has ever faced makes the big tobacco companies look like a bunch of pikers.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots
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Month 10, Day 30: Get Down To What Is Really Real.
The Miami Herald runs an AP article on the GOP aversion to reality. And it refers to them (Republicans) as “skeptics.”
Nuh-uh.
It is inaccurate to call most Republican candidates “skeptics” on the issue of climate change. A skeptic is motivated by a search for truth, which leads him or her to doubt any knowledge that has not been verified by personal experience or research. These candidates should be called “deniers” or “denialists.” Observe their unwillingness to do any research, their aversion to verifiable facts — the conclusion is inescapable: Republican opposition to the very concept of climate change is entirely ideological. Why do they reject the statements of scientific specialists? Precisely because scientists present actual hard evidence that climate change is real — evidence that can only be countered by unwavering refusals to listen and to understand. In other words, GOP candidates’ response to the facts on climate change is to stick their fingers in their ears and shout loudly. Republicans weren’t always anti-reality, but that was a long time ago.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Arnold Schwarzenegger James Cameron Koch Brothers Proposition 23
by Warren
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Month 10, Day 29: The Auteurial Imagination….
The Modesto Bee, a small California paper, notes that film director James Cameron has come out against the odious Proposition 23.
That is to say:
It’s good to hear James Cameron joining Governor Schwarzenegger in opposition to Proposition 23 in the last few days before the election, when the Koch brothers and their collaborators from the extractive industry sector are pouring surreal quantities of money into the campaign to suspend AB 32, California’s excellent climate change law. We recognize these conscienceless billionaires in two of Cameron’s creations: they occupied the Titanic’s most luxurious staterooms, and they’re the principal shareholders of “Avatar’s” RDA Corporation. These latter-day robber barons ignore the crucial truth that global climate change is likely to trigger a “domino effect” of infrastructural collapse, which would surely be bad for business. The worst-case scenarios suggested by climatologists can be summed up in one word: Venus. A film based on that planet would challenge any directorial imagination: hot and empty. Nobody to buy oil. A defeat of Proposition 23 will benefit the Koch brothers and their allies, too.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Citizens United corporate personhood
by Warren
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Month 10, Day 28: How I Long For The Days Of “Enlightened Self-Interest”
The Washington Post runs an AP story on the corporate groups that are destroying our democracy:
Rove, who was President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, and the two Mayflower lunch partners – former GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie and Steven Law, a veteran of Capitol Hill and the Chamber of Commerce – worried that the Republican Party alone would be no match for President Barack Obama’s superb fundraising.
“Clearly there was a tremendous amount of grass-roots energy building – a grass-roots prairie fire that was building in intensity,” Law, now the Crossroads president, said in an interview. “We felt that one of the things we could do was pour gasoline on that.”
ad_iconIf voters seemed angry, so was corporate America. Obama led Congress into passing health care and financial regulation overhauls and pushed for climate legislation, all of which angered the business community.
Assholes.
The fact that corporate America was “angry” about President Obama’s calls for climate legislation reveals a lot about Corporate America (which deserves full capitalizations now that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has affirmed its personhood). Specifically, Corporate America is mistrustful of expertise, incapable of long-term thought, lacks any conception of the common good, and is irrationally prone to anger.
A response to proposed climate-change legislation that was not distorted by these tendencies would look very different. For example, it would recognize the overwhelming scientific consensus on the reality of global warming, and acknowledge that the catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate chaos would be (to put it mildly) bad for business. If our corporate citizens were motivated by the common good rather than their quarterly profits, we ordinary human citizens would have no reason to fear them and their devastating impact on both the political and planetary atmospheres.
Warren Senders
By The Way…
…I know it’s been a long time since I did any music posting. Once this harrowing election is over I’ve got some goodies I’ll be posting. Until then…GOTV!