It reminds me of data centers now. They will benefit the rich owners of these companies while causing mass suffering (and likely pre-mature deaths) for those "down stream".
Or perhaps the white christian nationalists that penalize mothers for having complications from miscarriages and allowing them to die because the medical personnel is too afraid to provide care.
Ally, thank you. Hard to believe there is anyone in America who doesn’t know what Dobbs has done. And the implications for every American woman and for every taker of the Hippocratic Oath.
This is why I expected women nation wide in 2024 to vote for politicians that would strive to restore the rights women lost in the Dobbs decision.
It still baffles me that they didn't vote to end their second class citizenship. Think of how much better off we all would be if they had voted in their own best interests.
An awful lot that's gone on the past 20 and more years - just mystifies the hell out of me; The sheltered awareness, especially of the plight of 'others' continues to just gobsmack me - even.. within here, this community, sad to say. I find that I wonder (perhaps even worry.. ) if I and some handfuls of others are just 'too' sensitive and aware. Some of my nature I understand, as just 'is what it is' or just how i am; Endlessly curious and a voracious reader... Meh; whatever.
June 24 is the anniversary of Dobbs. I am organizing a rally in Chapel Hill, NC to reveal the continuing harm to women of this decision. (Wouldn't it be great if others did this?) I am leaning into my own research and observations,but I would like to add what you have shared to my list. Please let me know if you have any objections. Gerrie Richards (nowchapelhill@gmail.com)
Thank you, Ally. This joins the already massive list of devastations in the last year and a half needing reversal. We certainly have our work cut out as we head for the 500 year mark.
Google: “ ProPublica’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series, "Life of the Mother," has documented at least seven individual cases where pregnant women died after being unable to access standard, timely reproductive healthcare due to state abortion restrictions. Additionally, ProPublica's empirical data analysis uncovered a spike in life-threatening medical emergencies. This includes a 50% increase in the sepsis rate for second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations and a 54% surge in blood transfusions for first-trimester miscarriages in Texas after strict bans took effect.”
There are countless examples to be had Alan; You need only have the interest and search effort to 'turn the rocks over.' I'm a tad surprised that you would pose the 'ask' for proof.
Three women with problem pregnancies died by bleeding to death in Texas in late 2024 and early 2025 because the doctors were afraid of being imprisoned if they performed an abortion, even one to same the women's lives. Here's my message to the white Christian nationalists: All life on earth (plants, animals, insects) share the same DNA, going back 3.5 billion years to LUCA. There never was a Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. There is no such thing as a soul. When we die, we're dead and down the road, in a few billion years, the sun will envelope earth and burn it to crisp. Develop some critical thinking skills.
* Too much critical capacity concentrated behind one wall
* Combined with overconfidence in safeguards
That could apply not just to data centers, but also:
* Power grids
* Financial systems
* Supply chains
* Public Health
All involve complex, human-built systems where ignored risks + concentrated capacity + cascading failure can produce consequences far beyond what designers anticipated.
One lesson I learned in my career was that risk accumulates silently in all complex systems and the right trigger at the wrong time can release it all at once.
Of course, as your analogy shows, this risk isn’t limited to physical danger. It could be the 2008 financial crisis. Or a severe disruption to industry or the economy generally if a hyperscale data center fails. Or a pandemic, where we have inept clowns running public Health services and a skeptical public.
Tom, or an energy crisis caused by death star's foolish war with Iran and bottleneck now at the Strait of Hormuz. I recently read an essay on what could happen with this.
Heads of major oil companies are stating that we are weeks away from the artificial lowering of oil costs, through the use of oil reserves, expiring. When those reserves are depleted, the massive disruption in supply will be felt across the world, and prices are going to skyrocket. 150-175$ per barrel are likely. We may be seeing $10 per gallon average, and up to $15 in CA, where I live.
Just in time for summer, when demand is always high.
Another one, Michele, should grab you. Maybe it's the same one that you read. Daniel Byman, writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), walks us through the pitfalls of tRump's ill-conceived plans. Actors concerning this crisis (and if not a crisis now, it will be in short time), revolve chiefly around China and tRump, not tRump and Iran and its leadership, as some may surmise. Of course, we should not discount Israel as the wild card in all of this. Those stupid f*&ks will do anything to get their way regardless of the missile pounding they've received. tRump's bluffs and his going back and forth, clearly is not impressing anyone: translation? He hasn't a clue as to what he is doing. And that can be the most dangerous part for us, in the US, and the rest of the world. Make no mistake, tRump is working to alleviate the pressure and shift the focus on anyone other than him (as you and everyone reading HCR already knows.) My suspicion is that Netanyahu, for which I have some grudging respect, far more than for tRump (for which I have absolutely no respect), may well see a stab in the back to Netanyahu's wish for dominance in this region. tRump clearly has overplayed his hand, and with idiot sycophants like Hegseth and Rubio, he feels invincible. That, of course, is going to change soon.
Thomas, I don't discount what you're saying, but it could also be manipulation by major oil to justify raising prices. Sadly, I never expect big business to act in OUR best interest.
I have read, in more than one place, that the majority of the oil in the reserves has been for export. This only makes sense, since Big Oil wants the highest price for their product. They do not have loyalty to one nation. While I understand it on one level, I also think that a windfall profits tax should be applied to all of them.
That scenario will result in a massive economic depression. This could happen because we have very stupid people heading our government. "The inmates are now in control of the asylum." It's analogous to turning over the flight controls of a Boeing 747 in flight to a complete novice
It seems like all of the supposed guardrails in the system depended on the integrity and character of the people who hold power.
Even if there are legal safeguards, a lot of damage has been done before the courts can rule. And today there is a good possibility that the corrupt right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court will betray the Constitution and the people to give the Executive Branch unlimited power contrary to way our system was designed to be as laid out in our Constitution.
"A good possibility that they will betray the Constitution?" Whatever is now left of the Constitution, it's a certainty that they will trash it so that we can have a Christian theocracy. These people are religious ideologues.
Yes! In fact, as I read your description I actually thought of the Titanic. Why is it that we humans keep making the same mistakes over and over again?
Absolutely. Stopping these data centers should be one of our top priorities. Not only for the environmental impacts but also they are going to be personal data collection centers on us. They will work with companies like Flock cameras and Palantir to watch everything we do. Mass surveillance. What we write, what we look at, what we buy, how we drive... it sounds crazy but this is what they are preparing for and not enough people are aware. The Trump administration is adding language to make it a crime to speak out against these data centers. Bernie Sanders is the only one that I hear sounding the alarm. We need to paying attention now.
It's one thing to be on a substack. It's an entireley different matter to be on X. for the life of me I can't understand how so many otherwise progressive types still use it.
Dana, some folks are up in arms about data centers and some have put a stop to them. Of course, the rich owners are dangling jobs in many areas while we all pay more for electricity and they take up tons of water. Oregon and many states have drought conditions. Recently in one of her essays, Mary Geddry, who live on the southern Oregon coast, revealed a secret men only club that meets deep in the redwoods. If you look her up, you can find the excellent essays posted by her and her daughter. I recommend them.
At least after the Molasses Flood of 1919 the United States Industrial Alcohol Company did not try to claim that the flood was an act of God. In this day, they would certainly try…
Of course not. The global Epstein Class have been blaming Holy God for their brutality and selfishness since time immemorial .
War and every ecologic disaster has been blamed on “Holy God , Creator, Evolution, “ by greedy power mad men and women for millennia.
Xi , Putin, Modi, Musk, Thiele, Trump and all their acolytes always claim to speak for a Higher Power whether this is the PRC, Christian or Hindu Nationalism, Manifest Destiny and every economic, legal, penal and political system that allows an Epstein class to rule with complete immunity.
In contrast His Holiness the great XIV Dalai Lama , Professor Heather Cox Richardson, Reps Jasmine Crockett , Maxwell Frost, Pope Leo XIV, Indigenous Elders , the many members of the non violent resistance everywhere all offer alternatives to absolute power and the dangers inherent in elitism.
We need to learn from the people in Minnesota who embody non violent resistance and who are building alternatives to the brutal MAGA invaders . The donors, authors and implementers of Project 2025 envision a brutal ethnic cleansing of over 100 million people from your beautiful country.
Democracy, diversity, equity and Inclusion are always messy. However they are always much more pro life than absolute rule by members of an untouchable and unaccountable elite.
We do not need rigid orthodoxy.
We need mass grass root based non violent movements that focus on metanoia, transformation , restorative justice, truth and reconciliation.
Mistakes forgotten ( unheeded) cause history to repeat. Likely every state including this WV- have their ‘just another’ flood /dam collapsing, here The Buffalo Creek Disaster 1972 ..telling another story of neglect, corporate blunder/lack of oversight (or is it overlooking/don’t care ?) and lives lost.
And the beat goes on….
Every child needs educated , their potentials assessed ( because we can) to give credence to the folly of mankind as what greed’s real cost is.
Articles such as this ( Thanks again Heather, Elizabeth, et al) make what’s happening now so varied and applicable …blatantly obvious.
PS…I’d heard Theil moved to Argentina …likely no extradition laws, right?
Brazil and Argentina is where Nazis ran to hide. Joseph Mengele, the doctor who mutilated women in the camps, fled there. Simon Wiesenthal, the great Nazi hunter, helped Mossad find Adolf Eichmann, the architect of gas camps, to trial. Eichmann fled with his family to Argentina where they lived for a decade. Mossad picked him up off of the streets there and extradited him for trial and hanging. I tell you this because Thiel was raised by Nazi-loving parents in South Africa and the US. He was born in Germany. He has now fled to the Nazi harboring country of Argentina with his boyfriend and children.
If you look at Eichmann’s picture, who in modern times, looks just like him? I tell you this because I am the daughter of Holocaust victims. My grandparents were gassed at the camp called Chelmno.
From the inception of the Bill of Rights, the founders designed a government that would be run by and for the benefit of the wealthy elite.
Originally, only men with property had the right to vote.
As the right to vote expanded over the years, the wealthy elite have always manipulated the system so they retained more power in government than the rest of the population.
The elite have managed to arrange for the under payed , majority of the public to pay for the infrastructure needed for their businesses to succeed and when their employees organized and used collective bargaining in order to make reasonable livable wages, the elite and the politicians they funded proclaimed these workers were Socialist and Communist. Recently I have noticed Republican strategists on news shows whining that a lot of our political problems come from people calling out the GOP's policies and politicians as the fascist's they are.
Since the late nineteenth century, these assholes have been calling the working class Socialist and Communist, now they blame people who label them accurately as Fascist, who are responsible for the political and cultural divisiveness today. Projection is their specialty.
Please — enough with the “you forgot x…” we all enjoy reading intelligent observations. Feel free to add your own, but maybe dispense with the trope that makes it sound like the previous poster was an idiot…?
I deplore the word “idiot’,( no offense intended) hopefully I have not ,nor ever will, call any ..that. But intent ..of such actions , the blatant ones, I and many others refer to , is the issue…and apparently further corruption could thwart every move WE make as other countries have experienced? So much of that is far from idiot, it is criminal. And we have no way to correct this…but time?
But then we also need to look at one version of DEI, often called "DEI training". That is definitely based on rigid orthodoxy rather than solid research, and instead of valuing diversity, it violently tries to impose its ideology onto everyone else.
Equal rights for every individual — and that includes equal access to services, to voting, to health care, to the courts, etc. — is not rigid and doesn’t require a whole lot of training beyond a civics education, at which we progressively fail. Rights and Civics and how they intertwine will get us further down the road than DEI training. Of course, we do have to embrace and defend each individual’s standing in society, which to now is in CONSTANT conflict.
Exactly. What is lacking, including on the left, is a real civics education, so that people know that equal rights is part of the US Constitution as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - or, for that matter, any democratic Constitution.
DEI trainings all too often reject the idea of equal rights and instead propose that if you are part of a "historically oppressed" group of people, then your suffering is more important than that of anyone else, so you have the right to bully around and even cancel anyone who disagrees with you on anything.
This is precisely why, as Susan Neiman and so many others explained, this ideology is the opposite of what especially the left has always stood for. So, as a strategy (no matter how well-intentioned the people who designed or adopted it may be), it cannot possibly work. It can only create more violence.
"Equal rights" are part of the constitution only via amendment. Not in the original document, written by privileged white men. Something I have noted in many conversations with many different people is this: if you were not granted your right to vote, or to be a person in and of your own right, your opinion is colored by that experience. It is, in this country, the "default" position, and assumed to be the universal experience. That is not the case.
For most of humanity's existence on Earth, 99% of the people weren't allowed to vote.
To imagine that would leave eternal traces on our souls is absurd and not backed up by science.
This IS where the left fell into the trap of wokism in the negative sense of the word, I'm afraid. Wokism used the (in and of itself highly questionable) concept of "trauma" to tell those who were the last to get the right to vote (women, and then black Americans) that somehow this fact (which most people today never experienced in the first place) would make them by nature different from all fellow citizens.
This goes directly against the assumption of our common humanity that has always been at the heart of any left-wing political philosophy. It's also demonstrably false.
EUW ... please cite documentation that supports your statement that "DEI trainings ... reject the idea of equal rights and instead propose that if you are part of a 'historically oppressed' group of people, then your suffering is more important than that of anyone else, so you have the right to bully around and even cancel anyone who disagrees with you on anything."
Also, cite reference to Susan Neiman's explanation.
You spend a lot of time here writing opinions as if they are facts, while demanding that everyone else must cite evidence for their statements. It is well past time that you live by your own rules.
Sure. As to your first point, Ally's response above is a perfect illustration of it.
Susan Neiman: see for instance her book "Woke ≠ Left".
See also John McWorter's book "Woke Racism. How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America".
FYI: in general, in a democratic debate anyone who's asked to back up a claim with evidence needs to immediately do so. But you cannot blame anyone for not having done so BEFORE someone asks you, you see? That's because I cannot possibly know what everyone here already studied and what not. So I need YOU to tell me that you don't know what my references are and ask me to share them before I can know that it's what someone wants. That's all.
Thank you for the clarification. This is a disappointment to me, even though I can understand it. DEI is demanding instead of practicing understanding. Be more human than human. Incurable disease?! How can we “enlighten” DEI, particularly with the large presence of Christo-Nazis?
DEI trainings were an experiment in third-wave anti-social injustice. It's a failed experiment, as so many progressives have shown (read Jon McWorther, Susan Neiman etc).
We need to go back to second-wave anti-social injustice strategies. They worked, and one reason they did was that they were rooted in a secular form of spirituality, starting with the recognition of our common humanity. We need to reread MLK's "Strength to Love" for instance. We need to stand on the shoulders of those giants rather than imagine that we have to start from scratch and then refuse to study the history of the civil rights movement. We also need to read Saul Alinsky and the power of "community organizing" to achieve real, lasting, non-violent, democratic change (which is by definition step by step change, since it requires the changing of people's hearts and minds, and that takes time and a bottom-up approach, rather than just "commanding" people to adopt your own ideology, which hasn't even been seriously researched yet in the first place, and is based on demonstrable falsehoods).
We need to give up the most recent fad among the left, "Dem bashing", and abandon the cynical attitude that assumes (without fact-checking) that "all politicians are corrupt".
All of this we can do on our own, regardless of what a neofascist GOP does to its own voter base and to the US.
(By the way, neofascism and Nazism are both forms of fascism, but they're not the same thing. We can just call any fascist a Nazi... here too, we need to stick with proven facts, if we want to save democracy.)
When students force deans of their Ivy League universities to cancel people like Erik Holder (Obama AG) or Christine Lagarde (director of IMF), when it is the very job of universities to teach how to have real, respectful debates, that's absolutely a violent act.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So many people have been fired from their jobs only because they dared to question woke ideology. And that includes many progressives themselves.
That would be the case if those events were exceptional and if the ideology behind DEI TRAINING (the key word here is "training"; not everything that comes under the DEI label) would claim the opposite of canceling those you disagree with.
DEI in the sense of making sure that minorities have access to the highest forms of education, jobs etc. is definitely not "rigid", it's crucial to keep a democracy thriving.
But I agree, what is often proposed as "DEI trainings" is utterly rigid, often violent, and counterproductive.
See 'The Drey Dossier' for news of a plan that would put historical records under White House control, which apparently would seal them on Trump's leaving office, hiding them from view for at least twelve years.
Or killed. I read that while at the time it was claimed that the dam would have broken even if they had left it as was, but a recent study found otherwise. We are all dependent on a government that has oversight on our safety and this is carried out by people who are not corrupted by any party.
Those wealthy “club members” thought themselves to be the smartest people in the room, so to speak. Therefore, why would they think that their actions taken in the dam would have a negative impact on the manmade lake? And of course, the wealthy got off, scot free.
Ironically Johstown had three (3) floods: 1936 and 1977.
Between 76 and 85 people died during the flash flood that struck Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on July 19–20, 1977. Official figures vary slightly due to missing individuals, with the National Park Service and historical accounts reporting at least 77 to 85 deaths, while the U.S. Government Accountability Office cites 76 confirmed fatalities.
AI. Nearly 12 inches (300 millimetres) of rain fell in 24 hours when a thunderstorm stalled over the region, and six dams in the area over-topped and failed. The largest dam to fail was the Laurel Run Dam, releasing over 101 million U.S. gallons (380,000 cubic meters) of water that poured through the village of Tanneryville, killing 41 people.
My late uncle was with the Army Corps of Engineers that oversaw the area. I was a lawyer in a town about 100 miles away. I had cases in Johstown. My brother went to help with the recue.....
AI. Lawsuits stemming from the 1977 Johnstown flood were primarily tied to the catastrophic failure of the Laurel Run Dam, which broke and sent a wall of water into the valley. Victims' families filed lawsuits for corporate and state negligence; after over a decade of litigation, these cases were settled out of court in 1989 for an undisclosed sum...
Flood victims' families sought damages from multiple parties, claiming that the dam's known deficiencies were ignored for years prior to the disaster:
The Greater Johnstown Water Authority (the owners of the dam)Bethlehem Steel Corp. (the previous owner and a managing company)
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (for regulatory and oversight failures)
The Laurel Management Company (the dam maintenance contractor)
Ultimately, dams are not a good thing. Another case of human hubris thinking they can beat Mother Nature. Aside from failing, droughts are now threatening hydroelectric power stations at dams from doing what they were built to do.
Actually in NEO with the 1940’s East Ohio Gas disaster. Every family I think was composited for their loss and it seems that some justice and mercy was done. I think that was my grandfather an employee an employee since he graduated in eighth grade was given the responsibility to work with each family. The History is very vague but my hope and thought was that my grandfather did the right thing. There was no outcry or protests.
GJ, I hope the answer to your question is 'Soon the wealthy will be bankrupted by blunders of Titanic proportion. Until then I suggest we all wear our life jackets.
Yes, the "Johnstown Flood" disaster stories still resonated in the 1950's in Los Angeles but, not enough to stop a collapse of a dam in the Santa Monica mountains that spilled into the Fernando Valley below without the massive scope of resulting damage as the "Johnstown Flood". This is a childhood memory as grew up in Woodland Hills at the foot of Topanga Canyon.
The most competent member of our company emergency response team described his father as what I seem to recall as senior or head engineer at LADWP sometime after the failure of the Baldwin Hills Reservoir (fortunately slow enough for most to evacuate, and only 5 deaths), so we learned about that failure in 1963 as well as the big one that left Mullholland's reputation in tatters (from the St Francis Dam failure that cost at least 431 lives in 1929). I paid a bit more attention since my wife's long dead paternal grandparents lived in Pittsburgh and had other relatives in Johnstown that had survived that flood.
Through the safety team member, I started learning about southern California's particular geological problems starting with dams, but also about the oil extraction problems that led to the flaming sidewalk cracks in the Fairfax district in my first trip to the area for a job interview. Back in the 80s ad 90s, it seems the frequent earthquakes were related to the oil and gas extraction methods more than many wanted to admit, and I believe also had an impact on the local subsidence (besides shaking) that seemed to cause more dam failures than expected.
I'd noticed earlier earthquakes had the floor above my office had a 3/4 inch gap to the baseboard and pointed out to other team members the openings growing around vertical structural steel beams, even before one quake where another team member and I had gone back into the building after trying to get people out without being hit by glass falling from above the exits (few paid attention to those efforts). We went back in to spread baking soda in the chem lab where a lot of nitric acid had spilled when another tremor gave us a bit of a thrill ride on the cantilevered section where the lab was located. The earthquakes did seems to decrease through the later years, though the Northridge Quake had many of our engineers living in RVs in their driveways as they spent a year or two of mutual aid in getting their homes habitable again (with the skilled labor shortages and lack of enough affordable reconstruction materials.
After I retired and got active in going to public meetings, I met Dr. Tom Williams of the LA Sierra Club at a DOGGR (Division of Oil Gas and Geothermal Resources, now Cal GEM Geologic Energy Management Division) meeting on what I think was December 12, 2013, and many afterwards including one where we met Dr. Tony Ingraffea after the regular meeting. I thought they were exceptional having started as oil geologists making breakthroughs in North Slope Oil fields and Fracking in Pennsylvania, respectfully, but later turning into devil's advocates against the shoddy practices and dirty tricks, and adverse effects particularly well shown in the PBS Documentary, "The Power of Big Oil" that Dr. Ingraffea was featured, especially the third part.
Along the way I learned that Dr. Williams had apparently switched to Water Systems in 1980s Aleppo, Syria, I believe as part of a USAID effort, had become a life member of the Sierra Club and expert advisor. I also found he had not only remembered the Fairfax burning sidewalks that were going on during my recruitment visit, but had been posted at a bus stop bench for 3 days to make sure no one tried to extinguish the fire since that would let unburned, not so "natural" gas accumulate in the area.
Fascinating, Jim. This is the first I've seen about oil extraction being related to the earthquakes in California. I'd never heard of the burning sidewalks in Fairfax, either.
I have a friend who was a directional driller on both the North Slope and in Ecuador; he's the only person I have met from the oil/gas industry.
Most I've met are very smart people who usually know not to talk too much about what they do.
I lucked out when a friend's neighbor in Colorado, who set up instrumentation at all sorts of drilling and active well sites couldn't solve a problem in his truck's electrical system one night. I'd been able to wire up a few hot rods a year using junkyard harnesses modified for use with fiberglass fenders, etc, for the friend and fix race hauler wiring for others that were baffled by a few differences. In his case it was simply putting the wrong bulb type in the dome light. As we got to know each other, he told me about how his bosses under reported the amounts of oil extracted, saying they often under reported by 1/3rd for royalty payments to many small rights owners, and down to 1/6th of what they should have been paying Native Americans (as documented by tribe members who filmed them making six trip to refinery storage tanks when they claimed the truck had made six stops to pick up partial loads before taking it to the refinery storage tank).
I learned to ignore the oil executives and higher management people and get a bit more reliable clues from lower tier employees or their family members, some of whom seemed lax enough to brag a little about what they were getting away with.
He definitely falls into that category. He's pretty liberal in his politics, and is one of the smartest and best read people I know (his sister is another one of those).
Now you have me going down a rabbit hole of memories of working with movie tech veterans like the safety team member who's dad was an engineer for LADWP (after the dam failures).
He had worked for Nelson Tyler who built some of the first gyro stabilized camera mounts famously used for the long shot of New York City that goes to the tight close up of Barbra Streisand on the bridge of a tugboat then goes back out, all without a break ( in the 1968 movie, "Funny Girl"). Tyler also designed and patented the Wet Bike used in 1977 movie, "The Spy Who Loved Me" and the 2nd type Rocket Belt used in the opening ceremony for the 1984 Summer Olympics. It seems 31 years later David Mayman flew the Jetpack they designed around the Statue of Liberty, and is now working on an electric-powered personal air vehicle described at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/15/jetpacks-jet-propulsion-flying-to-work
I did get to talk to Clay Lacy a few times, who told me he basically bought the whole Tyler Camera Mounts operation to keep the great team of people working together in (I assume the film industry), and related projects, as I saw in an air show at the old Norton AFB when it was still the home of the Aerospace Audiovisual Service (AAVS) was still the film library. It was there that I first saw the impressive Tyler Mount and got to talk to the junior enlisted operator that used it to film close trailing aircraft from the open cargo deck.
Otherwise, the people that I talked to in the industry seem to go along with what you think you know, while looking for ideas for movies (without revealing any classified information they may encounter. At least that was the impression from the way Clay Lacy responded to comments about Howard Hughes favorite movie, "Ice Station Zebra," which he participated in, and the real incident it was very loosely similar to.
Oddly enough, though I dislike AI, I find it a reasonable answer to the query for, "Best evidence of connections between earthquakes and oil drilling," it sounds a bit like the movie people getting ideas from what may be real conditions they can dramatize, but it does seem to explain periods of many quakes and reduction in quakes in later years.
I actually think the industry usually used a bit too much trial and error which I suspect was the case in the Fairfax District where they tried a bit too much artificial pressurization to stimulate more output. I suspect they have learned a bit better how to reduce the risks (which curiously might have led to a bigger problem when the orphan wells can create situation like the Aliso Canyon gas leak or the Hutchinson Kansas Yaggy underground storage field that leaked into empty brine caverns and salt wells
There are lots of hydrologic bones to pick in California for those who are interested. What is the dam that almost failed three years ago ? I forget. Hethetchi ? PG&E is in the process of decommissioning the Scott and Van Arsdale dams on the Eel River. The Scott sits on a fault zone. Both dams date from about 1906 and are no longer profitable to maintain. They should come down. When they are gone the Eel will once again be the longest river with unimpeded salmon runs in California. But water users in Mendocino County are not altogether happy about that happening since the Scott Dam includes a pipe that diverts tons of Eel River waters through a mountain in to the Russian River. Those who claim vested rights to that water feel the dam should be maintained for their benefit. But five years ago when the license expired, no one stepped forward wanting to renew it. At last report, I hear certain down state users were trying to get Reclamation to buy the dam and maintain it for their benefit. That of course is just the sort of thing that Trump would have Doug Burgum do.
I would also have a look at the Lewiston dam on the Trinity River. This earthen dam was completed in 1962. Approaching the end of its useful life, this is a Reclamation property. Though sold as a flood control dam, its primary purpose is and always has been to permit the diversion of Trinity River waters in to the Sacramento, to replace Sacramento waters channeled further south by means of the Central Valley Project. The Trinity is the main tributary of the Klamath.
I would also take a close look and the issued associated with the Sites Pump Storage project planned by Reclamation in "Antelope Valley" above Chico, which would draw wet season waters out of the Sacramento to redistribute or hold for later release, and Newsom's Delta Conveyance, a planned project to dig tunnels under San Francisco Bay to allow the diversion of more Sacramento waters south to west side San Joaquin irrigation districts. At last report the state Supreme Court has voided the bond issue needed for that monumental project to go ahead. There is you might say a lot of guess work associated with it. But one thing is sure. There would be no more salmon runs on the Sacramento River. Or Smelt. Or anything else. It would then be a dead river.
That of course is nothing like the calamity that would befall southern California were the Colorado River to run dry. But the solution is not to push northern waters south as far as they will go. Nor to allow the federal government to remain involved to any degree.
It's complex and there are competing interests like what I vaguely remember of the Twin Tunnels proposals that to me, claimed to divert water from the Bay Delta area for farmers in the Central Valley and populations in southern California, but seemed really was supported by the Western States Petroleum Association and most likely API (American Petroleum Institute as a way to get way more water down to where the expanding fracking operations wanted so much of it. I think they claimed they would clean it up and let it go to farmers and residents once they had used it and cleaned it after fracking use.
I remember Colorado's missteps with some dams trying to keep river levels high enough and allowing use for farming and sewage projects that had to return water properly cleaned up for down river use, balancing who could use how much in different seasonal windows, and recharging aquifers with a constant caution to make it sustainable for fish migration. The problem I hadn't thought about was poorly designed an operations that built up silt behind dams (compared to states that took care to carefully allow high water flows at certain times to effectively flush the silt out periodically. I'm way too much of an amateur but did find interesting info in Tershia d'Elgin's "The Man Who Thought He Owned Water." The first half of the book seemed even more interesting than James Michener's "Centennial" the fictional name based more on the history of Greely, Colorado, usually described as founded by Nathan Meeker as the leader of the Union Colony, now usually described as a "utopian society based on temperance , religion, agriculture, education and family values." Tershia's great-great grandfather, Ben Eaton, was one of the 16 pioneers identified in the capitol building whose knowledge and help in setting up irrigation ditches like he had learned from Spanish settlers south of there, helped make the "colony" get off to a sustainable start.
Tershia, though points out Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune who famously said "Go West young man, go West and grow up with the country," and Father Meeker ( the agricultural editor), were both high on "The Communist Manifesto" as published in 1848 and, to me, their idealistic version of a utopian society (to me not that different from kibbutz communities early in the new state of Israel). To me, it seemed such a group was beneficial in figuring out (with Ben Eaton's help and contracting services), how to cooperatively develop water resources that helped open up so much more agriculturally useful land.
The book is to me as an even better version of Michener's (historical fiction), and way better on the water issues and legal fights.
I most remember her description of whiskey being for drinking and water for fighting in some areas.
"Royalty payments" fraudulently withheld? There is a cause action in CA for "late discovered fraud" depending on the knowledge or lack thereof of Plaintiff(s) who suffered money damages.
I saw an excellent documentary about it on the History Channel years ago, before they stopped being a History Channel.
Deja vu. Now we have a rerun of the Gilded Age. But now the wealthy class has more technology to resist wage earners' efforts to restore balance. They have used money in politics to chip away, little by little, at fair elections.
What did they (history channel) become? I’ve noticed a change in YouTube today. I’ve used the channel almost exclusively to upload my musical compositions. Sometimes I search material I want to view. But the aggressive algorithms today try to entice you to watch essentially AI and totally false pieces designed to pull you in to watch endless made-up crap. It’s call manipulation and seduction. This is why I argue against allowing children to have access to cell devices at such young ages because they easily get pulled in and addicted. Schools have made profound mistakes allowing such devices to destroy natural learning abilities. We are two generations into this behavioral manipulation and it shows. The behavior of all humans is being modified for the worst. And now we have an epidemic of distracted driving and car crashes. I saw a kid on a motorbike at a stoplight holding a cell device. Ya baby.
People were not buying the old consumerism story of capitalism as much, so a new way to distract, mesmerize, and control the populations had to be created.
I’m distinctly an outsider. Sometimes to my chagrin. I don’t even take my cell device with me all the time. Fuck if someone wants me they can leave a message. I inadvertently ended a potential new relationship once at lunch when the woman dropped her cell device on the table. In my corney way, I remarked that I had better keep my sentences short and she asked why. I responded that as soon as her device goes off I will be stuck in mid sentence so she could answer. Later that evening over texts, she called me rude. We weren’t a good match.
I recently looked for The History Channel too. I couldn’t find it on my TV provider (if that’s what you even call it) so I downloaded the app. That helped but I wondered why it changed from what it was.
I did not know that the reservoir had become a "private club" for the super-wealthy, nor that so many dangerous changes had been made to the dam. It shifts my understanding of the story.
Oh I wish she was my Professor in school/college. I would have been A+++ in this, not that Im blaming my own past teachers, but still, having Professor HCR as your actual Professor is such a life value add.
Talia, I grew up in Pennsylvania, not far from Johnstown. The flood was always mentioned as a significant event in the state's history, but not once did I ever hear about how a bunch of rich bastards modified the dam for their convenience.
Apparently, they not only evaded legal and moral accountability for their self-centered irresponsibility, they erased their blameworthiness from the history books.
Good of Heather on this occasion to recall how the rich took care of themselves then -- and in about that same proportion endangered -- killed -- many (Heather cites 2,208). And got away with it, no blame on any of them.
But there's also a possible transition here -- to the current, demented criminal in the White House and his determination to stay in power -- and his build-up, too, of the police state to enable that.
I watched the several minute video of Ali Velshi being escorted away from that New Jersey hellhole ICE and CBP concentration camp for people of color – far away from it, totally out of sight of it, far, far away – by police: many, many police.
What monstrous tyranny are Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance, Todd Blanche, and their let’s-all-suck-up-to-him criminal Donald all doing to get apparently every bit of local law enforcement to join the mass and obvious police state thuggery?
The rich of the late 19th century got started on their Gilded Age. Criminal/rapist Donald has hardly gotten started. He knows the only way he can stay in power is by police state brutality in killing the November elections.
Against such worst-case, Chicken Little warnings of calamity everywhere stand legions of attorneys, civic groups, state Attorneys General, a rapidly crystallizing and energized political opposition, and the steady unraveling of his own coalition of the clueless, and a string of critical lawsuits he keeps losing — not to mention the Constitution itself.
Really, for once, wouldn’t it make sense to take stock of, and salute, all the forces working against all this, rather than endlessly repeat what all of us (save for a few truly lost trolls and souls) already know?
Spot on ICTT. As I have posted & reposted on LFAA recently, 22 Attorney Generals across the Unites States have filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts now pending that will halt any type of effort to stop voters from Voting Early & Voting-by-Mail.
See, CA, MA, CO, NY & other states versus Donald J. Tump. Case No. 1:25-cv-10820. 2026.
Not to mention those Attorneys General who have already promised to arrest anyone from ICE, Homeland Security, Proud Boys, or anybody else trying to intimidate or harass voters exercising their state Constitution-enforced rights to free and fair elections.
Good morning, ICTT. Yesterday after the DFL (Democratic Farmer-Labor Party) in Minnesota endorsed our current, excellent Atty Gen, Keith Ellison, to run for re-election, his Republican opponent was on the radio attempting to trash Ellison for exactly the lawsuits you mention, Bryan––filed in Massachusetts and elsewhere because lawsuits should be filed in Minnesota. The Republican reasoning? Ellison should be focused on fraud in Minnesota. (Note: many people who participated in the infamous fraud cases here have been convicted and sentenced... not as if no one was doing something about it.)
The truth is that, along with other AGs, Ellison IS dealing with fraud because the lawsuits are aimed at much, much bigger fraud than is happening in any one state. The Big Fraud is international: the kind that is oozing out of Washington DC and flooding us all with damage resulting when funds are cut to national parks and foreign aid and rural hospitals and environmental regulation and and and...
Now we are going to watch how the campaigns unfold with avanlanches of maddening lies. Ellison and the other AGs are throwing life jackets to the rest of us by taking on the Big Fraud.
Yes, and ... (I learned to use that phase instead of No, but...), again what concerns me is ICE, HLS, etc can out number city & state law enforcement. Didn't ICE agents out numbered Minneapolis police 2-1 maybe more. I'll bet a plate lunch that Sideshow don & kegseth will federalizing all blue state National Guards in October for some bogus. I need to do more volunteer shifts at the humane society & walk dogs so I can temper my dark outlook.
The blue state AGs are doing what they can and must to preserve the vote. But I do not think they are under any illusion that there is no chance that SCOTUS will rule against them, no matter what most of us would see as a plain reading of statutes and the Constitution.
We can't give up and obey in advance, but neither can we whistle past the graveyard, pretending we don't see the possible outcomes.
If you want to protect your vote in case Trump and his minions play last-minute games about the ID you need to vote in person, (because there may be a surprise about not allowing vote by mail in some states,) be sure you have proof of citizenship ready. A US passport or raised seal birth certificate with a name that matches what is on your voter registration will suffice, or if you are in 5 northern border states, a version of Real ID with citizenship status indicated (not just a Real ID star). If you changed your name for any reason, get your legal name change paperwork in order as well. I have heard from several people that copies of birth certificates from red states are taking months to obtain.
The reason I’m skeptical is my state’s attorney general VOLUNTARILY handed over the state’s voter database as soon as it was demanded. I think TN, run by total fanboys for Trump, would obediently close every other polling place if he told them to.
I suppose both positions (Phil B and ICCT) have merit. HCR shows us how history eerily parallels our experiences today, and there is a definite pattern of the rich making poor decisions that others pay for with their lives, and said rich are not held accountable. And yes, there is also still cause for hope and that cause is born of ACTION, not just by the attorneys, but by We The People.
You cavil at the daring to "endlessly repeat what all of us . . . already know."
Hate to break it to you, ICTT, but those voting for the criminal, rapist, fraud, friend to dictators, and till now successful organizer of police state U.S.A. actually outnumbered "all of us" in the last national election.
It’s complicated, but add to this the non-voter who refused to see the danger ahead & sealed the fate of the nation in 2024. The MAGA would’ve been defeated if more of them had realized their inaction and showed up.
And why, in your opinion, might so many millions of Americans so given the pass of indifference to the ever on center stage fat slob ever pussy-grabbing, serial lying, smearing fellow Americans, eminently violating the Constitution's emoluments clause, befriending only dictators, oligarchs, and similarly cynical U.S. billionaires?
Phil, still scratching my head over that. Disengaged? Pandemic fatigue? And another thing , as a 1st generation Italian American , I am so pissed off to see these third and fourth generation descendants of their immigrant ancestors flit around the mob boss in chief, lapping up all of the anti-immigrant tropes like buttered pastene.
When Trump blathers on about something the chances of it ever happening are almost nil.
Everyday the war with Iran is over except that it's not is it.
Yesterday Chevron and Exxon-Mobil issued warnings about the world's oil supply being dangerously low.
Ukraine has forced Russia to cap dozens of wells because of damage to storage fields, pipelines, refineries, etc. There is a 4 gallon a week rationing of gasoline in Crimea. Airlines are canceling flights in dozens of countries due to the jet fuel shortage.
The spot price of oil may be around $90 a barrel, but those are futures' prices. By the time of delivery, that price has been jumping as high as $150/barrel and sometimes deliveries are canceled altogether.
Anyone that thinks things are normal in the fossil fuel world, are listening to Trump and the MSM. Bigly sad.
Virtually everyone reading this Newsletter knows exactly what you’re going to say even before you get three words out. It never changes. You’re not exactly preaching to the heathen here…
ICTT, I was hoping HCR would speak to the protests in NJ today so when she didn’t, I hoped the comments would bring it up. Phil Balla is the first to speak of them in the comments. Phil’s comments are valued here but for some reason you always seek them out and single them out with criticism.. and not constructive criticism. No, not everyone knows what Phil will say in their first 3 words. Not at all. I find your comments to Phil like school yard behavior. I’ve been watching from afar and cannot figure out why you want to single Phil out in particular, and always with the same vague criticism that has nothing to do with their argument. Let’s remember we are all on the same side here.. we might not all agree all the time, and that can lead to constructive discussions, but let’s not single out one person over and over.
Visiting family who have a TV, I've seen, this week, what MSM offers. It's mind-numbing. Banners of text can parade by below images flashing too fast to connect how they're related. To me it's a setup for dissociation and looking without seeing or making meaning. This has become a norm.
Oh, that’s me. Pollyanna to the core. You figured it all out. So smart. Couldn’t be more naive if I were little Bo-Peep herself. It’s so obvious-like… 😜
Are you sure? I’m not convinced. I think Elon rigged the machines to make it possible that Donnie didn’t win. People in upstate New York voted for Harris and their votes never recorded as such. When the results were posted, these voters asked where their votes were?
If he did it once , he did it in more places. Trump has eluded to Musk ‘getting’ him states he wasn’t expecting to get.
The Secretaries of State are also energized to provide safe and fair elections. Blue and Red state SOSs are in constant contact with each other to make sure of this.
Yes and WE, THE PEOPLE must be prepared to do our part. We can no longer hope that others can do this alone. “Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country.“
Correct. Democracy (America) is not a spectator sport. Everyone can do something that will help. We are all part of the forces working against the Epstein class so get up and get going.
The Johnstown Flood of 1889, as Heather recounts, is more than a historical tragedy. It is a warning about what happens when private privilege is allowed to override public safety. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club altered a dam for the comfort and leisure of the wealthy, ignored repeated warnings, and left working families downstream to face the consequences. When the dam failed, more than 2,200 people died.
The story is not only about water. It is about power. The men who benefited from the dam’s neglect escaped meaningful legal accountability. Their wealth, lawyers, and social standing protected them from the consequences that ordinary people could not avoid. Clara Barton and the American Red Cross brought vital relief, but charity after catastrophe could not correct the injustice that helped create it. Mercy matters, but it cannot replace responsibility.
For Americans today, Johnstown still speaks. Climate vulnerability, unsafe infrastructure, corporate negligence, and political capture often follow the same pattern: those with the most power make the decisions, while those with the least power absorb the risk. Just as in Johnstown, danger is too often pushed downhill.
A healthy democracy cannot tolerate a system in which wealth privatizes pleasure, socializes harm, and then hides behind influence when lives are lost. Public safety requires more than sympathy after the damage is done. It requires regulation, vigilance, accountability, and a moral insistence that human life must never be treated as collateral for elite convenience.
History’s warning is clear: catastrophes often begin long before the visible collapse. They begin when power is trusted without responsibility.
So well and eloquently stated, Michael! Power and money corrupt. Those wealthy men had lost all morals, compassion and humanity. They could have provided restitution but they had already sold their souls.
The history of private fishing and or hunting clubs is fascinating and telling. They were before the 1950’s country club motif and still continue on. Jeyckll Island and its millionaire club helped establish I think the FDC. It continues on to this day in the travel of SCOTUS members and also with the likes of Leonard Leo. And the concept of private lodges is so so colonialism 101. It happened back in Ireland when in the famine people heard a lodge was giving out food. Nope just a terrible rumor . This is an old and ancient patriarchy playbook. No voices of the wives -were they even there? No voices of the servants and cooks likely more female than not. One could do a mapping projects of what the current locations of the exclusive lodges and clubs locations are. This was part of the problem of the environmental movement at times it caters to the elite. They want their lands pristine but not for the rest and especially not for any othered group. Scrooge ‘s philosophy .
Trump’s sinister, but obvious, plan is to use this $1.8 billion slush fund plus the promise of pardons to pay his January 6 insurrectionists to create all kinds of violent chaos surrounding the midterms in order to sufficiently derail the democratic process so that he will be able to declare them invalid and declare martial law, etc etc. The question is, will the American people allow it? If they’re pissed off enough about the economy, maybe not..
Oh this is a perfect shirt for Tad Stoermer’s article this morning. Sometimes his articles are behind a paywall, not sure this one is.. either way subscription is worth it.
And now he's calling for a great MAGA rally to replace the Freedom 250 concerts which performers are baling on. A huge MAGA rally...what could possible go wrong.
How about filling that so-called MAGA rally with Americans who are fed up with high prices for gas, food, housing, healthcare, and education. Boo the crap out of Trump, peacefully. If/when the MAGA thugs attack, assume non-violent postures. Get it all onto social media. Show the world what MAGA really means. Show the world there are still Americans who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law.
He'll be coming for you, taking you to a nice free spot on the cement. A few worms in the food (if you're lucky enough to get any) won't hurt. It's protein. Stay hydrated. The toilet's over there.
Did you say you LOVE Trump? Our mistake. You'll figure it out, or not.
He's coming, full speed, for those "commie" liberals.
As a toddler military dependent in Germany from late 1947 to 1950, I lived about 15 miles south of Dachau. My parents visited it and showed us pictures when we were old enough. I knew it had been a former munitions factory but The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum adds much more (it seems the Trump administration would want to erase), at https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/dachau
"...Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos). The perpetrators used these locations for a range of purposes. These purposes included forced labor, detention of people deemed to be "enemies of the state," and mass murder. Millions of people suffered and died or were killed. Among these sites was Dachau, the longest operating camp.
Established in March 1933, Dachau was the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazi government.
Dachau became a model for all later concentration camps and served as a training center for SS concentration camp guards.
The number of prisoners incarcerated in Dachau between 1933 and 1945 exceeded 200,000. Scholars believe that at least 40,000 prisoners died there..."
He def won’t stop. But why warehouses? Because his billionaire friends are sitting with warehouses in their possession that they can’t sell. So, why not use taxpayer money to purchase them and then make them into concentration camps!? Billionaires get to offload some real estate they can’t sell and the government gets to make horrid conditions to falsely imprison people.
This is the post that Heather provides when the overwhelming success of Donald Trump cannot be dinged at all. I’m surprised she didn’t talk more about the Lakota Indians all over again or maybe Abraham Lincoln war the day before he died or any other very important items so she doesn’t have to talk about how successful and incredibly successful. Donald Trump is almost every day. And here’s the best part wait till everybody here actually goes to Washington DC and you don’t have preconceived notions about who the author or the architect was of the sites you’re gonna be absolutely floored and delighted and proud of Washington DC. Unless your sickness overwhelmed your common sense.
A cautionary tale about privatization. A public facility, built with reasonable safeguards, sold off, when obsolete for the design purpose, to private interests who strip infrastructure for scrap and make modifications without regard to downstream safety and interests.
I needed Heather to give me the history behind the Johnstown Flood. The words "Johnstown Flood" were familiar to me, but not the story, not the culpability of a specific group of rich, greedy, uncaring men. Maybe I'd learned the specifics in school, but if I did, I'm guessing that they were not presented with the sense of growing horror that Heather conveyed as she retold the story. Unfortunately, we need to keep repeating stories like this that warn us of the possible perils growing in our midst so that we can find ways to combat them before they destroy us..
Sorry, Betsy...i wasn't talking about that...look at Ralph's comment and you'll understand...I'm just too tired to explain right now...(i was talking about the '1%'/ the rich...). And I don't know if it's just me now (I've been awake for 24 hours and just about to sleep), or HCRs letter was repeated twice?
Hope you got some sleep. Heather posted pretty late, and I stopped reading the comments when people started blaming her for posting the beginning twice. All of us who rely on her need to cut her some slack when, like many of us, she's working on not enough sleep...
and i THINK H has a better sense of humor than some of us...she, HOPEfully, understands i'm just teasing...AND...whether some of you want to hear this or NOT...i'm fairly sure SHE doesn't read our posts...she has a few people that DO and they relay whatever might be important...and i don't qualify...
when i'm really BLAming someone for something? they and you and people for miles around will know it...you can bank on that...
AND...i've said here a NUMber of times...blame is not a solution...
appreciate your concern for H, though...really and truly...she IS a precious and rare commodity...i'm glad so many here understand that...
The first part was, but then I've done the same a few times when trying to write lessons plans for a course that was already near half way through the quarter.
Need? I don’t need any of this. I wish I could find a way to ignore it all and live in blissful ignorance. I used to be able to, with chemical help, but sobriety requires I look at the world as it is, not as I’d like it to be. HCR’s letters, and this forum, are most helpful in that endeavor.
I said to a friend the other day Ralph, I can't believe I still haven't picked up a drink. It's been 38 years and I refuse to let this slob take my sobriety from me too.
in the same LETter? maybe i'm the only one who got the same information twice in the same letter...if not...i guess the drugs finally kicked in...damn. 55 years later? musta said 'long acting' on the capsule in fine print.
in the same LETter? maybe i'm the only one who got the same information twice in the same letter...if not...i guess the drugs finally kicked in...damn. 55 years later? musta said 'long acting' on the capsule in fine print.
in the same LETter? maybe i'm the only one who got the same information twice in the same letter...if not...i guess the drugs finally kicked in...damn. 55 years later? musta said 'long acting' on the capsule in fine print.
From this calamity, Clara Barton and the Red Cross learned how to respond to natural disasters. At some point this knowledge, refined and honed, would form the eventual basis for the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), which has managed to save millions of lives over decades.
Until one day, a moron decided to use FEMA to promote himself, reward his friends, and attack his enemies, rather than prepare the country for future calamities set to come as ocean levels rise, climate shifts and natural defenses further weaken and erode. All while his mentally unbalanced Secretary for Health and Human Services would start dismantling the very health infrastructure that had permitted the country to respond to natural (or manmade) health disasters with speed and focus.
And here we are, now facing a strain of Ebola for which no medical treatment is available, in a world where boundaries between counties, states and entire nations often rapidly disappear, like a raging flood sweeping the guilty, the innocent, the unprepared, the negligent and the truly evil right along with it.
All this only about 3-4 years after the greatest pandemic the world has known since the Spanish Flu took over one million American lives, the majority of whom refused to take seriously what was occurring because that very same moron kept insisting that viruses were just a Chinese hoax.
And in his first term he discarded the material about pandemics the Obama administration had left him (after all, it came from the hated Obama) and look how we suffered during Covid. And look how he preened and pronounced stupid remedies he read on the Internet. And how he at first refused to allow sick Americans to disembark a ship because it would make the “numbers’ higher. And then when he caught covid, he was treated to the best medical care to be had because he was president.
I keep wondering how those around him, including Congress members, think THEY and their loved ones (assuming they love anyone but themselves and reelection) will be served by a decision maker who cares nothing about them (look at his support for hanging Pence). These people have an exceptionalism complex.
Thank you, once again, for bringing history alive and making it relevant to today's issues. Your writing weaves an important fabric that binds and enlightens today's Americans to their history and heritage. You are a treasure.
As the descendant of immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania, the Johnstown flood story was a part of my upbringing and I cannot believe that my fellow Pennsylvanians voted for Trump. They clearly didn't understand the flood and why it happened. Living along the Delaware River in my 30s and 40s, I experienced less devastating floods because of overdevelopment and hubris. Who cares what happens downstream as long as we have a nice McMansion here? /s
This leads me to a staunch belief that land should never be in private hands. If the government owned all the land in the country and citizens and companies merely rented it, they could control what was done with it. Preventing the removal of the flood mitigation devices would have saved countless lives in Johnstown. No one should have the right to do with "their land" what will affect others nearby. The US is wrong in its flight from regulation. It needs harsher regulation. It needs more environmental protections. It needs a view to the future, not a bratty, childish "you can't tell me what to do with MY land!" attitude.
I live in the Netherlands now where flood mitigation is a cutural imperative. Matter of fact the elections that every person living in the country for at least 90 days, regardless of status, can vote in are the Water Board elections because management of the waterways in a country mostly below sea level is the more important than anything else. There is, of course, private ownership of land in the Netherlands. But no one dares go against the rule of the Water Board or we will all perish beneath the waves.
It's time the United States realised its blind dedication to "Individual Freedom" runs contrary to the survival of its people.
This only works if the government has the best interests of the people at heart. I shudder to think of what would happen if our current administration had sole authority over the usage of land.
Yes, of course, Mary. I am treating the current "government" as a mass delusion that will be over soon and that we will work hard to prevent in the future.
Although one could argue that, with what they are doing to our national parks and the lands and buildings in DC, they already think they have sole authority over use of our land, and the court cases are beginning to rein that in.
Having lived and owned businesses in both places, it is amazing what you don't miss in Europe. You can do all the same things and succeed. But if you mess up, you don't die because of it. Learning to fly is so much easier when you know there's a net to catch you if you slip.
But here Kass, since having a net to catch you if you fall cost money coming from our taxes, the richest percentage of the population rather save that money for themselves .
Which is why you need a paradigm shift. (And a return to the taxation scheme that existed when we were the most prosperous country in the world.) The US has got to wake up to the fact that it isn't the 19th century where you have your 40 acres and a mule and you eek out what you can. (And if you fail, you starve.) I mean, that wasn't even the case back then. We need a new National Myth! We pay taxes to a government to protect us. That never means just military protection. That means environmental protects and health protections and financial protections. The US operates on this myth that you can not pay taxes and take care of everything yourself, but no one is out there building roads and electricity grids by themselves. The Tennessee Valley would still not have electricity if it wasn't for the TVA doing what no company would have chosen. This paradign shift could be accomplished with teaching children how our country truly made advances, not this lone wolf cowboy rhetoric.
That would require a serious investment in education. I'm not suggesting that everyone should invest in a college education.
I'm an old woman. I grew up in the 50's and 60's. I spent untold parent-teacher conferences disgusted with teachers' telling me that phonics was old fashioned while raising my son. I taught him at home.
Could any kid, now, diagram a sentence?
We took Latin in high school. What a splendid way to parse French, Italian and Spanish.
We had to read whole books and write original book reports (by hand not computer.} Penmanship, I can't go on.
I really sound like a cranky old lady.
My grandkids, raised by two people with advanced degrees, don't read books. Their school system is rated very highly in our state.
Yes, teaching critical thinking is important, but give the poor kids a decent base.
Ask for an increase in school funding? So many exhausted and broke parents say, "No".
This needs to come from the top.
That's you, Trump, the non-reader.
I know, you love the uneducated, so easy to manipulate.
Be a mensch. Care enough for your citizens.
Give them universal healthcare, too.
Be an example, not a bully.
Whew! Got that out.
Time for a snooze.
Don't waste your time reading this. It was a mental health exercise.
"This leads me to a staunch belief that land should never be in private hands."
Kass, you may already know fellow Pennsylvanian Henry George and his advocacy of a single tax and reform of land ownership. See Progress and Poverty, which helped usher in the Progressive Era.
A little known, nowadays, but very influential figure in the beginnings of the Progressive Movement. His writings in Progress and Poverty were widely read at that time. Some of his economic policy ideas are still relevant even yet.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is my model of rational large scale socially beneficial government action. It covered an 8 state area, making major rivers navigable with low dams and locks, massively reduced dangerous flooding that took lives and ruined farm land with the higher dams that made more power, provided predictable water supplies, and could have water levels lowered to absorb heavier rains in the old climate conditions they were designed for. Better weather prediction capability and climate science has partially enabled better adaptation but is not being maintained to the best standards we already know to use. The cutbacks in weather balloon sites reduces data from hard to measure sections of the atmosphere by any other means which noticeably reduced early warnings for tornadoes. Out of a bit of curiosity I looked at sondehub.org to see the relative numbers of balloons being used here and in Europe. To me, the cutbacks are like a child covering their eyes to avoid seeing anything that might frighten them. We need to take the blinders off those we depend upon to see things for us.
Kass, I can't agree with you. I now own my home outright, but I was a tenant for most of my life. As a tenant, I never had the security or certainty that I would have a home, even though I always paid my rent on time. I never knew for sure that my monthly rent would remain the same. I didn't even have the assurance that my landlord would always be my landlord. S/he could sell the property at any time and my new landlord might be horrible. As a tenant, I never had the freedom to personalize my home in a way that made me comfortable and happy. Any modifications I made had to be "undoable" at the time I moved out.
Real property ownership is the single most reliable way that one can build personal wealth, and even that is no guarantee. My Edmond, OK, home lost two-thirds of its value when Penn Square Bank collapsed and shattered the Oklahoma City metro economy.
However ... if your model were to work, then I would suggest that the Indigenous Peoples who possessed the North American Continent for millennia would be the only legitimate and qualified people to manage our resources. After all, they lived here for thousands of years and didn't screw it up.
What an horrific story of greed, hubris and carnage. How we go round and round in history repeating mistakes of the past ad nauseum. I’ve been thinking about the current state of our infrastructure and wondering how soon there will be another historic devastating event with those responsible excusing themselves from culpability. It seems inevitable, given the current situation, doesn’t it? Thank you Heather for your coverage of the past and the present.
As an Irish Come From Away I cannot understand how come brilliant Americans are not launching class action suits against Peter Thiele and Elon Musk. These South African white supremacists with NAZI Canadian roots break every law seemingly with complete impunity.
What is stopping Americans for suing them for all their many breaches of privacy ?
Frances, I think one explanation for the absence of class action lawsuits is that in order to establish legal standing as a class, harm must be demonstrated. Harm resulting from theft of personal information is difficult to detect, much less, demonstrate, especially when the theft was by a "government agency." Nobody knows whose information was taken, where it now resides, and what is being done with it.
The actual act of identity theft may or may not be a felony, depending on the jurisdiction where the theft happened. How the crime is classified depends mostly on what the thief does with the stolen information, and the degree of harm caused. Someone who cashes a check for less than $500 using a stolen driver's license will likely be charged with a misdemeanor.
Theft of large amounts of personal data from a server would be charged as a felony, but prosecution can take place only if the thief(ves) are identified and apprehended. Detection is almost impossible unless the stolen data is posted on the "dark web" or used to commit some kind of fraud. In that case, the crime would be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Obviously the current DOJ is not going to prosecute Thiel, Musk et al because 1. the current DOJ is corrupt, and 2. the DOJ would claim that Musk et al were acting as government contractors, so immune from federal prosecution.
This is entirely different from a civil class action lawsuit, which again, would have to show harm to establish standing as a class.
As soon as I read the introductory sentence, I knew where this was going. David McCullough's *The Johnstown Flood* was the first history book I bought that was not assigned. I was 16 when it was published, and I wanted to own it. It cost a lot of babysitting, but money well spent - I still have it.
Twenty years ago my British husband, an architect, proposed a trip to Wright's Falling Water. I agreed, as long as we included a visit to Johnstown.
It's clear the place never recovered. There was a fine museum created in a building that survived the flood. What I found especially telling, though, was the site of the South Fork club itself.
There was no lake, just a stream running across the old lake bed. Some of the "cottages" were still there, most converted into multi-family dwellings.
The truly haunting part was the remains of the dam itself. We could clearly see where it had broken loose. The sides were softened through the century-plus of weather and overgrowth, but still steep and angled.
McCullough covered the negligence of the wealthy industrialists - the "robber barons" of the Golden Age - and described how they were never held to account.
When Trump says we are living in America's Second Golden Age I often think of Johnstown.
Great bit of history given much fuller and fairer treatment than I ever heard in school. So many “natural” disasters have human greed at their heart. And greed left unregulated, then and now, is a massively destructive force.
Not to me. I started my law enforcement career working in our local jail for 18 months in 1985-1986. It was 2013 before I heard of "for profit" jails, prisons, and facilities. OMFG.
As to Trump’s bogus IRS suit and the “settlement”……EVERYONE with a working brain (or even half of a working brain) KNOWS that Trump and Blanche colluded and committed FRAUD!
They should both be charged with criminal fraud, be tried, be convicted and be put in PRISON.
The United States infrastructure is aged a decrepit. The flooding in Texas that killed young campers because the inadequate warning system that was actually funded is an example similar to this historical tragedy. The continuing flooding and storm issues that are happening in our Midwest are only news tragedies that we watch on the current weather. The Trump administration disabled two weather satellites when they took office. It is only a matter of time until a truly devastating issue arrives. SMH.
which goes into great and fascinating detail about the people living in Johnstown on that day and the devastation caused by the carelessness which allowed the failure of the dam. It’s well worth your time.
As one other comment noted, Clara Barton and the Red Cross were called out to help with the relief at Johnstown.
Barton didn't write much about her work in the Civil War aside from letters, her occasional diary, and the speeches she gave after the war, mainly about Andersonville.
However, she wrote a short book on the early responses of the Red Cross: "A Story of the Red Cross: Glimpses of Field Work."
In Chapter IV, she writes about leaving a flooded city of Washington to go to Johnstown. She describes the relief efforts, noting that the efforts of the Red Cross were just one part of the American response. She also notes that the Red Cross was so new, the Commander in charge didn't know what to do.
"I shall never lose the memory of my first walk on the first day—the wading in mud, the climbing over broken engines, cars, heaps of iron rollers, broken timbers, wrecks of houses; bent railway tracks tangled with piles of iron wire; bands of workmen, squads of military, and getting around the bodies of dead animals, and often people being borne away; the smouldering fires and drizzling rain—all for the purpose of officially announcing to the commanding general (for the place was under martial law) that the Red Cross had arrived in the field. I could not have puzzled General Hastings more if I had addressed him in Chinese; and if ours had been truly an Oriental mission, the gallant soldier could not have been more courteous and kind. He immediately set about devising means for making as comfortable as possible a "poor, lone woman," helpless, of course, upon such a field. It was with considerable difficulty that I could convince him that the Red Cross had a way of taking care of itself at least, and was not likely to suffer from neglect.
"Not a business house or bank left, the safes all in the bottom of the river; our little pocketbook was useless, there was nothing
to buy, and it would not bring back the dead. With the shelter of the tents of the Philadelphia Red Cross, that joined us en route with supplies, when we could find a cleared place to spread, or soil to hold them, with a dry-goods box for a desk, our stenographer commenced to rescue the first dispatches of any description that entered that desolate city. The disturbed rivers lapped wearily back and forth, the people, dazed and dumb, dug in the muddy banks for their dead. Hastings with his little
army of militia kept order. Soon supplies commenced to pour in from everywhere. . . .
"But I am not here to describe Johnstown—the noble help that came to it, nor the still more noble people that received it—but
simply to say that the little untried and unskilled Red Cross played its minor tune of a single fife among the grand chorus of relief of the whole country, that rose like an anthem, till over four millions in money, contributed to its main body of relief, with the he faithful Kreamer at its head, had modestly taken the place of the twelve millions destroyed. But after all it was largely the supplies that saved the people at first, as it always is, and the distribution of which largely consumed the money that was
contributed later." p. 17
She writes more about her stay there to rebuild the area. If you'd like to read the chapter, or the book, it's available online. Her prose is articulate and engaging, at times poetic. It's worth the read.
Daniel Morrell, founder of the local steelworks near Pittsburgh, recognized the vulnerability of Johnstown. Most of downtown Johnstown’s business, industrial, and residential areas were built on the floodplain. Flooding was almost a seasonal occurrence. Morrell worried about the condition of the dam. He hired an engineer and geologist to report on the problems. Morrell offered to contribute to proper repairs, but his suggestions were rebuffed by the Club, now aware of the dangers but seemingly unconcerned.
To me, a Pennsylvanian, the Great Johnstown Flood is a cautionary tail. Look at our corporate titans today and their symbiotic relationship with the Trump regime. My fear is that none of them will pay for the damage they have inflicted.
Thank you, Heather, for letting your large audience know about this terrible occurrence in our history.
Amazing story. I had known about the Johnstown flood since childhood, but no one had ever explained how it happened, not even in school.
It reminds me of data centers now. They will benefit the rich owners of these companies while causing mass suffering (and likely pre-mature deaths) for those "down stream".
Or perhaps the white christian nationalists that penalize mothers for having complications from miscarriages and allowing them to die because the medical personnel is too afraid to provide care.
Hard to believe, but I know this has happened. Do you have any specific examples?
A good search engine can be your friend. I did the heavy lifting for you:
https://thegepi.org/maternal-mortality-abortion-bans/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/23/health/abortion-bans-deaths-research-propublica/
https://www.prb.org/news/abortion-bans-linked-to-sharp-rise-in-sepsis-infant-death-and-maternal-mortality-new-research-shows/
Ally, thank you. Hard to believe there is anyone in America who doesn’t know what Dobbs has done. And the implications for every American woman and for every taker of the Hippocratic Oath.
This is why I expected women nation wide in 2024 to vote for politicians that would strive to restore the rights women lost in the Dobbs decision.
It still baffles me that they didn't vote to end their second class citizenship. Think of how much better off we all would be if they had voted in their own best interests.
That decision was the worst for women! We fought so hard in the 70’s for abortion to be recognized as a major health issue.
An awful lot that's gone on the past 20 and more years - just mystifies the hell out of me; The sheltered awareness, especially of the plight of 'others' continues to just gobsmack me - even.. within here, this community, sad to say. I find that I wonder (perhaps even worry.. ) if I and some handfuls of others are just 'too' sensitive and aware. Some of my nature I understand, as just 'is what it is' or just how i am; Endlessly curious and a voracious reader... Meh; whatever.
We need a new symbol for broken hearts on Substack.
💔
June 24 is the anniversary of Dobbs. I am organizing a rally in Chapel Hill, NC to reveal the continuing harm to women of this decision. (Wouldn't it be great if others did this?) I am leaning into my own research and observations,but I would like to add what you have shared to my list. Please let me know if you have any objections. Gerrie Richards (nowchapelhill@gmail.com)
Please do!! No objections at all.
Thank you, Ally. This joins the already massive list of devastations in the last year and a half needing reversal. We certainly have our work cut out as we head for the 500 year mark.
Thanks Ally; Your patience is an inspiration for me - as usual. Brava sis.
Here is an example: https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-miscarriage-texas-abortion-ban
ProPublica is a wonderful resource for just about anything! I read that story and others a while back and was horrified. It’s torture and cruelty.
Google: “ ProPublica’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series, "Life of the Mother," has documented at least seven individual cases where pregnant women died after being unable to access standard, timely reproductive healthcare due to state abortion restrictions. Additionally, ProPublica's empirical data analysis uncovered a spike in life-threatening medical emergencies. This includes a 50% increase in the sepsis rate for second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations and a 54% surge in blood transfusions for first-trimester miscarriages in Texas after strict bans took effect.”
Thank you for the source. All documentation will help US impeach SCOTUS members who voted for Dobbs.
Ah... Now reading further, I see our good Ally has provided; Thanks Ally ~
There are countless examples to be had Alan; You need only have the interest and search effort to 'turn the rocks over.' I'm a tad surprised that you would pose the 'ask' for proof.
Three women with problem pregnancies died by bleeding to death in Texas in late 2024 and early 2025 because the doctors were afraid of being imprisoned if they performed an abortion, even one to same the women's lives. Here's my message to the white Christian nationalists: All life on earth (plants, animals, insects) share the same DNA, going back 3.5 billion years to LUCA. There never was a Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. There is no such thing as a soul. When we die, we're dead and down the road, in a few billion years, the sun will envelope earth and burn it to crisp. Develop some critical thinking skills.
Also the fracking going on in PA.
Causing groundwater contamination as well as earthquakes. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-06129-3, https://www.gwpc.org/topics/hydraulic-fracturing/hydraulic-fracturing-induced-seismicity/
This is a sharp analogy. In other words:
* Too much critical capacity concentrated behind one wall
* Combined with overconfidence in safeguards
That could apply not just to data centers, but also:
* Power grids
* Financial systems
* Supply chains
* Public Health
All involve complex, human-built systems where ignored risks + concentrated capacity + cascading failure can produce consequences far beyond what designers anticipated.
One lesson I learned in my career was that risk accumulates silently in all complex systems and the right trigger at the wrong time can release it all at once.
Of course, as your analogy shows, this risk isn’t limited to physical danger. It could be the 2008 financial crisis. Or a severe disruption to industry or the economy generally if a hyperscale data center fails. Or a pandemic, where we have inept clowns running public Health services and a skeptical public.
The most perceptive overview of the cascading inevitabilities.
Tom, or an energy crisis caused by death star's foolish war with Iran and bottleneck now at the Strait of Hormuz. I recently read an essay on what could happen with this.
Heads of major oil companies are stating that we are weeks away from the artificial lowering of oil costs, through the use of oil reserves, expiring. When those reserves are depleted, the massive disruption in supply will be felt across the world, and prices are going to skyrocket. 150-175$ per barrel are likely. We may be seeing $10 per gallon average, and up to $15 in CA, where I live.
Just in time for summer, when demand is always high.
Thomas, the essay I read talks about this and all the things that we use oil for. It is not pretty.
Another one, Michele, should grab you. Maybe it's the same one that you read. Daniel Byman, writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), walks us through the pitfalls of tRump's ill-conceived plans. Actors concerning this crisis (and if not a crisis now, it will be in short time), revolve chiefly around China and tRump, not tRump and Iran and its leadership, as some may surmise. Of course, we should not discount Israel as the wild card in all of this. Those stupid f*&ks will do anything to get their way regardless of the missile pounding they've received. tRump's bluffs and his going back and forth, clearly is not impressing anyone: translation? He hasn't a clue as to what he is doing. And that can be the most dangerous part for us, in the US, and the rest of the world. Make no mistake, tRump is working to alleviate the pressure and shift the focus on anyone other than him (as you and everyone reading HCR already knows.) My suspicion is that Netanyahu, for which I have some grudging respect, far more than for tRump (for which I have absolutely no respect), may well see a stab in the back to Netanyahu's wish for dominance in this region. tRump clearly has overplayed his hand, and with idiot sycophants like Hegseth and Rubio, he feels invincible. That, of course, is going to change soon.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/irans-strait-hormuz-gambit-and-limits-us-military-power
Thomas, I don't discount what you're saying, but it could also be manipulation by major oil to justify raising prices. Sadly, I never expect big business to act in OUR best interest.
I have read, in more than one place, that the majority of the oil in the reserves has been for export. This only makes sense, since Big Oil wants the highest price for their product. They do not have loyalty to one nation. While I understand it on one level, I also think that a windfall profits tax should be applied to all of them.
That scenario will result in a massive economic depression. This could happen because we have very stupid people heading our government. "The inmates are now in control of the asylum." It's analogous to turning over the flight controls of a Boeing 747 in flight to a complete novice
You left out the political system.
It seems like all of the supposed guardrails in the system depended on the integrity and character of the people who hold power.
Even if there are legal safeguards, a lot of damage has been done before the courts can rule. And today there is a good possibility that the corrupt right-wing Justices on the Supreme Court will betray the Constitution and the people to give the Executive Branch unlimited power contrary to way our system was designed to be as laid out in our Constitution.
"A good possibility that they will betray the Constitution?" Whatever is now left of the Constitution, it's a certainty that they will trash it so that we can have a Christian theocracy. These people are religious ideologues.
Importantly, no accountability, no justice. The powerful become moreso, the rest are at their mercy.
A fascinating story.
Amazing how the more things change the more they stay the same.
Thank you Rex, for reminding us of the maniacal influence of Big Oil .
Yes! In fact, as I read your description I actually thought of the Titanic. Why is it that we humans keep making the same mistakes over and over again?
Choke points. Like the Strait of Hormuz.
Absolutely. Good insight. That's exactly what his happening here in Southern New Mexico with Project Jupiter.
Absolutely. Stopping these data centers should be one of our top priorities. Not only for the environmental impacts but also they are going to be personal data collection centers on us. They will work with companies like Flock cameras and Palantir to watch everything we do. Mass surveillance. What we write, what we look at, what we buy, how we drive... it sounds crazy but this is what they are preparing for and not enough people are aware. The Trump administration is adding language to make it a crime to speak out against these data centers. Bernie Sanders is the only one that I hear sounding the alarm. We need to paying attention now.
And AOC. With Bernie.
The DOJ has demanded info from Social Media on posters who don't share their fascist sensibilities.
It's one thing to be on a substack. It's an entireley different matter to be on X. for the life of me I can't understand how so many otherwise progressive types still use it.
Remember when Republicans worried about mass surveillance?
Superior empirical comment. ⬆️
Exactly
Dana, some folks are up in arms about data centers and some have put a stop to them. Of course, the rich owners are dangling jobs in many areas while we all pay more for electricity and they take up tons of water. Oregon and many states have drought conditions. Recently in one of her essays, Mary Geddry, who live on the southern Oregon coast, revealed a secret men only club that meets deep in the redwoods. If you look her up, you can find the excellent essays posted by her and her daughter. I recommend them.
At least after the Molasses Flood of 1919 the United States Industrial Alcohol Company did not try to claim that the flood was an act of God. In this day, they would certainly try…
Well, what can I say Dana, this has been going on since ages.
How?
Of course not. The global Epstein Class have been blaming Holy God for their brutality and selfishness since time immemorial .
War and every ecologic disaster has been blamed on “Holy God , Creator, Evolution, “ by greedy power mad men and women for millennia.
Xi , Putin, Modi, Musk, Thiele, Trump and all their acolytes always claim to speak for a Higher Power whether this is the PRC, Christian or Hindu Nationalism, Manifest Destiny and every economic, legal, penal and political system that allows an Epstein class to rule with complete immunity.
In contrast His Holiness the great XIV Dalai Lama , Professor Heather Cox Richardson, Reps Jasmine Crockett , Maxwell Frost, Pope Leo XIV, Indigenous Elders , the many members of the non violent resistance everywhere all offer alternatives to absolute power and the dangers inherent in elitism.
We need to learn from the people in Minnesota who embody non violent resistance and who are building alternatives to the brutal MAGA invaders . The donors, authors and implementers of Project 2025 envision a brutal ethnic cleansing of over 100 million people from your beautiful country.
Democracy, diversity, equity and Inclusion are always messy. However they are always much more pro life than absolute rule by members of an untouchable and unaccountable elite.
We do not need rigid orthodoxy.
We need mass grass root based non violent movements that focus on metanoia, transformation , restorative justice, truth and reconciliation.
Shalom.
"Xi, Putin, Musk, Thiele, Trump".
You forgot Netanyahu.
Mistakes forgotten ( unheeded) cause history to repeat. Likely every state including this WV- have their ‘just another’ flood /dam collapsing, here The Buffalo Creek Disaster 1972 ..telling another story of neglect, corporate blunder/lack of oversight (or is it overlooking/don’t care ?) and lives lost.
And the beat goes on….
Every child needs educated , their potentials assessed ( because we can) to give credence to the folly of mankind as what greed’s real cost is.
Articles such as this ( Thanks again Heather, Elizabeth, et al) make what’s happening now so varied and applicable …blatantly obvious.
PS…I’d heard Theil moved to Argentina …likely no extradition laws, right?
<<<heavy sigh, VOTE if you can>>>
Good news. Argentina and the US do have an extradition treaty. Of course, making it work for someone like Theil is the problem -- Money.
TY, I appreciate ‘ the candor’ ( and info) point well made.
Brazil and Argentina is where Nazis ran to hide. Joseph Mengele, the doctor who mutilated women in the camps, fled there. Simon Wiesenthal, the great Nazi hunter, helped Mossad find Adolf Eichmann, the architect of gas camps, to trial. Eichmann fled with his family to Argentina where they lived for a decade. Mossad picked him up off of the streets there and extradited him for trial and hanging. I tell you this because Thiel was raised by Nazi-loving parents in South Africa and the US. He was born in Germany. He has now fled to the Nazi harboring country of Argentina with his boyfriend and children.
If you look at Eichmann’s picture, who in modern times, looks just like him? I tell you this because I am the daughter of Holocaust victims. My grandparents were gassed at the camp called Chelmno.
I read that about Thiel as well. I was speculating if he'd stay the (bad word!) out of US politics then. Probably not. Wishful thinking.
WE have the numbers to stop this. VOTE those into power who will or VOTE them out who don't ….VOTE is the key word.
Thanks for the comment 🫶
From the inception of the Bill of Rights, the founders designed a government that would be run by and for the benefit of the wealthy elite.
Originally, only men with property had the right to vote.
As the right to vote expanded over the years, the wealthy elite have always manipulated the system so they retained more power in government than the rest of the population.
The elite have managed to arrange for the under payed , majority of the public to pay for the infrastructure needed for their businesses to succeed and when their employees organized and used collective bargaining in order to make reasonable livable wages, the elite and the politicians they funded proclaimed these workers were Socialist and Communist. Recently I have noticed Republican strategists on news shows whining that a lot of our political problems come from people calling out the GOP's policies and politicians as the fascist's they are.
Since the late nineteenth century, these assholes have been calling the working class Socialist and Communist, now they blame people who label them accurately as Fascist, who are responsible for the political and cultural divisiveness today. Projection is their specialty.
Patricia, Thiel did move to Argentina. I think that is telling.
Please — enough with the “you forgot x…” we all enjoy reading intelligent observations. Feel free to add your own, but maybe dispense with the trope that makes it sound like the previous poster was an idiot…?
I most certainly did not think the poster was an idiot and no shame was intended.
Words often convey things their source didn’t intend. It’s just a kind of a lazy trope, used far too often.
Sarcasm and irony are not conveyed well in text, added emojis help, but… 🤷♀️
I'm so grateful to have you as an instructor
I deplore the word “idiot’,( no offense intended) hopefully I have not ,nor ever will, call any ..that. But intent ..of such actions , the blatant ones, I and many others refer to , is the issue…and apparently further corruption could thwart every move WE make as other countries have experienced? So much of that is far from idiot, it is criminal. And we have no way to correct this…but time?
Perhaps.
Thank you! I was going to include him; you beat me to it.
And many more.
Looks like New Jersey needs to take some lessons from Minnesota right now!
I couldn't agree more.
But then we also need to look at one version of DEI, often called "DEI training". That is definitely based on rigid orthodoxy rather than solid research, and instead of valuing diversity, it violently tries to impose its ideology onto everyone else.
Equal rights for every individual — and that includes equal access to services, to voting, to health care, to the courts, etc. — is not rigid and doesn’t require a whole lot of training beyond a civics education, at which we progressively fail. Rights and Civics and how they intertwine will get us further down the road than DEI training. Of course, we do have to embrace and defend each individual’s standing in society, which to now is in CONSTANT conflict.
Exactly. What is lacking, including on the left, is a real civics education, so that people know that equal rights is part of the US Constitution as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - or, for that matter, any democratic Constitution.
DEI trainings all too often reject the idea of equal rights and instead propose that if you are part of a "historically oppressed" group of people, then your suffering is more important than that of anyone else, so you have the right to bully around and even cancel anyone who disagrees with you on anything.
This is precisely why, as Susan Neiman and so many others explained, this ideology is the opposite of what especially the left has always stood for. So, as a strategy (no matter how well-intentioned the people who designed or adopted it may be), it cannot possibly work. It can only create more violence.
"Equal rights" are part of the constitution only via amendment. Not in the original document, written by privileged white men. Something I have noted in many conversations with many different people is this: if you were not granted your right to vote, or to be a person in and of your own right, your opinion is colored by that experience. It is, in this country, the "default" position, and assumed to be the universal experience. That is not the case.
For most of humanity's existence on Earth, 99% of the people weren't allowed to vote.
To imagine that would leave eternal traces on our souls is absurd and not backed up by science.
This IS where the left fell into the trap of wokism in the negative sense of the word, I'm afraid. Wokism used the (in and of itself highly questionable) concept of "trauma" to tell those who were the last to get the right to vote (women, and then black Americans) that somehow this fact (which most people today never experienced in the first place) would make them by nature different from all fellow citizens.
This goes directly against the assumption of our common humanity that has always been at the heart of any left-wing political philosophy. It's also demonstrably false.
EUW ... please cite documentation that supports your statement that "DEI trainings ... reject the idea of equal rights and instead propose that if you are part of a 'historically oppressed' group of people, then your suffering is more important than that of anyone else, so you have the right to bully around and even cancel anyone who disagrees with you on anything."
Also, cite reference to Susan Neiman's explanation.
You spend a lot of time here writing opinions as if they are facts, while demanding that everyone else must cite evidence for their statements. It is well past time that you live by your own rules.
Well said, when I see anyone whining about Woke policies, I can't help but believe that they feel their superiority comes before all else.
Their beliefs in their superiority makes them inferior in my opinion.
Sure. As to your first point, Ally's response above is a perfect illustration of it.
Susan Neiman: see for instance her book "Woke ≠ Left".
See also John McWorter's book "Woke Racism. How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America".
FYI: in general, in a democratic debate anyone who's asked to back up a claim with evidence needs to immediately do so. But you cannot blame anyone for not having done so BEFORE someone asks you, you see? That's because I cannot possibly know what everyone here already studied and what not. So I need YOU to tell me that you don't know what my references are and ask me to share them before I can know that it's what someone wants. That's all.
Thank you for the clarification. This is a disappointment to me, even though I can understand it. DEI is demanding instead of practicing understanding. Be more human than human. Incurable disease?! How can we “enlighten” DEI, particularly with the large presence of Christo-Nazis?
DEI trainings were an experiment in third-wave anti-social injustice. It's a failed experiment, as so many progressives have shown (read Jon McWorther, Susan Neiman etc).
We need to go back to second-wave anti-social injustice strategies. They worked, and one reason they did was that they were rooted in a secular form of spirituality, starting with the recognition of our common humanity. We need to reread MLK's "Strength to Love" for instance. We need to stand on the shoulders of those giants rather than imagine that we have to start from scratch and then refuse to study the history of the civil rights movement. We also need to read Saul Alinsky and the power of "community organizing" to achieve real, lasting, non-violent, democratic change (which is by definition step by step change, since it requires the changing of people's hearts and minds, and that takes time and a bottom-up approach, rather than just "commanding" people to adopt your own ideology, which hasn't even been seriously researched yet in the first place, and is based on demonstrable falsehoods).
We need to give up the most recent fad among the left, "Dem bashing", and abandon the cynical attitude that assumes (without fact-checking) that "all politicians are corrupt".
All of this we can do on our own, regardless of what a neofascist GOP does to its own voter base and to the US.
(By the way, neofascism and Nazism are both forms of fascism, but they're not the same thing. We can just call any fascist a Nazi... here too, we need to stick with proven facts, if we want to save democracy.)
“Violently”?
Somehow I missed the news reports of thuggish sociologists-turned-Human-Resources staffers cracking heads until people improved their outlooks.
When students force deans of their Ivy League universities to cancel people like Erik Holder (Obama AG) or Christine Lagarde (director of IMF), when it is the very job of universities to teach how to have real, respectful debates, that's absolutely a violent act.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So many people have been fired from their jobs only because they dared to question woke ideology. And that includes many progressives themselves.
I am sorry. I think in the first paragraph you sre describing unfortunate events, falsely ascribing these to DEI, and then saying, “See? DEI is bad!”
In the second instance I think you are exaggerating anecdotal evidence.
That would be the case if those events were exceptional and if the ideology behind DEI TRAINING (the key word here is "training"; not everything that comes under the DEI label) would claim the opposite of canceling those you disagree with.
Unfortunately, both are false.
I think I partially agree, lol. But not sure. You don’t think DEI is rigid?
DEI in the sense of making sure that minorities have access to the highest forms of education, jobs etc. is definitely not "rigid", it's crucial to keep a democracy thriving.
But I agree, what is often proposed as "DEI trainings" is utterly rigid, often violent, and counterproductive.
"DEI is reigid". What does that mean?
I think it means he was forced to go to DEI training for some reason.
Cancel culture.
yup, rip them off the roots, I am really hoping Ronan Farrow to make a comeback with this.
That’s what the Age of Enlightenment was about!
It is an amazing story and the kind that abound when we see often devastating effects of the actions of the wealthy on other people.
And they all seem to get off scot-free. When have the wealthy ever been bankrupted by blunders of Titanic proportion.
This is the kind of "bothersome" story that Trump wants removed from history. Heaven forbid we should learn from past disasters!
Trump's own administration is one he should want removed from the history books, as an absolute catastrophe.
See 'The Drey Dossier' for news of a plan that would put historical records under White House control, which apparently would seal them on Trump's leaving office, hiding them from view for at least twelve years.
Or killed. I read that while at the time it was claimed that the dam would have broken even if they had left it as was, but a recent study found otherwise. We are all dependent on a government that has oversight on our safety and this is carried out by people who are not corrupted by any party.
“ We are all dependent on a government that has oversight on our safety and this is carried out by people who are not corrupted by any party.”
LOUDER LW, LOUDER GIRL!
Those wealthy “club members” thought themselves to be the smartest people in the room, so to speak. Therefore, why would they think that their actions taken in the dam would have a negative impact on the manmade lake? And of course, the wealthy got off, scot free.
The equivalent group now meet annually in Davos.
Same as it always was
I think the survivors were given blankets to try to keep warm.
The Johnstown Flood
The Privilege of Wealth vs Accountability in the Courts
Some things are simply inevitable
Manipulation of a fallible system has given us Trump The Destructor
Blunders, GJ? They are CRIMES! (PS. I know you know that.)
Ironically Johstown had three (3) floods: 1936 and 1977.
Between 76 and 85 people died during the flash flood that struck Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on July 19–20, 1977. Official figures vary slightly due to missing individuals, with the National Park Service and historical accounts reporting at least 77 to 85 deaths, while the U.S. Government Accountability Office cites 76 confirmed fatalities.
AI. Nearly 12 inches (300 millimetres) of rain fell in 24 hours when a thunderstorm stalled over the region, and six dams in the area over-topped and failed. The largest dam to fail was the Laurel Run Dam, releasing over 101 million U.S. gallons (380,000 cubic meters) of water that poured through the village of Tanneryville, killing 41 people.
My late uncle was with the Army Corps of Engineers that oversaw the area. I was a lawyer in a town about 100 miles away. I had cases in Johstown. My brother went to help with the recue.....
AI. Lawsuits stemming from the 1977 Johnstown flood were primarily tied to the catastrophic failure of the Laurel Run Dam, which broke and sent a wall of water into the valley. Victims' families filed lawsuits for corporate and state negligence; after over a decade of litigation, these cases were settled out of court in 1989 for an undisclosed sum...
Flood victims' families sought damages from multiple parties, claiming that the dam's known deficiencies were ignored for years prior to the disaster:
The Greater Johnstown Water Authority (the owners of the dam)Bethlehem Steel Corp. (the previous owner and a managing company)
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (for regulatory and oversight failures)
The Laurel Management Company (the dam maintenance contractor)
Ultimately, dams are not a good thing. Another case of human hubris thinking they can beat Mother Nature. Aside from failing, droughts are now threatening hydroelectric power stations at dams from doing what they were built to do.
'Titanic proportion' -- Good phrasing. 'Titanic' built by cost saving/profit loving elites. Anyone got a lifeboat?
Actually in NEO with the 1940’s East Ohio Gas disaster. Every family I think was composited for their loss and it seems that some justice and mercy was done. I think that was my grandfather an employee an employee since he graduated in eighth grade was given the responsibility to work with each family. The History is very vague but my hope and thought was that my grandfather did the right thing. There was no outcry or protests.
GJ, I hope the answer to your question is 'Soon the wealthy will be bankrupted by blunders of Titanic proportion. Until then I suggest we all wear our life jackets.
Off the top of my head:
Bernie Ebbers Worldcom
Bernie Madoff. Investments
Greg McLemore Pets.com
Marc Schilling. Webvan
Alfred Neumann. Wework
Dennis Kozlowski. Tyco
Elizabth Holmes. Theranos
Yes, the "Johnstown Flood" disaster stories still resonated in the 1950's in Los Angeles but, not enough to stop a collapse of a dam in the Santa Monica mountains that spilled into the Fernando Valley below without the massive scope of resulting damage as the "Johnstown Flood". This is a childhood memory as grew up in Woodland Hills at the foot of Topanga Canyon.
The most competent member of our company emergency response team described his father as what I seem to recall as senior or head engineer at LADWP sometime after the failure of the Baldwin Hills Reservoir (fortunately slow enough for most to evacuate, and only 5 deaths), so we learned about that failure in 1963 as well as the big one that left Mullholland's reputation in tatters (from the St Francis Dam failure that cost at least 431 lives in 1929). I paid a bit more attention since my wife's long dead paternal grandparents lived in Pittsburgh and had other relatives in Johnstown that had survived that flood.
Through the safety team member, I started learning about southern California's particular geological problems starting with dams, but also about the oil extraction problems that led to the flaming sidewalk cracks in the Fairfax district in my first trip to the area for a job interview. Back in the 80s ad 90s, it seems the frequent earthquakes were related to the oil and gas extraction methods more than many wanted to admit, and I believe also had an impact on the local subsidence (besides shaking) that seemed to cause more dam failures than expected.
I'd noticed earlier earthquakes had the floor above my office had a 3/4 inch gap to the baseboard and pointed out to other team members the openings growing around vertical structural steel beams, even before one quake where another team member and I had gone back into the building after trying to get people out without being hit by glass falling from above the exits (few paid attention to those efforts). We went back in to spread baking soda in the chem lab where a lot of nitric acid had spilled when another tremor gave us a bit of a thrill ride on the cantilevered section where the lab was located. The earthquakes did seems to decrease through the later years, though the Northridge Quake had many of our engineers living in RVs in their driveways as they spent a year or two of mutual aid in getting their homes habitable again (with the skilled labor shortages and lack of enough affordable reconstruction materials.
After I retired and got active in going to public meetings, I met Dr. Tom Williams of the LA Sierra Club at a DOGGR (Division of Oil Gas and Geothermal Resources, now Cal GEM Geologic Energy Management Division) meeting on what I think was December 12, 2013, and many afterwards including one where we met Dr. Tony Ingraffea after the regular meeting. I thought they were exceptional having started as oil geologists making breakthroughs in North Slope Oil fields and Fracking in Pennsylvania, respectfully, but later turning into devil's advocates against the shoddy practices and dirty tricks, and adverse effects particularly well shown in the PBS Documentary, "The Power of Big Oil" that Dr. Ingraffea was featured, especially the third part.
Along the way I learned that Dr. Williams had apparently switched to Water Systems in 1980s Aleppo, Syria, I believe as part of a USAID effort, had become a life member of the Sierra Club and expert advisor. I also found he had not only remembered the Fairfax burning sidewalks that were going on during my recruitment visit, but had been posted at a bus stop bench for 3 days to make sure no one tried to extinguish the fire since that would let unburned, not so "natural" gas accumulate in the area.
See https://emnetwork.substack.com/p/invisible-time-bomb-lessons-from
Fascinating, Jim. This is the first I've seen about oil extraction being related to the earthquakes in California. I'd never heard of the burning sidewalks in Fairfax, either.
I have a friend who was a directional driller on both the North Slope and in Ecuador; he's the only person I have met from the oil/gas industry.
Most I've met are very smart people who usually know not to talk too much about what they do.
I lucked out when a friend's neighbor in Colorado, who set up instrumentation at all sorts of drilling and active well sites couldn't solve a problem in his truck's electrical system one night. I'd been able to wire up a few hot rods a year using junkyard harnesses modified for use with fiberglass fenders, etc, for the friend and fix race hauler wiring for others that were baffled by a few differences. In his case it was simply putting the wrong bulb type in the dome light. As we got to know each other, he told me about how his bosses under reported the amounts of oil extracted, saying they often under reported by 1/3rd for royalty payments to many small rights owners, and down to 1/6th of what they should have been paying Native Americans (as documented by tribe members who filmed them making six trip to refinery storage tanks when they claimed the truck had made six stops to pick up partial loads before taking it to the refinery storage tank).
I learned to ignore the oil executives and higher management people and get a bit more reliable clues from lower tier employees or their family members, some of whom seemed lax enough to brag a little about what they were getting away with.
He definitely falls into that category. He's pretty liberal in his politics, and is one of the smartest and best read people I know (his sister is another one of those).
"... about oil extraction being related to earthquakes" was the featured screenplay theme in the movie "The Two Jakes" staring Jack Nicholson.
I'm not much of a movie person. I'll have to take a look at that one.
Now you have me going down a rabbit hole of memories of working with movie tech veterans like the safety team member who's dad was an engineer for LADWP (after the dam failures).
He had worked for Nelson Tyler who built some of the first gyro stabilized camera mounts famously used for the long shot of New York City that goes to the tight close up of Barbra Streisand on the bridge of a tugboat then goes back out, all without a break ( in the 1968 movie, "Funny Girl"). Tyler also designed and patented the Wet Bike used in 1977 movie, "The Spy Who Loved Me" and the 2nd type Rocket Belt used in the opening ceremony for the 1984 Summer Olympics. It seems 31 years later David Mayman flew the Jetpack they designed around the Statue of Liberty, and is now working on an electric-powered personal air vehicle described at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/15/jetpacks-jet-propulsion-flying-to-work
I did get to talk to Clay Lacy a few times, who told me he basically bought the whole Tyler Camera Mounts operation to keep the great team of people working together in (I assume the film industry), and related projects, as I saw in an air show at the old Norton AFB when it was still the home of the Aerospace Audiovisual Service (AAVS) was still the film library. It was there that I first saw the impressive Tyler Mount and got to talk to the junior enlisted operator that used it to film close trailing aircraft from the open cargo deck.
As close as I can get to film industry insider information is included at https://legendofpanchobarnes.com/index.php/about-the-film/synopsis/21-main-content/static-pages/210-a-history-of-aerial-cinematography
Otherwise, the people that I talked to in the industry seem to go along with what you think you know, while looking for ideas for movies (without revealing any classified information they may encounter. At least that was the impression from the way Clay Lacy responded to comments about Howard Hughes favorite movie, "Ice Station Zebra," which he participated in, and the real incident it was very loosely similar to.
Oddly enough, though I dislike AI, I find it a reasonable answer to the query for, "Best evidence of connections between earthquakes and oil drilling," it sounds a bit like the movie people getting ideas from what may be real conditions they can dramatize, but it does seem to explain periods of many quakes and reduction in quakes in later years.
I actually think the industry usually used a bit too much trial and error which I suspect was the case in the Fairfax District where they tried a bit too much artificial pressurization to stimulate more output. I suspect they have learned a bit better how to reduce the risks (which curiously might have led to a bigger problem when the orphan wells can create situation like the Aliso Canyon gas leak or the Hutchinson Kansas Yaggy underground storage field that leaked into empty brine caverns and salt wells
There are lots of hydrologic bones to pick in California for those who are interested. What is the dam that almost failed three years ago ? I forget. Hethetchi ? PG&E is in the process of decommissioning the Scott and Van Arsdale dams on the Eel River. The Scott sits on a fault zone. Both dams date from about 1906 and are no longer profitable to maintain. They should come down. When they are gone the Eel will once again be the longest river with unimpeded salmon runs in California. But water users in Mendocino County are not altogether happy about that happening since the Scott Dam includes a pipe that diverts tons of Eel River waters through a mountain in to the Russian River. Those who claim vested rights to that water feel the dam should be maintained for their benefit. But five years ago when the license expired, no one stepped forward wanting to renew it. At last report, I hear certain down state users were trying to get Reclamation to buy the dam and maintain it for their benefit. That of course is just the sort of thing that Trump would have Doug Burgum do.
I would also have a look at the Lewiston dam on the Trinity River. This earthen dam was completed in 1962. Approaching the end of its useful life, this is a Reclamation property. Though sold as a flood control dam, its primary purpose is and always has been to permit the diversion of Trinity River waters in to the Sacramento, to replace Sacramento waters channeled further south by means of the Central Valley Project. The Trinity is the main tributary of the Klamath.
I would also take a close look and the issued associated with the Sites Pump Storage project planned by Reclamation in "Antelope Valley" above Chico, which would draw wet season waters out of the Sacramento to redistribute or hold for later release, and Newsom's Delta Conveyance, a planned project to dig tunnels under San Francisco Bay to allow the diversion of more Sacramento waters south to west side San Joaquin irrigation districts. At last report the state Supreme Court has voided the bond issue needed for that monumental project to go ahead. There is you might say a lot of guess work associated with it. But one thing is sure. There would be no more salmon runs on the Sacramento River. Or Smelt. Or anything else. It would then be a dead river.
That of course is nothing like the calamity that would befall southern California were the Colorado River to run dry. But the solution is not to push northern waters south as far as they will go. Nor to allow the federal government to remain involved to any degree.
It's complex and there are competing interests like what I vaguely remember of the Twin Tunnels proposals that to me, claimed to divert water from the Bay Delta area for farmers in the Central Valley and populations in southern California, but seemed really was supported by the Western States Petroleum Association and most likely API (American Petroleum Institute as a way to get way more water down to where the expanding fracking operations wanted so much of it. I think they claimed they would clean it up and let it go to farmers and residents once they had used it and cleaned it after fracking use.
I remember Colorado's missteps with some dams trying to keep river levels high enough and allowing use for farming and sewage projects that had to return water properly cleaned up for down river use, balancing who could use how much in different seasonal windows, and recharging aquifers with a constant caution to make it sustainable for fish migration. The problem I hadn't thought about was poorly designed an operations that built up silt behind dams (compared to states that took care to carefully allow high water flows at certain times to effectively flush the silt out periodically. I'm way too much of an amateur but did find interesting info in Tershia d'Elgin's "The Man Who Thought He Owned Water." The first half of the book seemed even more interesting than James Michener's "Centennial" the fictional name based more on the history of Greely, Colorado, usually described as founded by Nathan Meeker as the leader of the Union Colony, now usually described as a "utopian society based on temperance , religion, agriculture, education and family values." Tershia's great-great grandfather, Ben Eaton, was one of the 16 pioneers identified in the capitol building whose knowledge and help in setting up irrigation ditches like he had learned from Spanish settlers south of there, helped make the "colony" get off to a sustainable start.
Tershia, though points out Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune who famously said "Go West young man, go West and grow up with the country," and Father Meeker ( the agricultural editor), were both high on "The Communist Manifesto" as published in 1848 and, to me, their idealistic version of a utopian society (to me not that different from kibbutz communities early in the new state of Israel). To me, it seemed such a group was beneficial in figuring out (with Ben Eaton's help and contracting services), how to cooperatively develop water resources that helped open up so much more agriculturally useful land.
The book is to me as an even better version of Michener's (historical fiction), and way better on the water issues and legal fights.
I most remember her description of whiskey being for drinking and water for fighting in some areas.
Thank you for this story, Jim!
This is one reason I so value this community-family! I appreciate how much the comments which add to the subject matter enlighten us all.
"Royalty payments" fraudulently withheld? There is a cause action in CA for "late discovered fraud" depending on the knowledge or lack thereof of Plaintiff(s) who suffered money damages.
I saw an excellent documentary about it on the History Channel years ago, before they stopped being a History Channel.
Deja vu. Now we have a rerun of the Gilded Age. But now the wealthy class has more technology to resist wage earners' efforts to restore balance. They have used money in politics to chip away, little by little, at fair elections.
What did they (history channel) become? I’ve noticed a change in YouTube today. I’ve used the channel almost exclusively to upload my musical compositions. Sometimes I search material I want to view. But the aggressive algorithms today try to entice you to watch essentially AI and totally false pieces designed to pull you in to watch endless made-up crap. It’s call manipulation and seduction. This is why I argue against allowing children to have access to cell devices at such young ages because they easily get pulled in and addicted. Schools have made profound mistakes allowing such devices to destroy natural learning abilities. We are two generations into this behavioral manipulation and it shows. The behavior of all humans is being modified for the worst. And now we have an epidemic of distracted driving and car crashes. I saw a kid on a motorbike at a stoplight holding a cell device. Ya baby.
People were not buying the old consumerism story of capitalism as much, so a new way to distract, mesmerize, and control the populations had to be created.
I’m distinctly an outsider. Sometimes to my chagrin. I don’t even take my cell device with me all the time. Fuck if someone wants me they can leave a message. I inadvertently ended a potential new relationship once at lunch when the woman dropped her cell device on the table. In my corney way, I remarked that I had better keep my sentences short and she asked why. I responded that as soon as her device goes off I will be stuck in mid sentence so she could answer. Later that evening over texts, she called me rude. We weren’t a good match.
Lol.
Good call.
I recently looked for The History Channel too. I couldn’t find it on my TV provider (if that’s what you even call it) so I downloaded the app. That helped but I wondered why it changed from what it was.
How has it changed?
I don’t watch it, but there some description of changes here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_Channel
See above. I used to watch it on TV, like any other channel.
I did not know that the reservoir had become a "private club" for the super-wealthy, nor that so many dangerous changes had been made to the dam. It shifts my understanding of the story.
I never knew the story behind the failure of the dam either - breathtakingly awful.
Here’s a folk ballad from musician Deborah Silverstein, The Johnstown Flood, telling the tragic story in song. 🎶
“South Fork’s a-rising, go spread the news…that mountain playground’s goin’ to bury you alive!”
Worth a listen…
https://youtu.be/bjiflXNRvSs?si=xnAquIzX3XT0SgNq
Ditto, the extent of the disaster made it iconic, but nary word about the cause.
Oh I wish she was my Professor in school/college. I would have been A+++ in this, not that Im blaming my own past teachers, but still, having Professor HCR as your actual Professor is such a life value add.
Talia, I grew up in Pennsylvania, not far from Johnstown. The flood was always mentioned as a significant event in the state's history, but not once did I ever hear about how a bunch of rich bastards modified the dam for their convenience.
Apparently, they not only evaded legal and moral accountability for their self-centered irresponsibility, they erased their blameworthiness from the history books.
As it was, it continues to be.
A disgraceful, monstrous story, and some of those who caused it went on to hold powerful positions. Gad. Sickening. More tan two thousand lives … !
Talia, I have also heard of it, but did not know the story. No surprise that they were not held accountable.
Exactly my response.
The Great Johnstown Flood. Infamous. Notorious.
Good of Heather on this occasion to recall how the rich took care of themselves then -- and in about that same proportion endangered -- killed -- many (Heather cites 2,208). And got away with it, no blame on any of them.
But there's also a possible transition here -- to the current, demented criminal in the White House and his determination to stay in power -- and his build-up, too, of the police state to enable that.
I watched the several minute video of Ali Velshi being escorted away from that New Jersey hellhole ICE and CBP concentration camp for people of color – far away from it, totally out of sight of it, far, far away – by police: many, many police.
What monstrous tyranny are Stephen Miller, J.D. Vance, Todd Blanche, and their let’s-all-suck-up-to-him criminal Donald all doing to get apparently every bit of local law enforcement to join the mass and obvious police state thuggery?
The rich of the late 19th century got started on their Gilded Age. Criminal/rapist Donald has hardly gotten started. He knows the only way he can stay in power is by police state brutality in killing the November elections.
Which doesn’t mean that’s what will happen….
Against such worst-case, Chicken Little warnings of calamity everywhere stand legions of attorneys, civic groups, state Attorneys General, a rapidly crystallizing and energized political opposition, and the steady unraveling of his own coalition of the clueless, and a string of critical lawsuits he keeps losing — not to mention the Constitution itself.
Really, for once, wouldn’t it make sense to take stock of, and salute, all the forces working against all this, rather than endlessly repeat what all of us (save for a few truly lost trolls and souls) already know?
Spot on ICTT. As I have posted & reposted on LFAA recently, 22 Attorney Generals across the Unites States have filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts now pending that will halt any type of effort to stop voters from Voting Early & Voting-by-Mail.
See, CA, MA, CO, NY & other states versus Donald J. Tump. Case No. 1:25-cv-10820. 2026.
Not to mention those Attorneys General who have already promised to arrest anyone from ICE, Homeland Security, Proud Boys, or anybody else trying to intimidate or harass voters exercising their state Constitution-enforced rights to free and fair elections.
Good morning, ICTT. Yesterday after the DFL (Democratic Farmer-Labor Party) in Minnesota endorsed our current, excellent Atty Gen, Keith Ellison, to run for re-election, his Republican opponent was on the radio attempting to trash Ellison for exactly the lawsuits you mention, Bryan––filed in Massachusetts and elsewhere because lawsuits should be filed in Minnesota. The Republican reasoning? Ellison should be focused on fraud in Minnesota. (Note: many people who participated in the infamous fraud cases here have been convicted and sentenced... not as if no one was doing something about it.)
The truth is that, along with other AGs, Ellison IS dealing with fraud because the lawsuits are aimed at much, much bigger fraud than is happening in any one state. The Big Fraud is international: the kind that is oozing out of Washington DC and flooding us all with damage resulting when funds are cut to national parks and foreign aid and rural hospitals and environmental regulation and and and...
Now we are going to watch how the campaigns unfold with avanlanches of maddening lies. Ellison and the other AGs are throwing life jackets to the rest of us by taking on the Big Fraud.
Yes, and ... (I learned to use that phase instead of No, but...), again what concerns me is ICE, HLS, etc can out number city & state law enforcement. Didn't ICE agents out numbered Minneapolis police 2-1 maybe more. I'll bet a plate lunch that Sideshow don & kegseth will federalizing all blue state National Guards in October for some bogus. I need to do more volunteer shifts at the humane society & walk dogs so I can temper my dark outlook.
As always thank you for the hope
The blue state AGs are doing what they can and must to preserve the vote. But I do not think they are under any illusion that there is no chance that SCOTUS will rule against them, no matter what most of us would see as a plain reading of statutes and the Constitution.
We can't give up and obey in advance, but neither can we whistle past the graveyard, pretending we don't see the possible outcomes.
If you want to protect your vote in case Trump and his minions play last-minute games about the ID you need to vote in person, (because there may be a surprise about not allowing vote by mail in some states,) be sure you have proof of citizenship ready. A US passport or raised seal birth certificate with a name that matches what is on your voter registration will suffice, or if you are in 5 northern border states, a version of Real ID with citizenship status indicated (not just a Real ID star). If you changed your name for any reason, get your legal name change paperwork in order as well. I have heard from several people that copies of birth certificates from red states are taking months to obtain.
The reason I’m skeptical is my state’s attorney general VOLUNTARILY handed over the state’s voter database as soon as it was demanded. I think TN, run by total fanboys for Trump, would obediently close every other polling place if he told them to.
Montana did too
There’s a plan to mail the ballots only to people precleared by the federal government.
I suppose both positions (Phil B and ICCT) have merit. HCR shows us how history eerily parallels our experiences today, and there is a definite pattern of the rich making poor decisions that others pay for with their lives, and said rich are not held accountable. And yes, there is also still cause for hope and that cause is born of ACTION, not just by the attorneys, but by We The People.
You cavil at the daring to "endlessly repeat what all of us . . . already know."
Hate to break it to you, ICTT, but those voting for the criminal, rapist, fraud, friend to dictators, and till now successful organizer of police state U.S.A. actually outnumbered "all of us" in the last national election.
It’s complicated, but add to this the non-voter who refused to see the danger ahead & sealed the fate of the nation in 2024. The MAGA would’ve been defeated if more of them had realized their inaction and showed up.
Or the voter, like a friend of mine, who said “all politicians are criminals.” Lots of people believe that.
Well-put, JJC in VT.
And why, in your opinion, might so many millions of Americans so given the pass of indifference to the ever on center stage fat slob ever pussy-grabbing, serial lying, smearing fellow Americans, eminently violating the Constitution's emoluments clause, befriending only dictators, oligarchs, and similarly cynical U.S. billionaires?
Phil, still scratching my head over that. Disengaged? Pandemic fatigue? And another thing , as a 1st generation Italian American , I am so pissed off to see these third and fourth generation descendants of their immigrant ancestors flit around the mob boss in chief, lapping up all of the anti-immigrant tropes like buttered pastene.
Fox poisoning, for one. Unwillingness to help a woman of color become president, for two. Possibly in the reverse order.
When Trump blathers on about something the chances of it ever happening are almost nil.
Everyday the war with Iran is over except that it's not is it.
Yesterday Chevron and Exxon-Mobil issued warnings about the world's oil supply being dangerously low.
Ukraine has forced Russia to cap dozens of wells because of damage to storage fields, pipelines, refineries, etc. There is a 4 gallon a week rationing of gasoline in Crimea. Airlines are canceling flights in dozens of countries due to the jet fuel shortage.
The spot price of oil may be around $90 a barrel, but those are futures' prices. By the time of delivery, that price has been jumping as high as $150/barrel and sometimes deliveries are canceled altogether.
Anyone that thinks things are normal in the fossil fuel world, are listening to Trump and the MSM. Bigly sad.
Virtually everyone reading this Newsletter knows exactly what you’re going to say even before you get three words out. It never changes. You’re not exactly preaching to the heathen here…
ICTT, I was hoping HCR would speak to the protests in NJ today so when she didn’t, I hoped the comments would bring it up. Phil Balla is the first to speak of them in the comments. Phil’s comments are valued here but for some reason you always seek them out and single them out with criticism.. and not constructive criticism. No, not everyone knows what Phil will say in their first 3 words. Not at all. I find your comments to Phil like school yard behavior. I’ve been watching from afar and cannot figure out why you want to single Phil out in particular, and always with the same vague criticism that has nothing to do with their argument. Let’s remember we are all on the same side here.. we might not all agree all the time, and that can lead to constructive discussions, but let’s not single out one person over and over.
So, Pollyanna, the concentration camps aren't already set up in the U.S.?
Tens of thousands of our fellows -- all persons of color -- aren't suffering?
The police state forces Ali Velshi showed really bid nothing to concern us?
Visiting family who have a TV, I've seen, this week, what MSM offers. It's mind-numbing. Banners of text can parade by below images flashing too fast to connect how they're related. To me it's a setup for dissociation and looking without seeing or making meaning. This has become a norm.
Don't watch. I use TV for entertainment. I get news from HCR and NPR. Anything else is pretty useless. (And not conducive to sleep.)
Where is freedom of the press? The regime has finally taken over so much of what we took for granted, I'm afraid.
Oh, that’s me. Pollyanna to the core. You figured it all out. So smart. Couldn’t be more naive if I were little Bo-Peep herself. It’s so obvious-like… 😜
[Yawn]
Did they, really? More folks voted for somebody other than Trump and Musk may have given an assist in battlegrounds.
Are you sure? I’m not convinced. I think Elon rigged the machines to make it possible that Donnie didn’t win. People in upstate New York voted for Harris and their votes never recorded as such. When the results were posted, these voters asked where their votes were?
If he did it once , he did it in more places. Trump has eluded to Musk ‘getting’ him states he wasn’t expecting to get.
I will never forget Trump saying he had "a little secret" when talking about Musk.
The Secretaries of State are also energized to provide safe and fair elections. Blue and Red state SOSs are in constant contact with each other to make sure of this.
Yes and WE, THE PEOPLE must be prepared to do our part. We can no longer hope that others can do this alone. “Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country.“
The female half of the population have, already, lost the right to control their own bodies.
Tell your story of "Chicken Little" to them.
Correct. Democracy (America) is not a spectator sport. Everyone can do something that will help. We are all part of the forces working against the Epstein class so get up and get going.
Thank you for your last paragraph.
The Johnstown Flood of 1889, as Heather recounts, is more than a historical tragedy. It is a warning about what happens when private privilege is allowed to override public safety. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club altered a dam for the comfort and leisure of the wealthy, ignored repeated warnings, and left working families downstream to face the consequences. When the dam failed, more than 2,200 people died.
The story is not only about water. It is about power. The men who benefited from the dam’s neglect escaped meaningful legal accountability. Their wealth, lawyers, and social standing protected them from the consequences that ordinary people could not avoid. Clara Barton and the American Red Cross brought vital relief, but charity after catastrophe could not correct the injustice that helped create it. Mercy matters, but it cannot replace responsibility.
For Americans today, Johnstown still speaks. Climate vulnerability, unsafe infrastructure, corporate negligence, and political capture often follow the same pattern: those with the most power make the decisions, while those with the least power absorb the risk. Just as in Johnstown, danger is too often pushed downhill.
A healthy democracy cannot tolerate a system in which wealth privatizes pleasure, socializes harm, and then hides behind influence when lives are lost. Public safety requires more than sympathy after the damage is done. It requires regulation, vigilance, accountability, and a moral insistence that human life must never be treated as collateral for elite convenience.
History’s warning is clear: catastrophes often begin long before the visible collapse. They begin when power is trusted without responsibility.
Thus, regulation is Public good. Despite what tge wealthy clobbers might think. Dams etc must be regularly inspected.
So well and eloquently stated, Michael! Power and money corrupt. Those wealthy men had lost all morals, compassion and humanity. They could have provided restitution but they had already sold their souls.
"Mercy matters, but it cannot replace responsibility".
BINGO!
The history of private fishing and or hunting clubs is fascinating and telling. They were before the 1950’s country club motif and still continue on. Jeyckll Island and its millionaire club helped establish I think the FDC. It continues on to this day in the travel of SCOTUS members and also with the likes of Leonard Leo. And the concept of private lodges is so so colonialism 101. It happened back in Ireland when in the famine people heard a lodge was giving out food. Nope just a terrible rumor . This is an old and ancient patriarchy playbook. No voices of the wives -were they even there? No voices of the servants and cooks likely more female than not. One could do a mapping projects of what the current locations of the exclusive lodges and clubs locations are. This was part of the problem of the environmental movement at times it caters to the elite. They want their lands pristine but not for the rest and especially not for any othered group. Scrooge ‘s philosophy .
See Yellowstone Club and the multitude of private enclaves in Montana.
Yes and there other places as well. Alaska and also in the south as in Jekyll Island in Georgia. And all need labor. Another layer to ponder.
Trump’s sinister, but obvious, plan is to use this $1.8 billion slush fund plus the promise of pardons to pay his January 6 insurrectionists to create all kinds of violent chaos surrounding the midterms in order to sufficiently derail the democratic process so that he will be able to declare them invalid and declare martial law, etc etc. The question is, will the American people allow it? If they’re pissed off enough about the economy, maybe not..
I have a new T-shirt that has a large picture of Felix the cat and the caption is “Demonstrations are fun, but have you tried revolution?”
Oh this is a perfect shirt for Tad Stoermer’s article this morning. Sometimes his articles are behind a paywall, not sure this one is.. either way subscription is worth it.
https://tadstoermer.substack.com/p/the-physics-of-resistance-at-delaney?r=56wm8i&utm_medium=ios
And now he's calling for a great MAGA rally to replace the Freedom 250 concerts which performers are baling on. A huge MAGA rally...what could possible go wrong.
How about filling that so-called MAGA rally with Americans who are fed up with high prices for gas, food, housing, healthcare, and education. Boo the crap out of Trump, peacefully. If/when the MAGA thugs attack, assume non-violent postures. Get it all onto social media. Show the world what MAGA really means. Show the world there are still Americans who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law.
Dave, we are already watched this movie on January 6.
The slush fund will hopefully not come to pass. There’s furious opposition, including from a few Republicans in Congress.
You think he'll stop with immigrants?
Why the multitude of empty warehouses?
He'll be coming for you, taking you to a nice free spot on the cement. A few worms in the food (if you're lucky enough to get any) won't hurt. It's protein. Stay hydrated. The toilet's over there.
Did you say you LOVE Trump? Our mistake. You'll figure it out, or not.
He's coming, full speed, for those "commie" liberals.
He's just not shown his hand yet.
As a toddler military dependent in Germany from late 1947 to 1950, I lived about 15 miles south of Dachau. My parents visited it and showed us pictures when we were old enough. I knew it had been a former munitions factory but The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum adds much more (it seems the Trump administration would want to erase), at https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/dachau
"...Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos). The perpetrators used these locations for a range of purposes. These purposes included forced labor, detention of people deemed to be "enemies of the state," and mass murder. Millions of people suffered and died or were killed. Among these sites was Dachau, the longest operating camp.
Established in March 1933, Dachau was the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazi government.
Dachau became a model for all later concentration camps and served as a training center for SS concentration camp guards.
The number of prisoners incarcerated in Dachau between 1933 and 1945 exceeded 200,000. Scholars believe that at least 40,000 prisoners died there..."
He def won’t stop. But why warehouses? Because his billionaire friends are sitting with warehouses in their possession that they can’t sell. So, why not use taxpayer money to purchase them and then make them into concentration camps!? Billionaires get to offload some real estate they can’t sell and the government gets to make horrid conditions to falsely imprison people.
Indeed
This is the post that Heather provides when the overwhelming success of Donald Trump cannot be dinged at all. I’m surprised she didn’t talk more about the Lakota Indians all over again or maybe Abraham Lincoln war the day before he died or any other very important items so she doesn’t have to talk about how successful and incredibly successful. Donald Trump is almost every day. And here’s the best part wait till everybody here actually goes to Washington DC and you don’t have preconceived notions about who the author or the architect was of the sites you’re gonna be absolutely floored and delighted and proud of Washington DC. Unless your sickness overwhelmed your common sense.
A cautionary tale about privatization. A public facility, built with reasonable safeguards, sold off, when obsolete for the design purpose, to private interests who strip infrastructure for scrap and make modifications without regard to downstream safety and interests.
The rich claim 100% ownership of the wealth created by others, and shirk responsibility for the damages incurred as a result of their greed.
Some things never change.
Thank you, HCR, for pointing that out again.
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
did you really NEED her to point it out, Ralph? i'm thinking NOT...feel free to correct me if i'm wrong...
I needed Heather to give me the history behind the Johnstown Flood. The words "Johnstown Flood" were familiar to me, but not the story, not the culpability of a specific group of rich, greedy, uncaring men. Maybe I'd learned the specifics in school, but if I did, I'm guessing that they were not presented with the sense of growing horror that Heather conveyed as she retold the story. Unfortunately, we need to keep repeating stories like this that warn us of the possible perils growing in our midst so that we can find ways to combat them before they destroy us..
Sorry, Betsy...i wasn't talking about that...look at Ralph's comment and you'll understand...I'm just too tired to explain right now...(i was talking about the '1%'/ the rich...). And I don't know if it's just me now (I've been awake for 24 hours and just about to sleep), or HCRs letter was repeated twice?
Hope you got some sleep. Heather posted pretty late, and I stopped reading the comments when people started blaming her for posting the beginning twice. All of us who rely on her need to cut her some slack when, like many of us, she's working on not enough sleep...
Betsy...got 3 hours...still feeling good...
and i THINK H has a better sense of humor than some of us...she, HOPEfully, understands i'm just teasing...AND...whether some of you want to hear this or NOT...i'm fairly sure SHE doesn't read our posts...she has a few people that DO and they relay whatever might be important...and i don't qualify...
when i'm really BLAming someone for something? they and you and people for miles around will know it...you can bank on that...
AND...i've said here a NUMber of times...blame is not a solution...
appreciate your concern for H, though...really and truly...she IS a precious and rare commodity...i'm glad so many here understand that...
The first part was, but then I've done the same a few times when trying to write lessons plans for a course that was already near half way through the quarter.
Need? I don’t need any of this. I wish I could find a way to ignore it all and live in blissful ignorance. I used to be able to, with chemical help, but sobriety requires I look at the world as it is, not as I’d like it to be. HCR’s letters, and this forum, are most helpful in that endeavor.
I said to a friend the other day Ralph, I can't believe I still haven't picked up a drink. It's been 38 years and I refuse to let this slob take my sobriety from me too.
Nothing wrong with a reminder, and a thank you, is there?
👏🏼
in the same LETter? maybe i'm the only one who got the same information twice in the same letter...if not...i guess the drugs finally kicked in...damn. 55 years later? musta said 'long acting' on the capsule in fine print.
in the same LETter? maybe i'm the only one who got the same information twice in the same letter...if not...i guess the drugs finally kicked in...damn. 55 years later? musta said 'long acting' on the capsule in fine print.
in the same LETter? maybe i'm the only one who got the same information twice in the same letter...if not...i guess the drugs finally kicked in...damn. 55 years later? musta said 'long acting' on the capsule in fine print.
and anyways, i was just trying to save H some virtual ink...
and if you don't like my sense of humor? i'm saving the good stuff for the paying customers...
good sunday to y'all...it's nice here...
I did not allow PAID subscribers on "Bryan's Substack".
Regardless my pists are 99.9% comments on LFAA & Civil Discourse the good Professors Platforms.
i bet that pists a lot of people off, bryan....(read your pyst again) ; - )
p(i)s(t)...have a great day...mean it...
Every billionaire is a policy failure.
"posts" not pists or "pissed".
From this calamity, Clara Barton and the Red Cross learned how to respond to natural disasters. At some point this knowledge, refined and honed, would form the eventual basis for the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), which has managed to save millions of lives over decades.
Until one day, a moron decided to use FEMA to promote himself, reward his friends, and attack his enemies, rather than prepare the country for future calamities set to come as ocean levels rise, climate shifts and natural defenses further weaken and erode. All while his mentally unbalanced Secretary for Health and Human Services would start dismantling the very health infrastructure that had permitted the country to respond to natural (or manmade) health disasters with speed and focus.
And here we are, now facing a strain of Ebola for which no medical treatment is available, in a world where boundaries between counties, states and entire nations often rapidly disappear, like a raging flood sweeping the guilty, the innocent, the unprepared, the negligent and the truly evil right along with it.
All this only about 3-4 years after the greatest pandemic the world has known since the Spanish Flu took over one million American lives, the majority of whom refused to take seriously what was occurring because that very same moron kept insisting that viruses were just a Chinese hoax.
Sometimes, the mind just reels.
And in his first term he discarded the material about pandemics the Obama administration had left him (after all, it came from the hated Obama) and look how we suffered during Covid. And look how he preened and pronounced stupid remedies he read on the Internet. And how he at first refused to allow sick Americans to disembark a ship because it would make the “numbers’ higher. And then when he caught covid, he was treated to the best medical care to be had because he was president.
I keep wondering how those around him, including Congress members, think THEY and their loved ones (assuming they love anyone but themselves and reelection) will be served by a decision maker who cares nothing about them (look at his support for hanging Pence). These people have an exceptionalism complex.
ICCT, I read yesterday that leon skum had come out with a statement that he had "accidently" cut Ebola research/response in the "DOGE" intrusion.
Who'd of thunk?
Thank you, once again, for bringing history alive and making it relevant to today's issues. Your writing weaves an important fabric that binds and enlightens today's Americans to their history and heritage. You are a treasure.
Privatize the profits. Socialize the losses. Then as well as now.
Again, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
Always an optimist, I'm hoping for evolution.
As the descendant of immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania, the Johnstown flood story was a part of my upbringing and I cannot believe that my fellow Pennsylvanians voted for Trump. They clearly didn't understand the flood and why it happened. Living along the Delaware River in my 30s and 40s, I experienced less devastating floods because of overdevelopment and hubris. Who cares what happens downstream as long as we have a nice McMansion here? /s
This leads me to a staunch belief that land should never be in private hands. If the government owned all the land in the country and citizens and companies merely rented it, they could control what was done with it. Preventing the removal of the flood mitigation devices would have saved countless lives in Johnstown. No one should have the right to do with "their land" what will affect others nearby. The US is wrong in its flight from regulation. It needs harsher regulation. It needs more environmental protections. It needs a view to the future, not a bratty, childish "you can't tell me what to do with MY land!" attitude.
I live in the Netherlands now where flood mitigation is a cutural imperative. Matter of fact the elections that every person living in the country for at least 90 days, regardless of status, can vote in are the Water Board elections because management of the waterways in a country mostly below sea level is the more important than anything else. There is, of course, private ownership of land in the Netherlands. But no one dares go against the rule of the Water Board or we will all perish beneath the waves.
It's time the United States realised its blind dedication to "Individual Freedom" runs contrary to the survival of its people.
Kass,
This only works if the government has the best interests of the people at heart. I shudder to think of what would happen if our current administration had sole authority over the usage of land.
Yes, of course, Mary. I am treating the current "government" as a mass delusion that will be over soon and that we will work hard to prevent in the future.
Although one could argue that, with what they are doing to our national parks and the lands and buildings in DC, they already think they have sole authority over use of our land, and the court cases are beginning to rein that in.
I like Europeans more than Americans. There needs to be a balance between private property ownership and the public good.
Having lived and owned businesses in both places, it is amazing what you don't miss in Europe. You can do all the same things and succeed. But if you mess up, you don't die because of it. Learning to fly is so much easier when you know there's a net to catch you if you slip.
But here Kass, since having a net to catch you if you fall cost money coming from our taxes, the richest percentage of the population rather save that money for themselves .
Which is why you need a paradigm shift. (And a return to the taxation scheme that existed when we were the most prosperous country in the world.) The US has got to wake up to the fact that it isn't the 19th century where you have your 40 acres and a mule and you eek out what you can. (And if you fail, you starve.) I mean, that wasn't even the case back then. We need a new National Myth! We pay taxes to a government to protect us. That never means just military protection. That means environmental protects and health protections and financial protections. The US operates on this myth that you can not pay taxes and take care of everything yourself, but no one is out there building roads and electricity grids by themselves. The Tennessee Valley would still not have electricity if it wasn't for the TVA doing what no company would have chosen. This paradign shift could be accomplished with teaching children how our country truly made advances, not this lone wolf cowboy rhetoric.
That would require a serious investment in education. I'm not suggesting that everyone should invest in a college education.
I'm an old woman. I grew up in the 50's and 60's. I spent untold parent-teacher conferences disgusted with teachers' telling me that phonics was old fashioned while raising my son. I taught him at home.
Could any kid, now, diagram a sentence?
We took Latin in high school. What a splendid way to parse French, Italian and Spanish.
We had to read whole books and write original book reports (by hand not computer.} Penmanship, I can't go on.
I really sound like a cranky old lady.
My grandkids, raised by two people with advanced degrees, don't read books. Their school system is rated very highly in our state.
Yes, teaching critical thinking is important, but give the poor kids a decent base.
Ask for an increase in school funding? So many exhausted and broke parents say, "No".
This needs to come from the top.
That's you, Trump, the non-reader.
I know, you love the uneducated, so easy to manipulate.
Be a mensch. Care enough for your citizens.
Give them universal healthcare, too.
Be an example, not a bully.
Whew! Got that out.
Time for a snooze.
Don't waste your time reading this. It was a mental health exercise.
💯 % right Kass. 🤗
Hope you are running for office someday, Kass!
I don't like all of either of them, but I envy European benefits and culture.
"This leads me to a staunch belief that land should never be in private hands."
Kass, you may already know fellow Pennsylvanian Henry George and his advocacy of a single tax and reform of land ownership. See Progress and Poverty, which helped usher in the Progressive Era.
I did not know (or at least I didn't remember). Thanks Donna. I will look that up!
A little known, nowadays, but very influential figure in the beginnings of the Progressive Movement. His writings in Progress and Poverty were widely read at that time. Some of his economic policy ideas are still relevant even yet.
Yes. Some say he was the best known public figure of his times, and his book P&P the most widely read book of its time.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is my model of rational large scale socially beneficial government action. It covered an 8 state area, making major rivers navigable with low dams and locks, massively reduced dangerous flooding that took lives and ruined farm land with the higher dams that made more power, provided predictable water supplies, and could have water levels lowered to absorb heavier rains in the old climate conditions they were designed for. Better weather prediction capability and climate science has partially enabled better adaptation but is not being maintained to the best standards we already know to use. The cutbacks in weather balloon sites reduces data from hard to measure sections of the atmosphere by any other means which noticeably reduced early warnings for tornadoes. Out of a bit of curiosity I looked at sondehub.org to see the relative numbers of balloons being used here and in Europe. To me, the cutbacks are like a child covering their eyes to avoid seeing anything that might frighten them. We need to take the blinders off those we depend upon to see things for us.
Kass, I can't agree with you. I now own my home outright, but I was a tenant for most of my life. As a tenant, I never had the security or certainty that I would have a home, even though I always paid my rent on time. I never knew for sure that my monthly rent would remain the same. I didn't even have the assurance that my landlord would always be my landlord. S/he could sell the property at any time and my new landlord might be horrible. As a tenant, I never had the freedom to personalize my home in a way that made me comfortable and happy. Any modifications I made had to be "undoable" at the time I moved out.
Real property ownership is the single most reliable way that one can build personal wealth, and even that is no guarantee. My Edmond, OK, home lost two-thirds of its value when Penn Square Bank collapsed and shattered the Oklahoma City metro economy.
However ... if your model were to work, then I would suggest that the Indigenous Peoples who possessed the North American Continent for millennia would be the only legitimate and qualified people to manage our resources. After all, they lived here for thousands of years and didn't screw it up.
What an horrific story of greed, hubris and carnage. How we go round and round in history repeating mistakes of the past ad nauseum. I’ve been thinking about the current state of our infrastructure and wondering how soon there will be another historic devastating event with those responsible excusing themselves from culpability. It seems inevitable, given the current situation, doesn’t it? Thank you Heather for your coverage of the past and the present.
As an Irish Come From Away I cannot understand how come brilliant Americans are not launching class action suits against Peter Thiele and Elon Musk. These South African white supremacists with NAZI Canadian roots break every law seemingly with complete impunity.
What is stopping Americans for suing them for all their many breaches of privacy ?
Frances, I think one explanation for the absence of class action lawsuits is that in order to establish legal standing as a class, harm must be demonstrated. Harm resulting from theft of personal information is difficult to detect, much less, demonstrate, especially when the theft was by a "government agency." Nobody knows whose information was taken, where it now resides, and what is being done with it.
I understood that stealing personal data is a felony. I watched an interview on Fox news about the info stolen. Musk et al were boasting about it ?
The actual act of identity theft may or may not be a felony, depending on the jurisdiction where the theft happened. How the crime is classified depends mostly on what the thief does with the stolen information, and the degree of harm caused. Someone who cashes a check for less than $500 using a stolen driver's license will likely be charged with a misdemeanor.
Theft of large amounts of personal data from a server would be charged as a felony, but prosecution can take place only if the thief(ves) are identified and apprehended. Detection is almost impossible unless the stolen data is posted on the "dark web" or used to commit some kind of fraud. In that case, the crime would be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Obviously the current DOJ is not going to prosecute Thiel, Musk et al because 1. the current DOJ is corrupt, and 2. the DOJ would claim that Musk et al were acting as government contractors, so immune from federal prosecution.
This is entirely different from a civil class action lawsuit, which again, would have to show harm to establish standing as a class.
The harm is clear to me. So I cannot understand.
As soon as I read the introductory sentence, I knew where this was going. David McCullough's *The Johnstown Flood* was the first history book I bought that was not assigned. I was 16 when it was published, and I wanted to own it. It cost a lot of babysitting, but money well spent - I still have it.
Twenty years ago my British husband, an architect, proposed a trip to Wright's Falling Water. I agreed, as long as we included a visit to Johnstown.
It's clear the place never recovered. There was a fine museum created in a building that survived the flood. What I found especially telling, though, was the site of the South Fork club itself.
There was no lake, just a stream running across the old lake bed. Some of the "cottages" were still there, most converted into multi-family dwellings.
The truly haunting part was the remains of the dam itself. We could clearly see where it had broken loose. The sides were softened through the century-plus of weather and overgrowth, but still steep and angled.
McCullough covered the negligence of the wealthy industrialists - the "robber barons" of the Golden Age - and described how they were never held to account.
When Trump says we are living in America's Second Golden Age I often think of Johnstown.
The first McCullough book I read was The Path between the Seas, a history and building of the Panama Canal. Really good that.
Great bit of history given much fuller and fairer treatment than I ever heard in school. So many “natural” disasters have human greed at their heart. And greed left unregulated, then and now, is a massively destructive force.
Remember, the central theme of Trump is DEREGULATION.
Deregulation = Removal of the tools of accountability.
As in ICE house accountability
Yep
And ‘privatization’ sounds so benign…
Not to me. I started my law enforcement career working in our local jail for 18 months in 1985-1986. It was 2013 before I heard of "for profit" jails, prisons, and facilities. OMFG.
As to Trump’s bogus IRS suit and the “settlement”……EVERYONE with a working brain (or even half of a working brain) KNOWS that Trump and Blanche colluded and committed FRAUD!
They should both be charged with criminal fraud, be tried, be convicted and be put in PRISON.
Patience, Joel. If we all participate in the coming election, vengeance shall be ours! So get busy getting everyone you know prepared to vote.
The United States infrastructure is aged a decrepit. The flooding in Texas that killed young campers because the inadequate warning system that was actually funded is an example similar to this historical tragedy. The continuing flooding and storm issues that are happening in our Midwest are only news tragedies that we watch on the current weather. The Trump administration disabled two weather satellites when they took office. It is only a matter of time until a truly devastating issue arrives. SMH.
David McCullough wrote a book : The Johnstown Flood”
which goes into great and fascinating detail about the people living in Johnstown on that day and the devastation caused by the carelessness which allowed the failure of the dam. It’s well worth your time.
Thanks, Ann. Love both Appalachia and David McCulough.
And the rapacious ruled the earth and took their measure of flesh from those they exploited.
As one other comment noted, Clara Barton and the Red Cross were called out to help with the relief at Johnstown.
Barton didn't write much about her work in the Civil War aside from letters, her occasional diary, and the speeches she gave after the war, mainly about Andersonville.
However, she wrote a short book on the early responses of the Red Cross: "A Story of the Red Cross: Glimpses of Field Work."
In Chapter IV, she writes about leaving a flooded city of Washington to go to Johnstown. She describes the relief efforts, noting that the efforts of the Red Cross were just one part of the American response. She also notes that the Red Cross was so new, the Commander in charge didn't know what to do.
"I shall never lose the memory of my first walk on the first day—the wading in mud, the climbing over broken engines, cars, heaps of iron rollers, broken timbers, wrecks of houses; bent railway tracks tangled with piles of iron wire; bands of workmen, squads of military, and getting around the bodies of dead animals, and often people being borne away; the smouldering fires and drizzling rain—all for the purpose of officially announcing to the commanding general (for the place was under martial law) that the Red Cross had arrived in the field. I could not have puzzled General Hastings more if I had addressed him in Chinese; and if ours had been truly an Oriental mission, the gallant soldier could not have been more courteous and kind. He immediately set about devising means for making as comfortable as possible a "poor, lone woman," helpless, of course, upon such a field. It was with considerable difficulty that I could convince him that the Red Cross had a way of taking care of itself at least, and was not likely to suffer from neglect.
"Not a business house or bank left, the safes all in the bottom of the river; our little pocketbook was useless, there was nothing
to buy, and it would not bring back the dead. With the shelter of the tents of the Philadelphia Red Cross, that joined us en route with supplies, when we could find a cleared place to spread, or soil to hold them, with a dry-goods box for a desk, our stenographer commenced to rescue the first dispatches of any description that entered that desolate city. The disturbed rivers lapped wearily back and forth, the people, dazed and dumb, dug in the muddy banks for their dead. Hastings with his little
army of militia kept order. Soon supplies commenced to pour in from everywhere. . . .
"But I am not here to describe Johnstown—the noble help that came to it, nor the still more noble people that received it—but
simply to say that the little untried and unskilled Red Cross played its minor tune of a single fife among the grand chorus of relief of the whole country, that rose like an anthem, till over four millions in money, contributed to its main body of relief, with the he faithful Kreamer at its head, had modestly taken the place of the twelve millions destroyed. But after all it was largely the supplies that saved the people at first, as it always is, and the distribution of which largely consumed the money that was
contributed later." p. 17
She writes more about her stay there to rebuild the area. If you'd like to read the chapter, or the book, it's available online. Her prose is articulate and engaging, at times poetic. It's worth the read.
https://ia601605.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/33/items/GutenbergENzip/37.zip&file=Story%20of%20the%20Red%20Cross%3B%20Glimpses%20of%20Field%20Work%2C%20A%20-%20Clara%20Barton%2C%202009%20%2850p%29.pdf
Thank You, MB.
Daniel Morrell, founder of the local steelworks near Pittsburgh, recognized the vulnerability of Johnstown. Most of downtown Johnstown’s business, industrial, and residential areas were built on the floodplain. Flooding was almost a seasonal occurrence. Morrell worried about the condition of the dam. He hired an engineer and geologist to report on the problems. Morrell offered to contribute to proper repairs, but his suggestions were rebuffed by the Club, now aware of the dangers but seemingly unconcerned.
To me, a Pennsylvanian, the Great Johnstown Flood is a cautionary tail. Look at our corporate titans today and their symbiotic relationship with the Trump regime. My fear is that none of them will pay for the damage they have inflicted.
Thank you, Heather, for letting your large audience know about this terrible occurrence in our history.