A headline in the New York Times today read: “Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s.” The story explained that more money in the hands of consumers thanks to federal stimulus spending, along with a new skepticism of stretched supply lines, has created a rebound in American manufacturing.
“in fact it never showed signs of increasing economic growth. What it did was to move wealth dramatically upward. It also made the measure of the economy the health of Wall Street rather than Main Street.”
It is also a fact that more Chinese businessman have become millionaires and billionaires than in the US since 1980 by a huge margin. It also lifted a billion Chinese out of poverty. Thank Nixon for ‘opening’ China. For his business donors. At the expense of the ever shrinking US middle class. “These jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back.”-Bruce Springsteen. “Capital is like water, it seeks its own level”- AOL Time Warner CEO said something like that mid 2000’s.
Now, after 42 years of concentrating so much wealth upward and Citizen’s United to keep it that way, and no Fairness Doctrine thus keeping masses ignorant of these facts. Do we have a chance of a more perfect Union based on equality of opportunity, of access to quality education, clean air and water, and the pursuit of happiness? Our only chance is to vote BLUE!
Ted, While reading your comment, I was reminded, just yesterday, when Kevin McCarthy unveiled the GOP “Commitment to America” policy goals, he announced that the very first bill would be to fire 87,000 IRS agents. McCarthy stated, “We want to work for you, not go after you.” Expectedly, he neglected to mention that more than one-quarter of unpaid taxes come from the wealthiest Americans, who owe $163 billion in taxes annually. I imagine one reason an understaffed IRS would let the top 1% avoid taxes is because they would lack the personnel to process the requisite sophisticated tax filings. Indeed, I would expect, were we to do a deep dive into most, if not all, of the GOP’s “Commitment to America” policy goals, we would find they’re designed to meet the needs of the ruling class, not to make the lives of everyday people materially better, more stabilized, and more dignified. Hence, I would contend that Democratic leadership is obligated to unpack the GOP agenda.
Jeri, Your observation is spot-on. Still, I would note the one difference is that Congressional Representatives, six weeks before the 1994 Congressional election, were more forthcoming, specifying the plan’s provisions that included “reducing the size of government, cutting taxes, and both tort reform and welfare reform.”
Ted, In my view, what we are witnessing is substantially more malevolent than “pandering.” I see a party ruthlessly pursuing power for their own purposes and to meet their own needs instead of the needs of the people.
A sea change in what America is supposed to mean. A place where the rich get what they want and the others accept the crumbs. Sounds like what people fled from in the beginning. Sorry, Founding Fathers, we are in danger of losing what you gave us…
Jeri, In my view, your comment misrepresents what our founders sought to establish, namely structures of government whose powers were balanced in a way that expectedly would protect the country from the excesses of any one branch. Were Republicans to attain control of both Chambers of Congress and win the White House in 2024, said events conceivably would precipitate both a fatal weakening of America’s civic institutions and also a Presidency eager and able to consolidate power, wherein the rule of law could be subjugated to an individual.
Thanks, Barbara! Yes! Unpack the GOP 's agenda! Most of us don't know what's really tbehind their promises and slogans -- as is always the problem. And the Dems need to tell it in some detail to make it hit home. Even sow pictures and graphs. ( I'm not kidding either.) Don't they have anyone who does graphics. People grasp them much quicker than words. Please, Dems, show us some graphics.
I've just emailed the WH asking them to flood the airwaves with graphics showing the accomplishments of this administration. https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Maybe others of you would consider doing this also. If their email box is full of this suggestion, maybe it will have an effect.
One problem might be that there has been a revolving door for director of communications
Mary, I greatly appreciate your affirming response, which has bolstered my confidence regarding letters I am preparing to send both to the White House and to Democratic leadership.
Great! Barbara, if you create graphics or know someone who does, perhaps your letter or email could include an example or use the one Prof. R. provides here. It's VERY surprising to me that these are lacking in ordinary press conferences, speeches by the president, guest appearances on Sunday talk shows and others -- all places where graphics say so much more than words. Maybe they need a teacher in the director's office. : )
Mary, Perhaps you noted that T L Mills, who is part of this thread, rightly noted that California Representative Katie Porter is particularly adept at producing high quality graphs and charts to amplify issues and clarify concepts.
We need to also say very clearly how wealth moved, not just upward, but outward, as in out of this country, to China, enriching them with one of the worlds most concentrated millionaire and billionaire classes in the history of the planet. That wealth could have been new schools, college educations, bridges and roads, renewal both urban and rural, a countrywide Wi-Fi network, investments in green energy, and proper V.A. Services and funding to care for veterans. But we didn’t get any of that. Instead the Chinese did.
I’m not blaming the Chinese. I’m blaming Nixon for starting it. I’m blaming Regan for sustaining it. I’m blaming the GOP for outsourcing the American Dream to a country, China, where elections do not take place, no worker protections exists, and the wealth stolen from our middle class has in fact cemented 1 party rule that is enriching theit communist party and their crony’s in an effort to keep it that way forever. We were sold that sending factory jobs to China would lift billions out of poverty and capitalism would transform China into a democracy. No democracy has developed. It was all a lie. The opposite has happened in human rights and freedoms, and China remains hostile to Its pacific neighbors. Then theirs their occupation of Tibet, racial discrimination, and human rights dispersion and abuses.
The hard truth is that sending jobs there just hides real inflation, consumers pay less for a while, so employers can pay them less and less. All the while defunding education here. The net effect is that Unions are broken by stock holders and backed up by the GOP. Then workers have less and less organization and $ to lobby for their rights. which has privileged stock holders over workers. If it continues another 40 years, will an American middle class even exists?
Save some blame for Milton Friedman and his "shareholder value trumps all" world view. I suspect that sans that shift in our economic play book, companies wouldn't have been quite so quick to pull up stakes and move off-shore. It probably would have happened eventually, but that philosophy sure lit a fire under it.
Before going off-shore, the Rust Belt manufacturing moved to the "right to work" South, where they could avoid those pesky unions. ("Right to work"= right to starve)
Everything you reference in your first paragraph is what the MAGA Republicans are working to achieve right here in the USA, When they proudly wear there 'Make America Great Again' ball caps the "again" means back to the days of child labor, sweat shops, non-unionization, and when women were not allowed to vote. Not my idea of "great" at all.
Yup. Offshoring only works when two criteria are met imho.
1. We only export to democracy's, thus we strengthen them and not 1 Party State/authoritarian state that is hostile to our allies and interests ( in China case... Japan/SK/Taiwan/Asian emerging countries)
2. We plan ahead to invest in education to keep families and communities strong with new technologies etc. This way we keep our country resilient, preventing grievance politics and increasing vulnerability to the opioid crisis. ( remember...counties that flipped Obama to Drumf also are the counties with the worst unemployment & highest addiction rates.
This way we aren't abandoning our own people to needlessly suffer economic shock and trauma, here and abroad.
Okay, but my recollection is that those white men cooked their own goose when they voted for Reagan, even after he busted their unions. Why? My guess is that most of them voted R because they believed Republicans would help them keep black people out of what was left of their unions.
Sadly, amen. I get so sick of the republicans Lying their way into office. They literally have no concern for the citizens of this country. Only what they can get away with and put in their pockets.
Christine, I have thought of you since learning that Ian would hit Florida. To you, family, friends … your entire family of Floridians wishing you safety and good care.
Re: The 2020 RAND Corp report on US income inequality: $50T worth of US wealth transferred from 90% of the population to 1% from 1975 to 2018. Prior to that, income was tied to the GDP. If that were the case today, there would be an extra $2.5 T in American pockets every year. So much for supply side, trickle down economics.
I have never met a businessman who, in the face of heavy demand for his product, says, "Yeah, I know I could sell the hell outta this stuff, but then I'd make money and have to pay taxes, so, nebbermind."
The sheer non-logic of the supply side argument always made my head spin.
Interesting Nixon greases the skids for the exodus of jobs out of our country and Reagan’s gop cabal open the banking floodgates for looted $$$$ by burgeoning Russian oligarchs when the Soviet Union dissolved!
Curious how these two political milestones in US history eventually eroded our own human right’s .conditions in this country.
I’m so glad we finally had the chance to prove “bottom up and out” is the best way to grow the economy and benefit the middle class. President Biden is going a great job and can do even more if we can get him a better majority.
The most startling and heartening statistics aren't the number of new manufacturing jobs, which is indeed impressive, but these: "the real net worth of the bottom 50% of U.S. households has climbed 60% since Biden took office, now reaching $67,524."
But how many Americans in this group realize what they've reaped under Biden? Unfortunately, Inflation skews so many perceptions. Then again, I don't recall Republicans proposing anything that would help keep the economy rolling on. Meanwhile, Biden and the Democrats keep proving that good things happen when government is focused on improving lives rather than fomenting hate and division.
Major changes have been made in our government by the Biden administration. The following are a few highlights featured in today’s Letter, but they are not all Biden and his team have accomplished in less than 2 years.
- Biden has made it clear that he is working to overturn 40 years of “supply side” economics, ushered in by President Ronald Reagan.
- he is building the economy “from the bottom up and the middle out,” he, along with the Democrats in Congress, bolstered domestic manufacturing with measures like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act
- National Economic Council director Brian Deese told the reporters, “One of the most striking things that we are seeing now …. —U.S. companies and global companies—that are committing to build and expand their manufacturing footprint in the United States and doing so based on their view that not only did the pandemic highlight the need for more resilience in their supply chains, but that the United States is creating a policy environment that makes long-term investment here in the United States more attractive.”
- Meanwhile, the real net worth of the bottom 50% of U.S. households has climbed 60% since Biden took office, now reaching $67,524.
- “Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s.”
- American manufacturers have not only regained all the jobs lost during the pandemic, but they have also added about 67,000 more.
It is fair to ask if this country is as divided as it is because of the economic policies of the Republican Party beginning with Reaganomics.
‘This system was designed to free up capital at the top of the economy through tax cuts and deregulation in the belief that putting capital in the hands of the wealthy—the “supply side”— would lead them to invest more in the economy, thus making it grow more quickly and providing more jobs. While Republicans came to embrace that ideology wholeheartedly, in fact it never showed signs of increasing economic growth. What it did was to move wealth dramatically upward. It also made the measure of the economy the health of Wall Street rather than Main Street.’ (Letter)
Let me put it another way: it is time to hold The Republican Party responsible for transferring the wealth of working Americans to the ultra-wealthy.
AND
It’s time for Biden and the Democratic party to let everyone know how they are returning that money to the American people, making our lives better and more economically secure as the country grows anew.
How do we all do this Fern? There needs to be advertising by the DNC that powerfully hits these points. There needs to be a way to get through to the trumpbotomized. How do we do this?
Gailee, I'm just winging it, but we are loaded with terrific writers, documentarians, performers... there need to be teams put together for social media, radio, cable, broadcasting, print, online... most artists are in the battle for democracy and when has there been more verified corruption and propaganda created by the Republican party and their cast of devils?
Indeed! steady incremental and consistent messaging by the deeper and more intelligent half of the nation must flood this opportunity for the people side to finally be re-established.
We must avoid relishing the squalor of the MAGA wreckage and ensure the highest values of the past are firmly established.
But those tasks are up to each and everyone of us.
Gailee, we are being distracted by criminals who are working day and night to steal our country. Recycling is still going on but doesn’t rip our heart out like other activities. Caring for our physical planet is still so very important to many of us all over the world.
Look at the starving of the poor in Africa…I am dying a little bit everyday when I absorb so much need and want to help.
My daughter is finishing a book study on climate change. She encouraged us to look more deeply at local need so I am going to get involved with my local Sierra Club.
I support a young man in Bangladesh and for a child to attend school in Haiti. These are really small things and as I give I am also trusting someone else to actually care for these children I can not be with but yet want to help in some way.
All I can say is one by one, day by day we can do something .
Media is too focused on blathering republicans liars. Where are our bull horns that have wider reach than substacks. MSNBC tries but Fox lies rule. MSM focuses their news efforts on money making brouhaha rather than public service.
Doesn't seem that Biden has taken off his gloves and clenched his fists to finally give the gop maggots the old "One-Two" right in their dusty parched kisser! Hopefully all other Democrats will boisterously join his brave urgings to repeatedly reveal the gop deceptions, lies, and hypocrisies.
We should all carefully consider our Democratic resurgence success plan, Eh!?
Finally some fresh thought provoking urging to actually solve the problem GOP Maggot debacles.
Thank you!
Love your comment as opposed to others wasting our time with ridiculously long comment blathering plagiarizing of all that we have already studied in great detail
Well the wonderful pleasures we ALL enjoy here in our comments is sharing our opinions about how to solve the OBVIOUS problems that our American democracy is being bombarded by the gop maggots.
I am sorry you find some slight disagreement with a small part of my opinion. Isn't it wonderful we all see things a bit differently from each other. That is how aw all learn form each other. Eh!?
Fern, everything you say here is true, IMHO, but I'm wondering if we aren't all missing the big picture, which is that rapid, sustained economic growth, whether one subscribes to the GOP's Reaganoid trickle-down theory, or feels enthusiastic about Biden's Rooseveltian plan to put more money in the pockets of the poor and normal working stiffs, is - with overpopulation - the main driver of climate change.
I think there is an argument to be made for finding ways to meet everyone's needs while limiting GDP growth and trying to save ourselves from the worst climate disasters that our scientists have been predicting for many decades. The graphs of world economic growth and the increase of people-produced CO2 in the atmosphere are pretty similar and still rapidly rising (by historical standards, if I am not mistaken, which I may be. I'll google it)
I realize this is a can of worms and not explicitly today's LFAA topic (basically, Biden is doing a good job, while the GOP is trying to destroy all we hold dear!), so if anyone wishes to respond to this post, please do not feel hijacked. Have a nice day!
David, the technology to reach net zero, even negative, CO2 emissions exists now. What is lacking is the political will form a coherent plan (though there are several good ones), fund, scale-up, and implement it. This has been true for both Democrats and Republicans for decades. We need a quantitative easing type plan to save the climate - and by extension, everyone and everything, on the planet. We did this 14 years ago to save a few too large, crooked, financial institutions. Time to do the same for the planet and ALL of its inhabitents.
But David Herrick is right about overpopulation, which is going to get worse to the tune of four NY State population equivalents over the next 40 years (Census Bureau) due to US immigration policy (90% of that gain will be immigration, just 10% native increase).
I'm a left wing Democrat. My great uncle was de facto head of the Colorado Democratic Party for the first half of the last century. I've been pro-choice since I understood the issues in my early teens. I've also been concerned about overpopulation since I was 9, and so was very early in favor of birth control and family planning.
I learned about globalwaraming in a course on environmental issues in 1975 given by John Holdren, who later became President Obama's Science Advisor. It's obvious to me that the US is way overpopulated already, and an article two years ago in the NYT Mag warned that in the next couple of decades, Americans (especially in the West and Southwest) would become climate refugees. It's a frightening read.
The US is one of the worst places on the planet to put more people, as we're the major industrialized nation with the greatest per capita greenhouse emissions. (China emits significantly more, but has lower per capita emissions.)
Climate change is a huge problem and it will take all of us to do what we are able to do to help. There are so many things I need to change as a consumer to help. I am learning....I am trying to do what I can to improve. My daughters are much better and more involved than I .... I can make better choices!
Emily, your determination to learn about climate change and improve your consumer habits is admirable, of course. But, I think we have all been guilt-tripped into thinking that if we drive a smaller car, turn down the thermostat, install LED lightbulbs and make a thousand other changes large and small in how we consume stuff, that somehow the CO2 in the world's atmosphere will stop increasing, perhaps even diminish, and that this is the key to saving ourselves from ourselves.
But, most people are still just pleasure seekers of one sort or another -- I know I am -- and do not necessarily do all the right things -- even if they know they should -- or even believe that their failure to behave properly will lead to the extinction of our species in fairly short order.
Result? As a species we continue barreling down the highway to Hell as several serious and immediate consequences of climate change are beginning to regularly influence our lives in negative ways. So-called 100 and 1,000-year disasters are now showing up annually and changing the lives of millions of people, but deciding to hang out our laundry rather than throw it in the dryer is not what will save us.
If we are very lucky, and the climate stability "window" of opportunity is not already shut, our feelings of guilt will lead us to vote for politicians who will pass draconian laws requiring us all to behave as we should with respect to energy use, and this "us all" includes governments, light and heavy industries, service providers, every other sort of business, sports teams, self-employed professionals, all of us, even -- no, especially -- the privileged ultra-rich.
Incentives and excise taxes will not suffice. There will need to be laws passed, warnings, then tickets issued and arrests made for infractions both small and large.
What we do not know yet, but may soon discover, is how strong our collective death wish is. That we have not yet managed to nuke ourselves into extinction is some cause for optimism, I suppose.
There was a newspaper article published in 1928, where scientists spoke about the impact on the climate of all the coal we were burning. So our species knew that far back that fossil fuels were a problem. And recently two young climate activists were sentenced to jail time for having sabotaged the Dakota pipeline and were called domestic terrorists. Who is actually the domestic terrorist - those who want to stop petroleum extraction or those who profit from it?
David--I think you are quite right about the need for government regulations and enforcements--and also about common human psychology. My uncles who worked on farms with tobacco crops in the '30s and '40s said they all referred to cigarettes as "cancer sticks." Later on, Surgeon Generals' warnings and educational efforts barely made a dent in smoking rates until the government began taxing the products (raising the prices), regulating their sales, restricting areas where smoking was allowed, exposing the lies of the companies, etc. Persuasion and carrots can encourage change in some social and economic arenas, but it definitely takes sticks. In the case of climate change, we're all smoking whether we like it or not, so the sticks should be pretty damn big.
I have been deeply worried about climate change even before it got in the news (which really is only over the last year or two). And since then, as we also saw with the pandemic response, the USA has shown that it is incapable of quickly and effectively responding in the necessary way. All that has to happen is for Republicans to merely have enough power to exercise the filibuster. The only way we as a nation are to adopt enough green policies quickly enough is if those policies outcompete the dirty policies we have in place now. And do not tread on "Freedum". Ain't gonna happen IMO. We are a free market cowboy nation, and the free market doesn't have long term goals, and cowboys are uneducated and selfish. Our goals are short term, and we are not comfortable with change. Our government is ponderous and fractured, and moves at the speed of a glacier. Don't count on us. Count on the rest of the world, which may (or may not) drag us along. As a species, we are in huge trouble.
PS 'Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun's heat.'
Yes, Fern, and we produce them and convert them rapidly into planet-killing CO2 because politicians always promise economic growth and feel they have to deliver on their promises. You know, "more jobs, lower taxes, higher wages, more fun if you just vote for me" is the routine. Yes, Democrats do it too, unfortunately.
'big picture' David: 'official warned Wednesday. David Beasley, head of the U.N. World Food Program, said its latest analysis shows that "a record 345 million acutely hungry people are marching to the brink of starvation" — a 25% increase from 276 million at the start of 2022 before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb.Jul 7, 2022'
There are more big pictures positive and negative I could provide in answer to your 'over population' big picture, which as you may have realized is not the only way to address 'climate catastrophe' as far as I am concerned.
I agree, Fern, over-population is just an aggravating factor in climate change.
My main point was that the consumer-driven endless economic growth we all enjoy and participate in -- and cannot conceive of as somehow not necessarily good -- is not sustainable in any case. The Earth is a finite place. All politicians promise to deliver better economic growth than their adversaries, as if simply growing the economy helps everyone, but it doesn't unless the benefits of such growth are shared, if not in equal measure, at least fairly, based on the notions that no one should have to sleep on the street and no one should be able to waste his extra dough launching suborbital pleasure rockets while other folks are having to sleep on the street.
David, Does our use of LANGUAGE and framing of the CAUSES and SOLUTIONS with regard to Climate Change sometimes unnecessarily put people at odds? Do you think that the substance and framing of the issue in the following report by The Union of Concerned Scientist useful in this regard?
From: The Union of Concerned Scientists
REPORTS & MULTIMEDIA / EXPLAINER
CLIMATE CHANGE and POPULATION
Published Nov 9, 2021 Updated Jul 5, 2022
'We’re sometimes asked “Isn’t population growth driving climate change?” But that’s the wrong question—and it can lead to dangerous answers.'
'We frequently receive questions about population growth and its relationship to climate change. It’s an old idea with a troubling history. In the context of solving the climate crisis, it's distracting at best, and at worst, has the potential to do great harm to the climate and to people around the world.'
'Here are the facts: climate change is caused by the heat-trapping emissions produced when we burn coal, oil, and gas, and cut down forests. Data show that these emissions are most closely connected to carbon-intensive production and consumption patterns, predominantly the carbon-intensive lifestyles of the relatively wealthy, both here in the United States and around the world. Fossil fuel companies, utilities, and their trade groups also bear significant responsibility: they have used their power, money and deceptive tactics to lock in carbon-intensive infrastructure and constrain choices individuals can make about their energy supply.'
'A misplaced focus on population growth as a key driver of past, present, and future climate change conflates a rise in emissions with an increase in people, rather than the real source of those emissions: an increase in cars, power plants, airplanes, industries, buildings, and other parts of our fossil fuel-dependent economy and lifestyles. Implicit in this faulty framing is the notion that all people contribute significantly to heat-trapping emissions. In fact, data show (PDF) that the richest 10 percent of the world’s population contributes 50 percent of annual global warming emissions.' (Unionof ConcernedScientists) See link below.
Yes, the Union of Concerned Scientists EXPLAINER about climate change and the importance of population growth is fine as far as it goes. Until quite recently, there could be no real comparison of the CO2 emissions of the world's richest country and strongest modern economy (us, of course) with the CO2 emissions of India or China, for example, where historically most people have survived on subsistence agriculture. The rich west is still responsible for most of the "extra" CO2 in our atmosphere, in part because we (still) produce much more of it on a per capita basis than the more recently industrialized nations, and in part because we've been spewing it out for far longer. A billion Chinese people couldn't come close to our annual overall levels of CO2 emission until very recently, and our per capita emissions are still much higher than theirs and (until Covid slowed things temporarily) growing, despite all apparent efforts to bring solar and wind power on line in the USA and Europe. Only a few countries are coming anywhere close to their Paris Agreement goals. I'm pretty sure we are not.
So yes, the unheard of rapid increase of CO2 levels just in the past 50 years is a product of energy-intensive, free-living western lifestyles, not population growth, though there has been plenty of that, too. Even the increased CO2 levels in China and India are arguably the result of industrial activity in the service of western markets for...well, just about everything. There is no way billions of Chinese and Indians can produce American levels of CO2 unless... unless they begin to live the way we do. But, inevitably, many, many people out there in the world can watch (in real time, via smart phone) Americans and Europeans seeming to live high on the hog driving around in sporty SUVs and pigging out on junk food and having every convenience in the world with no apparent hassles or restrictions on their personal freedom, and, well, lots of them want that. Even if high CO2 emissions are part of the deal.
So, while it is wrong and unfair to say that population growth has been and is driving CO2 emissions worldwide, I think it is not unreasonable to ask ourselves what the situation will be when even a half or a third of China's and India's people achieve our fossil fuel dependent lifestyle. Can we say to them, "No, you can't live like we do because it will lead to the end of human life on earth"? Are they making efforts to achieve their prosperity by developing large scale solar/wind energy generation capacity? How can we ask them to do this without being total hypocrites? Are we willing to help them? I mean, global warming is our fault, and we have known where our way of life was taking us at least since the first Earth Day back in ...1969? 1970?
This is reason enough why the USA should already lead the world in abandoning fossil fuels ASAP, but we are not doing it, Fern, certainly not the MAGA GOP, and I'm not sure all our Democrats in Congress can have clean consciences on this either.
I think if Congress put a draconian End-of-fossil-fuel-production-and-use bill on Joe Biden's desk, he would sign it. But I am not (yet) holding my breath.
I'm in complete agreement with your perspective on overpopulation. It's the unsustainable tyrannosaurus in Mother Earth's room. "Our" planet will survive until the sun explodes, but not in a manner that anyone alive today could recognize. The achievement of Zero Population Growth will be necessary for the long-term sustainability of homo sapiens.
Ed, I think it would be a mistake to lay this all on overpopulation. Technology has a way of correcting for that. Vertical, hydroponic farming can deal with both the soil depletion and water issues associated with feeding the world for some time to come, for example, but we should certainly address unchecked population growth for the long term. The last time I made a coast to coast flight in the USA there were vast tracts of empty land punctuated by the occasional small town and just a few large metropolitan areas surrounding the major air terminals.
I believe the much larger elephant in the room is that same force: technology, and the exponential growth thereof. Ted Keyes mentioned above the “Fairness Doctrine”, which as you know was a mandated sharing of opposing of viewpoints on the airwaves (AM radio being the most ubiquitous). It’s gone now, that wise doctrine, and AM radio has been almost totally co-opted by right wing talk radio. And where, I ask, is the stronghold of the far right? In the “heartland”, AKA, those vast tracts of space between the big blue coastal metro areas for the most part. And what has been the effect of this messaging blitzkrieg by the right (I ask again, hopefully not begging too many questions in a row:-)? A bringing together of a whole lot of people into one tent, which looks a lot like “overpopulation” in the realm of communications. Add to this the blindingly rapid expansion of social media enabled by the internet, which itself only really took off in the Reagan era, and you have the perfect storm of information saturation, polarization, aroused aggressive behavior; in short, the same kinds of things psychologists have reported for decades when studying the intentional over crowding of rat populations, but this time in a the virtual arena. And by the way, the nefarious elements in our societies are much better able to coordinate their efforts and observe the effects given these new tools.
We read all the time about simple solutions, and I mean no offense here, but “slowing down population growth” (even ZPG) or “voting Blue” (Bill Clinton was a Democrat, brought us NAFTA and it would have been more of the same under Hillary) I feel, won’t cut it. The real nut we need to crack is how to rein in the use of technology by the sociopathic bad actors among us, where for the most part that same technology is owned by the very same group, as are the politicians and, increasingly, the courts. Wish I knew the answer. Maybe it’ll take an asteroid. I'll leave you with that happy thought :-)
Does it all go back to climate change? Politics and economics won't matter if we don't tend to the pressing issue of preserving our planet from the danger of succumbing to climate changes for which its residents are responsible. If that happens, the manner in which an uninhabitable rock orbiting the Sun is governed won't matter. Can this problem be solved by democratic means, not only nationally, but for the entire planet as well? To borrow a couple of phrases, 'To be or not to be, that is the question' ... and 'Ask not for whom the bell tolls.' Somewhere out in space, another civilization might be laughing at Planet Earth, seeing us still stumbling around without one government to solve the problems of an entire planet.
Jack, perhaps there was a moment in history in the aftermath of the first uses of the BOMB when the USA might have pushed for the establishment of genuine world government that would have been democratic enough to satisfy the winners of WW2, attractive to countries emerging from their status as colonies, and believably better for the losers of WW2 than being pushed around by a sole nuclear power, us. But once the Ruskies got their bomb, and the world was again at binary war, Cold as it may have been, and Americans continued to view the rest of the world as a hellish place, we were left with the far less than democratic UN. We could have done worse, but we might have done a whole lot better. I really hate to even think it, but maybe a "tactical nuke" on Ukraine followed by a... No, better not to even think it.
Dear HCR, Fern, and all the other wonderful commenters on LFAA. Today is my last day as a subscriber to LFAA so I can like your comments but cannot argue with you. Maybe that's a good thing. I have learned so much from you. I can only afford so many paid subscriptions so at least for a while I have subscribed to The Hartmann Report. My other paid subscription is to TCfromLA. And I support the Kyiv Independent. I will probably come back to LFAA, especially if I can free up money from somewhere else. Tanya is home in Ukraine and not coming back. I hope to join her in the New Year sometime when she says it is safe. She has a small generator just in case to keep the furnace pilot light on, and the fridge and freezer running. Gas is not likely to be a problem but water could be. If everything goes south, she will close up the house, grab the pets and head for western Ukraine of Germany. We talk twice daily on WhatsApp but I miss her dreadfully and miss Lucky and the three cats too.
Thanks for giving us the update. I've always looked forward to your posts, and have been worrying about you. I hope so very much that you can soon be reunited in Ukraine.
Maybe someone savvier about these things than I am could set up a "Keep Allen Hingston on LFAA" online crowd-funding, with any leftover funds going to some worthy pro-Ukrainian charity. I'll chip in for sure. Without that, I'll certainly miss reading your comments. In any case, best of luck to you and your family, Allen
So why is this not shouted by Democrats every day? Why can I only learn about these stats by reading Heather's newsletter? The GOP are masters at dominating the news with their lies and distortions. Why are Democrats so bad at responding loudly and frequently to it?
“in fact it never showed signs of increasing economic growth. What it did was to move wealth dramatically upward. It also made the measure of the economy the health of Wall Street rather than Main Street.”
It is also a fact that more Chinese businessman have become millionaires and billionaires than in the US since 1980 by a huge margin. It also lifted a billion Chinese out of poverty. Thank Nixon for ‘opening’ China. For his business donors. At the expense of the ever shrinking US middle class. “These jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back.”-Bruce Springsteen. “Capital is like water, it seeks its own level”- AOL Time Warner CEO said something like that mid 2000’s.
Now, after 42 years of concentrating so much wealth upward and Citizen’s United to keep it that way, and no Fairness Doctrine thus keeping masses ignorant of these facts. Do we have a chance of a more perfect Union based on equality of opportunity, of access to quality education, clean air and water, and the pursuit of happiness? Our only chance is to vote BLUE!
Ted, While reading your comment, I was reminded, just yesterday, when Kevin McCarthy unveiled the GOP “Commitment to America” policy goals, he announced that the very first bill would be to fire 87,000 IRS agents. McCarthy stated, “We want to work for you, not go after you.” Expectedly, he neglected to mention that more than one-quarter of unpaid taxes come from the wealthiest Americans, who owe $163 billion in taxes annually. I imagine one reason an understaffed IRS would let the top 1% avoid taxes is because they would lack the personnel to process the requisite sophisticated tax filings. Indeed, I would expect, were we to do a deep dive into most, if not all, of the GOP’s “Commitment to America” policy goals, we would find they’re designed to meet the needs of the ruling class, not to make the lives of everyday people materially better, more stabilized, and more dignified. Hence, I would contend that Democratic leadership is obligated to unpack the GOP agenda.
Sort of like Newt’s “Contract on America.” How can we screw you to the point of no return.
Exactly.
Jeri, Your observation is spot-on. Still, I would note the one difference is that Congressional Representatives, six weeks before the 1994 Congressional election, were more forthcoming, specifying the plan’s provisions that included “reducing the size of government, cutting taxes, and both tort reform and welfare reform.”
I believe that’s called ‘pandering’.
Ted, In my view, what we are witnessing is substantially more malevolent than “pandering.” I see a party ruthlessly pursuing power for their own purposes and to meet their own needs instead of the needs of the people.
A sea change in what America is supposed to mean. A place where the rich get what they want and the others accept the crumbs. Sounds like what people fled from in the beginning. Sorry, Founding Fathers, we are in danger of losing what you gave us…
Without the amendments, this is very much like what we began with.
Jeri, In my view, your comment misrepresents what our founders sought to establish, namely structures of government whose powers were balanced in a way that expectedly would protect the country from the excesses of any one branch. Were Republicans to attain control of both Chambers of Congress and win the White House in 2024, said events conceivably would precipitate both a fatal weakening of America’s civic institutions and also a Presidency eager and able to consolidate power, wherein the rule of law could be subjugated to an individual.
amen Pandering would be an "improvment"
Let's call it a HEIST
Agree, Barbara!
100%
Well I have another term for that - but this is a family friendly forum.
lol
Charlie!
lol; or bologna between the bread - lipstick on the pig, etc. ?
Thanks, Barbara! Yes! Unpack the GOP 's agenda! Most of us don't know what's really tbehind their promises and slogans -- as is always the problem. And the Dems need to tell it in some detail to make it hit home. Even sow pictures and graphs. ( I'm not kidding either.) Don't they have anyone who does graphics. People grasp them much quicker than words. Please, Dems, show us some graphics.
Where's CA Rep Katie Porter? She is fabulous with graphs and charts!
I've just emailed the WH asking them to flood the airwaves with graphics showing the accomplishments of this administration. https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Maybe others of you would consider doing this also. If their email box is full of this suggestion, maybe it will have an effect.
One problem might be that there has been a revolving door for director of communications
Mary, I like the idea of graphics that can have an immediacy that words alone might not have.
Mary, I greatly appreciate your affirming response, which has bolstered my confidence regarding letters I am preparing to send both to the White House and to Democratic leadership.
Great! Barbara, if you create graphics or know someone who does, perhaps your letter or email could include an example or use the one Prof. R. provides here. It's VERY surprising to me that these are lacking in ordinary press conferences, speeches by the president, guest appearances on Sunday talk shows and others -- all places where graphics say so much more than words. Maybe they need a teacher in the director's office. : )
Mary, Perhaps you noted that T L Mills, who is part of this thread, rightly noted that California Representative Katie Porter is particularly adept at producing high quality graphs and charts to amplify issues and clarify concepts.
Thanks, Barbara. Yes, I saw Mills' remark but not knowing CA Rep. Katie Porter or her background, it didn't add anything to the discussion fo rme.
We need to also say very clearly how wealth moved, not just upward, but outward, as in out of this country, to China, enriching them with one of the worlds most concentrated millionaire and billionaire classes in the history of the planet. That wealth could have been new schools, college educations, bridges and roads, renewal both urban and rural, a countrywide Wi-Fi network, investments in green energy, and proper V.A. Services and funding to care for veterans. But we didn’t get any of that. Instead the Chinese did.
Ted, don't blame the Chinese because they invested in the opportunities we gave them.
We need to get to work ourselves "Building Back BETTER"!
I’m not blaming the Chinese. I’m blaming Nixon for starting it. I’m blaming Regan for sustaining it. I’m blaming the GOP for outsourcing the American Dream to a country, China, where elections do not take place, no worker protections exists, and the wealth stolen from our middle class has in fact cemented 1 party rule that is enriching theit communist party and their crony’s in an effort to keep it that way forever. We were sold that sending factory jobs to China would lift billions out of poverty and capitalism would transform China into a democracy. No democracy has developed. It was all a lie. The opposite has happened in human rights and freedoms, and China remains hostile to Its pacific neighbors. Then theirs their occupation of Tibet, racial discrimination, and human rights dispersion and abuses.
The hard truth is that sending jobs there just hides real inflation, consumers pay less for a while, so employers can pay them less and less. All the while defunding education here. The net effect is that Unions are broken by stock holders and backed up by the GOP. Then workers have less and less organization and $ to lobby for their rights. which has privileged stock holders over workers. If it continues another 40 years, will an American middle class even exists?
Save some blame for Milton Friedman and his "shareholder value trumps all" world view. I suspect that sans that shift in our economic play book, companies wouldn't have been quite so quick to pull up stakes and move off-shore. It probably would have happened eventually, but that philosophy sure lit a fire under it.
Before going off-shore, the Rust Belt manufacturing moved to the "right to work" South, where they could avoid those pesky unions. ("Right to work"= right to starve)
Everything you reference in your first paragraph is what the MAGA Republicans are working to achieve right here in the USA, When they proudly wear there 'Make America Great Again' ball caps the "again" means back to the days of child labor, sweat shops, non-unionization, and when women were not allowed to vote. Not my idea of "great" at all.
You mean those red caps "Made in China" and purchased for the "America First" crowd. Maximum irony, if only the MAGAs had enough wit to realize it.
Fascists always corrupt the language
Ted,
Exactly what you have written about I experienced for 40 years as an engineer in various corporations.
I graduated college in 1982 when everything was made here and there was a healthy middle class.
Today? I have watched American management outsource and offshore with the goal of commanding 100X the bonuses they were given in 1982.
A small number of white men have benefitted fantastically from this movement.
And, a very large number of white men lost their jobs.
Now, Trump has knitted all white men into a clump using hate.
Yup. Offshoring only works when two criteria are met imho.
1. We only export to democracy's, thus we strengthen them and not 1 Party State/authoritarian state that is hostile to our allies and interests ( in China case... Japan/SK/Taiwan/Asian emerging countries)
2. We plan ahead to invest in education to keep families and communities strong with new technologies etc. This way we keep our country resilient, preventing grievance politics and increasing vulnerability to the opioid crisis. ( remember...counties that flipped Obama to Drumf also are the counties with the worst unemployment & highest addiction rates.
This way we aren't abandoning our own people to needlessly suffer economic shock and trauma, here and abroad.
Okay, but my recollection is that those white men cooked their own goose when they voted for Reagan, even after he busted their unions. Why? My guess is that most of them voted R because they believed Republicans would help them keep black people out of what was left of their unions.
Sadly, amen. I get so sick of the republicans Lying their way into office. They literally have no concern for the citizens of this country. Only what they can get away with and put in their pockets.
Well said, Mr. Keyes! Excellently well said!
Ted is not blaming the Chinese. He is putting the blame squarely on US policy.
🗽
🙏 Christine. How could I wordsmith it clearer?
Hear you loud and clear.
Salud, Ted. 🗽
Christine, I have thought of you since learning that Ian would hit Florida. To you, family, friends … your entire family of Floridians wishing you safety and good care.
Thank you, Fern.
🗽
Yes, ur right we do, we are, and there’s so much to do
Re: The 2020 RAND Corp report on US income inequality: $50T worth of US wealth transferred from 90% of the population to 1% from 1975 to 2018. Prior to that, income was tied to the GDP. If that were the case today, there would be an extra $2.5 T in American pockets every year. So much for supply side, trickle down economics.
Amen!
I have never met a businessman who, in the face of heavy demand for his product, says, "Yeah, I know I could sell the hell outta this stuff, but then I'd make money and have to pay taxes, so, nebbermind."
The sheer non-logic of the supply side argument always made my head spin.
And let’s make our chances better. Greg Olear today….”Down With Putin”. Now. Not later.
https://open.substack.com/pub/gregolear/p/down-with-putin?r=l2aa7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Russian Warship….enough…go f*ck yourself with all your sycophants and fan boys and girls on board.
🗽
Interesting Nixon greases the skids for the exodus of jobs out of our country and Reagan’s gop cabal open the banking floodgates for looted $$$$ by burgeoning Russian oligarchs when the Soviet Union dissolved!
Curious how these two political milestones in US history eventually eroded our own human right’s .conditions in this country.
I’m so glad we finally had the chance to prove “bottom up and out” is the best way to grow the economy and benefit the middle class. President Biden is going a great job and can do even more if we can get him a better majority.
The most startling and heartening statistics aren't the number of new manufacturing jobs, which is indeed impressive, but these: "the real net worth of the bottom 50% of U.S. households has climbed 60% since Biden took office, now reaching $67,524."
But how many Americans in this group realize what they've reaped under Biden? Unfortunately, Inflation skews so many perceptions. Then again, I don't recall Republicans proposing anything that would help keep the economy rolling on. Meanwhile, Biden and the Democrats keep proving that good things happen when government is focused on improving lives rather than fomenting hate and division.
Major changes have been made in our government by the Biden administration. The following are a few highlights featured in today’s Letter, but they are not all Biden and his team have accomplished in less than 2 years.
- Biden has made it clear that he is working to overturn 40 years of “supply side” economics, ushered in by President Ronald Reagan.
- he is building the economy “from the bottom up and the middle out,” he, along with the Democrats in Congress, bolstered domestic manufacturing with measures like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act
- National Economic Council director Brian Deese told the reporters, “One of the most striking things that we are seeing now …. —U.S. companies and global companies—that are committing to build and expand their manufacturing footprint in the United States and doing so based on their view that not only did the pandemic highlight the need for more resilience in their supply chains, but that the United States is creating a policy environment that makes long-term investment here in the United States more attractive.”
- Meanwhile, the real net worth of the bottom 50% of U.S. households has climbed 60% since Biden took office, now reaching $67,524.
- “Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s.”
- American manufacturers have not only regained all the jobs lost during the pandemic, but they have also added about 67,000 more.
It is fair to ask if this country is as divided as it is because of the economic policies of the Republican Party beginning with Reaganomics.
‘This system was designed to free up capital at the top of the economy through tax cuts and deregulation in the belief that putting capital in the hands of the wealthy—the “supply side”— would lead them to invest more in the economy, thus making it grow more quickly and providing more jobs. While Republicans came to embrace that ideology wholeheartedly, in fact it never showed signs of increasing economic growth. What it did was to move wealth dramatically upward. It also made the measure of the economy the health of Wall Street rather than Main Street.’ (Letter)
Let me put it another way: it is time to hold The Republican Party responsible for transferring the wealth of working Americans to the ultra-wealthy.
AND
It’s time for Biden and the Democratic party to let everyone know how they are returning that money to the American people, making our lives better and more economically secure as the country grows anew.
How do we all do this Fern? There needs to be advertising by the DNC that powerfully hits these points. There needs to be a way to get through to the trumpbotomized. How do we do this?
Gailee, I'm just winging it, but we are loaded with terrific writers, documentarians, performers... there need to be teams put together for social media, radio, cable, broadcasting, print, online... most artists are in the battle for democracy and when has there been more verified corruption and propaganda created by the Republican party and their cast of devils?
Republicans do this very thing for their lies and propaganda machine. Why are they so committed - money.
Indeed! steady incremental and consistent messaging by the deeper and more intelligent half of the nation must flood this opportunity for the people side to finally be re-established.
We must avoid relishing the squalor of the MAGA wreckage and ensure the highest values of the past are firmly established.
But those tasks are up to each and everyone of us.
I agree. But why is this not happening?
Gailee, we are being distracted by criminals who are working day and night to steal our country. Recycling is still going on but doesn’t rip our heart out like other activities. Caring for our physical planet is still so very important to many of us all over the world.
Look at the starving of the poor in Africa…I am dying a little bit everyday when I absorb so much need and want to help.
My daughter is finishing a book study on climate change. She encouraged us to look more deeply at local need so I am going to get involved with my local Sierra Club.
I support a young man in Bangladesh and for a child to attend school in Haiti. These are really small things and as I give I am also trusting someone else to actually care for these children I can not be with but yet want to help in some way.
All I can say is one by one, day by day we can do something .
Respectfully don't we need money to do the above Fern? I feel since the R's got that 150 billion dollar donation we are drowning over here.
Yes, Fern!!!! We need to work together using our gifts, great or small to save our country and rescue our planet.
Media is too focused on blathering republicans liars. Where are our bull horns that have wider reach than substacks. MSNBC tries but Fox lies rule. MSM focuses their news efforts on money making brouhaha rather than public service.
And tfg’s performative outrages suck all the media air out of the universe.
Jeri Chilcutt
Doesn't seem that Biden has taken off his gloves and clenched his fists to finally give the gop maggots the old "One-Two" right in their dusty parched kisser! Hopefully all other Democrats will boisterously join his brave urgings to repeatedly reveal the gop deceptions, lies, and hypocrisies.
Gailee Walker Wells
Ahhhh...
Wonderfully focused concern!
We should all carefully consider our Democratic resurgence success plan, Eh!?
Finally some fresh thought provoking urging to actually solve the problem GOP Maggot debacles.
Thank you!
Love your comment as opposed to others wasting our time with ridiculously long comment blathering plagiarizing of all that we have already studied in great detail
Last paragraph is rude, uncalled for, unnecessary, to say the least, Mr. all about Love. Hypocrisy much?
AshleyR TN
Well the wonderful pleasures we ALL enjoy here in our comments is sharing our opinions about how to solve the OBVIOUS problems that our American democracy is being bombarded by the gop maggots.
I am sorry you find some slight disagreement with a small part of my opinion. Isn't it wonderful we all see things a bit differently from each other. That is how aw all learn form each other. Eh!?
yes
This is the problem. Real Data does not seem to be absorbable by so many instead they parrot Fox News blah blah blahs
Fern, everything you say here is true, IMHO, but I'm wondering if we aren't all missing the big picture, which is that rapid, sustained economic growth, whether one subscribes to the GOP's Reaganoid trickle-down theory, or feels enthusiastic about Biden's Rooseveltian plan to put more money in the pockets of the poor and normal working stiffs, is - with overpopulation - the main driver of climate change.
I think there is an argument to be made for finding ways to meet everyone's needs while limiting GDP growth and trying to save ourselves from the worst climate disasters that our scientists have been predicting for many decades. The graphs of world economic growth and the increase of people-produced CO2 in the atmosphere are pretty similar and still rapidly rising (by historical standards, if I am not mistaken, which I may be. I'll google it)
I realize this is a can of worms and not explicitly today's LFAA topic (basically, Biden is doing a good job, while the GOP is trying to destroy all we hold dear!), so if anyone wishes to respond to this post, please do not feel hijacked. Have a nice day!
David, the technology to reach net zero, even negative, CO2 emissions exists now. What is lacking is the political will form a coherent plan (though there are several good ones), fund, scale-up, and implement it. This has been true for both Democrats and Republicans for decades. We need a quantitative easing type plan to save the climate - and by extension, everyone and everything, on the planet. We did this 14 years ago to save a few too large, crooked, financial institutions. Time to do the same for the planet and ALL of its inhabitents.
But David Herrick is right about overpopulation, which is going to get worse to the tune of four NY State population equivalents over the next 40 years (Census Bureau) due to US immigration policy (90% of that gain will be immigration, just 10% native increase).
Doesn't help to have laws that prohibit birth control, family planning, etc.
I'm a left wing Democrat. My great uncle was de facto head of the Colorado Democratic Party for the first half of the last century. I've been pro-choice since I understood the issues in my early teens. I've also been concerned about overpopulation since I was 9, and so was very early in favor of birth control and family planning.
I learned about globalwaraming in a course on environmental issues in 1975 given by John Holdren, who later became President Obama's Science Advisor. It's obvious to me that the US is way overpopulated already, and an article two years ago in the NYT Mag warned that in the next couple of decades, Americans (especially in the West and Southwest) would become climate refugees. It's a frightening read.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html
The US is one of the worst places on the planet to put more people, as we're the major industrialized nation with the greatest per capita greenhouse emissions. (China emits significantly more, but has lower per capita emissions.)
Climate change is a huge problem and it will take all of us to do what we are able to do to help. There are so many things I need to change as a consumer to help. I am learning....I am trying to do what I can to improve. My daughters are much better and more involved than I .... I can make better choices!
Emily, your determination to learn about climate change and improve your consumer habits is admirable, of course. But, I think we have all been guilt-tripped into thinking that if we drive a smaller car, turn down the thermostat, install LED lightbulbs and make a thousand other changes large and small in how we consume stuff, that somehow the CO2 in the world's atmosphere will stop increasing, perhaps even diminish, and that this is the key to saving ourselves from ourselves.
But, most people are still just pleasure seekers of one sort or another -- I know I am -- and do not necessarily do all the right things -- even if they know they should -- or even believe that their failure to behave properly will lead to the extinction of our species in fairly short order.
Result? As a species we continue barreling down the highway to Hell as several serious and immediate consequences of climate change are beginning to regularly influence our lives in negative ways. So-called 100 and 1,000-year disasters are now showing up annually and changing the lives of millions of people, but deciding to hang out our laundry rather than throw it in the dryer is not what will save us.
If we are very lucky, and the climate stability "window" of opportunity is not already shut, our feelings of guilt will lead us to vote for politicians who will pass draconian laws requiring us all to behave as we should with respect to energy use, and this "us all" includes governments, light and heavy industries, service providers, every other sort of business, sports teams, self-employed professionals, all of us, even -- no, especially -- the privileged ultra-rich.
Incentives and excise taxes will not suffice. There will need to be laws passed, warnings, then tickets issued and arrests made for infractions both small and large.
What we do not know yet, but may soon discover, is how strong our collective death wish is. That we have not yet managed to nuke ourselves into extinction is some cause for optimism, I suppose.
There was a newspaper article published in 1928, where scientists spoke about the impact on the climate of all the coal we were burning. So our species knew that far back that fossil fuels were a problem. And recently two young climate activists were sentenced to jail time for having sabotaged the Dakota pipeline and were called domestic terrorists. Who is actually the domestic terrorist - those who want to stop petroleum extraction or those who profit from it?
Great question J Nol, …and notice the one with the packed purse gets to be the judge !
David--I think you are quite right about the need for government regulations and enforcements--and also about common human psychology. My uncles who worked on farms with tobacco crops in the '30s and '40s said they all referred to cigarettes as "cancer sticks." Later on, Surgeon Generals' warnings and educational efforts barely made a dent in smoking rates until the government began taxing the products (raising the prices), regulating their sales, restricting areas where smoking was allowed, exposing the lies of the companies, etc. Persuasion and carrots can encourage change in some social and economic arenas, but it definitely takes sticks. In the case of climate change, we're all smoking whether we like it or not, so the sticks should be pretty damn big.
I have been deeply worried about climate change even before it got in the news (which really is only over the last year or two). And since then, as we also saw with the pandemic response, the USA has shown that it is incapable of quickly and effectively responding in the necessary way. All that has to happen is for Republicans to merely have enough power to exercise the filibuster. The only way we as a nation are to adopt enough green policies quickly enough is if those policies outcompete the dirty policies we have in place now. And do not tread on "Freedum". Ain't gonna happen IMO. We are a free market cowboy nation, and the free market doesn't have long term goals, and cowboys are uneducated and selfish. Our goals are short term, and we are not comfortable with change. Our government is ponderous and fractured, and moves at the speed of a glacier. Don't count on us. Count on the rest of the world, which may (or may not) drag us along. As a species, we are in huge trouble.
PS 'Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun's heat.'
Yes, Fern, and we produce them and convert them rapidly into planet-killing CO2 because politicians always promise economic growth and feel they have to deliver on their promises. You know, "more jobs, lower taxes, higher wages, more fun if you just vote for me" is the routine. Yes, Democrats do it too, unfortunately.
Apparently it's not just the CO2, but all the other gases produced from burning fossil fuels that add to climate change and health problems.
I've read that just raw methane leaking out of old fracking holes is a pretty big problem, too.
'big picture' David: 'official warned Wednesday. David Beasley, head of the U.N. World Food Program, said its latest analysis shows that "a record 345 million acutely hungry people are marching to the brink of starvation" — a 25% increase from 276 million at the start of 2022 before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb.Jul 7, 2022'
There are more big pictures positive and negative I could provide in answer to your 'over population' big picture, which as you may have realized is not the only way to address 'climate catastrophe' as far as I am concerned.
I agree, Fern, over-population is just an aggravating factor in climate change.
My main point was that the consumer-driven endless economic growth we all enjoy and participate in -- and cannot conceive of as somehow not necessarily good -- is not sustainable in any case. The Earth is a finite place. All politicians promise to deliver better economic growth than their adversaries, as if simply growing the economy helps everyone, but it doesn't unless the benefits of such growth are shared, if not in equal measure, at least fairly, based on the notions that no one should have to sleep on the street and no one should be able to waste his extra dough launching suborbital pleasure rockets while other folks are having to sleep on the street.
David, Does our use of LANGUAGE and framing of the CAUSES and SOLUTIONS with regard to Climate Change sometimes unnecessarily put people at odds? Do you think that the substance and framing of the issue in the following report by The Union of Concerned Scientist useful in this regard?
From: The Union of Concerned Scientists
REPORTS & MULTIMEDIA / EXPLAINER
CLIMATE CHANGE and POPULATION
Published Nov 9, 2021 Updated Jul 5, 2022
'We’re sometimes asked “Isn’t population growth driving climate change?” But that’s the wrong question—and it can lead to dangerous answers.'
'We frequently receive questions about population growth and its relationship to climate change. It’s an old idea with a troubling history. In the context of solving the climate crisis, it's distracting at best, and at worst, has the potential to do great harm to the climate and to people around the world.'
'Here are the facts: climate change is caused by the heat-trapping emissions produced when we burn coal, oil, and gas, and cut down forests. Data show that these emissions are most closely connected to carbon-intensive production and consumption patterns, predominantly the carbon-intensive lifestyles of the relatively wealthy, both here in the United States and around the world. Fossil fuel companies, utilities, and their trade groups also bear significant responsibility: they have used their power, money and deceptive tactics to lock in carbon-intensive infrastructure and constrain choices individuals can make about their energy supply.'
'A misplaced focus on population growth as a key driver of past, present, and future climate change conflates a rise in emissions with an increase in people, rather than the real source of those emissions: an increase in cars, power plants, airplanes, industries, buildings, and other parts of our fossil fuel-dependent economy and lifestyles. Implicit in this faulty framing is the notion that all people contribute significantly to heat-trapping emissions. In fact, data show (PDF) that the richest 10 percent of the world’s population contributes 50 percent of annual global warming emissions.' (Unionof ConcernedScientists) See link below.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/climate-change-and-population
Yes, the Union of Concerned Scientists EXPLAINER about climate change and the importance of population growth is fine as far as it goes. Until quite recently, there could be no real comparison of the CO2 emissions of the world's richest country and strongest modern economy (us, of course) with the CO2 emissions of India or China, for example, where historically most people have survived on subsistence agriculture. The rich west is still responsible for most of the "extra" CO2 in our atmosphere, in part because we (still) produce much more of it on a per capita basis than the more recently industrialized nations, and in part because we've been spewing it out for far longer. A billion Chinese people couldn't come close to our annual overall levels of CO2 emission until very recently, and our per capita emissions are still much higher than theirs and (until Covid slowed things temporarily) growing, despite all apparent efforts to bring solar and wind power on line in the USA and Europe. Only a few countries are coming anywhere close to their Paris Agreement goals. I'm pretty sure we are not.
So yes, the unheard of rapid increase of CO2 levels just in the past 50 years is a product of energy-intensive, free-living western lifestyles, not population growth, though there has been plenty of that, too. Even the increased CO2 levels in China and India are arguably the result of industrial activity in the service of western markets for...well, just about everything. There is no way billions of Chinese and Indians can produce American levels of CO2 unless... unless they begin to live the way we do. But, inevitably, many, many people out there in the world can watch (in real time, via smart phone) Americans and Europeans seeming to live high on the hog driving around in sporty SUVs and pigging out on junk food and having every convenience in the world with no apparent hassles or restrictions on their personal freedom, and, well, lots of them want that. Even if high CO2 emissions are part of the deal.
So, while it is wrong and unfair to say that population growth has been and is driving CO2 emissions worldwide, I think it is not unreasonable to ask ourselves what the situation will be when even a half or a third of China's and India's people achieve our fossil fuel dependent lifestyle. Can we say to them, "No, you can't live like we do because it will lead to the end of human life on earth"? Are they making efforts to achieve their prosperity by developing large scale solar/wind energy generation capacity? How can we ask them to do this without being total hypocrites? Are we willing to help them? I mean, global warming is our fault, and we have known where our way of life was taking us at least since the first Earth Day back in ...1969? 1970?
This is reason enough why the USA should already lead the world in abandoning fossil fuels ASAP, but we are not doing it, Fern, certainly not the MAGA GOP, and I'm not sure all our Democrats in Congress can have clean consciences on this either.
I think if Congress put a draconian End-of-fossil-fuel-production-and-use bill on Joe Biden's desk, he would sign it. But I am not (yet) holding my breath.
David,
I'm in complete agreement with your perspective on overpopulation. It's the unsustainable tyrannosaurus in Mother Earth's room. "Our" planet will survive until the sun explodes, but not in a manner that anyone alive today could recognize. The achievement of Zero Population Growth will be necessary for the long-term sustainability of homo sapiens.
Ed, I think it would be a mistake to lay this all on overpopulation. Technology has a way of correcting for that. Vertical, hydroponic farming can deal with both the soil depletion and water issues associated with feeding the world for some time to come, for example, but we should certainly address unchecked population growth for the long term. The last time I made a coast to coast flight in the USA there were vast tracts of empty land punctuated by the occasional small town and just a few large metropolitan areas surrounding the major air terminals.
I believe the much larger elephant in the room is that same force: technology, and the exponential growth thereof. Ted Keyes mentioned above the “Fairness Doctrine”, which as you know was a mandated sharing of opposing of viewpoints on the airwaves (AM radio being the most ubiquitous). It’s gone now, that wise doctrine, and AM radio has been almost totally co-opted by right wing talk radio. And where, I ask, is the stronghold of the far right? In the “heartland”, AKA, those vast tracts of space between the big blue coastal metro areas for the most part. And what has been the effect of this messaging blitzkrieg by the right (I ask again, hopefully not begging too many questions in a row:-)? A bringing together of a whole lot of people into one tent, which looks a lot like “overpopulation” in the realm of communications. Add to this the blindingly rapid expansion of social media enabled by the internet, which itself only really took off in the Reagan era, and you have the perfect storm of information saturation, polarization, aroused aggressive behavior; in short, the same kinds of things psychologists have reported for decades when studying the intentional over crowding of rat populations, but this time in a the virtual arena. And by the way, the nefarious elements in our societies are much better able to coordinate their efforts and observe the effects given these new tools.
We read all the time about simple solutions, and I mean no offense here, but “slowing down population growth” (even ZPG) or “voting Blue” (Bill Clinton was a Democrat, brought us NAFTA and it would have been more of the same under Hillary) I feel, won’t cut it. The real nut we need to crack is how to rein in the use of technology by the sociopathic bad actors among us, where for the most part that same technology is owned by the very same group, as are the politicians and, increasingly, the courts. Wish I knew the answer. Maybe it’ll take an asteroid. I'll leave you with that happy thought :-)
Does it all go back to climate change? Politics and economics won't matter if we don't tend to the pressing issue of preserving our planet from the danger of succumbing to climate changes for which its residents are responsible. If that happens, the manner in which an uninhabitable rock orbiting the Sun is governed won't matter. Can this problem be solved by democratic means, not only nationally, but for the entire planet as well? To borrow a couple of phrases, 'To be or not to be, that is the question' ... and 'Ask not for whom the bell tolls.' Somewhere out in space, another civilization might be laughing at Planet Earth, seeing us still stumbling around without one government to solve the problems of an entire planet.
Jack, perhaps there was a moment in history in the aftermath of the first uses of the BOMB when the USA might have pushed for the establishment of genuine world government that would have been democratic enough to satisfy the winners of WW2, attractive to countries emerging from their status as colonies, and believably better for the losers of WW2 than being pushed around by a sole nuclear power, us. But once the Ruskies got their bomb, and the world was again at binary war, Cold as it may have been, and Americans continued to view the rest of the world as a hellish place, we were left with the far less than democratic UN. We could have done worse, but we might have done a whole lot better. I really hate to even think it, but maybe a "tactical nuke" on Ukraine followed by a... No, better not to even think it.
Dear HCR, Fern, and all the other wonderful commenters on LFAA. Today is my last day as a subscriber to LFAA so I can like your comments but cannot argue with you. Maybe that's a good thing. I have learned so much from you. I can only afford so many paid subscriptions so at least for a while I have subscribed to The Hartmann Report. My other paid subscription is to TCfromLA. And I support the Kyiv Independent. I will probably come back to LFAA, especially if I can free up money from somewhere else. Tanya is home in Ukraine and not coming back. I hope to join her in the New Year sometime when she says it is safe. She has a small generator just in case to keep the furnace pilot light on, and the fridge and freezer running. Gas is not likely to be a problem but water could be. If everything goes south, she will close up the house, grab the pets and head for western Ukraine of Germany. We talk twice daily on WhatsApp but I miss her dreadfully and miss Lucky and the three cats too.
You can find me on TC's substack if you need me
Thanks for giving us the update. I've always looked forward to your posts, and have been worrying about you. I hope so very much that you can soon be reunited in Ukraine.
Maybe someone savvier about these things than I am could set up a "Keep Allen Hingston on LFAA" online crowd-funding, with any leftover funds going to some worthy pro-Ukrainian charity. I'll chip in for sure. Without that, I'll certainly miss reading your comments. In any case, best of luck to you and your family, Allen
I'm in David. If Allen is willing, It would give me a lift.
Appreciated but not necessary. Many thanks
Hey, It was self-help for me, dear Allen.
Happy to contribute to the critical "Keep Allen Hingston on LFAA" initiative, dearest Fern! 🕊💙💛
Thank you, Allen I will be in touch. More later. 🟦🟨
We need you to be here with us Allen, especially in your completely understandable, “missing” state. 💙💛
The question becomes, “can actions speak louder than propaganda”?
So why is this not shouted by Democrats every day? Why can I only learn about these stats by reading Heather's newsletter? The GOP are masters at dominating the news with their lies and distortions. Why are Democrats so bad at responding loudly and frequently to it?
I shout. I post. I feel like I'm a candle in the wind.