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      Questions on Which No One Agrees: Infrastructure, Cuba and Jobs

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      In August, the Daily Devil’s Dictionary appears in a single weekly edition containing multiple items taken from a variety of contexts.

      Obama Hosts the Jet Set While Biden Plays the Propeller

      As Barack Obama held a lavish do at his Martha’s Vineyard manor, US President Joe Biden tweeted his satisfaction with what appears to be a major accomplishment, getting an infrastructure bill halfway home through a vote in the Senate. “As we did with the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway,” he proudly proclaimed, “we will once again transform America and propel us into the future.”

      Propel:

      Provide a force that establishes new momentum, with or without the means to control the direction of the resulting motion

      The Context

      In the first part of his tweet, Biden explained that his “Infrastructure Deal signals to the world that our democracy can function, deliver, and do big things.” Some may read this as meaning that Biden’s pride in this partial accomplishment proves that in exceptional circumstances — by definition extremely rare — US democracy is capable of functioning.

      The corollary is that most of the time that must not be the case, an idea most people tend to agree with. But the politicians in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, appear ready to play a game of chicken. In the barnyard of the Beltway, Biden should know how perilous it can be to count your chickens before they hatch, especially when expecting one of the hatched chickens not only to cross the road (to work on repairing its potholes), but even to be propelled across it.

      Christopher Wilson at Yahoo observes that nine “moderate House Democrats on Friday threatened to blow up infrastructure negotiations, highlighting the delicate line that party leadership is trying to walk as it pushes two bills totaling over $4 trillion.” At the same time, the progressive wing has threatened to withdraw its support if the $1-trillion bill passed by the Senate is not coupled with a bill for $3.5 billion that covers some of the most urgent needs.

      In China, Cuba and Ohio, Reform and Inertia Go to Battle

      READ MORE

      Biden’s idea that the nation is being “propelled” into the future contains the odd suggestion that the future will not happen without this exceptional force. We might ask ourselves how 78-year-old Joe Biden envisions his own future, let alone the nation’s and the world’s. In the complete statement put out by the White House, a familiar Biden theme concerning the future reappears. It states that the “agreement will help ensure that America can compete in the global economy just when we are in a race with China and the rest of the world for the 21st Century.”

      Speculating about whether the US “can compete” reveals how skewed the notion of competition has become in US culture. Of course, the US can compete. Even if China does eventually overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy, the US will still be in the competition. In a fair game — even a game of chicken — everyone is expected to compete. That is the principle at the core of capitalism. What Biden literally means is that it’s all about winning, or rather dominating, and not about competing. For nearly a century, the US has seen its role, not as that of a competitor, but of a dictator. Competing means exercising the power to deprive other nations of even being allowed to compete. That’s what wars, invasions and sanctions are all about.

      The other complementary oddity in this statement is Biden’s idea that the 21st century is a prize to be won by a single nation. This is an idea he has repeatedly insisted on. It leaves the impression, confirmed by recent history, that as humanity prepares for a multipolar world, the US will resist to the death any challenge to its will to dominate. This bodes ill for the future of both Americans and everyone else at a time when it has become increasingly apparent that global problems can only be solved if all the nations and peoples of the world are involved.

      The New York Times Is Suffering From a Cold War Syndrome

      The New York Times continues to be hot on the trail of the tragic tale of the “Havana syndrome.” In its latest installment in the ongoing series of articles intended to demonstrate the paper’s failure to notice that tragedy has definitively morphed into comedy, The Times’ White House and National Security correspondent, David Sanger, offers this summary: “While the leading theory in the ‘Havana syndrome’ cases is directed microwave attacks, a classified session for senior government officials said months of investigation were inconclusive.”

      Leading theory:

      For government-led investigations, any theory, however improbable or utterly unlikely that points toward a hypothesis consistent with the requirements of the perpetrator’s agenda of political marketing

      The Context

      The New York Times appears to believe that “inconclusive” means worth writing about as if it was true until the whole thing ends up in the waste bin of history. For some historical perspective, the Warren Commission’s hasty and highly motivated conclusion in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of President John F. Kennedy became the “leading theory” of the time. It has remained officially the “leading theory” ever since and has even profited from the trend created in the early history of the CIA of dubbing a “conspiracy theory” any theory that differs or deviated from the “leading theory.”

      This is in spite of a mountain of forensic evidence as well as willfully ignored testimony that has emerged over time pointing to the involvement or complicity of the CIA, or at least some members of the CIA, most likely with the discreet assistance from the Mafia. Film director Oliver Stone is still bravely working on the case. Despite his new documentary on the JFK assassination that was featured last month at the Cannes film festival, The New York Times didn’t bother to review or even mention it. If it wasn’t financed by Hollywood, no movie is worth reviewing.

      The Havana syndrome story has turned into high and, as usual, expensive comedy because of the monumental efforts required to ensure that the “leading theory” continues to hold its lead even after multiple contradictory hypotheses emerge. In Sanger’s article, one quote by CIA Director William J. Burns gives the game away. Explaining his hesitation to charge Russian President Vladimir Putin with the crime, Burns responded: “Could be, but I honestly cannot — I don’t want to suggest until we can draw some more definitive conclusions who it might be. But there are a number of possibilities.” The Times has not just been suggesting it, but claiming it for at least the past year.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Sanger seems unaware of the comic effect of what he reports in the paragraph following Burns’ admission: “This spring, for example, American military personnel operating in Syria suspected that a sudden illness may have been caused by a Russian aircraft that could have directed microwaves at them; it was later determined they had food poisoning.” Those who have followed the story over the past five years know that the initial cases in Cuba that gave the official title to the syndrome produced the first comic trope when, after the victims submitted recordings of the sounds identified as the source of their woes, a study by a team of biologists “said it matched the mating song of the Indies short-tailed cricket found around the Caribbean.”

      Could the Russians have been genetically engineering the crickets to produce the kind of microwave suspected (but never identified) of causing the damage? The idea that it is a sonic attack in the form of aggressive microwaves is still nothing but that: an idea or, as Burns would admit, one of “a number of possibilities” — alongside food poisoning.

      Can The New York Times be suffering from what should be called the “Havana syndrome syndrome”? It appears so, as it continues to feature the latest “inconclusive” official moves as a breaking news story that is literally devoid of content. Sanger obviously has a direct line to the State Department and the CIA, and probably knows that if he has nothing else to report about how frightening the Russians or the Chinese have become, he can always come back to the Havana syndrome. 

      As with the narrative around UFOs, explaining the state of play of the unexplained, especially if fear is involved, will always attract readers, even when the explanation amounts to affirming that there is no explanation. Meanwhile, the investment of taxpayer money continues. The National Security Council, according to a senior administration official, is “leveraging a broad array of scientific and medical expertise from within the government and outside of it to explore multiple hypotheses and generate new insights.” Their aim is of course to “protect our personnel and identify who or what is responsible.” If they aren’t even sure if they’re looking for a “who” or a “what,” there will indeed be a lot of expensive work to do.

      Whose Reason Will Prevail in the Cuba Debate?

      Following recent protests in Cuba, people find themselves struggling with what politicians and the media want to frame as a simple binary problem. To the question of what has caused the misery in Cuba, Jorge Salazar-Carrillo, writing in The Conversation, notes that  “many analysts and activists — and the Cuban government — argue that this is due to American sanctions on Cuban goods” and counters that “the embargo is not the main reason Cubans are in dire straits now.”

      Main reason:

      One of many probable causes of a particular disaster, cited by a person who seeks to reduce the problem to a single cause so as to put all the blame on an adverse party and deny any responsibility from the speaker’s own side

      The Context

      Claiming to offer “perspective,” Salazar-Carrillo writes: “consider that Cuba’s income per capita back in the 1950s was one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Today it has one of the lowest.” He chooses to forget another critical historical fact reported by Marianne Ward and John Devereux in an academic article with the title “The Road Not Taken: Pre-Revolutionary Cuban Living Standards in Comparative Perspective.” The authors describe a Cuba dominated by US business and Mafia interests. They explain that “between 1920 and the 1950s per capita income was declining while the revenues of the richest Cubans were increasing exponentially.”

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Castillo conveniently fails to observe that, despite the decline in income per capita since the revolution, income equality is much greater than it was under Batista’s rule. Ward and Devereux explain that in pre-revolutionary Cuba, “U.S. financial interests included 90 percent of Cuban mines, 80 percent of its public utilities, 50 percent of its railways, 40 percent of its sugar production and 25 percent of its bank deposits. In return, Cuba got hedonistic tourists, organized crime and General Fulgencio Batista” who “appointed himself president by way of a military coup in 1952.”

      To make matters worse, “Not only was the economy weakening as a result of U.S. influence, but Cubans were also offended by what their country was becoming: a haven for prostitution, brothels and gambling.” Is this the situation Castillo and other Cuban exiles wish to return to? Does this explain why a six-decade-long embargo that deprives an entire nation of interacting economically with the dominant economies of the world is not the “main reason” for its economic woes?

      The Hyperreality of a Liberal Identity in the US

      New York Times columnist Ross Duthout used the example of Tucker Carlson’s fawning interview with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban to make an important point about “the ever-lengthening list of people who have had careers derailed for offenses against progressive norms.” He adds that frequently, “they are heterodox liberals rather than conservatives, because conservatives are rare in elite institutions and less interesting to ideological enforcers.” 

      Heterodox liberals:

      Either a real subcategory of a totally imaginary category of Americans or an imaginary subcategory of a real category of Americans. Let the reader decide.

      The Context

      In the US, everyone is taught from birth that society can be divided into two opposing camps: liberals and conservatives. Growing up, most young people feel pressure to decide which side they are on. Typically, they accept their chosen label for the rest of their lives, though converts do exist, some of whom make a point of broadcasting to the world how they were “born again” politically as living examples of a “great awakening.”

      Criticizing the tyranny of thought exercised by what he calls “intolerant progressivism,” Douthat somehow misses the real and obvious vice in the system. The intolerant progressives he despises have adopted a behavior perfectly consistent with one of the core values in US culture. We could call it “the culture of aggressive community enforcement or negative branding.”

      The idea of law and order resonates strongly in US culture. People can believe and think anything they like, but there are laws that define the limits on their actions. On the other hand, the belief in the abstract notion of “freedom” as something divinely ordained tells them that there should be no limit on what they can do. This has led the culture to adopt a compromise position formulated in the traditional idea that you can wave your arms around as much as you like, but your freedom to do so stops when it enters another person’s space. There is even a consecrated expression: Your personal liberty to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In other words, Americans think of themselves as free swingers, but they acknowledge that there are instances in which it may be necessary to restrain the movement. That produces a psychological dilemma that can be resolved either by disciplining one’s own movements (respecting other people’s space) or simply by avoiding other people altogether and retreating into one’s own private reality. This implicit choice has a major impact on how people choose to live their lives. The bold take risks and cultivate a carefully managed discipline of assertiveness. The shy crawl back into their shell.

      Douthat asks an interesting question: “But where can you go to vote for a different ruling ideology in the interlocking American establishment, all its schools and professional guilds, its consolidated media and tech powers?” The answer is nowhere, but not for the reason he expects. The “ruling ideology” isn’t the regime of political correctness he excoriates. There is a superior, universal ruling ideology shared by all but a few lucid and utterly marginalized critics. It bears the name “American exceptionalism.”

      Douthat has no problem with that imposed ideology that indeed interlocks everything in the political economy. Its effects may lead to the destruction of humanity. But what Douthat thinks we really need to worry about is political correctness.

      Forget Climate: Rick Scott Wants to Protect Jobs, Mainly His Own

      In an interview with NPR’s Ari Shapiro, Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida weighed in on the question of climate change. In the past, Republican politicians have preferred to dismiss the topic as fake news. Not Rick Scott, who tells us: “I think we clearly want to, and need to, address the impacts of climate change, and we’ve got to protect our environment, but we’ve got to do it in a fiscally responsible manner. We can’t put jobs at risk.”

      Fiscally responsible:

      Possessing the theological virtue in the capitalist religion of being socially irresponsible, thanks to a divine decree that places the health and prosperity of investments above the health and prosperity of the people

      The Context

      Scott added, “We’ve got to focus on the impacts of climate change, but you’ve got to do it in a manner that you don’t kill our economy.” Many economists agree with the Biden administration’s stated belief that aggressively countering climate change will not only save the planet but also produce jobs and permanently improve the economy. If that is true, what is the basis of Scott’s fear of killing the economy?

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      The short answer that Republican lawmakers are well aware of is that stimulating a new direction for the economy will deprive some in the rentier class of monopolists their flock of geese that have so consistently laid golden eggs. The economists counter that promoting economic transformation may create new wealth. But the problem for someone like Scott is that new wealth takes years to build the reserves required for it to engage in serious Beltway lobbying and the active funding of political campaigns for incumbent senators.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The planet is in peril. We’re building Congress’s strongest-ever climate bill | Bernie Sanders

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      OpinionBernie SandersThe planet is in peril. We’re building Congress’s strongest-ever climate billBernie SandersMore than any other legislation in US history it will transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into sustainable energy Wed 18 Aug 2021 08.46 EDTLast modified on Wed 18 Aug 2021 10.14 EDTThe latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is clear and foreboding. If the United States, China and the rest of the world do not act extremely aggressively to cut carbon emissions, the planet will face enormous and irreversible damage. The world that we will be leaving our children and future generations will be increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable.But we didn’t really need the IPCC to tell us that. Just take a look at what’s happening right now: A huge fire in Siberia is casting smoke for 3,000 miles. Greece: burning. California: burning. Oregon: burning. Historic flooding in Germany and Belgium. Italy just experienced the hottest European day ever. July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded. Drought and extreme weather disturbances are cutting food production, increasing hunger and raising food prices worldwide. Rising sea levels threaten Miami, New York, Charleston and countless coastal cities around the world in the not-so-distant future.In the past, these disasters might have seemed like an absurd plot in some apocalypse movie. Unfortunately, this is now reality, and it will only get much worse in years to come if we do not act boldly – now.The good news is that the $3.5tn budget resolution that was recently passed in the Senate lays the groundwork for a historic reconciliation bill that will not only substantially improve the lives of working people, elderly people, the sick and the poor, but also, in an unprecedented way, address the existential threat of climate change. More than any other legislation in American history it will transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.This legislation will be a long-overdue step forward in the fight for economic, racial, social and environmental justice. It will also create millions of well-paying jobs. As chair of the Senate budget committee my hope is that the various committees will soon finish their work and that the bill will be on the floor and adopted by Congress in late September.Let me be honest in telling you that this reconciliation bill, the final details of which are still being written, will not do everything that needs to be done to combat climate change. But by investing hundreds of billions of dollars in the reduction of carbon emissions it will be a significant step forward and will set an example for what other countries should be doing.Here are some of the proposals that are currently in the bill:Massive investments in retrofitting homes and buildings to save energy.Massive investment in the production of wind, solar and other forms of sustainable energy.A major move toward the electrification of transportation, including generous rebates to enable working families to buy electric vehicles and energy-efficient appliances.Major investments in greener agriculture.Major investments in climate resiliency and ecosystem recovery projects.Major investments in water and environmental justice.Major investments in research and development for sustainable energy and battery storage.Billions to address the warming and acidification of oceans and the needs of coastal communities.The creation of a Civilian Climate Corps which will put hundreds of thousands of young people to work transforming our energy system and protecting our most vulnerable communities.The Budget Resolution that allows us to move forward on this ambitious legislation was passed last Wednesday at 4am, by a vote of 50-49 after 14 hours of debate. No Republican supported it, and no Republican will support the reconciliation bill. In fact, Republicans have been shamefully absent from serious discussions about the climate emergency.That means that we must demand that every Democrat supports a reconciliation bill that is strong on solutions to the climate crisis. No wavering. No watering down. This is the moment. Our children and grandchildren are depending upon us. The future of the planet is at stake.
      Bernie Sanders is a US senator and the chair of the Senate budget committee
      TopicsBernie SandersOpinionUS politicsClimate changeUS SenateEnergycommentReuse this content More

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      Are you in denial? Because it’s not just anti-vaxxers and climate sceptics | Jonathan Freedland

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      OpinionCoronavirusAre you in denial? Because it’s not just anti-vaxxers and climate scepticsJonathan FreedlandTo accept the facts about climate science without changing the way we live is also to deny reality Fri 13 Aug 2021 11.55 EDTLast modified on Fri 13 Aug 2021 15.04 EDTIt’s easy to laugh at the anti-vaccine movement, and this week they made it easier still. Hundreds of protesters tried to storm Television Centre in west London, apparently unaware that they were not at the headquarters of the BBC or its news operation – which they blame for brainwashing the British public – but at a building vacated by the corporation eight years ago and which now consists of luxury flats and daytime TV studios. If only they’d done their own research.Anti-vax firebreather Piers Corbyn was there, of course, unabashed by the recent undercover sting that showed him happy to take £10,000 in cash from what he thought was an AstraZeneca shareholder, while agreeing that he would exempt their product from his rhetorical fire. (Corbyn has since said that the published video is misleading.) “We’ve got to take over these bastards,” he said during this week’s protest, while inside Loose Women were discussing the menopause.In Britain, the temptation is to snigger at the anti-vaxxers, but in the US it’s becoming ever clearer that the outright Covid deniers, vaccine opponents and anti-maskers – and the hold they have over the Republican party – are no joke. The Covid culture wars have escalated to such an extent that the Republican governors of two states, Florida and Texas, are now actively barring schools, colleges and local authorities from taking basic, common-sense measures against the disease.They are no longer allowed to require vaccines, proof of vaccination, a Covid test or masks. Any Florida school administrator who demands the wearing of masks could lose their pay. Texas is dropping the requirement that schools even notify parents when there’s a coronavirus case in class. Naturally, the Covid numbers in both states are through the roof. For all Joe Biden’s early success with vaccination, this level of resistance is posing a grave threat to the US’s ability to manage, let alone defeat, the pandemic.What explains this level of Covid denialism? In the US, the roots of a “don’t tread on me” libertarianism that regards any instruction from government as a step towards tyranny run deep. In the Trump era, it has become a matter of political identity: a refusal to believe Covid is real or that the measures against it are legitimate are increasingly conditions of membership of the right and of good standing as a true devotee of the former president. They are conditions of membership. Besides, Covid denialism offers the lure of all conspiracy theories: the promise of secret knowledge, the chance to see what the sheeple cannot see.For everyone else, it’s tempting to take pride in being untainted by such thinking. To dismiss the Covid deniers, whether in Florida or west London, as a group apart, irrational, if not downright stupid – refusing to take the steps that will provably protect them, their families and those around them. And yet, the distance between them and everyone else might not be as great as you think.Contempt for the unvaccinated is a temptation to be resisted | Dan BrooksRead moreOn the same day that Piers and the placard wavers were out in force in White City, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered its report on the state of our planet. It was its starkest warning yet. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called it a “code red for humanity”, adding that the “alarm bells are deafening”. The IPCC found that sea level is rising, the polar ice is melting, there are floods, droughts and heatwaves and that human activity is “unequivocally” the cause.Now, there are some who still deny this plain truth, the same way that some insist coronavirus is a “plandemic” hatched by Bill Gates or caused by 5G phone masts or aliens. Both those groups are guilty of cognitive denial, failing to update their beliefs in the light of the evidence.But there is another form of denial, what the philosopher Quassim Cassam calls “behavioural or practical denialism”. This is the mindset that accepts the science marshalled by the IPCC – it hears the alarm bell ringing – but still does not change its behaviour. It can operate at the level of governments: note the White House official who on Wednesday urged global oil producers to open up the taps and increase production, so that hard-pressed US motorists can buy gasoline more cheaply. And it lives in individuals, too, in the fatalism that says one person can do nothing to halt a planetary emergency, so you might as well shrug and move on. Which is “to act in the same way as if you were a climate change denier,” says Cassam. “The practical upshot is the same.”Whether it’s Covid or climate, there is a common defect at work here. It is wilful blindness, a deliberate closing of the eyes to a reality that is too hard to bear – and it afflicts far more than a hardcore of noisy sceptics and protesters. A US poll this week found that a summer of heatwaves, flooding and wildfires – evidence that the planet is both burning and drowning – has barely shifted attitudes to the climate issue. Many, even most, are looking the other way.Perhaps all this is worth bearing in mind as policymakers grappling with the twin crises try to cajole the wary towards action for both their own and the collective good. In both cases, it pays to peel the committed deniers away from those who are merely hesitant or apathetic, and therefore more persuadable. And, again in both cases, it’s wise to remember that the recalcitrant are driven by an impulse that is all too human: namely, fear.TopicsCoronavirusOpinionVaccines and immunisationHealthClimate changeUS politicsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      Remember Obama’s drill, baby, drill days? Democrats aren’t innocent on climate | David Sirota

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      OpinionClimate changeRemember Obama’s drill, baby, drill days? Democrats aren’t innocent on climateDavid SirotaObama campaigned in climate poetry and then governed in fossil fuel prose. Joe Biden may well follow in his footsteps Tue 10 Aug 2021 06.25 EDTLast modified on Tue 10 Aug 2021 16.29 EDTIf after Monday’s news you didn’t feel a pang of doom, you’re either a zen master, a recluse living in a news vacuum, or a nihilist. The new United Nations report on climate change predicts an actual, bona fide apocalypse unless our civilization discards our fetish for incrementalism, rejects nothing-will-fundamentally-change fatalism and instead finally takes the crisis seriously.The bad news is that we’ve been here before during the last era of Democratic supremacy, and if the Obama era we sleepwalked through now repeats itself, we’re done. It’s that simple.IPCC report shows ‘possible loss of entire countries within the century’Read moreThe glimmer of good news is that we still have time to defuse the worst effects of the climate bomb, and at least one part of the political dynamic may finally be changing.But if we allow corporate media and the political class to erase our memory of how we arrived here, then history will probably recur and we will all burn.The bad news: we’ve been here beforeAt its core, the climate crisis is a product of bipartisan corruption and greed. Politicians bankrolled by oil and gas interests ignored scientists’ warnings, and financed a fossil fuel economy knowing full well it would destroy the ecosystem that supports all life on the planet.Republicans were more explicit about their corruption, actively denying the scientific facts and resurrecting their own version of a Flat Earth Society that reassured voters that nothing has to change and everything will be fine. Democrats settled on a different, but similarly pernicious, form of climate denialism: They acknowledged the science and issued progressive sounding press releases about the environment, and then they continued supporting fossil fuel development.This strategy satiated liberals’ top priority: enjoying erudite speeches from Ivy League politicians that make affluent liberals feel smart, smug and superior, regardless of whether the rhetoric is subsequently betrayed and discarded in the actual legislative process, which Democrats’ MSNBC-addled base doesn’t seem to care about in the red-versus-blue partisan wars.The cynical formula crescendoed in the presidency of Barack Obama, who campaigned in climate poetry and then governed in fossil fuel prose.When Obama won the 2008 election, liberals lauded him for declaring: “Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”Little noticed was the concurrent Obama-Biden pledge to “promote the responsible domestic production of oil and natural gas,” “prioritize the construction of the Alaska natural gas pipeline,” and extract “up to 85bn barrels of technically recoverable oil [that] remains stranded in existing fields”.And so four years after that campaign, Obama delivered a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma, which perfectly summarized his actual legacy – and which future post-apocalypse historians (if any survive) will likely see as one of the pivotal moments in the cataclysm:“Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years,” he said in a speech promising to increase pipeline capacity to flood the world with even more fossil fuels.“Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75% of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some. So we are drilling all over the place – right now.”You can try to tout Obama’s support for stuff like the Paris accords and electric vehicles, but his own boasts illustrate a record of climate denialism, as did Obama’s 2018 declaration one month after an IPCC sounded an alarm. Amid the worsening emergency, he told a Texas audience that “suddenly America is like, the biggest oil producer. That was me, people … just say, ‘Thank you,’ please.”Obama: “Suddenly America is the largest oil producer, that was me people … say thank you.” pic.twitter.com/VfQfX1SR0x— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 28, 2018
      The self-congratulation came only two years after Obama tweeted: “Climate change is happening now. Denial is dangerous.” And in that contrast, we see the fundamental formula at work.Obama, like so many politicians, seems to believe that regardless of what’s happening in the physical world, he and his fellow elites can just tweet, Instagram influence, and speechify their way through it, and nobody will care.But this isn’t merely a sleight of hand. There’s also an ideology here – or, more accurately, a sociopathy. Obama’s presidency was an eight-year quest to secure the vaunted “pragmatic” label from corporate media’s bipartisanship fetishists, no matter the human cost of that pursuit.From the all-too-small stimulus, to the watered-down Wall Street reform bill, to the Heritage Foundation–originated healthcare legislation to the push for social security cuts to the approval of toxic chemicals to the Oklahoma speech’s embrace of drill-baby-drill, most major Obama initiatives represented an attempt to appease the right and punch a left.The Obama administration’s top-line goal was to prove to Washington pundits and corporate donors that the Democratic party will always prioritize compromise – even when it means compromising the lifespans of millions of people.All of this was enabled and fortified by Democrats who enjoyed giant majorities in Congress – and yet did nothing to change the dynamic. On climate in particular, that was most obvious: the Democratic House did pass a cap-and-trade bill, but Obama abandoned it in yet another effort to reach out to Republicans, and therefore it went nowhere in the Democratic Senate.Obama and congressional Democrats then helped the Republican party lift the crude oil export ban, and Democrats’ support for natural gas was so aggressive, one oil and gas law firm said it was a “case of policy continuity from Obama to Trump”.The good news: a line in the sand (maybe)Joe Biden, congressional Democrats and Democratic primary voters were not innocent bystanders in all this. Biden was the vice-president and had his name on the original initiatives to flood the world market with US fossil fuels during the climate crisis. Primary voters rewarded him with the presidential nomination as he was lauded by the fossil fuel industry for campaigning against a fracking ban – just as those same voters continue rejecting progressive climate candidates in favor of corporate-friendly incrementalists.Colorado’s 2020 Senate primary was the iconic example of that trend: a reliably blue state’s Democratic electorate obediently followed orders from party leaders in Washington and gave its US Senate nomination to one of America’s most ardently pro-fossil-fuel politicians – all while the local media and political class scoffed at his progressive primary opponent for airing an ad rightly predicting that climate change would prevent Coloradans from safely going outside.That past was a prelude to the last few months, which have seen Biden begin to pull an Obama.On the stump, he’s offered climate poetry, telling America that climate is the “No 1 issue facing humanity” and done photo-ops driving an electric truck. And like Obama, he’s breaking all sorts of campaign promises and governing in fossil fuel prose, increasing drilling to George W Bush levels, backing Trump-era fossil fuel projects, touting auto-emission rules weaker than Obama’s, deploying his energy secretary to promise a bright future for the fossil fuel industry.Now, Biden is championing a bipartisan infrastructure bill that omits major climate initiatives – and that legislation is moving through a Congress whose most powerful Senate Democrat profits off the coal business, and whose most powerful House Democrat laughed at the “green dream or whatever”. It doesn’t help that the party is run by a gerontocracy that can laugh off the emergency, knowing they won’t be around to suffer through the worst consequences of its climate compromises and capitulations.Clearly, if nothing fundamentally changes in our politics and for the donor class that is disproportionately driving the climate crisis, then everything in our natural world is going to change for the worse, with ecocidal consequences on a scale that our species has never experienced, and might not survive.Thankfully, that reality seems to finally be seeping into the consciousness of at least a handful of lawmakers – and even more thankfully, the narrowly divided congressional chambers mean only a small group of legislators are needed to actually alter the legislative dynamics.In recent weeks, progressive lawmakers from Representative Mondaire Jones, a Democrat from New York, to Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, have promoted a simple mantra: “No Climate, No Deal.” The idea is that they will vote down any bipartisan infrastructure bill until it is coupled with legislation that could be the last chance to mobilize the country for the epic battle against climate change, before Republicans win back Congress.This ultimatum is required in order to prevent Biden, Republicans and corporate Democrats from doing what they clearly want to do: simply pass an infrastructure bill that props up the fossil fuel industry with subsidies and road infrastructure, and then leave for vacation without any new climate initiatives as the world incinerates.Until now, progressive lawmakers have made a lot of noise and a lot of sententious declarations about the need for bold action and fearlessness – and then they’ve refused to follow up that sound with the fury of withheld votes. Most notably, they did not withhold their votes on the Covid relief bill in order to force the inclusion of a $15 minimum wage – and now that much-promised initiative has been surgically erased from the discourse, like the memory of an old flame in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.So, yeah, it’s fair to remain circumspect that these Democratic lawmakers would actually follow through on their new ultimatum, for fear of being labeled seditious traitors to the party – which is now considered the highest form of treason in American politics. Such skepticism is especially warranted since these legislators have not made clear what they consider “climate” and exactly what they are demanding for a deal.Then again, what ultimately constitutes “climate” in any agreement may be somewhat vague, but it’s kind of like the obscenity standard – you know it when you see it. Plus, Democratic lawmakers even threatening to act as a climate voting bloc is already providing far more pressure on Biden than Obama ever faced from his own party when he was bragging about his unrelenting support for the fossil fuel industry. And that pressure has at least produced an initial reconciliation proposal that is somewhat serious. So that’s something.As the IPCC report suggests, whether or not these Democrats follow through and force a climate confrontation in Congress – and whether or not their own constituents demand they hold out – could be the difference between a livable planet and a hellscape.It’s the difference between Democrats in 10 years bragging, “That was me, people!” about rescuing the world from disaster, or hunkering down at their Martha’s Vineyard compounds after they’ve laid waste to the planet.
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
      This piece was originally published in the Daily Poster
      TopicsClimate changeOpinionOilDemocratsBarack ObamaJoe BidenUS politicsEnergycommentReuse this content More

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      Biden’s battle to solve the climate crisis: Politics Weekly Extra

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      Last December, a month before his inauguration, Biden announced he was naming former secretary of state John Kerry as the first ever presidential envoy for climate as part of his plan to deal with the crisis.
      Joan E Greve talks to Oliver Milman about what Biden’s climate change plans are, what challenges he’s up against and if he and John Kerry can lead the way in solving the climate crisis.

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      When Joe Biden was inaugurated on 20th January 2021, he came with some ambitious ideas for how to tackle climate change. Biden’s proposals were quite different from those of Donald Trump, who began his presidency by announcing the US was leaving the Paris Agreement. Biden made it clear that he was taking a new approach when he appointed former presidential candidate and secretary of state John Kerry to the newly created position of special presidential envoy for climate but is it enough? And are President Biden and John Kerry the right people to help lead the charge? Oliver Milman and Joan E Greve discuss. Archive: Getty, Fox News, AP, C-SPAN, NBC News, Fox 13 News, CBS News Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      The Democrat blocking progressive change is beholden to big oil. Surprised? | Alex Kotch

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      OpinionUS politicsThe Democrat blocking progressive change is beholden to big oil. Surprised?Alex KotchJoe Manchin owns millions of dollars in coal stock, founded an energy firm and Exxon lobbyists brag about their access to him. Republicans fundraise on his behalf Tue 20 Jul 2021 06.13 EDTLast modified on Tue 20 Jul 2021 08.09 EDTAs “thousand-year” heat waves caused by the climate crisis rock the west coast and biblical floods engulf major cities, Senate Democrats are negotiating a $3.5tn budget package that could include an attempt to slow the use of fossil fuels over the next decade.One prominent senator is very concerned about proposals to scale back oil, gas and coal usage. He recently argued that those who want to “get rid of” fossil fuels are wrong. Eliminating fossil fuels won’t help fight global heating, he claimed, against all evidence. “If anything, it would be worse.”Which rightwing Republican uttered these false, climate crisis-denying words?Wrong question. The speaker was a Democrat: Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.West Virginia is a major coal-producing state. But Manchin’s investment in dirty energy goes far beyond the economic interests of the voters who elect him every six years. In fact, coal has made Manchin and his family very wealthy. He founded the private coal brokerage Enersystems in 1988 and still owns a big stake in the company, which his son currently runs.In 2020 alone, Manchin raked in nearly $500,000 of income from Enersystems, and he owns as much as $5m worth of stock in the company, according to his most recent financial disclosure.Despite this conflict of interest, Manchin chairs the influential Senate energy and natural resources committee, which has jurisdiction over coal production and distribution, coal research and development, and coal conversion, as well as “global climate change”.He even gave a pro-coal speech in May to the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) while personally profiting from Enersystems’ coal sales to utility companies that are EEI members, as Sludge recently reported.Manchin is one of many members of Congress who are personally invested in the fossil fuel industry – dozens of Congress members hold Exxon stock – but he is among the biggest profiters. As of late 2019, he had more money invested in dirty energy than any other senator.How can this be? Wouldn’t basic ethics prevent someone from being in charge of legislation that could materially benefit them? Unfortunately, conflict-of-interest rules in the Senate are remarkably weak. And guess who is seeking to strip conflict-of-interest rules from a 2021 democracy reform bill?Joe Manchin.His proposal “leaves out language that S 1 would add to federal statute prohibiting lawmakers from working on bills primarily for furthering their financial interests”, Sludge reported.Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, has used the evenly split chamber to block Joe Biden’s agenda. In the process he has become arguably the most powerful person in Washington. Hardly any Democratic legislation can pass without his vote.That’s a problem – especially given that Manchin sometimes seems like he’s an honorary Republican. Earlier this month the Texas Tribune and other publications reported that Manchin was heading to Texas for a fundraiser hosted by several major Republican donors, including oil billionaires.Manchin, along with Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has vowed to protect the filibuster – a rule, frequently used to empower white supremacists, that requires 60 votes for most Senate bills to pass. That includes vital voting rights legislation, passed by the House, that is the only way to stop the Republican party from eviscerating what’s left of our democracy in the name of the “big lie” of voter fraud.Because of his uniquely powerful position as a swing vote, Manchin can rewrite major legislation to his liking – effectively dictating the legislative agendas of Congress and the White House.It appears that Manchin will have his way with the White House’s infrastructure package as well, and his changes will probably be more devastating, given the climate emergency we live in.Manchin isn’t just sticking up for the coal industry and his family’s generational wealth; he’s doing the bidding of oil and gas executives, who also stand to lose money if the nation transitions away from toxic fuels.Manchin’s political campaigns are fueled by the dirty energy industry. Over the past decade, his election campaigns have received nearly $65,000 from disastrously dishonest oil giant Exxon’s lobbyists, its corporate political action committee, and the lobbying firms that Exxon works with. A top Exxon lobbyist recently bragged about his access to Manchin.In the 2018 election cycle, his most recent, Manchin’s campaign got more money from oil and gas Pacs and employees than any other Senate Democrat except then North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp. Manchin was also the mining industry’s top Democratic recipient in Congress that cycle.If Biden wants to have any kind of legacy, he needs to stand up to Manchin, a member of his own party, and work with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to get him in line. I don’t fully know why Biden permits the West Virginian to dictate his own presidential policy agenda. But what is crystal clear is that the leader of the United States should be doing a whole lot more.
      Alex Kotch is an investigative reporter and editor with the Center for Media and Democracy, a nationally recognized watchdog that leads award-winning investigations into the corruption that undermines our democracy, environment, and economic prosperity
      This article was produced in partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy
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