Public Comment

Slack Facts

On March 21, the Chronicle reported on a fire that engulfed several structures at the Tiny House enclave near Oakland's Lake Merritt. The Chronicle's coverage included a sentence that announced: "the cause is presumed to be undetermined." Which, I suppose, is another way of saying, "I'm guessing we just don't know."

Is Reich Running for Real?

My daily email flood is forever clotted with surveys—"Support this?" "Back that?" "Sign on?" (All leading to: "Donate here!") But one recent e-missive from "Equality Democrats" caught my eye. The message read: "Should Robert Reich run for office? Yes, No, Unsure."

The announcement praised former Clinton-era Labor Secretary and current UCB Prof. Reich for "fighting on the frontlines of progressive issues for DECADES" and claimed that "some experts are floating the idea of Robert Reich running for office! They're saying he can REALLY win!"

The only thing they aren't saying (if this email is to be believed) is what office he might be running for. California already has a strong senate team. But, say if Dianne Feinstein were to retire—would Reich rise to the occasion?

Near as I can tell, UC's most progressive professor/activist/polemicist/cartoonist has only run for public office once, in 2002, when he vied to become the Democratic governor of Massachusetts. (The party eventually chose former Massachusetts State Treasurer Shannon P. O'Brien to run for the office and she eventually lost to Republican Mitt Romney.) 

Reparations Preparations 

Calls have come from around the world demanding that Vladimir Putin's government be required to pay reparations for the wanton murder of innocent Ukranians and the wholesale destruction of civilian dwellings and infrastructure that has turned the country's cities into wastelands of smoldering rubble. 

Activist/writer Nicolas J.S. Davis offers a further suggestion:
"Maybe a call for reparations to Ukraine should include a commitment by the US to pay:
• the reparations to Nicaragua that were ordered by the International Court of Justice in 1986,
• the $3 billion that Nixon promised to Vietnam (plus adjustment for 50 years of inflation), and
• proportionate reparations to Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Palestine, Yemen and other countries the United States and its allies have attacked with American weapons, killed thousands (or millions in some cases) of their people and destroyed their civilian infrastructure.
If we can spend $800 billion-per-year to fund all this destruction, how much would be appropriate to spend on repairing the damage?
Maybe we could ask the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Congressional Research Service and the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General to look into this." 

Russia's War Crimes: The US Paved the Way 

Hospitals bombed. Civilian apartments destroyed. Residents forced to flee their homes. This is what Russia's invasion has brought to Ukraine. But this also is a summation of the horrific damage inflicted by NATO during the 1999 Kosovo War. 

On March 24, 1999, US/NATO forces began bombing Yugoslavia in a campaign that lasted 78 days—nearly three months. 

During this siege, NATO missiles and airstrikes destroyed 25,000 homes, 300 miles of roads, 400 miles of railways, 14 airports, 19 hospitals, 19 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments, and 44 bridges. 

The Centre for Humanitarian Law in Belgrade estimated around 9,401 people were killed or disappeared during NATO's bombing of Kosovo. Other estimates concluded the NATO bombardment injured as many as 25,000. 

And it was an "atomic war," as well, since NATO's use of depleted uranium ordnance left entire neighborhoods contaminated with radioactive rubble. 

Here's a related video (apologies if it starts off with an unsolicited ad): 

Don't Be Fueled: Toyota's Not as Green as It Seems 

"The world's biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home," UN Secretary-General António Guterres, recently remarked. Guterres' comment was prompted by the release of the latest UN Climate Report, which Guterres characterized as "an atlas of human suffering." 

In response, the European Union has announced plans to stop making gas-powered cars by 2035. But, according to SumOfUs.org, "those plans may never become law, if Toyota and their Brussels lobbyists have their way."  

Yep, Toyota, the ubiquitous Japanese automaker, has tarnished its green reputation. According to the New York Times and The Guardian, Toyota is gunning its engines to block essential clean-climate laws. 

"Toyota is one of the world’s top lobbyists against laws to protect us all from catastrophic climate breakdown," SumOfUs sums up. "Only oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron are doing more lobbying harm!" 

The good news? "Toyota bosses hate it when news about their lobbying gets out," says SumOfUs, citing Toyota's decision to halt its lawsuit to block climate action after a major public outcry in California. So hop on board and tell Toyota to stop lobbying for fossil fuels, and go green for real. https://actions.sumofus.org/a/toyota-polluta 

The Most Effective Planet-saving Options 

Recycling, composting, electric cars are seen as effective option to address climate change. When it comes to cutting gigatons of CO2, composting is twice as effective as recycling paper while driving an electric auto is nearly twice as effective as recycling mountains of ocean-choking plastics. But these four options fall way short of three other eco-options. Switching to a meatless, plant-rich diet would be 8 times more beneficial than driving a Tesla. But there are two more "lifestyle choices" that are even more effective: reducing food waste and promoting family planning and assuring the education of young girls. While tooling around in Teslas can save about 8 gigatons of CO2, each of these two overlooked alternatives can save more than 80 gigatons of the industrialized world's planet-cooking gases. 

The figures come from Population Connection, a DC-based group that is concerned about the eco-impact of more than 30 million unintended births each year (1.3 million of those unplanned births occur in the US alone). That means that nearly 38 percent of the 80 million babies born each year, are "unplanned," which often means they will face lives of abandonment and poverty. Population Connection is promoting passage of the Global HER Act (Health, Empowerment, and Rights) to counter a Global Gag Rule that would terminate US foreign aid to any countries that offered safe, legal abortions. 

Savant of the People 

Barbara Garson, the multi-talented author of All the Livelong Day and Macbird (an anti-war play from the 60s that skewered the presidency of Lyndon Johnson), recently posted an appreciation in The Nation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's now-famous TV comedy series, in which she writes: "Servant of the People is among the world’s great satires, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who both writes and acts, is the most appealing 'little guy' since Charlie Chaplin." 

Here's the trailer for a show that ran for several years and proved prophetic when the actor/comedian followed in the footsteps of his fictitious creation and found himself in the seat of power dealing with oligarchic corruption and foreign aggression. Servant is nothing like The Office. It's more like a Hollywood blockbuster, complete with massive sets, exotic locations, sleazy villains, frantic fist-fights, blazing guns, and even a wild car-chase or two. 

Postscript from The Nation: "On the day this article went to press, Servant of the People returned to Netflix. You can watch the first season here." 

A Scotch Tape Recording 

And here's a weird little tribute to "Servant of the People." Flying under the YouTube title, "We dubbed a clip from Servant of the People," a fan in Scotland took a favorite scene from Zelenskyy's episodic satirathon and dubbed it in Scottish-accented English. Adding to the weirdness: the fan's voice-over employs the same hyper-amped voice for all the characters. 

The Right to Protest 

With all the tragic images spilling out of Ukraine since the Russian invasion stalled and turned into a siege of bombs and missiles, it was encouraging to see the photos and videos of people in Russia spilling into parks and plazas in 21 Russian cities to protest Putin's war crimes. The protests were consequential, with Reuters and The Guardian reporting a crack-down by Russian police that (as of March 6) had resulted in the arrest and detention of 4,300 anti-war protestors. (On March 7, NPR upped those figures to report that "more than 13,000 Russians in 147 cities have been detained at anti-war rallies since Russia first invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24." 

Fortunately, we live in a "free and open" society that respects the First Amendments guarantees of free speech and public assembly! 

Opps! Not so fast! A recent email from the folks at Nuclear Resister, takes us back to George W. Bush's 2003 US invasion of Iraq (which prompted demonstrations around the world) and notes: "For the record, in the USA alone, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of from November 2002 through mid-April 2003…, [there were] more than 7,500 anti-war arrests in 300-plus actions in 115 cities in 35 states." 

GOP Harassment Highs Rise to New Lows 

Lawrence of Berkeley has kindly shared a 5-minute video from Thom Hartmann who reports that pro-Trump Election Subversion Forces are already on the sidewalks bearing arms and cameras to knock on doors and take photos of minority voters while demanding to know how they plan to vote. The NAACP, the League of Women Voters and others have sued claiming this "Voters Intimidation Campaign" violates both the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Ku Klux Klan of 1871. 

"Breaking Wind": A Ghastly Connection 

In early March, Inside Climate News published a report with the following headline: "NC Hurricanes Linked to Gastrointestinal Illness in Marginalized Groups." 

The first thought that occurred to me was: could this be an extreme case of "breaking wind"? And, if so, what was making the stomach-stress so intense that it could be linked to the release of hurricane-force gastrointestinal petards? 

Turns out it wasn't a case of human burps causing gale-force winds. Quite the opposite. In the aftermath of major hurricanes, North Carolina's hospital were deluged with residents complaining of "diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain." Inside Climate News noted that those suffering most from stomach distress came from "one of the soggiest parts of the state, and also [were] among the poorest and most racially diverse" members of society. 

The problem was not that these residential blocks were the "soggiest": they also tended to be the "hoggiest." In addition to living near industrial coal ash ponds, the afflicted residents were also living adjacent to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). When you peel off the sanitizing label, CAFO turns out to be another way of describing a site in which "hogs create more fecal waste each year than the state’s human population." 

And if that's not enough to make your colon cringe, researchers have recently warned of a "growing risk of infection from Vibrio, a group of pathogens that includes flesh-eating bacteria, as warming water and intensifying storm surges help the bacteria flourish and move inland." 

More evidence that climate change will mean more than a bothersome headache in the years ahead: it might also mean more time in the loo, bellyaching—literally—and up-chucking your latest meal. 

De-Pork the Politicians 

In 2020, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) publicly dismissed the dangers of the coronavirus while quietly profiting off investments in body bags. Loeffler was defeated in the polls but, as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) notes, "The corruption remains." 

Now a team of progressive politicians—including Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA), along with Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Andy Kim (D-NJ)—have crafted new legislation that would ban all members of Congress, their families, and other top government officials from buying and selling stocks. 

The clean government activists from P Street—"the progressive alternative to K Street"—and a coalition of independent, clean-government organizations have urged the House Committee on Administration to hold a hearing on the Ban Conflict Trading Act. 

According to PCCC, "A recent Insider report showed that in 2020 and 2021, dozens of lawmakers flouted even the existing—toothless—rules that require lawmakers to report stock trades." 

According to a report from UnusualWhales, five top stock-trading violators include Reps Robert Wittman (R-VA), Mark Green (R-TN), Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who purchased a bundle of Lockheed stocks just prior to Putin's "imminent" invasion and subsequently Tweeted: "war is incredibly profitable and convenient." 

The New York Times recently endorsed the "No stocks" option with an editorial that stated: "Members of Congress should not be trading stocks, ever.... The nation is experiencing a crisis of confidence that is eating away at its strength and unity. Americans have lost faith in Congress. Now is the moment to drive home this popular, common-sense reform." 

"Public outcry can get this across the finish line," says PCCC. So, naturally, there's a petition to sign.