VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump dealt humiliating blow by former president
The Carter Foundation made a verrrrry interesting choice of photograph to release after the former president's funeral...with a certain someone missing from the shot!
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The Los Angeles fires didn’t have to be this bad
Ben Burgis, Jacobin: "For decades, environmental activists have been shouting from the rooftops that Southern California will be increasingly vulnerable to more and worse wildfires as global temperatures continue to climb. But despite their urging, little movement has been made. The institutional breakdown starts at the federal level, with years of climate policy paralysis, and cascades down through California’s state government to Los Angeles County and City Hall. We don’t have the full picture yet of how these fires happened, but we know, for example, that the state government’s failure to force for-profit energy monopoly PG&E to properly secure its transmission lines has made the state far more vulnerable to similar blazes. We also know that in a city, county, and state historically resistant to redistributing their considerable wealth through progressive taxation, public services have suffered. However you slice all of this, what’s clear is that the LAFD was understaffed to begin with and had several million dollars less this fiscal year than it was expecting. On December 4, city fire chief Kristin Crowley warned in a letter that these cuts had “severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.” A little over a month later, 130,000 residents have fled from the spreading flames. And in a saner and less unequal city, state, and country, an entire suite of public services could be generously funded. Meanwhile, hundreds of prison inmates have been brought in to help fight the fires for far less than minimum wage. It’s hard to imagine a grimmer symbol of our literally burning late-capitalist hellscape than a locale that’s home to so much lavish and conspicuous wealth bringing in incarcerated firefighters to risk their lives for less per day than their free equivalents would make in an hour — if only the city had been willing spring for a few more of them. Wildfires predate both climate change and the politics of austerity. Nevertheless, both greatly exacerbate their risks. It would be a mistake to either blame this entirely on “nature” or to broadly condemn human civilization itself as a blight on nature. One of the core functions of an organized society is to minimize the dangers posed to its members by the ravages of nature. Sociologically and ecologically, ours has failed spectacularly."
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Women's March plans HUGE show of resistance to Trump at inauguration
Women's March On inauguration weekend in DC and nationwide, Women's March is rebelling against hopelessness and kicking off a new season of collective action against Trump! Will you make your voice heard and pledge to march on Saturday, January 18th, with Women's March? If you can't make it to D.C., you can do your part and help support the organizers of this critical show of defiance against a would-be dictator. All hands on deck!
A tale of two justice systems: only Trump gets convicted of 34 felonies and receives no punishment
Jessica Washington, The Intercept: "Convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush money case, Donald Trump could have faced severe consequences. Each of the felony counts of falsifying business records was punishable by up to four years in prison and fines of up to $5,000. Yet U.S. District Judge Juan Merchan took a remarkably light approach in sentencing Friday, issuing Trump an 'unconditional discharge' — meaning no jail time, no fines, and effectively no punishment except that he retains his felony conviction. For many in the criminal justice reform and abolitionist space, his feather-light sentence further highlights the widespread inequities and failures of a criminal legal system where hundreds of thousands of Americans remain behind bars without ever even being convicted, let alone of a felony. Despite the nonexistent penalties (aside from limits on his ownership of firearms and a requirement that he provide a DNA sample for a New York state database), Trump continued to rail against his prosecution. He called it 'a very terrible experience' that was politically motivated, echoing his previous claims that he was facing a 'two-tiered justice system.' In the same city across a thin stretch of river, Ann Mathews, managing director of the Bronx Defenders, a public defenders nonprofit serving low-income Bronx residents, agrees that this case highlights the two tiers of justice. Just not in the way Trump means. 'This never happens for our clients,' said Mathews. 'We felt the outrage. And then I think, wow, imagine the people we represent.' Paul Henderson, a former San Francisco prosecutor, agrees that such a sentencing is unheard of in a case like this. 'I’ve been a prosecutor for a long time; I’ve worked in accountability my entire career; I don’t see sentences like that; I just don’t,' said Henderson. Throughout the trial, Mathews noted, Trump was granted liberties that are never given to her clients, including having his attorneys present at his probation interview. 'We’re never allowed to accompany our clients, and in fact, are specifically prohibited from being there during a probation interview, which is an incredibly important moment in the case for a client who is going to be sentenced,' said Mathews. Mathews said she doesn’t take issue with the fact that Trump was granted the unconditional discharge. She just wishes that some of that same leniency could be shown in other cases. 'Why is it that in so many similar situations, and even arguably less serious at least in terms of the charges,' she said, 'we see much harsher sentencing?'
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What if I can’t insure my home at all?
Sam Mellins, The Lever: "Major insurance companies are choosing to protect the fossil fuel industry while abandoning homeowners whose safety and livelihoods are being threatened by the industry’s carbon emissions. Insurance giants Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and AIG are three of the biggest insurers of fossil fuel infrastructure around the world. But the companies have just announced plans to scale back their homeowner coverage in California, where they insist future climate-related losses will likely prevent them from turning a profit. The coverage withdrawals may soon ignite a big money battle in the state’s legislature, pitting insurance giants against lawmakers trying to preserve coverage for their constituents. Meanwhile, climate campaigners are decrying what they say is a fundamental hypocrisy. “Insurance companies have known about climate risk for decades,” said Elana Sulakshana, senior campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network. 'Yet instead of actually tackling the root of these disasters, they’re making short-term adjustments and refusing to fundamentally change their relationship to the fossil fuel industry.' Though they’re not as high profile as fossil fuel companies or airlines, insurance companies are some of the biggest drivers of climate change. That’s not only because they invest hundreds of billions of dollars of consumers’ premiums in fossil fuel companies, but also because their coverage provides the financial safeguard that enables tremendously costly oil, gas, and coal exploitation projects to go forward. Last year, Chubb’s chairman and CEO Evan Greenberg said the company was reducing its coverage in parts of the state that were 'both highly exposed, and even moderately exposed, to wildfire' because it was unable to obtain an 'adequate price for the risk, and not by a small amount' due to both the costs of wildfires and California’s regulatory climate. Chubb and other insurers have not similarly withdrawn their coverage of fossil fuel projects creating the climate risk. For Californians in these areas, losing fire insurance is a highly stressful experience. 'They think, ‘What if I can’t insure my home at all, and then it burns down, and I have nothing?’ said Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders. 'Then they think, ‘Well isn’t there some law that prevents the insurer from just dumping me like this?’ And the short answer is no.”
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Democrats have become the party of war. Americans are tired of it
Matt Duss, The Guardian: "The most devastating appraisal of the 2024 Democratic national convention was delivered by the neoconservative doyen Bill Kristol: “Leon Panetta quoting Ronald Reagan! My kind of Democratic convention.” He meant it as praise. Like Clinton, Harris this year seemed far more interested in boasting about the US’s “lethal” military and campaigning alongside the torture advocate Liz Cheney (while also touting the endorsement of her father, the “war on terror” architect Dick Cheney) than in articulating a vision of peace and stability. Meanwhile, in the last few weeks before the election, the Trump campaign noticeably leaned into an anti-war message, with JD Vance making the rounds hailing the now president-elect as a “candidate of peace”. But it was even more baffling that Democrats had left the anti-war lane wide open for him by leaning into a tired, curdled militarism as a substitute for an actual foreign policy vision. When Joe Biden took office in 2021, I never imagined I would write this, but by the end of his presidency he will have done more damage to the so-called “rules-based order” than Trump did. Fifteen months and counting of support for Israel’s horrific assault on Gaza has violated virtually every international norm on the protections of civilians in war and left America’s moral credibility in tatters. Biden showed that international law is little more than a cudgel to be used against our enemies while being treated as optional for our friends. The political scientist Daniel Drezner recently wrote that with the re-election of Trump, the era of American exceptionalism has ended: “Under Trump, US foreign policy will cease promoting long-standing American ideals. That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.” The slow death of this kind of American exceptionalism has been the work of multiple administrations. Trump is just here to bury the corpse. But if they ever take back the levers of power, a lot of Democrats will be tempted to try to dig it up and try to shock it back to life. We should leave it in the ground."
Our future copresidents wage garbage wars on LA fires
Joan Walsh, The Nation: "Copresidents-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk wasted no time racing to the political bottom in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles fires Wednesday, which have so far killed at least five people, injured many more, and destroyed thousands of structures—many if not most of them homes. On Truth Social Wednesday, the juvenile Trump denounced California Governor Gavin Newsom as “Newscum” and accused him of “refusing to sign the water restoration declaration…that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning.” Copresident Musk went Trump one better, as he frequently does. He blamed the disappointing (to everyone—it’s tragic) response to the fire on DEI hires in the fire department. “They prioritized DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion principles] over saving lives and homes,” Musk claimed, ridiculously. At the same time, he seemed to blame it on Jews, cosigning a post by maniac Alex Jones that blamed a 'globalist plot to wage economic warfare and deindustrialize the United States before triggering global collapse.' Newsom told Trump: 'My message to the incoming administration—and I’m not here to play any politics—is please don’t play any politics. There’s a time and place for that…. The precious moments we have to evacuate, we don’t have any time for that mishegoss.' Sorry, Governor Newsom, Trump has time for nothing but mishegoss. I hope President Biden can release as much FEMA money as possible before he leaves at noon January 20. And I hope Democrats toughen up on defense—and eventually, on offense. The future of Los Angeles depends on it."
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