Dark money's assault on our planet

Something is killing the Great Salt Lake. Any guesses what that might be?

Lake Mead and Lake Powell are in the clutches of the worst water-level drop in their life-giving histories. What might the problem be?

With hundreds of wildfires this year, over 200 Texas counties have earned "crop disaster area" designation. Any suggestions as to why?

No suggestions, no guesses, and certainly no solutions from Republican-controlled legislatures committed to bury their heads in arid sand.

All that concerns them is drilling, pumping and consuming – gas, oil, water – whatever. In other words, business as usual. The planet be damned.

In Utah, a rancher told the New York Times the existential crisis of the Great Salt Lake is an "environmental nuclear bomb."

Ho hum, say Republican lawmakers -- and voters who send them to the Capitol in Salt Lake City to ignore (Earth's) reality. This being a political body tightly wrapped around a Big Lie, why not falsehoods, about the very existence of our planet?

One would think Utah, with its stunning and delicate ecosystems, from snow caps to desert flats, would be as intently focused on the environment as any state. Nah.

As such, Utah is one of the states represented in a well-oiled contraption called the State Financial Officers Foundation. It's made up of Republican state treasurers devoted to undercutting any and all efforts at addressing climate change.

For instance, members vow to redirect state business away from "woke" businesses that express devotion to climate action.

Texas served as a model for this when Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law blocking state agencies from investing in businesses that have cut ties with fossil fuel companies.

In addition to spending taxpayer dollars to conspire thusly, the organization benefits from the largess of the Koch petrochemical dynasty and other players like the American Petroleum Institute, Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation.

For those in a civics coma, this is one more example that parties matter, philosophies matter. Oh, yeah, and voting matters.

When pondering down-ballot races like treasurer and attorney general and secretary of state, consider the damage partisans can do, and many are sworn to do.

Rest assured, if one runs for any of these positions as a Republican, he or she can depend on massive dark money facilitated by the Citizens United ruling of 2010. Read all about the filthy stuff in Jane Mayer's "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right."

For decades, petro players like the Koch family have spent like mad to elect state officials who pledge to the vow that carbon extraction is next to godliness.

Part of that campaign is and was the effort to populate the courts with friends of polluters.

To that end, the biggest victory in the dark money offensive was the Supreme Court's recent ruling in West Virginia vs. EPA that ruled the agency couldn't regulate carbon emissions. That's up to Congress, sayeth the Koch Court.

In question was what's called the "Chevron deference," the principle that it's unrealistic to rely on lawmakers to sign off on intricacies of environmental policy, hence empowering the experts at the EPA.

The absence of such is frightening considering the technological ignorance that pervades this or any Congress.

Exhibit A was the explanation in 2006 by then Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, describing the internet as a "series of tubes."

Stevens said he was only speaking metaphorically. Whatever. For something more authoritative, let's leave it up to one of the Apollo astronauts, unattributed, who said of the level of technological expertise he found on Capitol Hill:

"A lot of these people, they don't know their butt from third base."

This fully explains what enlightenment awaits when innocents become industry sock puppets.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

We know what the majority supports; will it vote?

Poll after poll after poll.

Name your indicator and know the Republican Party is completely out of touch with the majority of thought in America. Completely on the wrong side of history. Completely wrong. Period.

Abortion rights. Sane gun laws. LBGTQ rights and social advancement. Voting rights. The Affordable Care Act and other steps to insure more Americans.

Not to mention the desire never to see Donald Trump in a position of power again.

It's a rout. So how is it possible that the Party of Trump could reclaim control of Congress in the fall?

We all know how – the same way Trump became president in the first place: voter apathy -- miserable, unforgivable non-turnout by people who support all the above.

Republicans knew where the prize was when they looked at the bankruptcy king and said, "What the hell?" in 2016.

The prize was the Supreme Court. Trump got fewer votes, but thanks to the Electoral College, he got the prize.

Now Republicans hope – assume – that by way of voter apathy and gerrymandering they can have control of Congress with the new year.

For those very reasons, prospects are not good in the House.

A principal reason is a Supreme Court sculpted by the forces of backsliding and racism. Fair districts and much of what came from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have been flushed down the toilet.

Things are looking less bleak in the Senate, thanks to – drum roll – Donald Trump.

Trump's hand-picked celebrity candidates (Dr. Oz? Herschel Walker? Don't make us laugh.) and made-to-order election deniers aren't doing too well. Meanwhile, the abortion issue is proving to be exactly the kind of voter motivator Republican strategists feared.

Let's face it: The GOP's driving cause is to keep people away from the polls. When turnout goes up, Republican candidates go down.

Off-year elections are notoriously low turn-out. The party in power almost always gets punished by the "anti" vote – voters motivated by grudges and momentary concerns.

Inflation is the biggest concern of the moment, and Republicans hope to hang it around Democrats' necks.

Too much of the reporting on inflation has been a disservice ("What's the stock market saying?") Too few Americans understand that this is a global problem driven by two factors: supply-chain problems worldwide related to the pandemic and stunningly sweeping sanctions against Russia for the horrors it has wrought in Ukraine.

It's going to hurt the Democrats, without question.

Other issues are going to motivate people, however, headed by Republican policies to empower states to order every pregnant woman to gestate to term.

It's been stunning and revealing how quickly red-state legislatures have taken this step. Republicans will not profit from this politically.

Poll after poll after poll shows this to be true.

The horrifying carnage in Uvalde, Texas, once again has drawn a focus on the fact that the GOP is motivated not by public safety but the needs of commerce when it comes to gun-happy constituents -- and the gun lobby.

The organic grassroots protest in Uvalde demanding that Texas lawmakers convene in special session to age-restrict the purchase of assault weapons shows the desire among the masses to shed nutty Old West inclinations about killing machines.

The U.S. House was representing the majority of Americans when it voted to ban assault weapons last week. Of course, the gun lobby will ride the filibuster in the Senate, and dependable Republican lap dog obedience, to have the final say.

This is a scary time. Suddenly lawmakers must protect such things taken for granted, such as contraception and the right of privacy. The highest court has become an adversary of basic and long-held rights.

The majority must stand up. It must assert itself by voting. It must put the minority in its place this November, not in control of Congress.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Party of Trump is certifiably off its rocker

Donald Trump and shoeshine boy Rudy Giuliani like to throw around claims of dead people voting in massive numbers.

Eight thousand dead voters in Philly! Make that 30,000!

Uh, yeah. As he admitted to Arizona's House speaker, Giuliani had no evidence for any of his claims, only theories.

Ah, but I'm here to report that Colorado has confirmed an instance. Sorry, Rudy, but the dead person's vote went to your client.

It's quite a story, actually, because the man who cast his presumed-dead wife's vote was (is?) being investigated for her murder.

Barry Morphew is the name, a resident of Chaffee County in Southern Colorado. His wife Suzanne disappeared two years ago. He was held for months as the prime suspect, then released in April when the case grew cold. Whoever killed Suzanne did a really good job of concealing the deed.

Morphew didn't try to conceal his illegal vote, however. He told the FBI, "I just thought I'd give (Trump) another vote. I figured all these other guys are cheating."

Who are "these other guys," Barry? Maybe Rudy can tell us. The only other cheaters we can lock-cinch confirm from 2020 were those conspiring to re-install Trump president after getting shellacked at the polls.

"All these other guys." That line is one of the fruits of the Big Lie.

Trump has built an industry of out of bogus claims, brick by brick. In the process, he's raked in millions of dollars from followers who believe he needs their money to investigate the "steal."

In the Jan. 6 rally that sent rioters on their merry way up the Capitol steps, Trump juiced the crowd with specious voter claims:

"Dead people. Lots of dead people. Thousands."

In Pennsylvania, he crowed, "you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters" and "10,000 votes illegally counted."

All were among the claims Trump's own attorney general, Bill Barr, pronounced to be "bullshit."

Of course, Trump knew it was all a lie. Steve Bannon assured as much in a broadcast before the 2020 election: When Trump lost, he was going to say he won – bigly. Then he would surf the wave of chaos as far as he could.

As grievous as was Trump's comportment, lounging before the big screen while big-bellied rioters assaulted the Capitol and threatened his vice president's life – more egregious is what the Big Lie has done to our elections system.

Draconian moves have been made nationwide to make voting more difficult and purge voters, all based on unconscionably bogus claims pertaining to "ballot security" and more.

Last week the Republican-majority Wisconsin legislature passed a bill to ban voting drop boxes except at county election headquarters.

As one who uses them, let me say, "You've got to be kidding."

Ballot drop boxes are absolutely secure and are the essence of voter convenience. No evidence exists – none – that they can or ever have been used fraudulently. They are more secure, for example, than the mailbox outside your pharmacy.

The only reason for this move is the Republican power structure's pledging allegiance to Trump's Big Lie.

It was a disgusting spectacle -- an insult to Americans far and wide -- that at its state convention, the Texas Republican Party voted to pronounce Joe Biden's win null and void.

Based on what? Rudy's "theories"? No -- based on the calculated fiction of one serial liar on the cusp of indictment for defrauding the U.S. government and fomenting an insurrection.

Texas Republicans also called for a vote on secession from the United States. Let me be the first to say:

Good luck, compadres. After our troops at Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Fort Sam Houston and elsewhere occupy all major citadels, gulf ports, petrochemical facilities, oil fields and pro football palaces, and control the entire I-35 corridor, they will have reduced New Texas to a place where only the deer and antelope play – and a functioning electric grid won't matter at all.

The Republican Party, running on a lie and supporting a lawbreaker, isn't fit to hang a shingle in a constitutional republic.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

Agents of chaos and criminality

Where did they find these people? Roger Stone. Paul Manafort. Sidney Powell. John Eastman.

How is it that any of these people could ever be at the elbow of the most powerful man on the planet?

We know where they found Rudy Giuliani: begging for pizza crust and publicity on the sidewalks of New York.

And someone made a deep dive into the sewer where Steve Bannon dwells.

How did any in this police lineup gain entrance to the White House?

They were there at the behest of the former president who, if "justice" is more than a seven-letter world, will wear numbers on his chest for his next portrait.

So much to digest from Republicans inside the administration who appeared live and videotaped in the public hearings of the Jan. 6 Committee:

Team Crazy knew Donald Trump lost bigly, knew the courts wouldn't help him, ran into "deep state" resistance on seizing voting machines and appointing a special counsel (Powell) to declare the election stolen.

What was the final option for a pack of political thieves?

Chaos. That's what.

This is what Bannon was referring to in a podcast a few days before the 2020 election.

"What Trump's gonna do is just declare victory, right? He's gonna declare victory. But that doesn't mean he's a winner. He's just gonna say he's a winner."

This, he said, would create a "firestorm."

Bannon knew of what he was speaking. Chaos is what the man is all about, and why Trump so values his opinion.

Chaos – to disrupt the electoral count and cause discord in the streets with the hope of sending all of it back to pliant Republican-controlled legislatures.

"This is about Trump pushing for uncertainty in our country." That's not some liberal MSNBC talker venting. It's former campaign manager Brad Parscale in a text exchange expressing deep regret for having served "a sitting president asking for civil war."

Mike Pence's former chief counsel Greg Jacob testified to the committee that the whole idea – fake electors and all -- was to create a violence-inducing "constitutional jump ball" to create rage and confusion, with a void to be filled by the loser who wouldn't leave.

This is a criminal conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, plain and simple. People died, and democracy was gravely wounded.

Speaking of fraud, that's what the Department of Justice said Bannon did, claiming in 2020 that he siphoned from a fund ostensibly to raise private dollars to build a border wall. He got a Trump pardon, and returned to being one of America's loudest voices for political chaos.

If one wants a "smoking gun" on Donald Trump's intentions for Jan. 6, it comes from the caldron of chaos that is Bannon's own mouth.

After two phone calls Jan. 5 with the president, Bannon broadcast, "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's all converging and now we're on the point of attack."

Attack? The attack on democracy.

Again, where did they find these goons? Before he became editor of Breitbart, the online MAGA mouthpiece, Bannon was involved in a deep-data exploitation operation called Cambridge Analytica.

The now-defunct company, a client of the Trump campaign (after having helped Ted Cruz in his losing bid for the GOP nomination) dug into online activities of millions of average Americans on Facebook and then used targeted fake social media posts, pure disinformation, to influence them in advance of the 2016 election.

Read about it in the book "Mindf*ck" by former Cambridge Analytica insider Christopher Wylie.

          In particular, posts were meant to discourage Black Americans from voting at all. It was cunningly evil. No bloc was more crucial to Donald Trump's victory than those who didn't vote.

      So, how in the world did Trump and Bannon end up in a position to blow up the democracy that's the envy of the world? Apathy and disinformation, that's how.

        Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com. 

 

Now, Coach will lead us in satanic verses

When my son was in fifth grade in Texas, he found himself a pawn in a morality play. Literally.

His teacher, Mrs. Thrasher, had scripted a performance about early settlers taming the land. It was pastoral. Literally.

Central to the plot was the felling of trees and the milling of wood, presumably to build a cabin, or North America's first Starbucks.

The audience presumed wrong. The communal quest was fulfilled when the lumber was erected – into a cross.

My wife and I later would refer to the play as "Deforestation for Christ."

It was a stunning imposition of the teacher's religion not only on the class but on an audience.

This was just one wrinkle of an unabashedly evangelical quest for a person whose position of authority was granted by taxpayers.

Parents later learned that Mrs. Thrasher was leaning on her students to join a campus Bible club she was forming.

To the school district's great credit – this was Texas, after all -- she was fired for refusing to acknowledge that as a representative of the state her job was not to push her religion on captive audiences.

This made her a local folk hero among others who believe this to be a "Christian nation" and who think that the government's role is to make you, me and that guy on the corner more holy.

They say the worst thing that ever happened to schools is the end of organized school prayer. They call it "God removed from our schools." That's as much of a lie and deceit as "pro-life" for those who would engage the state of Texas in each woman's reproductive cycle.

Rest assured, for them it was "Praise Jesus" time when the Supreme Court ruled on behalf of a Bremerton, Wash., football coach who decided his calling is to make his religiosity a 50-yard-line spectacle.

Unanswered would be the court's position if the marching band formed a pentagram and played "Sympathy for the Devil."

Justice Neil Gorsuch's opinion said at issue was one man humbly offering "prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied."

That's a Trumpian falsehood. Video of coach Joseph Kennedy doing his thing shows a loud and zealous group activity that continued to grow in zeal.

If he's unplugged from Youtube, Justice Gorsuch could read press accounts including one in the Seattle Times of swarms of people from both sides of the field "hopping the fences and rushing to the field to be close to Kennedy before he started his prayer."

And there was no question about the coach's motives, either. He said the objective wasn't observing his faith in private but "helping these kids be better people."

In other words, he wasn't pulling a Tim Tebow. He was pulling a Billy Graham.

In the hands of this Supreme Court, the separation of church and state – and the liberties it protects -- stands to take a battering.

Yes, liberties – freedom of people of varied faiths to handle their business without imposition, interference or sponsorship from the  government.

One of the great deceits of the religious right, and of the court majority, is that restrictions on states like the prohibition on school prayer are averse to religion.

It is just the opposite. The reason the founders included the religion clause of the First Amendment was to prevent the oppression posed by piously tyrannical majorities in the homelands of America's early settlers.

Prayer isn't calisthenics. The state can tell you to run laps to keep your pads.

The state can say, "Give me 20 pushups." But it's against the spirit and intent of the First Amendment for the state to say, in the form of a full-of-himself coach, "Now, gather around to pray" -- even if a reckless court now says it's OK.

Those who represent us have no business casting anyone in their morality plays.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Trump's only defense starts with "I"

From what we've learned from the Jan. 6 Committee, Donald Trump may have to deploy a novel defense against the crime of seditious conspiracy.

Insanity.

This one must deduce from comments about the hurdle of "state of mind and intent" prosecutors would need to demonstrate to prove criminality.

To that effect, Trump World should be aggressively changing its tune in reacting to the explosive testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson.

Now, take notes, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson. You're all going to have to be on the same page if you want to keep him out of the clink. All together, now:

Of course, he assaulted a Secret Service agent and attempted to steer the limo to the Jan. 6 melee.

Of course, he threw plates of food at the White House wall.

Of course, he sought to lie and cheat his way back into the presidential residence – our residence -- he so soiled.

Of course. Of course. Of course. Why? Because he is Donald Trump. Does the law even apply to people insane with power lust?

At the risk of self-promoting, at this point I must return to something I wrote in 2019 about the first impeachable (and removable) thing a red-handed Trump was caught doing.

When first reports emerged that he sought to extort "a favor" from Ukraine's president to help facilitate a political hatchet job, I wrote this "Question to admirers of Donald Trump":

"When suspicions first were raised, did the man you helped elect sound like someone who asked the president of a foreign country to investigate the son of a political opponent?

"Ah ha. You nodded your head. Ever so slightly, you did.

"Or maybe you said, 'Hell, yeah.'"

Hell yeah. By now we know him all too well. Trump did what's alleged before the Jan. 6 committee – conspired to defraud the U.S. government (by extension you and me), raged against anything (such as truth) in his way, incited a riot, did nothing to save the lives endangered or lost, or the democracy teetering on the brink. Oh, and he fraudulently raised a lot of money doing it.

His only defense is insanity.

Tucker, Sean, Laura, "Fox & Friends": Do you want your preferred president to be gobbling up air time with collect calls from federal prison?

Then go with the insanity defense. Of course, he menaced that agent. Of course, the condiments flew.

Per today's Trump World talking point: Trying to deconstruct the case about the man's criminality into whether his fingerprints were on the agent's throat is an artful dodge about the whole mess – the conspiracy, the fraud, the violence – that these hearings are about.

But if you want to focus on those things, Team, say, "Yeah, the guy was out of his mind. He did it. Patently insane. Not guilty!"

Cassidy Hutchinson is of sound mind, and of eyes and ears. Not only that, she was down the hall. She was a birdie putt away.

Did you hear Trump say he barely knows her? Then he proceeded to rip her like, um, he knows her. Which is it? Do you know her or do you not? Don't bother. Plead state of mind.

What Trump did right there is an element of what prosecutors label "consciousness of guilt." The primary definition is concocting a "false alibi."

Wait? Did you know her? Or did you not?

Don't try to explain what Trump knew. Let the defense team take over:

"He doesn't know anything that can be held against him, your honor. He's out of his mind."

Everything we've learned since Jan. 6 fits exactly what we know of Trump – corrupt, conniving, venal and driven by self-interest, or at least what Vlad Putin deems that to be.

It's an open-and-shut case of criminality, corruption and treason. Cassidy Hutchinson had to ask, who in his right mind would have even contemplated it? The man down the hall did.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

What non-voters have wrought

Last May, Gallup found eight of 10 Americans supported the right the Supreme Court just tossed in history's waste basket – the right for a woman to choose.

Next to go? Same-sex marriage in states bold enough to abolish it. A person's right to use contraception also is threatened.

What thereafter? Prohibition of interracial marriage? Resegregation of lunch counters?

Last week's ruling on abortion rights shows no precedent is going to stop Republican appointees from doing what partisans hired them to do.

Such are fruits reaped for leaving the most consequential matters in American history up to chance.

The chance that one justice would die on the cusp of a presidential election.

The chance that a previously pro-choice con man would become president with millions fewer votes than his progressive challenger.

The chance that on any number of matters – gun laws, reproductive rights, voting rights – the nation can and will be governed by a minority of a minority.

And we aren't just talking of the Cruz Caucus in a filibustered Senate.

In 2016 a lot of Republicans held their noses and voted for the Orange Con. They knew that the essence of the quest was control of the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile a whole bunch of squishy centrists and haven't-given-it much thought progressives, particularly at a tender age of self-induced ignorance, didn't vote.

They convinced themselves that it didn't matter, that "there's no difference between the parties," or, "Hillary's going to win."

The local newspaper where I live interviewed collegians wearing "Vote for Nobody" buttons. Hardee har-har.

The Electoral College wasn't the reason behind the con man's gaining the power to populate the courts in 2016. Apathy was.

Four years later sufficient Americans were appalled by the con man that they removed him from office. Too late for what would happen to the Supreme Court.

Three Supreme Court vacancies presented themselves in the four years prior, including one opened up when Senate Republicans denied even a hearing to Barack Obama's nominee.

So, two points: (1) elections matter; (2) parties matter.

Never in modern history have the two major political parties presented such stark differences – on abortion rights, on LGBTQ rights, on voting rights, on gun laws, on corporate control of lawmaking.

Oh, yes, corporate control. The conservative control of this court is corporate – the result of years of big-money plotting by interests like the Koch dynasty and proxies in the Federalist Society.

This is what we have because too many voters left too much of governing up to chance.

This matter goes back to when another Republican ascended to the presidency with fewer votes than his opponent.

Lest we forget: That man, George W. Bush, appointed Samuel Alito, author of last week's ruling, along with Chief Justice John Roberts.

In 2000 much was made of an already conservative Supreme Court siding with Bush in awarding Florida to him. Much was made of the unfairness of the Electoral College.

But the Supreme Court didn't award Florida to Bush. Nor did the voters who thought they were voting for Al Gore but were confused by ballots into voting for Patrick Buchanan.

What awarded the presidency to Bush was the thousands of progressive Floridians who cast a protest vote for Ralph Nader, somehow a blow for a greener world.

Ironic it was then that Gore -- too squishy for Nader voters – would win the Nobel Peace Prize for heroic efforts to warn the planet about what carbon pollution is doing to it and to us.

The bottom line: People who believe in all of the things Republicans oppose – abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, expanded voting rights, stronger gun laws -- have got to start voting against the those who would put the minority in charge on our highest court.

This is going to happen, in increasing numbers.

Trump himself, while crowing of his anti-choice achievement on Fox News, privately has warned that the Supreme Court's abortion ruling will hurt the GOP at the polls.

Darned right.

The lesson to voters: Stop leaving your government up to chance.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.