We can live only minutes without oxygen, days without water and weeks without food, but deprive us of any of these three for long enough and we die. I have fasted for as long as three days, but I have never gone more than 24 hours without water. Three days without food is no big deal for a well-nourished American like myself, but a day without water sucked.

I really didn’t think I’d be writing about water again so soon, but Andrew Marlton, in this morning’s First Dog On The Moon—All that perfectly good water dumped into the ocean like some sort of enormous NATURE TOILET!—put Brenda The Civil Disobedience Penguin (pygoscelis anarchii) front and center.

Reading about Australia’s water challenges reminded me of a year-long project that The Guardian began last week on Our Unequal Earth. The editors write:

Today the Guardian is launching a year-long series, Our Unequal Earth, investigating environmental injustices: how ecological hazards and climate disasters have the harshest impacts on people of color, native tribes and those on low incomes.

The most egregious examples include the lead poisoning crisis in Flint, Michigan, petrochemical pollution in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, and today’s series launch story, about an entire river that stops at the US-Mexico border, leaving ordinary Mexicans without water. Each of these cases has also prompted inspiring community activism.

Our new environmental justice reporter, Nina Lakhani, asked five luminaries of the movement [Dr. Robert Bullard, Kandi Mossett-White, Mustafa Ali, Jamie Margolin and LeeAnne Walters, JH] to explain “environmental justice” in their own words. They reveal why, alongside global heating and the extinction crisis, it is one of the most pressing issues of our time.

You should read the whole introduction, but this morning I want to write about the first installment: The lost river, Mexicans fight for mighty waterway taken by the US. Nina Lakhani begins:

The temperature is rising toward 45C (113F) as young brothers Daniel and Dilan Rodríguez skip towards a bridge over the Colorado River in the Mexican border town of San Luis Río Colorado. But there is no water flowing through the channel of one of the world’s mightiest waterways. The pair run down the river bank and cheerfully splash through stagnant puddles dotted about the riverbed.

“We wish we had a river, so we could swim, and jump and sail my cousin’s boat,” said Daniel, 12. “At least we have puddles to make mud balls, that can be fun.” The Colorado originates in the Rocky mountains and traverses seven US states, watering cities and farmland, before reaching Mexico, where it is supposed to flow onwards to the Sea of Cortez.

Instead, the river is dammed at the US-Mexico border [Link not in the original, JH], and on the other side the river channel is empty. Locals are now battling to bring it back to life.

Yes, there is a treaty, but like many treaties that the United States signs, the beneficiaries are always those who would profit and never those with the real need.

The disparities on both sides of the border are stark.

In the US, the Colorado serves more than 35 million people, including several native tribes, seven national wildlife refuges and 11 national parks, and supports $26m tourism and recreational industries, as well as farming. California has rights to the largest quantity, with 4.4m acre-feet per year – or 29% of the total – while Utah is allocated 1.7m and Nevada 0.3m.

At the Morelos dam, located between Los Algodones, Baja California, and Yuma, Arizona, the river is diverted to a complex system of irrigation canals which nourish fields of cotton, wheat, alfalfa, asparagus, watermelons and date palms in the vast surrounding desert valley. This is good for farmers—and less so for ordinary Mexicans.

Water is literally—on either side of the border—life in the southwest and like the bad guys in China Town, the real villains want to hoard what belongs to the planet for their own benefit and damn all the invisible people.

Bonus No. 1: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Bonus No. 2: ‘It’s where we come from’: the River People in Mexico left without a river.

Bonus No. 3: GAWD WILLIN’ AN’ THE CREEK DON’T RISE: PART I…

Bonus No. 4: 6 Ways Trump Has Sold Out America.

[Update @ 1157—I do love synchronicity: The fight to stop Nestlé from taking America’s water to sell in plastic bottles.]

I live in one of America’s Green Zones. Not green in the sense of all our trees and parks; not green because of a leftist environmental vibe, but green in the way the other Green Zone in the heart of Baghdad is green: a go zone, a safe zone. And, at 64, I very well may live to see our own climate-crisis refugees come flooding in. For our water.

The water battle is not new. The southwest has coveted the single largest reservoir of potable surface water on the planet for generations and the people in the Great Lakes states, and two Canadian provinces, understand the growing crisis.

As our existential threat from climate chaos escalates so too will the mass exodus from what Bill McKibben calls “large swaths of the world increasingly off-limits to humans.” Our danger is not from places like Asia or the Middle East. Our danger is from places like California.

Bill McKibben in Has the climate crisis made California too dangerous to live in? for The Guardian, writes:

Monday morning dawned smoky across much of California, and it dawned scary—over the weekend winds as high as a hundred miles per hour had whipped wildfires through forests and subdivisions.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened—indeed, it’s happened every year for the last three—and this time the flames were licking against communities destroyed in 2017. Reporters spoke to one family that had moved into their rebuilt home on Saturday, only to be immediately evacuated again.

In the early ’90s (no online version available) I wrote an op-ed in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer about the absurdity of building homes in places where Mother Nature—with her floods and earthquakes and fires and hurricanes—continuously sent the message to us puny humans that our presence was not wanted nor tolerated. At the time I was writing about the insanity of rebuilding the devastated communities in Florida recovering from Hurricane Andrew.

To illustrate my point, I imagined a developer despoiler building housing on Lake Erie ice—something you could have done in 1992 but not in 2019—only to see the homes sink in the spring and then repeating the futile exercise the next winter. This bizarre habit of building in danger zones—who’s afraid of a 500-year flood?—is more than bizarre now and we have only our own hubris and the lies of the fossil-fuel extraction industry, to blame. McKibben continues:

The spectacle was cinematic: at one point, fire jumped the Carquinez Strait at the end of San Francisco Bay, shrouding the bridge on Interstate 80 in smoke and flame.

Even areas that didn’t actually burn felt the effects: Pacific Gas and Electric turned off power to millions, fearful that when the wind tore down its wires they would spark new conflagrations.

Three years in a row feels like—well, it starts to feel like the new, and impossible, normal. That’s what the local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, implied this morning when, in the middle of its account of the inferno, it included the following sentence: the fires had “intensified fears that parts of California had become almost too dangerous to inhabit”. Read that again: the local paper is on record stating that part of the state is now so risky that its citizens might have to leave.

On the one hand, this comes as no real surprise. My most recent book Falter centered on the notion that climate crisis was making large swaths of the world increasingly off-limits to humans. Cities in Asia and the Middle East where the temperature now reaches the upper 120s—levels so high that the human body can’t really cool itself; island nations (and Florida beaches) where each high tide washes through the living room or the streets; Arctic villages relocating because, with sea ice vanished, the ocean erodes the shore.

But California? California was always the world’s idea of paradise (until perhaps the city of that name burned last summer). Hollywood shaped our fantasies of the last century, and many of its movies were set in the Golden State. It’s where the Okies trudged when their climate turned vicious during the Dust Bowl years—“pastures of plenty”, Woody Guthrie called the green agricultural valleys. John Muir invented our grammar and rhetoric of wildness in the high Sierra (and modern environmentalism was born with the club he founded).

California is the Golden State, the land of ease.

We have nothing to be easy about. Is it any wonder that the under-30 crowd is obsessed with dystopian fiction? When you’re living the nightmare, it can help to believe that reality isn’t real.

Bonus No. 1: TRUMP’S SALARY’S THE LEAST HE MAKES FROM US…

Bonus No. 2: California wildfires leave destruction across the state—in pictures.

Bonus No. 3: Trump Gets Extremely Graphic In Describing Death Of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Bonus No. 4: Ta-Nehisi Coates pulls few punches at Raleigh “Color of Education” summit.

Bonus No. 5: The unfairness of it all.

Bonus No. 6: Beware of the extremists in moderate clothing.

Bonus No. 1: Will the brave and clever sulphur-crested cockatoo win Bird of the Year? Did a cockatoo write this?

[Editor’s Note: Roldo’s retrospective of the battles among Cleveland’s power—both electrical and political—players and the the numerous intersections among them is not intended to be a an easy evening’s read. They are, as Roldo told me, To be saved and hopefully read as desired; to keep the record.

The story spans nine issues of Point Of Viəw beginning in May of 1978 and reaching forward 41 months to October of 1981. The tale (not yet finished as evidenced by the recent battling-petitioners shenanigans surrounding Big Electric and Big Gas and the—to date—failure to get a repeal of HB 6 onto the ballot) is emblematic of how things still get done on America’s North Coast. JH]

The HB 6 utility bailout bill gives a glimpse of how our private interests operate—Mafia style. It reveals enough about the strings of power to show how power works. In Cleveland. Then and now.

The utilities, as visible to anyone with a TV, will lie and distort with impunity. No one monitors the lies they tell. The TV ads tell the story.

They are assured by tradition that the news media will do nothing to stop them. They will run the lies as if true.

It shouldn’t be radical to tell the truth. Yet it is.

I have had a history with our local electric utility in particular. It’s one of corruption that goes beyond the utility itself. It went as high as a federal judge and a prominent law firm.

So as I LOOK BACK once more, I start with a May 1978 issue, Vol. 10, No. 22 of Point Of Viəw. It revealed acts by Ralph Besse, Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company chairman, former Squire, Sanders & Dempsey lawyer, and a law firm returnee in retirement. Squires also represented CEI in the trials.

Besse demanded his CEI executives read and follow Nazi Field Marshall Rommel as a guiding light for their business dealings. Yes, a Nazi general. One executive objected Continue Reading »

For nearly three years now President Donald John Trump has looted the United State’s treasury for million of dollars in direct violation of Article I, Section 9 Clause 8 of the United States Constitution now commonly known as the Emolument Clause. Before Trump only constitutional scholars knew the clause existed or knew the definition of emolument. I certainly didn’t.

As president, Trump receives a salary of $400,000 along with a $50,000 expense allowance, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account and a $19,000 entertainment account for each year he’s in office. We paid more than that for the ground transportation alone to ferry Vice President Michael Richard Pence between Dublin, Ireland and Trump’s golf resort in Doonbeg, a three-hour, 180 miles journey; one way. All so Trump could bill his country for Pence’s stay at his hotel.

The, now well known, clause in question states:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, [All emphasis mine, JH] from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Now, of course, Pence is no King, Prince, or foreign State, but by directing Pence to the stay at the Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland, Trump violated Article II, paragraph 7 of our Constitution which states:

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

We The People could have saved a bundle if Pence had just stayed in Dublin. But, as Robert Reich details in Trump’s Emoluments Mess, plenty of foreign states—as well as not a few princes from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern monarchies, are stuffing Trump’s pockets.

And we’re letting him.

Bonus No. 1: The Fraternal Oder of Asshats…

Bonus No. 2: Slow TV—Narrowboat trip on the Caldon canal.

No one—from beat cops and petty bureaucrats to politicians and captains of industry—like anyone questioning their authority. Especially when those asking the questions aren’t signing their paychecks. But when a nation’s founding document begins with the three words We The People, then those in charge are The People. We don’t always, however, do a good job.

We have no one to blame for corruption in government but ourselves. The Russians are not to blame. The One Percent are not to blame. Hell, even Donald John Trump is not to blame. They are like scorpions crossing the river on the backs of frogs. Their very nature is to be corrupt and if we do nothing, well, we’re to blame.

Ralph Nader has devoted his life to public service, not as a politician, but as a citizen perpetually engaged in our civic commons. He’s not happy with recent events.

Nader, in Excluding the Civic Community Excludes Life-Savers, writes:

The lawmakers are doing it. The candidates are doing it. The mass media are doing it. All are excluding from their arenas the leading citizen groups as never before, since the early nineteen sixties. The nonprofit national advocacy/research organizations that led the way for social reforms are being shut out of the political process. These groups were pioneers in consumer rights, environmental protections, labor rights, and whistle-blower protections. These groups fought for freedom of information laws and practices and access to justice in ways that have made our country better in so many ways.

Television anchors like Judy Woodruff (The News Hour, PBS) and Chuck Todd (Meet the Press, NBC) prefer to interview reporters, political consultants or tired Continue Reading »

I cannot tell a lie. We’ll actually, I can. Lots of them. That was we writers do, after all. Last evening I guest facilitated a regular meeting of Building the Writing Habit. The format is simple: we meet at 6:30 p.m. and write for one hour and then, those who wish to, share what they’ve written that night or a page or two of their work in progress.

I chose not to read last night, but I did bring four of my favorite books on writing. They’re my favorites, not because they’re the best on writing, but because they’re the best on writing by authors whose work I admire and read. The four books were: Lawrence Block’s Telling Lies For Fun and Profit; Rita Mae Brown’s Starting From Scratch; Stephen King’s On Writing; and Marge Piercy’s So You Want To Write.

I have a lot more—and have read even a greater number—books on writing, but these four contain everything I’ve ever really needed.

One of the participants who did read talked about electronic aids to writing and the need to not allow such algorithms to dominate the writing. I agree. I agree because computers, for all their mimicking, lack any semblance of soul and thus cannot help a writer find their voice. As we were discussing voice I recalled Alice McDermott’s advice on sentence making.

I’ve not read any of McDermott’s books, but I will.

Bonus No. 1: Lawrence Block Telling Lies for Fun and Profit Audiobook.

Bonus No. 2: WE NEED A REAL JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA…

Bonus No. 3: America laughed at Hillary Clinton’s remarks about Tulsi Gabbard, but her ideas fit perfectly in the intellectual mainstream.

Bonus No. 4: Trump gives astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch the bird.

One of the negative consequences of retiring is that I no longer spend hours listening to NPR in my car. I miss shows like Sound of Ideas, Fresh Air, Science Friday and 1A, to name just a few, and have been trying to remedy that by listening to the recordings at home while I go about mundane tasks like cleaning and seeing to my endless list of honey-dos.

This morning I caught up a bit on 1A, first listening to last Friday’s domestic and international news roundups and then I scrolled down a bit to find a show from 14 September: Hijacking The American Conversation. Host Joshua Johnson interviewed Andrew Maranatz, author of Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. Johnson ledes the piece with:

Who directs the national conversation? And does the national conversation even exist anymore?

Enabled by the rise of social media, author Andrew Marantz argues that a certain kind of internet denizen, colloquially referred to as “edge lords,” has worked to destroy reasonable online discourse.

Marantz follows this group of “nihilists, right-wing nationalists, conspiracy purveyors, white supremacists and more” as they push right-wing memes and fake news on Facebook and attend the DeploraBall after the election of President Donald Trump.

Can the American public retake control of the internet from the trolls?

The whole show was worth my time—and would be worth yours—but the segment that most caught my attention was Marantz’s tale of Samantha which begins at timemark 22:20. Her story is compelling because it gives us a glimpse of why we should not ask the really stupid question: How could anyone be that stupid?

Bonus No. 1: White privilege can be hard to spot, explain.

Bonus No. 2: And now a message from Rat Industries.

Ralph Nader wants the flesh-and-blood versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter to step up and combat the evil villain in our White House. Top on his list are President Barack Hussein Obama (Superman?), Condoleezza Rice (Wonder Woman?) and Colin Powell (Batman?).

Nader calls this real-world Justice League of America: The Influentials.

Nader, in Where Are The Influentials Who Find Trump Despicable?, writes:

The British political philosopher, John Stuart Mill, was a man of many pithy phrases. Possibly his most widely quoted assertion is that “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

This quote fits the Trump age perfectly. Where are you, Barack Obama? Obama is still polling higher than any other politician, active or retired. Instead of speaking out, he is making movies, maybe writing another book, and otherwise really enjoying himself.

Where are you Condoleezza Rice? She encouraged Rex Tillerson to be Trump’s Secretary of State, but Tillerson was cast aside in 2018 by a sneering Trump, who pronounced him “dumb as a rock.” Condoleezza is collecting honors and large speech fees and teaching at Stanford University (keep in mind that Rice was on the inside Continue Reading »

I went recently to the Cleveland Heights Library on Lee Road.

I knew I could find someone there who would take my signature FOR a measure to place Ohio House Bill 6 on the ballot in 2020. Then I can vote to dump it. I also found a couple there trying to stop people from signing. It’s a bruising fight. Big money, as usual.

And NO, I’m not concerned the Chinese or anyone else will disturb me when we repeal the bill that fills the pockets of utility bosses and investors.

I had great experiences with our once utility—the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., now part of a larger entity.

One of the worse manipulators of government,

I saw how it operated and for whom.

Not for the average user of electricity, that’s for sure.

But what always struck me was how these so-called private businesses hated competition.

In Cleveland, old Muny Light used to provide some competition. Probably still does.

So CEI, with the help of the local business cabal, wanted to choke Muny to death.

Why? A major factor, I always believed, was the fact that CEI itself wasn’t a normal capitalist business. It was a semi-public entity with its profit margin partly insured by the state.

I think its bosses had an inferiority complex about that. And they wanted to snuff out the city’s electric system. Almost did.

In this Looking Back notation I’d like to show how nervous CEI people were. They stopped me at the door of a downtown hotel where they feted Cleveland “journalists” prior to taking them to a ballgame. It was an annual affair. There is a photo with this November 1977, Vol. 10, No. 8 issue of Point Of Viəw, I am at the door with a CEI PR man and a Cleveland Police officer. Some 100 ‘journalists’ remained private.

Another piece of Feb. 1979, Vol. 11, No. 14, examines how CEI with others, including Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, used underhanded tactics to try to kill Muny Light. Unfortunately, in two trials (one a hung jury) the city couldn’t successfully prove anti-trust activity by CEI, largely with the duplicity of a federal judge—Robert Krupansky. It tells a lot about Cleveland and its ways.

I finished my first read of Ta-Nehisi Coates debut novel The Water Dancer this week and I took a lot of notes. I took a lot of notes for two reasons: first, I greatly admire Coates’ skill as a writer; and second, because my current novel is set a dozen or so years after Coates’ book and I wanted study Coates’ use of language because words are how we set the scene.

I wanted to see how he set the scene for two reasons: first, I greatly admire Coates’ skill as a writer; and second, because I’m writing a novel set a dozen or so years after Coates’ book. I wanted to see how Coates handled language: particularly contractions and dialect—prolly for probably and bout (not ’bout)for about, but ’cause, (not cause) for because; as well as words identifying contemporaneous technology such as Argand lamp—because words are how we transport the reader.

Lately I’ve been on something of a Hayao Miyazaki kick and yesterday I watched The Immersive Realism of Studio Ghibli which begins with this narration:

In order to tell a compelling and effective story, storytellers must construct an immersive world in which that story takes place, a process known as world building.

Back in my Dungeons & Dragons days—pre AD&D—I got to be quite good at world building and I think that those lessons informed my later fiction writing.

In my present project, I’m writing about a time that is unfamiliar to the average reader and so I have to use words to create that immersive world and I’ve immersed myself in that time by reading first-person accounts, reading fiction written during the time and listening to music from the period.

As I took notes I wanted to see how Coates created his own immersive world. He did so masterfully, of course, and I wanted to share a bit of what caught my attention. In what follows I’ve underlined the important words and placed the page number where I found the sentence in parenthesis.

Enjoy.

I am remembered to them both—Rose and Emma. (18)

I put on my osnaburg shirt and pants… (11)

But it was Winter in Virginia, and all in possession of good sense were huddled inside by the fires. (12)

When the bell rang and everyone repaired for supper, I did not return to Thena’s. (16)

“I think you should understand some things bout me, bout you, bout this place.” (16)

“Big John wasn’t no driver ‘cause he was the meanest like Harlan.” (17)

“He could tell you the best way to dig out the horn-worms which leaves you s’pose to sucker and which you might like to leave be.” (17)

“Gave out extra helpings of victuals to those who did not have.” (17)

“Folks’ll tell you that even John couldn’t have saved us. It was the land, cursing these whites for what they done to it, for how they stripped it down. Still some red Virginia left, but soon it gon be Virginia sand.” (18)

“I am remembered to them both—Rose and Emma.” (18)

“It’s worse things to be wrathy about.” (25)

And those that’s still here feel a tightness between them. (25)

“I don’t care nothing for all they feelings.” (26)

I was standing in my father’s second-floor study, having filed away his correspondence into the cubbies of the mahogany secretary, and under the silver arms of the Argand lamp I found myself carried away by the latest volume of De Bow’s Review. (38)

There was something to her own silence that communicated a deep and particular loneliness, and though we never spoke directly upon the origins of this feeling, I felt it to be cousin to my own. (166)

Own the man’s especial knowledge and you shall own the measure of the man. (167)

A pinch of pokeweed. (180)

I am struggling to see how telling you that girl was a grass widow would make me anything more than a gossip. (334)

In those moments running, he was free, unweighted by the partings, unbroken by the seven and nine. (273)

[I’ve not found any definition for seven and nine online. Coates uses the phrase three other times: “Sitting here watching the sun set on your own time, with nothing over you and no one to command you or threaten a seven and nine.” (162); “She was well-liked and highly by all the Quality, and had never been condemned to a seven and nine.” (259); and “But for those who were hard, for those who worshiped the seven and nine, Abe was a caution.” (273). My best guess is that the term refers to some extraordinary work shift—nine hours a day, seven days a week?—but I don’t know.]

“All right,” I said. “Prolly should go.”
“Prolly should,” she said. (356)

And as she said it, her face shifted into an executioner’s mask. (361)

I’m going to give the book a few weeks and begin reading again.

Bonus No. 1: The ‘Whistleblower’ Probably Isn’t.

Given what I read this morning from Matt Taibbi and my coffee talks with Tim Russo, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to know who the fuck to trust when discussing national politics. People that I’ve thought reasonable and trust worthy in the past—like Taibbi and Ralph Nader are heading in completely different directions. Or are they?

Nader, in “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” Really!, writes:

It is time for the House of Representatives to announce comprehensive articles of impeachment against the chronic outlaw and violator of the public trust—President Donald J. Trump who won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote.

Six House Committees have been investigating and assembling for months the necessary evidence. Mr. Trump himself has taunted the House to impeach him. He has openly and brazenly defied Congressional subpoenas for documents and blocked subpoenaed witnesses from testifying. This obstruction of Congress is an Continue Reading »

So, this morning Tim Russo and I were solving the world’s problems over pieces of his mother’s apple pie and sour-cream doughnuts from Becker’s and the topic of the current love fest going on between Democrats and the nation’s spooks security agencies came up. How the FBI, CIA, NSA and ODNI became, especially post-Snowden, our buddies is beyond me.

Matt Taibbi is a journalist who has seen his share of shenanigans around the world and he’s calling bullshit on our present constitutional crisis. The entire piece is a must read, but one paragraph at about the midpoint grabbed my attention.

Taibbi, in We’re in a permanent coup, writes:

Trump’s campaign antagonism toward the military and intelligence world was at best a millimeter thick. Like almost everything else he said as a candidate, it was a gimmick, designed to get votes. That he was insincere and full of it and irresponsible, at first at least, when he attacked the “deep state” and the “fake news media,” doesn’t change the reality of what’s happened since. Even paranoiacs have enemies, and even Donald “Deep State” Trump is a legitimately elected president whose ouster is being actively sought by the intelligence community.

I don’t like Trump but I’m finding that I actually hate the Democrats more. Bernie has become, in my humble opinion, the only intelligent option to shut down what’s looking more like a very real Seven Days In May.

Previously: WHISTLE BLOWERS MORE LIKE SMOKE BLOWERS…

Everyone in America knows the identities of the top two whistleblowers in our country (and the name of the man who created a network for whistelblowers), they would be Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. The name of the whistleblower on our minds at present, of course is… Yep. We have no idea. What’s wrong with this picture?

Based upon our public knowledge of how whistleblowers have been treated in the 21st century and his experiences as a journalist, Matt Taibbi smells a whole mischief of rats. Taibbi, writing in The ‘Whistleblower’ Probably Isn’t for Rolling Stone Magazine, ledes:

Start with the initial headline, in the story the Washington Post “broke” on September 18th:

TRUMP’S COMMUNICATIONS WITH FOREIGN LEADER ARE PART OF WHISTLEBLOWER COMPLAINT THAT SPURRED STANDOFF BETWEEN SPY CHIEF AND CONGRESS, FORMER OFFICIALS SAY

The unnamed person at the center of this story sure didn’t sound like a whistleblower. Our intelligence community wouldn’t wipe its ass with a real whistleblower.

Americans who’ve blown the whistle over serious offenses by the federal government either spend the rest of their lives overseas, like Edward Snowden, end up in jail, like Chelsea Manning, get arrested and ruined financially, like former NSA official Thomas Drake, have their homes raided by FBI like disabled NSA vet William Binney, or get charged with espionage like ex-CIA exposer-of-torture John Kiriakou. It’s an insult to all of these people, and the suffering they’ve weathered, to frame the ballcarrier in the Beltway’s latest partisan power contest as a whistleblower.

So, what makes this whistleblower special? Perhaps, as Taibbi makes the case, they’re not actually a whistleblower.

Near the end of his piece, Taibbi made this observation:

The argument that’s supposed to be galvanizing everyone right now is the idea that we need to “stand up and be counted,” because failing to rally to the cause is effectively advocacy for Trump. This line of thinking is based on the presumption that Trump is clearly worse than the people opposing him.

Neither Taibbi or I, am in any way shape or form fans of our president, but he’s looking better and better compared to the other side.

Help us Mr. Sanders…!

Bonus No. 1:

One of Senator Bernie Sanders evergreen themes in the Senate and as a candidate for President of the United States has been that 99.9 percent of Americans are being used by 0.1 percent of Americans stateless oligarchs just happening to live in our country to further enrich the fortunes and lifestyle all at the cost of our children and grandchildren.

They’re not stealing from us because they can, they’re stealing from us because we allow them to. Ralph Nader understands the power of the chant: The people united can never be defeated and why the 0.1 percent hire toadies to keep us apart. That is the only way to beat odds of 999 to 1.

Nader, in Shame of a Nation: The 1 Percent Rules, the 99 Percent Lets Them!, writes:

1. There has never been more access to food—domestic and imported-yet hunger is an ongoing problem everywhere. In the U.S. alone, 16.5 million children go to bed hungry and 20 percent of community college students are experiencing “food insecurity.”

2. Never have there been more communications technologies, yet it is harder to get through to people personally than fifty years ago.

3. Never have people been able to use their right to free speech so unencumbered, yet a torrent of lies are now spread so freely and are often unchallenged.

4. Never have there been higher corporate profits, yet staggering amounts of poverty and near poverty remain along with stagnant wages.

5. Never have there been more medicines to alleviate pain, yet far too many of these pain killers have caused massive fatalities and addictions.

6. Never has there been more liquid corporate capital piled up, yet corporate investment is proportionately lower than before. Instead, CEO’s have burned more Continue Reading »

The original Gund Arena was to cost $120-million. However, it came in at $154-million. Now we are told the renewal for the same arena—now clumsily-named Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse—is $185-million. In other words, $31-million more than the original overrun cost of the arena. That is $341-million total. Not counting interest.

It’s only money, folks. Not to worry.

Let me tell you Cleveland and Cuyahoga County people something strange. YOU ARE STILL PAYING FOR THE ORIGINAL GUND ARENA. The next payment of about $8 million due Jan. 15, 2020. Still not the end. The debt continues on for Cuyahoga County bonds.

The PD never covered this issue honestly. It was a co-conspirator cheerleader. Still is.

The arena—granted first to the Gunds—worth $3.4 billion and now by Dan Gilbert—worth $6.5 billion (Forbes rated)—has always been a public burden. Check the LOOKING BACK 1997, Vol. 30 No. 6 issue of Point Of Viəw below. It likely tells as well as one can how rapacious these billionaire owners are. A bitter taste of elite corruption. You will see how rent owed by the Gunds became debt to be collected by them.

It could not so continue.

Thus, eventually to avoid a very, very embarrassing bankruptcy of the Gateway Economic Development Corp., established to operate the baseball and basketball facilities, the team owners promised to pay Gateway’s operating expenses. In return, the teams grabbed naming rights of the facilities. We have never been allowed to know the price of naming rights.

One more thing: The Gund Arena, The Quicken Arena, The Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, none of them pay a penny in property taxes to the city or the Cleveland schools on the $154-million or with the added $185-million.

IT’S TAX FREE. FOREVER.

Below I’ll give you a sense of the tens of millions of dollars the Cavs, Indians and Browns take from Cleveland school children. It’s more than upsetting.

This weekend we got what passes as journalism from the PD (Propaganda Dealer).

The paper allowed Cavs CEO Len Komoroski to answer questions. No critic was consulted. No neutral voice was sought. Only the team’s most biased voice got to comment on the expanded facility.

Nor were any documents cited on the cost the public helped pay. This is shoddy stuff. Yet it follows the PD’s track record since the mid-1980s when the first try for a stadium failed.

The team owners, Dan Gilbert, gets credit for chipping in $45-million. That’s what he’s credited doing. However, no documentation. Take it on faith.

No mention either that while the PD cites the team’s 62 percent share of the renovation costs NOT A SINGLE DOCUMENT OF COST IS PROVIDED.

Nor does the PD even hint that 100 percent of any new revenue goes to—you guessed it—Gilbert and the Cavs.

From the beginning the paper of record has failed miserably to cover the Gateway Economic Development Corp., the vehicle that built and manages the two major league venues with very heavy public expense.

It has been likely a billion dollar drain on an economically ill city and county. The figures don’t include the heavy drain on the Cleveland schools.

Originally, the campaign to fund these venues PROMISED no tax abatement. Indeed, it promised in a full-page PD ad “$15 million a year for schools for our children.” (their emphasis).

Laugh or cry.

Here were other promises made but not kept:

—28,000 good-paying jobs for the jobless.
—Neighborhood housing for the homeless.
—energy assistance for the elderly.
—$33.7 million in public revenues.

Such blatant liars should at least be questioned.

Not at the PD. Not ever.

You would think that an up-to-date newspaper would provide adequate data for its voting public. Not so.

The property tax issue is a perfect example.

Mayor Michael White and County Commissioner Tim Hagan, both Democrats, lobbied successfully to excuse ALL sports facilities of the need to pay property taxes on the structures. You are supposed to pay taxes on 35 percent of assessed value.

The last time I checked was in 2015. Here were the results:

The $276-million Browns stadium would pay an annual tax of $9.6 million per year. The Cleveland schools lose $5.76 million of that amount each year.

The $176-million Progressive field would pay taxes of $6.2 million a year and the Cleveland schools would lose $3.72 million of that annually.

The $113 million Quicken Arena would pay taxes of $3.9 million a year and the Cleveland schools lose $2.4 million of that sum annually.
:
Every year! For the 15 years of operation total: Still zero.

So, the three sports facilities—all tax exempted—are valued totally at $565-million and assessed for tax purposes at $197-million (35 percent of appraised value) pay no taxes.

With the renewed Arena, er, Fieldhouse, the taxes should go up.

They remain the same: ZERO.

So, we have turned so many corners since the sparsely attended inauguration of Donald John Trump our nation has turned in more circles than my dog Gillighan when he snuggles in for the night. Still, I’m more hopeful today than I’ve been in a very long time and so in my head I’m hearing The Byrds singing: Turn, Turn, Turn…

Nader, in Trump—Will He Implode with Lies Before He is Impeached? writes:

Donald Trump said he believes the Constitution lets him do “whatever I want as President.” In over two and a half years, Trump has been a serial violator of the Constitution, unmatched by any president in American history. Just about every day he is a constitutional outlaw.

Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein has documented twelve categories of major constitutional transgressions. Some are also statutory crimes. Many of these involve Trump overpowering the critical separation of powers that our founders rigorously established to assure that the president does not become a monarch like King George III.

The framers were very clear that Congress and only Congress can appropriate monies for the Executive branch to spend; that only Congress can declare war; that the president must faithfully execute the laws; and that the Congress has the full authority to investigate the executive branch for abuses, irregularities, illegalities, or the need Continue Reading »

When our young nation created the District of Columbia to be the place of our capital, the intent was to not give that honor to anyone of the 13 new states. In the beginning it was a place of gathering, not living but over the decades, particularly in the years since the second world war, that changed and now 630,427 stateless citizens live there.

As a matter of perspective, that is only slightly less than North Dakota (760,077) and greater than either Vermont (626,299) or Wyoming (577,737). The original reasons for creating the district no longer exist and the time is long past to give the people living there a state.

Ralph Nader, in Statement of Ralph Nader on Statehood for the District of Columbia, writes:

Submitted for the record of the House Judiciary Committee Hearings on September 19, 2019

It is important for Democrats and Republicans to give voice to people whose voice is not heard inside the corridors of power. More than 600,000 of those people live in the District of Columbia. As the capital of this nation, the District is the symbol of the freedoms for which this nation stands. The light of democracy shines from the District, but Continue Reading »