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Activism, politics, and beer from PA-based Raging Chicken Press
Episodes
Monday Feb 08, 2021
Monday Feb 08, 2021
Raging Chicken has been covering the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education for ten years. We've exposed the lies told by university presidents and system chancellors. We've shown how administrators have used deceptive accounting practices to pull the wool over the eyes of students, faculty, staff, and the public. And, we've given voice to the faculty, staff, students, and community members who fought back.
Today, Indiana University of Pennsylvania is facing devastating cuts in faculty and programs. There's a shiny new Chancellor, but the playbook is much the same. You can dress up austerity in Silicon Valley happy-talk, but the end game is the same.
On this episode of Out d'Coup LIVE we'll be mining the Raging Chicken archives to reframe the discourse of crisis in the defunding and destruction of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. We'll also be taking your calls on the podbean app.
A special shout out to Jonathan Mann who wrote our intro song, “There Are No People in the Future.” Check out all is great stuff on his YouTube page and follow him on Twitter @songadaymann
Selected Raging Chicken coverage of PASSHE discussed in this episode.
- I Went to Harrisburg and my Head Exploded
- Wall Street on the Susquehanna: PASSHE Bond Scheme Bleeds Education Budget for Beautiful Buildings
- PASSHE’s Austerity Magic: Save Your Despair for Better Days
- Exposing Budget Fraud at PASSHE Universities | Colleen Bradley tells her story
- Budgeting for Fear and Austerity: An Interview with Howard Bunsis
- The Bunsis Report
- APSCUF Releases Independent Audit of PASSHE’s Books, Confirms Bond Schemes Bleeding Education Dollars
- Denying Access: Transforming PASSHE’s Commitment to Working-Class Students
Friday Feb 05, 2021
Friday Feb 05, 2021
On an Instagram Live broadcast Monday night, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told the world in detail about her harrowing experiences during the Capitol insurrection.
11 House Republicans join all House Democrats in stripping QAnon Representative Marjorie Taylor Green of committee roles.
Senate Democrats pass a budget bill in the wee hours this morning paving the way for passing Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package through reconciliation. The bill was passed only after Vice President Kamala Harris cast a tie-breaking vote.
Joe Biden fired all 10 members of the Federal Services Impasse Panel this week. The FSIP is a labor panel that settles federal labor disputes between public unions and the different federal agencies, but under Trump, the Panel was stacked with Koch operatives and used to break federal sector unions.
Congressional Democrats are pushing Biden to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt. During the campaign Biden says he would support canceling $10,000 in student loan debt, but pressure led by Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Ilhan Omar, Ayana Pressley, Alma Adams, and Mondaire Jones seems to be having an effect. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tweeted “Our team is reviewing whether there are any steps he can take through executive action and he would welcome the opportunity to sign a bill sent to him by Congress.”
The good folks at the American Prospect have an “Executive Action Tracker” on their website as part of their #DayOneAgenda project.
Over 1,100 Columbia University students have pledged to go on a tuition strike, saying they refuse to pay full tuition for all on-line classes.
This Super Bowl Sunday General Motors will unveil their electrical vehicle line. GM has said they will eliminate all their combustion engine vehicles by 2035.
Governor Tom Wolf released his annual budget address on Wednesday. The Governor called for an increase in the personal income tax and a tax credit program that will reduce taxes for 70% of working Pennsylvania families. He also called for the legalization of recreational cannabis use and an increase in the $15 minimum wage.
Nikil Saval released a response to Gov. Wolf’s budget proposal, saying that his budget “does much to move funding swiftly, and equitably, to those who need it most.” But, Saval wrote that the absence of vigorous environmental protection to respond to the climate crisis and the budget’s silence on dealing with the housing crisis, especially during the pandemic, represents “two missed opportunities.”
Former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor has gone from political irrelevance to defending Donald Trump during the upcoming impeachment trial. Castor managed to burn every bridge possible while serving as the Montgomery County District Attorney and as the Acting Attorney General of Pennsylvania. Congratulations, Bruce?
Kathy Boockvar steps down after a major screw up that set back the fight for a Constitutional Amendment allow abuse survivors access to justice.
Scott Perry’s faculty instructor at the Army War College pens an op-ed to the York Daily Record saying that he finds Perry’s behavior “troubling” and calls on Perry to “remove his name from any website that infers, in any way, that the Army War College considers him to be of the same stature” of some of the celebrated graduates of the college.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki could not say what the future of the Space Force will be under the Biden Administration. She promised to get together with the point of contact with the Space Force for more information. The Space Force flag was waving during the inauguration we should say.
On Super Bowl Sunday, SpaceX is launching a commercial for what it’s billing as the “first ‘all-civilian’ spaceflight” as part of their Inspiration4 project with billionaire Jared Isaacman. The commercial tells viewers they’ll have a chance to climb aboard. According to Space.com, there are three non-billionaire seats available: “One seat is up for grabs in a contest to anyone who makes a donation to St. Jude's Children Research Hospital. Another seat will go to a St. Jude's healthcare worker, and the third will go to the winner of an entrepreneur contest run by Isaacman's Shift4Shop.”
And in a major shift away from the Trump organization, Biden created a new role at NASA to prioritize Earth sciences to combat the climate crisis. The new Senior Climate Advisor position will report directly to NASA’s administrator. The head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin Schmidt, will be the acting senior advisor until they fill the role permanently.
Sean got shipments of pots this week. That’s pots, plural.
Free Will Releases Juice Money - Sour Ale with Plum, Black Currant, Cinnamon, Cardamom, Vanilla, and Milk Sugar. C.O.B. - Coffee Oatmeal Brown Ale brewed with flaked oats and a variety of dark malts, then later rested atop two pounds per barrel worth of freshly roasted coffee beans from Speakeasy Coffee Company.
Shout out to an old friend and the folks at Narragansett Brewery in Providence, RI.
Monday Feb 01, 2021
Monday Feb 01, 2021
On today’s show, I welcome Brian Bailie back to the podcast. Bailie is an Assistant Professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of Cincinnati’s Blue Ash College. Brian’s latest articles include,“Are We an Academic Journal? Editing as Ethical Practice for Change,” co-authored with Steve Parks, in Reflections: A Journal of Community Engaged Writing and Rhetoric, and the ever-timely piece in Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, “So, Richard Spencer is Coming to Your Campus. How He was Allowed on, and How You Can Confront Him.”
I wanted to have Brian back on the show to update us on some of the many assaults on public higher education during the pandemic. Tonight we’ll talk about the attempt by lawmakers in Iowa to strip tenure from faculty in all state public colleges and universities. Then we’ll ask why a dead professor is teaching an art course for Concordia University. Then there’s the U of Florida installing "tattle buttons" to narc on faculty who moved some in-person classes on-line. Oh, yea, then in our backyard the PA State System of Higher Education is gutting faculty and staff at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. But we won’t leave you with all doom and gloom. We'll talk about the fight back. UC students with Boldly Bankrupt are doing great work and building coalitions.
A special shout out to Jonathan Mann who wrote our intro song, “There Are No People in the Future.” Check out all is great stuff on his YouTube page and follow him on Twitter @songadaymann
- Check out Boldly Bankrupt: https://boldlybankrupt.cargo.site/
- Dead professors teaching at Concordia University: https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/dead-professor-teaching-online-class.html
- Iowa attack on tenure: https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/education/iowa-lawmakers-advance-bill-to-eliminate-tenure-20210126
- IUP Cuts: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/us/college-coronavirus-tuition.html (we didn't get to talk too much about this tonight. I'll focus on it on another show).
Friday Jan 29, 2021
Friday Jan 29, 2021
Biden signs significant executive actions on climate change and restoring Obamacare. His climate action calls for converting the federal vehicle pool to all electric vehicles. And, the government must now take into account all the climate costs before approving any federal permits.
Wall Street Hedge Funds feel the pitchforks as Reddit-fueled retail traders take revenge. Think about the big GameStop story as the revenge for what those very same Hedge Funds did to Toys R’ Us. Gotta say, it’s fun to see “eat the rich” trending.
The GameStop controversy has done more to bring Left and Right politiicans together than any initiative of the Biden administration. That’s after the trading platform Robinhood screws retail traders to protect hedge fund billionaires. But AOC tells Ted Cruz that he’s not wanted and he should resign.
According to new reporting in the Guardian, it looks like most of the world's poorest countries will not be vaccinated against COVID-19 until well into 2024. Some may never reach necessary vaccination levels. Nothing like adding yet another crisis on the backs of the most vulnerable regions. I guess fomenting global uprisings are going to be a thing this decade.
New York’s Governor Cuomo allegedly purposely underreported nursing home deaths by as much as 50%.
Iowa lawmakers on the verge of eliminating tenure at all Iowa state universities. It would be the first, but presumably not the last, state to eliminate tenure.
And those Hedge Fund babies are gonna cry more tears when they hear that Sweden has put a ban on mink breeding due to the spread of a COVID-19 variant through the country’s mink population. No fur coats for you.
And, Q-Anon, Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Green gets crazier by the day. Not only did she call the Parkland shooting a “false flag” operation, newly revealed posts show her applauding calls to assassinate Democratic congressional leaders including Nancy Pelosi.
PA Republicans make headlines in the New York Times again. An article dropped yesterday about why Pennsylvania Republican leaders are doubling down on their Trump credentials
Pennsylvania has a Jeffrey Yass problem. PA Spotlight published an oped in the Penn Capital Star about billionaire hedge funder Jeffrey Yass, his connections to the education privatization movement and how he has used Commonwealth Foundation associated PACs to fund Pennsylvania’s leading insurrectionists.
WITF, Harrisburg’s NPR affiliate, has made the editorial decision to mention how key Republicans played a role in the insurrection by signing onto letters to overturn the 2020 election results whenever they report on those republicans from here on out. For example: “Sen. (name), who signed a letter asking members of Congress to delay certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral votes despite no evidence that would call those results into question, today introduced a bill …”
A thirty-year-old bartender in Montgomery County has tested positive for the UK variant of the coronavirus. That’s one the variants that spreads more easily and more quickly than the original strain.
Axiom Space has announced that it will fly the first ever crew of tourists to the International Space Station in early 2022. Three of the globes super rich will pay $71 million each for the trip. They will spend 8 days on the space station.
Free Will Brewing releases.
Monday Jan 25, 2021
Monday Jan 25, 2021
Biden is president. Kamala Harris makes history as first woman, first South Asian, and first African American vice president.
Republicans are wasting no time in showing their true colors. McConnell pulls a stunt on Day One to block Democrats from taking over the majority on committees.
Yes, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as president and vice president this past week, but Chairman Sanders stole the inauguration and became an instant internet meme with his winter coat and mittens.
Speaking of Chairman Sanders, he started Biden’s presidency by waving two big middle fingers to everyone’s “unity talk.” Senator Sanders wasted no time threatening Republicans with reconciliation if they do not agree with COVID relief. Sanders stated that Republicans used budget reconciliation to push tax-cuts through for the rich and that Democrats will use the process to help working families.
Earlier today, Biden lifted the Trump ban on transgender individuals serving openly in the military.
As we go LIVE, the House has delivered the article of impeachment against former president Donald Trump to the Senate. Apparently, Chief Justice Roberts was unwilling or uninterested in presiding over a second trial. The Constitution says the Chief Justice is to preside over a sitting president but does not spell out what happens in a trial against a former president. Senator Leahy has been tapped to be the presiding officer.
Joe Biden is making in-roads with labor in ways that previous administrations haven’t. On his first day in office, Biden fired Peter Robb, the former head of the National Labor Relations Board. Robb was a corporate lawyer who helped Rondal Regan fire thousands of air-traffic controllers in the 1980’s. Robb was just replaced with Peter Ohr as interim head of the NLRB. Ohr made waves in a ruling that allowed Northwestern University football players to unionize.
Big Twitter-verse controversy over #ForceTheVote leads to frustrating debate between Sam Seder of the Majority Report and Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders campaign. The debate took place on Bad Faith podcast, which Briahna Joy Gray co-hosts with Virgil Texas from Chapo Traphouse.
Documents obtained by Pennsylvania Spotlight showed that Pennsylvania Senate Republicans spent over $1 million in legal fees to disenfranchise Pennsylvania voters. That’s right. They spent your tax dollars to stop you from voting last year.
On Friday night, it was reported in the New York Times that an unnamed Pennsylvania Politician played a key role in trying to stage a coup within the Department of Justice in order to force Georgia to overturn their election results.
It turns out that in a follow-up reporting, it was Scott Perry who aided Trump in trying to fire the senior staff at the Department of Justice to install a Trump loyalist who was willing to overturn the Georgia election results.
The plot thickens in the case against Riley Williams, the 22-year-old Harrisburg area woman who took part in the Capitol insurrection, allegedly stole Nancy Pelosi’s laptop, and then tried to sell it to Russia. According to DC-based NBC investigative reporter, Scott MacFarlane, Williams, who was released on bail under the supervision of her mother, hopped on the internet and encourage people involved in the insurrection to destroy evidence. MacFarlane reported on Twitter that the U.S. Justice Department told the judge in the case just that as they sought to prohibit Williams’s internet access.
We’re not out of the woods, but PA saw the lowest number of new cases of COVID-19 and the lowest number of deaths in weeks.
On today’s last call: what’s new at Free Will Brewing; Levante Brewing stout haul; cooking with Sean; and other randomness.
Monday Jan 18, 2021
Monday Jan 18, 2021
On this week's episode of Out d'Coup LIVE I am joined by student organizers Paul Berlet, Mattieu Maier, and Samantha Marencik from Kutztown University Activists.
Paul Berlet is a junior Secondary English Education major. He gained grassroots organizing experience working with Kutztown Students for Sanders and most recently with Healthy Campus Bill of Rights, a group of concerned professors, community members, parents, and students that aimed to put pressure on Ku's administration regarding the fall 2020 reopening plan. Paul believes in the power of direct action to be able to empower students and employees to demand dignity from the decision-makers and bosses that continue to put profits over people.
Sam Marncik is a Sophomore Music Education major. She was excited to expand and solidify her political ideology on her arrival at Kutztown. Prior to attending Kutztown, Sam was the president of her high school's gay/straight alliance. At KU, she joined the Bernie Sanders campaign where she began to learn the importance of grassroots organizing. She had always seen herself as a humanitarian but her experience and ability to lead helped propel KUA to the successful organization it is today.
Matthieu Maier is a Sophomore Music Education major at KU. Upon his arrival at KU in 2019, he didn’t have any strong political affiliations. However, events over the past year opened his eyes to the truth of progressive and leftist policy. He believes in the power of the collective and uplifting the working class from the oppression of the ruling class. These beliefs serve as driving forces behind Matthieu’s participation in KUA and desire to ensure safety to all students and employees of KU.
The Kutztown University Activists are a non-hierarchical group of students who formed in response to Kutztown University's negligent reopening this fall. They are fighting to end worker abuse, a safe COVID-19 plan, better student health services, and true student empowerment. KU Activists seek to create a new culture at Kutztown that empowers the students to be able to make changes regarding their own educational experience and the society more broadly.
Thursday Jan 14, 2021
Thursday Jan 14, 2021
Donald Trump is the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach Trump. No, my representative was not one of them.
As the days go by we find out that the head of the Capitol police lie, the FBI released a report ahead of the insurrection warning that there were indications that the Trump supporters were calling for “war.” And now the FBI is warning that State Capitol buildings may now be targets over the weekend.
FBI investigators looking into Wednesday’s right-wing insurrection are starting to look at legislators who may have coordinated with organizers of the mob.
Representative Aryanna Pressley confirmed that the panic buttons in her office were ripped out before the insurrection and Representative James Clyburn confirmed that his private office where he does most of his work was sacked leading to suspicions of an inside job.
Conan the Barbarian releases a video calling Wednesday’s insurrection, “America’s Kristallnacht.”
Parler is gone (for now) and the GOP is crying about it.
James Comey - yes, THAT James Comey, is actually out there calling for Biden to pardon Trump. Yeah, that guy who helped hand Trump the presidency back in 2016.
DC Hotel workers from UNITE HERE Local hint at a wildcat strike ahead of the inauguration to help stave off any repeat of last Wednesday’s insurrection. In a statement, the union said, “We are calling on hotels in the DC region to close ahead of inauguration, unless they are hosting security personnel. Any hotel that stays open must permit workers to stay home and/or leave the moment they feel unsafe.”
Fast Food workers are calling for a nationwide strike on Monday, January 18, to urge the Biden administration to raise the minimum wage to at least $15/hour.
It’s been another wild week for Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano
WHYY reported that Senator Mastriano used $3,400 in campaign cash to pay for busses to take insurrectionists to Washington DC.
Media Matters reported that Doug Mastriano frequently goes on Q Anon associated podcasts and in recent weeks called the effort to overturn the election a “death match with the Republican Party.”
Mastriano is also calling on Trump supporters to stand-down this weekend as insurrectionists plan on rallying outside the Pennsylvania capitol this weekend and all of next week. In a facebook post, he stated: Please do not participate in rallies or protests over the next 10 days. “Let’s focus on praying for our nation during these troubling times.”
Frank Scavo, a former congressional candidate from northeastern Pennsylvania, organized a bus trip from Old Forge to last week’s insurrection and was caught repeatedly lying about his involvement in the insurrection. First he told reporters he was nowhere near the capitol, then he told them that he was close to the capitol but didn’t go inside and now there is photographic evidence that he was inside the capitol during the insurrection.
Pennsylvania Republicans move forward with their plans to gerrymander the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in response to Republicans losing three Supreme Court Seats in 2015. Republicans are using recent PA Supreme Court rulings during the 2020 election as excuses for their latest attack on the court.
In happier news, State Senator Jim Brewster won his final court battle and is now seated.
State Representative Elizabeth Fielder has been named the chair for the newly formed Progressive Policies for Working People subcommittee. The new subcommittee will be part of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Policy Committee and will give progressive lawmakers more of a legislative voice within the House Democratic Caucus.
In more good news for state politics, the crew heading the Pennsylvania Legislative Climate Caucus is looking good. The Caucus will be Chaired by Rep. Danielle Friel Otten, D-Chester; the vice chair will be Rep. Nancy Guenst, D-Montgomery; and, Rep. Rick Krajewski, D-Philadelphia, will serve as Secretary. If you don’t know Nancy Guenst, we’ll tell you about the note she posted to her office door for potential insurrectionists.
PASSHE Chancellor Greenstein has trouble maintaining the good-guy, Chancellor McDreamy schtick in a open Spotlight PA interview on Zoom last night.
What are we doing with our “free time.”
Free Will Brewing has some new releases. We'll give you the details in today's Last Call.
Monday Jan 11, 2021
Monday Jan 11, 2021
We can only hope that the rest of 2021 doesn’t look like what we experienced this past week. For the first time since 1814, the U.S. Capitol building was stormed by fanatical Trumpsters, QAnon conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and other right-wing radicals in what was nothing less than an attempted coup. That is exactly what Fiona Hill, the former Senior Director of Trump’s National Security Council called it. While the smell of tear gas was still strong in the Capitol, we already began to hear calls for “moving beyond” the events and return to the good old days of civility. That’s right, even before most of us could even process this right-wing insurrection, we saw lawmakers and pundits put out the call for civility. “This is not the America we all know,” we were told.
Chris Hayes was part of an MSNBC panel the night of the insurrection. He seemed to capture the sense of gaslighting many of us felt as the calls for “a return to normalcy” and “civility” felt. Listen for yourself:
I'll be kicking off the discussion tonight with an article I wrote back in 2018 about the breakdown of democracy in the lead up to the 2016 election. We'll take a look at the failure of liberals to recognize the coming crisis and the need to be prepared to fight to end the clear threat to the future of democracy in the U.S.
My article, "We Are Not All In This Together: A Case for Advocacy, Factionalism, and Making the Political Personal," appeared in the amazing collection, "Unruly Rhetorics: Protest, Persuasion, and Publics," edited by Jonathan Alexander, Nancy Welch, and Susan Jarratt.
Friday Jan 08, 2021
Friday Jan 08, 2021
Four (now five) people are dead and many more injured after radical Trumpsters lay siege to the U.S. Capitol building. Decades of the GOP stoking the fires of racism, conspiracy theories, and ideologically driven media is coming home to roost. Fire’s like that. Only fools believe that they can tame a wildfire.
After hours of delays due to the Trumpster insurrection, the results of the Electoral College Vote was officially counted and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn into office in less than two weeks.
It’s time to break out your copies of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, or pick up a copy if you don’t have one yet. The escalating violence is part of the authoritarian playbook. This does not bode well for 2021.
Some Democrats initially tried to simply “get back to normal” following the failed coup, but it’s becoming increasingly impossible for them to do so. Pressured by Democratic House and Senate members, Pelosi and Schumer are now calling for Trump’s removal though the 25th Amendment or impeachment. This is a quickly developing story.
Congresswoman Katherine Clark told CNN this morning that House Democrats are preparing an impeachment vote by the middle of next week if Trump isn’t removed by the 25th amendment.
All of that happened after Democrats scored historic victories in the Georgia runoff elections. Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff victories give Democrats control of the Senate with Kamala Harris as the tie breaker.
And THAT came after Trump was recorded trying to intimidate Georgia election officials to give him enough votes to give the Georgia election to Trump.
The other big news of the week seems almost trivial at this point.
Pennsylvania Senate Republicans this week gave their one preview of what we saw unfold in DC this week. PA Senate Republicans led by Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman refused to seat incumbent, reelected State Senator Jim Brewster. Corman and Senate Republicans forcefully seized control from Lt. Governor John Fetterman who was presiding over the session.
John Fetterman hinted about his candidacy for the United State Senate on twitter this morning.
Kutztown University President Kenneth Hawkinson announced that he has tested positive for COVID. Kutztown University has some of the worst COVID numbers in PA higher education after Hawkinson demanded a return to in-person classes in Fall 2020. Kutztown has more than 430 confirmed cases of COVID among students and staff. Hawkinson’s announcement comes at a time of spiking COVID cases in Berks County, passing 25,000 cases this week.
And in more Kutztown University news, a man in a Kutztown hat was captured on film assaulting an AP photojournalist at the Trumpster insurrection. It’s good to be golden, I guess.
The full 2021 calendar for space launches and missions is out. We’ll have links and highlights for what looks to be a pretty active year in space.
And, of course, we’ll take you through some of the Free Will Brewing releases ready for 2021.