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Activism, politics, and beer from PA-based Raging Chicken Press
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Friday May 28, 2021
Friday May 28, 2021
More pressure to end the filibuster as Republican Senators refuse to back the Jan 6 commission.
More momentum for Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure proposal. A new polls shows that a majority of Pennsylvanians support the proposal, by the way.
It was a trifecta for the climate on Wednesday.
A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of 2030 in a case brought by Friends of the Earth.
Shareholder activists pushed out two of Exxon’s hand-picked board members and elected members who “pledged to steer the company toward cleaner energy and away from oil and gas.”
And, shareholders at Chevron voted 61% to cut its emissions. Another proposal that would have required the company to prepare a report on the impact its business would have from the net zero 2050 scenario, lost with 48% of the vote.
ConocoPhillips has a unique solution to the melting of Alaskan permafrost on Alaska’s North Slope - refreeze the permafrost so you can drill.
A UK-based blimp company is looking to deploy hybrid airships for shorter trips between places like Liverpool and Belfast or Barcelona to the Balearic Islands. The company, Hybrid Air Vehicles, says replacing air and ship traffic with its airships could cut emissions by 90%.
Half of all U.S. adults are now fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
New book finally exposes Bernie Sanders as a sham! Yes, you will not believe what this foot soldier of the ruling elite demand! When he’s on the road he demands hotel rooms with...wait for it...a KING BED and temperatures as low as 64 degrees! The hypocrite!
Ladies and Gents (long pause) we got him. Sedition Hunters, online sleuths, angry partisans and supporters of the ruling elite unearthed video footage that showed State Senator Doug Mastriano breaching police barricades & walking towards the capitol steps minutes before the building was breached on January 6th. This latest round of reporting completely undermines the stories and statements Mastriano gave to reporters and Senate leadership in the days following the insurrection.
If that’s not bad enough, Senator Mastirano issued a statement attacking the Huffington Post for reporting on this story and reporting on the fact that he posed for pictures with Sam Lazar, an insurrectionist wanted by the FBI for using bear spray on police officers. Mastriano compared the photos to Obama taking pictures with Bill Ayers or Louis Farrakhan. Mastriano’s statements prompted reporters to dig more into his connections with Lazar and showed that he has posed for photos with Lazar at least 5 times over the past year.
Keeping up with the insurrection, Sandy Weyer, another Mastriano associate who is known as “Sedition Sandy,” was named in an FBI affidavit for entering the capitol on January 6th.
Talking about Senator Mastriano. The Arizona Mirror, a sibling outlet related to the Pennsylvania Capital Star, reported that Senator Mastriano ordered an unauthorized audit of the 2020 election in Fulton County. The company that conducted the audit is associated with Sydney Powell and the Stop the Steal Movement. On top of that, they spoiled over $20,000 worth of election equipment that couldn’t be used in the previous primary.
Reps. Russ Diamond and Barabar Gleim began seeking co-sponsors for legislation that would penalize any school that teaches “critical race theory.”
Another Bucks County, PA man, Leonard Ridge, was arrested for allegedly taking part in the Jan 6 insurrection. Ridge bragged about his involvement on Snapchat.
The battle of the billionaire space barons is heating up and the Senate prepares a $10 billion dollar bailout for Jeff Bezos’s “Blue Origin” after his fufus were hurt after he lost the bid to SpaceX for the moon lander.
The European Space Agency is looking to develop a GPS and communication network around the Moon to aid in Earth-to-Moon communications for future missions.
The chickens are coming home to roost in the craft beer industry. Brienne Allan, a production manager at Notch Brewing in Salem, MA asked an open-ended question on her Instagram account: Is anyone else experiencing sexist comments? As reported on Boston’s WBUR, “The answer was this cascade of experiences, flooding her private messages with a deluge of trauma. …’It escalated really quickly into people talking about sexual violence and sexual harassment, racism from owners and superiors and just how, the HR system in general is just failing people right now,’ Allan said. ‘It just escalated out of control. I have over a thousand stories up now’."
The reckoning is ONLY BEGINNING.
Wednesday May 26, 2021
Wednesday May 26, 2021
It’s the second episode of The Wednesday Show! Today we’ll be talking about Cyril’s latest column, “Only a political uprising can save PA’s higher education system,”reclaiming our political imagination for organized action, and what stories Cyril is cooking up for future columns. And, maybe, we’ll check in on new reporting in Axios on right-wing PAC funding of school board elections. And then there’s the Keeping Kids in School PAC which is active right here in Eastern PA.
Check out Cyril's newsletter here: https://cyrilmychalejko.substack.com/
Join Raging Chicken's Discord server to continue the conversation: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Monday May 24, 2021
Monday May 24, 2021
We're opening up the "phones" again on this week's Out d'Coup LIVE. We'll be talking more about PASSHE redesign plans, the expansion of Raging Chicken's podcasts, some things I've been reading (prepare yourself for a little MMT convo), and whatever you all bring to the table.
Some topics for tonight:
- Seth Kahn, West Chester U faculty pens open letter to Chancellor Greenstein on PASSHE consolidation: https://bit.ly/3vjlPy4
- Liz Downing, Chair Post-Secondary Education Committee of the Women's Advocacy Coalition makes the case for the Nellie Bly Scholarship: https://bit.ly/3vhFMFy
- State Senator Lindsey Williams wants your thoughts on PASSHE redesign: https://www.senatorlindseywilliams.com/passheredesign/
- Just finished Stephanie Kelton's "The Deficit Myth," so Modern Monetary Theory might also make an appearance: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781541736184
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Chatting on #livechat during and after the show.
We're continuing to test our new platform for Out d'Coup LIVE. We'll be doing some real-time experiments with Riverside.fm. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for listeners to join the show while at the same time boosting the quality of our sound. So, we'll give it a whirl.
During the live show, I'll announce when we'll be taking calls. If you want to call into the show, you should join the show on Riverside.fm and turn the volume off on YouTube, otherwise you'll get a delay and feedback.
You can join the show, Monday 5/24/21 @ 7pm using this link: https://riverside.fm/studio/out-dcoup-live
Once your are in the show, you can comment in real time. You should be able to "call in" to the show too. Here's the info for how that works: https://support.riverside.fm/en/articles/4666206-live-call-in
Friday May 21, 2021
Friday May 21, 2021
We are back and we survived the gas shortage of 2021!
Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire after more than a week of intense violence that led to at least 243 Palestinian deaths - more than 60 were childrent - and 12 Israeli deaths, as reported by the BBC. Looks like that ceasefire may not last the day.
Republican Senators will not get on board legislation calling for a bi-partisan commission looking into the January 6 insurrection. Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio gives Republicans a lashing.
New reporting in ProPublica shows that the Trump era helped launch a new breed of donor who now have significant influence over the Republican Party.
According to a newly compiled report by the EPA, climate change is already having a significant impact on the U.S. - not to mention the rest of the world. EPA administrator Michael Regan said, “There is no small town, big city or rural community that is unaffected by the climate crisis...Americans are seeing and feeling the impacts up close, with increasing regularity.” As reported in the New York Times, those impacts include bigger wildfires that start earlier in the year; warmer seas; more frequent heat waves; persistent flooding; and, even ragweed pollen season is starting earlier.
Ford launches what may be a game changer in the electric vehicle market. On Wednesday, Ford unveiled the all-electric F150 Lightning, which performs better than combustion engine models in many metrics. However, its $39,974 pricetag that is likely to mark a turning point. At just under $40,000 the F150 Lightning is competitive with Tesla’s base model Model 3, currently the most popular electric vehicle in the country.
The big F150 lightning reveal follows Biden’s visit to the Ford plant in Dearborn, MI the day before, to pitch his EV plan. The EV plan, which is folded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, calls for $174 billion in consumer tax credits, support of US battery production, and funds to retool car plants to assemble EV’s.
This may sound like a broken record player, but progressives across Pennsylvania once again celebrated huge primary victories.
- Larry Krasner won in a landslide against FOP endorsed candidate Carlos Vega. The FOP and other pro-police PACs spent $250,000 to unseat Krasner only to lose by a 2-1 margin
- On top of Krasner’s victory, Krasner gained a lot of allies in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. Seven of the eight open seats went to nominees endorsed by Reclaim Philadelphia, the Working Families Party and other criminal justice reform organizations.
- Out west, House Representative Ed Gainey defeated Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. Gainey gained traction as a movement candidate following the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and was backed by SEIU Healthcare PA and groups like One Pennsylvania. He will become the first black mayor in Pittsburgh’s history.
- Tyler Titus (they/them) won their primary for Erie County Executive in the far northwest as an out transgender person. They will faceoff against the Republican nominee in November and have the opportunity to become the first transgender person to hold an elected exectuvie position in the country.
- Ezra Nanes crushed his primary election to become the next mayor of State College. He will become the first Jewish mayor in the city’s history and his victory only highlights how progressive movement is turning Centre County into a solid blue county.
In not so progressive news, but shocking to say the least, Wanda Williams defeated Harrisburg’s mayor Eric Papenfuse. Williams raised $30k and was vastly outspent by Eric Papenfuse, Dave Schankweiler and Otto Banks. Wanda won by linking Papenfuse to his Republican donors and to Schankweiler and Banks, who were Republicans running as Democrats.
House Representative Marty Flynn wins his special election to replace former Senator John Blake. The district has been trending red for some time, but Flynn was able to hold onto the seat. Blake left the Pennsylvania Senate to work for Congressman Matt Cartwright earlier this year
In other news, go grab your spurs cowboy! Doug Mastriano is preparing his run for Governor and is already taking shots at Lou Barletta’s extremely white teeth. Mastriano held a fundraiser with Rudy Giuliani last week and was spotted posing for photographs with an insurrectionist wanted for spraying bear spray at the capitol police during the January 6th attack on the capitol.
PA Senate Democratic Caucus continue hearings on PASSHE consolidation plan. This week’s hearings included testimony by faculty, staff, students, university leaders, and community members.
Cyril Mychalejko’s new piece just dropped, saying “Only a political uprising can save PA’s higher education system.” Mychalejko echos what we’ve been saying for years on this program: only organizing and direct action gets the goods.
In his first hearings after taking over as NASA’s Chief administrator, Bill Nelson pledges to move forward with the Artemis moon program and Mars ambitions while stoking fears that China is on course to dominate the future of space exploration.
China becomes the second country to successfully “soft-land” a rover on Mars. The Zhurong rover successfully landed last Friday, May 14. On Wednesday, the rover sent back some selfies and images of Mars. The Zhurong rover is part of China’s Tianwen-1 mission that arrived in Martian orbit back in February.
A little further in the weeds, SpaceX grabs the contract for Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander in 2023. According to Firefly, “Blue Ghost will be carrying 10 payloads for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) task order 19D mission, in addition to separately contracted commercial payloads.” Yes, the next round of Moon exploration is really a thing, folks.
In some ‘not so good’ beer news, Tired Hands’ owner Jean Broillet IV was pushed out of day-to-day operations by employees for allegations of racism, sexism and unsafe working conditions throughout the pandemic. When confronted, he stepped down immediately. The staff posted on the company's Instagram account that they will keep the brewery running as they look for new leadership. This story comes as a reckoning is happening throughout the craft beer industry.
It’s Sour Sunday this Sunday at Free Will Brewing and they have a new release to celebrate: Catch Lightning; DDH Love Letter from the 90s; Kragle Light. And, Free Will just opened a new tap room in Souderton, PA at the Broad Street Theater!
Monday May 17, 2021
Monday May 17, 2021
On this week's show I welcome Nick Marcil and Alexandra Karlesses. Nick and Alex are graduate students at West Chester University who wrote a piece for the student newspaper The Quad, "Hallmarks of neoliberalism pervade PA system of higher education." In that piece they argue,
"While the promise of market efficiency can seem tempting under such bleak circumstances, it is not a sustainable model of increased access or more abundant resources in higher education. In fact, despite the increasing reliance on this model, inflation-adjusted per-student state funding has declined in 41 states since 2008, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In PA alone, we have seen about a 40% reduction since the year 2000 in state funding across the board, even as universities continue to struggle and threaten to shut their doors."
Now, Alex and Nick are helping launch a new organization, "PASSHE Defenders," Fighting for a Fully Funded State System of Free Public Higher Education. Sounds like an appropriate addition to the Marvel Universe and I'm all in. Find them on Twitter @DefendersPasshe & Instagram passhe_defenders. You can join them for an organizing meeting this Thursday, May 20 @ 7:00 pm - SIGN UP HERE.
It turns out today is a good day to have them on, too. Earlier today the PA Senate Democratic Caucus Policy Committee held a hearing on PASSHE consolidation plans. State Senators Katie Muth, Lindsey Williams, and Judy Schwank led questions for panels featuring faculty, staff, students, and administrators.
Nick Marcil is a first-year Higher Education Policy and Student Affairs masters student at West Chester University. He is a current Graduate Assistant for Student Engagement in the Center for Civic Engagement & Social Impact and will be returning there next year. He graduated from the West Chester University in May 2020, where he majored in Early Grades Preparation and a minor in Mathematics Education (Pk-8).
Alex Karlesses is a first-year Higher Education Policy and Student Affairs masters student at West Chester University. She is a current Graduate Assistant in the Twardowski Career Development Center, and thoroughly enjoys counseling students and helping them with their postgraduate plans. She was also recently elected as the Vice President of the Graduate Student Association, and plans to use her platform to promote and plan programming for first-generation students, as well as help graduate students obtain any resources they need to help secure funding or further aid for their studies. She graduated from the University of Delaware in 2017, where she majored in English and Journalism.
Friday May 14, 2021
Friday May 14, 2021
Out d'Coup's Friday politics round-up is off this week. I thought that since we've been talking a lot about PASSHE Chancellor Greenstein's plans to "redesign" PA public higher ed that I'd post a replay of an Out d'Coup LIVE from March in which I breakdown some of the history of "PASSHE-in-crisis" and Chancellor Greenstein's rhetorical strategies to get people to buy into his plans for consolidation and austerity under his "redesign" brand.
Kevin Mahoney
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The Chancellor of the PA State System of Higher Education, Dan Greenstein, has dropped a few bombshells this week about the future of the 14 state owned university system. Public higher education in PA is facing an uncertain future now. We'll be taking your calls about PASSHE and the future of public higher ed.
Sound from this week's PA State Senate higher ed appropriation hearings, unpacking the rhetorical strategy of PASSHE Chancellor, and so much more.
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
Monday May 03, 2021
Monday May 03, 2021
On tonight’s show, I welcome Joshua Boaz Pribanic, the co-creator and -co-director of the Rights of Nature documentary, Invisible Hand. Invisible Hand has been called a “paradigm shifting” documentary about the struggle for the recognition of “Rights of Nature,” quite possibly a defining battle of our times where nature, democracy face off in rural America. Produced by award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo, Invisible Hand takes us behind the curtain of the global economy where “Rights of Nature” becomes capitalism’s primary opponent. The film’s epic battle does not begin in the centers of global capital, but in the small rural community of Grant Township, PA as residents band together to stop a fracking waste injection well from being located in their town. The “Rights of Nature” may be the most provocative, and powerful, assemblages of Western legal traditions and Indigenous knowledge that this country has ever seen. And it may be what is necessary to combat the climate crisis and reimagine global civilization.
Joshua is a film director, editor, investigative reporter who gained international attention for his reporting on fracking shale gas in the United States. He’s probably best known for his award-winning documentary films on fracking, the 2013 film Triple Divide and the 2017 film, Triple Divide [Redacted], and, now, of course, Invisible Hand. Joshua is also the co-founder of the investigative journalism non-profit, Public Herald where he serves as Editor-in-Chief. Public Herald has been cited in over 200 publications including The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times.
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
Friday Apr 30, 2021
Friday Apr 30, 2021
One day ahead of his 100th day in office, Biden addressed a joint session of Congress to layout out another ambitious policy agenda in his “American Families Plan.” As reported in the New York Times,
Also this week, Biden signed an executive order increasing the minimum wage for all federal contractors to $15/hour. The increase will impact hundreds of thousands of workers.
The FBI raided Rudy Giuliani’s home and office this week, seizing computers and cell phones. According to new reporting in the New York Times, the probe centers on the firing of the US Ambassador to Ukraine. If there are any feds listening to this podcast, please send us all conversations between Rudy and Doug Mastriano.
Tucker Carlson tests the boundaries of extremism. Carlson used his top-rated, Fox News show to claim that requiring children to wear masks was “child abuse.” He said, “your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart...Call the police immediately, contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you’re looking at is abuse, it’s child abuse and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it.”
The game of musical chairs has begun as the Census Bureau released the new state population numbers, which determine the number of seats each state gets in the House of Representatives.
Gains: Texas (2), Florida (1), North Carolina (1), Colorado (1), Oregon (1), Montana (1)
Losses: California (1), New York (1), Illinois (1), Pennsylvania (1), Ohio (1), Michigan (1), West Virginia (1)
Matt Gaetz’s wing man decided to sing.
Pennsylvania Spotlight relaunched their website! This is a project that has been in the works for months and thank you to everyone who helped make this possible, especially Scott Wagner and Mike Turzai.
Senator Doug Mastriano and Pennsylvania Supreme Court candidate Paula Patrick were slated to speak at the “Up Front in the Prophetic” Q-Anon conference happening in Gettysburg this June, but both issued statements condemning the event and movement. Unconfirmed reports are that Mastriano issued this statement with a wink and a nod.
A case by Pennsylvania high school student Brandi Levy made it to the Supreme Court after she was suspended from her cheerleading tea m after posting harsh comments about her school on Snapchat. When she failed to make the varsity cheerleading team, she posted a picture of herself flipping the bird captioned with “F___ school f___ softball f___ cheer f___ everything.” The case raises significant questions about the authority of schools to punish students for speech that occurs off school grounds.
This was a major week for the future of the PA State System of Higher Education. On Wednesday, Chancellor Greenstein’s plans to merge six universities into two was accepted by the Board of Governors, triggering a 60 comment period and legislative hearings. A new report by the U Mass-based Political Economy Research Institute found that Greenstein’s plans will lead to over 1,500 direct job losses, leading to over 700 additional “indirect” or “induced” lost jobs in the Commonwealth. The question on the table now is whether Governor Wolf wants the destruction of PA public higher ed to be his lasting legacy.
In my neck of the woods, there’s a team of right-wing extremists running for the Pennridge School Board. At least they are making it easy to know who NOT to vote for. So, DO NOT vote for Christine Batycki, Jordan Blomgren, Ricki Chaikin and Bob Cormack.
The Mars Helicopter Ingenuity failed to make a fourth flight yesterday when it failed to switch into flight mode.
China launched the main main module for its first permanent space station on Thursday. The launch is the first of 11 missions necessary to complete the station and establish China a major player in the future of space. China will also land its first rover on Mars next month.
Last Friday, SpaceX’s Crew-2 mission launched a new crew to the International Space Station. On their way to the space station, a piece of space junk came unexpectedly close to colliding with the capsule.
The four astronauts that arrived at the International Space Station were scheduled to depart the ISS later today, but they have been delayed for the second time due to weather. Or, maybe they want a few more days for sightseeing?
Free Will Brewing new releases: Strawberry Banana Mash & Longful Hunt.
Last weekend Free Will launched Sunday Sessions - live music at the Brewery. Sklyar Love kicked off the season for the first show. This Sunday, John Valerio will be taking the stage from 1-4pm. No tickets required. There will be 19 beers on tap, wine from Pennswood, and food by Tre’ Locally Sourced.
Monday Apr 26, 2021
Monday Apr 26, 2021
On tonight’s show, I welcome Dr. Jamie Martin to the show. Martin is the president of the APSCUF, the faculty union representing the 14 state-owned universities making up the PA State System of Higher Education. Faculty, staff, and students are facing a precarious future as the Chancellor of the state system, Daniel Greenstein, pushes forward his agenda to merge six universities into two, layoff scores of faculty and staff, throw students' academic programs into flux, and force more classes online. Greenstein tells a fairy tale narrative of his "Redesign" plans, but many faculty, students, and staff aren't buying in. Earlier today, Greenstein dropped his 439 page university merger plan - a plan that will be presented to the Board of Governors this Wednesday, April 28. We'll talk about how we got here and where we need to go.
Martin graduated from IUP with bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a doctorate in criminology. Her research has focused on qualitative research, corrections, and criminal-justice ethics. She has published articles in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education and American Journal of Criminal Justice, and she has also published a book called Looking Out: Jailed Fathers’ Perceptions about Separation from Their Children. Additionally, she won the Center for Teaching Excellence Award in 2004 and the Outstanding Teacher Award in the College of Health and Human Services in 2008.
Resources:
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April 27 – LHU APSCUF town hall
Lock Haven University’s APSCUF chapter will host an online Q&A session for alumni to discuss consolidation. The session runs 7–8 p.m. Tuesday, April 27, in Zoom meeting ID # 977 1143 0089.
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April 28 – Consolidation-plan presentation and Day of Action:
8:30 a.m. | BOARD OF GOVERNORS MEETING (livestreamed) — Click here for details about how to watch and how to participate in public comment that morning. -
11:30 a.m. | SAVE OUR STATE SCHOOLS will host a streamed event to discuss advocacy surrounding the plan. We’ll share registration when it is available; better yet, you can sign up for SOSS email alerts to hear directly from them.
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Follow Save Out State Schools on Twitter: @OurStateSchools. Look for additional. Sign up for additional information and email alerts on their webpage: SaveOurStateSchools.org.
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Check out APSCUF's student page with additional events and organizing info.
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
Friday Apr 23, 2021
Friday Apr 23, 2021
Guilty, guilty, guilty. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin found guily on all three counts in the murder of George Floyd. Now attention turns back to the work of fundamentally transforming policing in America.
The three former Minneapolis police officers who were involved in George Floyd’s arrest and who stood by as Derek Chauvin killed Floyd, will be facing their own day of reckoning in court in the coming months.
As if to underscore that convicting Derek Chauvin would not change the rot at the core of American policing, police shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright just 10 miles from where Derek Chauvin’s trial was being held.
Axios reported that Senate Democratic and Republican staffers see the Chauvin verdict as “taking off the pressure” to pass meaningful police reform.
And...is Nancy Pelosi actually trying to hurt Democrats and prove to everyone that she and others in the party leadership are completely out of touch?
India sets a new global record for the most number of COVID cases in a day at more than 330,000. Until now, the United States was the only nation to see that number of cases in a day. Hospitals in Delhi and in other large cities are running out of oxygen. Indian journalist Rana Ayyub told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman “it is an apocalyptic situation in India right now.” With a population four times as large as the United States the devastation from the virus could prove catastrophic and lead to the spread of new virus strains.
The explosion of COVID cases in India has further exposed inequity in vaccine distribution globally. Even though India is one of the largest producers and suppliers of vaccines to the world, corporate patent protections have prioritized getting vaccines to nations who can pay top dollar, not to those who need it most. We can thank Bill Gates for that, as outlined in Ann Neumann’s recent article in the Baffler, “Who Owns Vaccines.”
Yesterday, on Earth Day, Biden made a commitment to cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030. While the commitment is one of the boldest we’ve ever seen from an American president, energy experts told the New York Times that such a move would “require a dramatic overhaul of American society,” and fundamental changes in American’s energy system. It remains to be seen if the Biden administration truly has the political will to do what is necessary to meet his own commitments. It should be noted that climate scientists and activists have pointed out that even Biden’s bold goals are not enough to stave off some of the worst effects of climate change.
Priorities USA, the Super PAC that supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, released a report last week that was very critical of Democrats' ad spending. Republicans outspent Democrats on TV and digital advertising for House and Senate campaigns 8 to 12 months before the 2020 even though Democrats outspent Republicans by the time of the election. And here’s the kicker: 75% of the money Democrats spent on TV advertising for Congressional races missed their target audiences.
DC Statehood, baby. House passed a D.C. Statehood bill yesterday. The bill moves on to the Senate. It will be one more test of how wedded to the filibuster Democrats are.
Seth Grove and the House Republicans from the State Government Committee released their “findings” from their election integrity hearings. Republicans are eyeing up voter IDs for in-person voting and those voting by mail, limiting dropboxes to one per county, having signature tests and third party witness signatures for mail-in ballots and purging of the voter rolls.
Stephen Caruso from the Pennsylvania Capital Star published an amazing interview with House State Government Chair Seth Grove. During the interview, Caruso asked Grove how he can be a “good faith” actor in negotiating voting reforms when he is associated with ALEC, put his name on letters seeking to overturn Pennsylvania’s election results and had a meeting with Kris Kobach during his election integrity hearings. Grove’s response “we’ll see.”
Election truthers, conspiracy theorists and insurrectionists inspired by the MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell returned to the capitol this week demanding that the Pennsylvania General Assembly pass legislation to conduct a complete audit of the 2020 election. The event was such a hit that independent journalist and documentarian, Zach Roberts, traveled to Harrisburg for it.
Cris Dush went full blown “Cold Warrior” in the middle of a Senate appropriations hearing yesterday. Dush used COVID conspiracies and Nazi anaologies when asking Acting Department of Health Secretary Allison Beam if the Wolf administration intentionall sent COVID infected patients to nursing homes and turned those nursing homes into “death camps.”
In an Op-Ed this week, Tara Murth and Susan Frietsche from the Women’s Law Project, warned that maternal mortality is skyrocketing in Pennsylvania while PA Republicans continue to pursue anti-abortion legislation that will only worsen the crisis. HB 1977 is a near total abortion ban; SB 21 pretends to protect people with disabilities as a justification for restricting abortion rights; and HB 1890 would mandate a death certificate be issued for every abortion and would threaten medical providers who did not obtain a death certificate.
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a big, if rather superficial, story on PASSHE Chancellor Greenstein’s plans to fundamentally redesign the 14 state-owned university system. While much of the article misses the mark, it has helped place PASSHE in the national spotlight - right where Greenstein wants it, I suspect. APSCUFs survey of the faculty affected by the planned mergers found that fewer than 8% of faculty were supportive of the mergers and only 7% believed the process has been transparent.
NASA’s Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, made not one, but two flights on the red planet this week. The historic first flight on Monday saw the helicopter take off, hover about 10 feet in the air for about 30 seconds, then descend back to the ground. On Thursday, the flight lasted almost a minute. The helicopter hovered at about 16 feet and moved sideways for about 7 feet before returning to the ground.
Meanwhile on the ground, NASA’s Perseverance rover turned a bit of Martian air into breathable oxygen thanks to an instrument called MOXIE. The little toaster-sized instrument is designed to separate oxygen atoms from carbon-dioxide molecules. The test produced enough oxygen to give a single astronaut about 10 minutes of breathable air.
Early this morning the SpaceX Crew-2 Dragon capsule launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida upon a Falcon 9 rocket. The international crew consists of 2 astronauts from the U.S., one from Japan, and one from Russian. Crew-2 should arrive at the International Space Station early tomorrow morning.
U.S. military chose Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics for their first phase of a project to test nuclear propulsion systems in orbit.
And, SpaceX beat out Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics to win build the space craft for NASA’s Artemis mission to the Moon.
I got myself some Human Robot beer this week! And...a hat.
Free Will Releases.