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Activism, politics, and beer from PA-based Raging Chicken Press
Episodes
Friday Jun 11, 2021
Friday Jun 11, 2021
Joe Manchin decides to sink hopes of passing voting protections laid out in the For the People Act, taking out an editorial in West Virginia newspapers to spew nonsense about bipartisanship. His move happens, of course, while Republican state legislatures are passing voter suppression laws at a breakneck pace.
A similar fate awaits Biden’s infrastructure plan as Manchin and Sinema refuse to get rid of the filibuster. Talks between Biden and West Virginia’s Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito fell apart after it was clear the Republican position “did not meet the essential needs of our country to restore our roads and bridges, prepare us for our clean energy future, and create jobs,” according to a statement from White House press secretary Jen Psaki. A new bipartisan proposal from a group of 10 senators led by Krysten Sinema and Mitt Romney was developed late yesterday, but sounds like it will gut all investment in climate infrastructure. Senator Markey and other Democratic Senators have said they will not vote for a bill that does not invest in necessary climate infrastructure.
Turns out Trump’s justice department was secretly subpoenaing phone and other records from Democrats on House Intelligence committee. The practice continued under Biden’s administration until just a couple of weeks ago.
The Keystone XL pipeline is dead.
PA Republicans propose major changes in the Commonwealth’s election law, calling for stricter voter ID rules and restrictions on early voting.
PA Republicans spent a good part of the week with attacks on women’s rights, passing more restrictive anti-abortion laws.
The PA Senate also gleefully passed a bill that prohibits PA health secretary from “mandating stay-at-home orders, imposing masking and social distancing guidelines, and ordering business closures.” The PA legislature also voted to end Gov. Tom Wolf’s pandemic disaster declaration this week. Republican Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward joyfully proclaimed: “for all practical purposes, the state of emergency in our Commonwealth is over.”
PASSHE hearings were held this week and Chancellor Daniel Greenstein spent much of the hearing happy texting on his phone. However, as Bill Schackner reported, with over 100 individuals calling in with comments, only ONE person endorsed plans for consolidation.
Jeff Bezos announces that he is going to space with his brother for Blue Origin’s first crewed suborbital mission. Bezos announced his intentions in an Instagram video in which he said, “You see the earth from space and it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth. I want to go on this flight because it’s the thing I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.” Ah yes, that warm fuzzy feeling you get when the richest person on the planet gets to live out his boyhood dreams, built on the back of massive exploitation of Amazon’s workers.
NASA says that Russia may pull out of the International Space Station. Russia has been a key international partner on the ISS since the beginning. NASA’s Chief administrator, Bill Nelson, is concerned that Russia may be looking to work more closely with China now that China has begun to build its own space station and has big lunar ambitions.
Notch Brewing: Brave Noise - Pale Ale, brewed to show solidarity for all those that have suffered discriminatory behavior in the workplace, now available at our Salem Tap Room & Biergarten in 16oz 4-packs and on draft. The release party featuring @lagerdogofficial official and donation opportunities for @pinksbootssociety starts at 6pm!
New Show - Space Left
Wednesday Jun 09, 2021
Wednesday Jun 09, 2021
On today's show, Cyril and Kevin will be talking about his latest column, "PA must make a long-term commitment to fund public transport;" his latest post to his newsletter, "Wither Pennsylvania? QAnon, Bigotry, Coup Mongers, and (Sadly) More!!;" and so much more.
Check out Cyril's newsletter here: https://cyrilmychalejko.substack.com/
You can help support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at patreon.com/rcpress. Your support has helped make today’s show possible.
And make sure to join our Discord Server to continue the conversation all week long. Just click on the link in today’s show notes: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Monday Jun 07, 2021
Monday Jun 07, 2021
This week I welcome Colleen Gray Nguyen to the show. Colleen is a candidate for PA State House in Cumberland County - currently, that's the 87th district, but that could change after redistricting.
Colleen has been living with type 1 diabetes since the age of 3. She co-founded the Keystone Diabetic Kids Camp where she continues to serve on the planning committee and volunteers as a camp counselor. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Nicholas Wolff Foundation which hosts summer camps for children with disabilities. She’s the co-founder of Harrisburg Beer Week, the state leader for the #insulin4all movement, and has worked in both volunteer and professional capacities for PA Stands Up, the Cumberland County Democratic Committee, the East Pennsboro Democratic Club, and campaigns for Nicole Miller, Tara Shakespeare, and Shanna Danielson.
Colleen is a graduate of the Emerge PA training program, and was awarded the JFK Award for Visionary Leadership and Innovation by the Cumberland County Democratic Party. She lives in Enola, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania with her husband and three children.
You can support Colleen Gray Nguyen's campaign right now, right here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/colleenforpa
Follow her on Twitter: @ColleenForPA
Join Raging Chicken's Discord server: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Chatting on #livechat during and after the show.
Friday Jun 04, 2021
Friday Jun 04, 2021
The Arizona Republican election audit sham led by the QAnon owner of “Cyber Ninjas,” is quickly becoming the launching pad for a national, right-wing organizing strategy to delegitimize democracy and fan the flames of extremism.
CNN reports that QAnon inspired right-wing radicals are taking to Telegram - a social messaging platform that is far more welcoming of extremists - to deepen their conspiracies and plan. Congressional sources told CNN that they are especially concerned about plans to support Trump’s re-installation as president in August.
This past weekend, former national security adviser Michael Flynn seemed to endorse a coup at the “For God & Country Patriot Roundup,” a QAnon conference in Dallas, TX. When Flynn was asked why can’t a military coup like the one happening in Myanmar happen in the United States, Flynn replied: “No Reason. I mean, it should happen here. No reason.” You’ll recall that it was also Flynn who called on Trump to invoke martial law to force new elections in key states.
Meanwhile, the anti-democracy movement has been hard at work on their inside game as Republican lawmakers have continued to pass voting restrictions around the country. The Washington Post reports that this year has seen the introduction of 253 bills designed to restrict voting across 43 states, according to a new report from the Brennan Center. As of mid-May, 22 voting restrictions laws have been passed in 14 states.
Media Matters for America released a list of all the QAnon supporters running for Congress in 2022.
Miami is considering a proposal to build a 20 foot sea wall to save the city from the impacts of climate change. As reported in New York Times, “Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods — except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district.”
The FBI is investigating Trump appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for illegal political fundraising for Trump.
Trump’s blog is shut down for good only a month after its launch.
Daryl Metcalfe’s annual Right to Bear Arms Rally is this Monday.
The Arizona election audit sham attracted PA State Senator Doug Mastriano, State Senator Chris Dush, and State Representative Rob Kauffman to travel to the state like moths to the flame.
Mastriano finally makes it to prime time. On Wednesday night, on Chris Hayes’s All In, Mastriano features prominently in the opening segment about the rise of dangerous, anti-democracy movement. The report points to Mastriano’s visit to Arizona as case in point in how it all works.
State Senator Scott Perry ran into the woods to avoid taking questions from local media, according to Raw Story.
Former State Rep. Ryan Costello is not OK. At least that’s how things seemed last night on Twitter. Apparently, PA Spotlight is squatting in his head after they published info showing that Costello donates to a school board PAC that recruits QAnon conspiracy nuts to run for office.
State Sen. Lindsey Williams is preparing to introduce a bill in the PA Senate requiring lawmakers to publicly post how they are spending millions of dollars in tax-payer funded expenses.
The New Jersey GOP primary for this year’s race for Governor has turned into a Trump bootlicker competition.
Allegheny County DA Stephen Zappala found himself in a scandal this week. He sent an email to prosecutors telling them to stop accepting plea deals from a black lawyer who called his office “systemically racist.” Way to pull a racism, DA Zappala.
On Wednesday, NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced that the space agency is planning two missions to Venus in the late 2020s. The two missions, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS will gather evidence about possible microbial live in Venus’s atmosphere and more thoroughly map the planet’s surface. It's been over three decades since NASA launched missions to Venus.
A new documentary, Woman in Motion, tells the story of how Nichelle Nichols, famous for her ground-breaking role as Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek, pioneered the NASA recruiting program to higher people of color and the first women astronauts in the 1970s and 1980s. The documentary is streaming on Paramount+.
Grist releases a list of new environmental films that you should add to your watch list.
Books to read:
- How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, Cory Doctorow.
- Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, by Talia Lavin.
- Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility, by Alex Zamalin
Will Sean be live-blogging his vacation?
Wednesday Jun 02, 2021
Wednesday Jun 02, 2021
On today's show, Cyril and Kevin will be talking "free trade," fair trade, and trade agreements like NAFTA. Both of us were involved with organizing against corporate globalization in the late 1990s/early 2000s. In many ways, that fight continues and becomes even more pressing as we confront challenges of climate change, deepening inequality, white supremacy, and rising authoritarianism.
You should also sign up for Cyril’s newsletter on Substack: https://cyrilmychalejko.substack.com/
You can help support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at patreon.com/rcpress. Your support has helped make today’s show possible.
And make sure to join our Discord Server to continue the conversation all week long. Just click on the link in today’s show notes: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
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 31, 2021
Monday May 31, 2021
This week I welcome Brian Bailie back to the program to talk about a new report, "COVID-19 and Academic Shared Governance," by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The report finds that college and university administrations responses to the COVID-19 pandemic disregarded the norms of academic governances and "were affected largely by administrative fiat, with little or no consultation with the faculty ever where austerity and emergency measures had dramatic effects on the curriculum, an area traditionally considered the faculty's primary responsibility." We'll may also dip into a recent report by the Roosevelt Network, “The Financialization of Higher Education at the University of Cincinnati,” as well as the broader attack on public higher ed.
Brian Bailie is an Associate 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.”
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Chatting on #livechat during and after the show.
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 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.
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.