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Activism, politics, and beer from PA-based Raging Chicken Press
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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
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.
Monday Apr 19, 2021
Monday Apr 19, 2021
On today’s show, I welcome back to the program, Karen Feridun. Karen is the Founder of Berks Gas Truth, a grassroots community organization fighting to ban fracking and all shale gas infrastructure. She is co-founder of the statewide Better Path Coalition. For the past 11 years, she worked with organizations in PA, NY, NJ, and DE to get the ban on fracking in the Delaware River Basin that was imposed in February. She is currently part of an international coalition working to stop Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports and a national coalition working with members of Congress to reform the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
We'll be talking about The Better Path Coalition's "We Are the Ones" campaign. The coalition hopes to build on the recent decision to ban fracking in the Delaware River Basin and the release of Kristina Marusic’s bombshell report for Environmental Health News, “Fractured: The Body Burden of Living Near Fracking” - and pressure the Wolf administration to end his support of fracking and the fossil fuel industry once and for all.
Resources:
- Berks Gas Truth: https://gastruth.org/
- Better Path Coalition: https://www.betterpathcoalition.org/
- We Are the Ones: https://www.betterpathcoalition.org/we-are-the-ones
- We Are the Ones Sign-On letter: bit.ly/wearetheoneswolf
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 16, 2021
Friday Apr 16, 2021
Kimberly Potter, the officer that shot and killed Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man, has been fired and will face second-degree manslaughter charges. Potter, a 26 year veteran of the Brooklyn Center, MN police force and president of the police union. She claims she meant to use a taser, but pulled her weapon instead.
In more arguments for why we need to defund the police, Chicago police released body cam footage of an officer killing 13-year-old young black man, Adam Toledo, as he raised his hands up.
Minnesota protests continued and have been met with militarized police response.
Meanwhile, in Virginia a cop drew a weapon and pepper-sprayed a uniformed soldier at a traffic stop. The Windsor Police Department officer apparently thought the car had no plates, despite the new car temporary tags clearly displayed in the rear-window. When Army lieutenant Caron Nazario asked the officer what was going, officer Joe Jutierrez responde, “What’s going on is you’re fixing to ride the lightning, son.”
And lawyers for Derek Chauvin, the cop that slowly killed George Floyd, rested their case after trying to smear Floyd and falsely attribute his death to drugs. Chauvin refused to take the stand, invoking the 5th Amendment.
President Biden has been dragging his feet on relaxing Trump’s inhumane restrictions on refugees, leading to a lot of head-scratching and anger from Democrats and immigrant and refugee rights groups. According to new reporting by CNN, the reason for the delay is that Biden is fretting over the “political optics” of allowing more refugees into the country. The delay has left thousands of people seeking refuge in a state of limbo after an already lengthy waiting process.
The Guardian reports that police officers and public officials from around the country have been donating to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund. An executive internal affairs officer from Norfolk Virginia gave a donation that said “keep your head up, you’ve done nothing wrong.”
The Florida Senate passed an “anti-riot bill” that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has been drooling over. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the bill will “grant civil immunity to people who drive through protestors blocking a road; prevent people arrested for rioting or offenses committed during a riot from bailing out of jail until their first court appearance; and impose a six-month mandatory sentence for battery on a police officer during a riot.”
In addition, “A new crime of “mob intimidation,” defined as three or more people “acting with a common intent” forcing or threatening to force another person from taking a viewpoint against their will, is created by the bill. It is punishable as a first-degree misdemeanor, and bail is denied until first court appearance for anyone charged with the crime.”
More alarming news on the climate front. In a new study by the Key Biodiversity Areas Secretariat in Cambridge, UK, scientists found that “just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat,” according to The Guardian. Previous analyses put the number between 20- and 40%. However, those studies relied heavily on satellite images, which can give the false impression that the ecosystems are intact.
The numbers are in. Workers hoping to unionize the Amazon plant in Bessemer, AL lost their election in a blowout. The vote was 738 in favor to 1,798 against.. Writing in the The Nation, Jane McAlevey argues that the effort does not mean that unionizing Amazon plants are doomed; rather, there were warning signs all over that the campaign had some serious problems - some due to Amazon’s union-busting efforts, but also due to some “fatal flaws” in the organizing campaign itself.
- Inaccurate lists of workers
- Poor handling of discussions about union dues
- Focus on plant gates, no house calls
- No sign of majority support
Seth Grove and the House State Government Committee ended their dog and pony show relitigating the 2020 election. The meetings spanned 2 months, took up a total of 48 hours and continued to spread disinformation surrounding the 2020 election. In the waning days, Grove invited members from multiple Heritage Foundation fronts, the Foundation for Government Accountability, the Public Interest Legal Foundation and other Koch Brother backed organizations to continue Trump’s big lie.
The next phase of the PA House Republican’s plan to cancel voting rights in Pennsylvania moves forward. It may take months for legislation to take shape, but Pennsylvania will be a focal point as Republicans look to push a smorgasbord of voter suppression tactics, like signature matching and voter ID’s.
The Philadelphia Police Department launched a short-lived initiative to combat gun violence in the city this week. Commissioner Outlaw announced that the police department was going to team up with the Department of Parks and Recreation and teach children about gun safety. The problem? The Commissioner stated that they were going to use the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program without stating it was an NRA backed program. The initiative lasted less than a day after gun safety advocates and residents pounced on this idea.
Philadelphia Councilmember Kendra Brooks, introduced two bills this week that would end practice of landlords denying turning away prospective tenants based upon eviction records. Brooks explained her rationale to WHYY: “Structural barriers and biases in the renting process disproportionately impact low-income renters, especially Black women. And as we know, these same renters have been hit the hardest by the pandemic. We must work toward a pandemic recovery that leaves no one behind and protecting renters’ rights to access affordable rental properties is a key part of that.”
PASSHE Chancellor Dan Greenstein, made his case for his plan to fundamentally redesign the 14 state-owned university system to the Board of Governors on Thursday. Board of Governors Chair, Cynthia Shapira, called Greenstein’s remarks “inspirational” as she threw her support behind his plans to merge 6 of the universities into 2; fire hundreds of faculty and staff; and force students into more online classes. A piece of good news from the meeting that is getting much more coverage is the Board agree to freeze tuition for a third straight year.
Kutztown University student, Natalie Santos running for Allentown City Council.
NASA’s InSight Mars lander is going into emergency hibernation due to a build up of dust on the lander’s solar panels. Since landing in Elysium Planitia in 2018, InSight has been busy - detecting more than 500 Mars quakes and beginning to measure Mars’s core. Scientists say the lack of the powerful gusts of wind that are common in other parts of the planet have led to the build up.
Still no flight for Ingenuity. An expected test flight for the little Mars helicopter was called off earlier this week due to a software issue related to its flight control. A fix has been identified and the NASA team say that Ingenuity may be ready to give it another go as early as next week.
Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk announced that not only will the Artemis mission put the first woman on the moon, it will also send the first person of color as well.
I will be seeking out Human Robot beer this coming week.
Monday Apr 12, 2021
Monday Apr 12, 2021
On tonight’s show, I welcome Chad Nicholson, Community Organizer with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Chad has been engaged in community rights work since 2009, initially working with Envision Spokane on a Bill of Rights protecting neighborhoods, workers, and the environment. He then moved on to assist in New England, working with communities in Maine and New Hampshire to protect their environment. He now lives and organizes in Pennsylvania, assisting communities to engage in rights-based organizing on issues ranging from environmental protection to prisoners’ rights.
Chad has been involved with the fight in Pennsylvania townships to pass Home Rule powers to resist the decimation of their communities by the fracking industry. Most notably, Chad’s work in Grant Township, PA has been part of an on-going fight to assert the rights of a community to protect its environment and to extend legal rights to the natural environment. The story of Grant Township is a David and Goliath story - a battle that began more than seven years ago and is scheduled to go before the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court this summer. The Grant Township battle has only emboldened other PA towns/. Just last month, residents of Clara Township in Potter County, PA voted in support to consider Home Rule powers after Routlette Oil and Gas tried to get a permit for a fracking waste well there.
Chad and the CELDF have been on the cutting edge of making a case for the legal rights of the natural world. The fight in Grant Township, PA featured heavily in the recent documentary by Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic, Invisible Hand: The Rights of Nature. Mark Ruffalo was the executive producer for the film.
Resources:
- Contact Chad Nicholson:
- chad@celdf.org, keybase.io/ctnicholson (encrypted) or 207-541-3649 (encrypted through signal.org)
- Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund: https://celdf.org/
- Pennsylvania Community Rights Network: https://www.pacommunityrights.org/
- East Run Hellbenders Society FB page: https://www.facebook.com/eastrunhellbenders
- Grant Township, Indiana County, PA: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grant%20Township,%20Indiana%20County,%20Pennsylvania/104053069631300/
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 09, 2021
Friday Apr 09, 2021
U.S. Intelligence officials released their “Global Trends” report and its pretty bleak. As the Washington Post headline reads: “Intelligence forecast sees a post-coronavirus world upended by climate change and splintering societies.”
Biden’s infrastructure bill is pretty awesome.
A new study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, found that most of the January insurrectionists came from counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic White population. That is, most didn’t come from deep read counties; they came from places like Bucks County, PA that is experiencing a significant shift in demographics. The study also found that those involved in the insurrection are older and more professional than right-wing groups studies in the past; they were all, however, 95% white and 85% male. The lead researcher, political scientist Robert Pape, suggests that 90% of the insurrectionists are still in the process of congealing into a mass movement that is willing to put “violence at its core.”
The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, helped pave the way for Democrats to use budget reconciliation again this fiscal year to pass Biden’s proposed $2 trillion infrastructure plan. She stated that the Section 304 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 allows for the Senate to use reconciliation more than once a fiscal year, because it says "the two Houses may adopt a concurrent resolution on the budget which revises or reaffirms the concurrent resolution on the budget for such fiscal year most recently agreed to."
Just to balance the equation apparently, Joe Manchin flip-flops, saying that there is no way he would vote to get rid of or weaken the filibuster.
Biden’s new Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, calls for a single minimum global corporate tax.
Biden announced on Thursday moves to end gun-maker liability protections as part of a series of executive actions in response to gun violence.
Things just get worse and worse for Trump-loving, and all-around creepy, Florida congressman Matt Gaetz. The New York Times reported that Gaetz went pardon shopping in the final weeks of Trump’s term. Apparently he asked Trump for an unconditional pardon for any crimes he may or may not have committed.
One out of every three UK teachers plans to quit in the next 5 years because of rapidly increasing workload and growing disrespect for teachers. That’s according to the results of a survey that the National Education Union asked of 10,000 members.
Congratulations to Kadida Kenner from the Pennsylvania Budget Policy Center & We The People for accepting her new role as Executive Director at The New Pennsylvania Project. Kadida will be fighting to protect voting rights right here in Pennsylvania as Republicans continue to push Trump’s Big Lie in 2020 and ramp up their nationwide attacks on voting rights.
Speaking of the attacks on voting rights by Pennsylvania Republicans, Republicans Daryl Metcalfe, Seth Grove, Cris Dush and dozens of other conservative republicans were spotted having dinner with Chris Kobach Tuesday evening. Kobach was the Secretary of State in Kansas and helped weaponize Trump’s unfounded election fraud claims in 2016.
If that’s not bad enough, Seth Grove is wrapping up his show hearings on the 2020 elections and has started inviting Koch aligned front groups to push their anti-voter agenda at the latest House State Government Committee hearings. Grove had members from the Foundation for Government Accountability and the Heritage Foundation’s Honest Elections Project speak at his most recent hearings.
In their 2021 Gerrymandering Threat Index, Represent.us has moved Pennsylvania into the moderate risk category as PA Republicans gear up their voting repression machine.
Get ready Pennsylvania, because the push to restrict rights at the ballot box is coming our way.
Rep. Scott Perry struggles with using Venn diagrams.
Did you know that if you offer people a discount to shop at your store you just might be part of the plan of microchipped lizard-men to eat your liberties? It could happen. Well, and it kind of did happen to Donna Gouldery, a owner of Allora Gifts & Home Decor in Doylestown, PA. The crazy story is highlighted in Cyril Mychalejko’s latest column, “Hysterical social media mob targets Doylestown business woman.” We’ll get into it.
COVID cases and hospitalizations continue to rise in PA and NJ even as vaccines roll out.
The University of Pittsburgh is has ordered students to shelter in place as coronavirus cases spike again.
70% of PASSHE faculty oppose mergers.
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter survived its first several days detached from the Perseverance rover. Yesterday, the little helicopter unlocked its rotors and will go through a series of tests before attempting the first-ever powered flight on the Red Planet sometime after Sunday, April 11. .
It’s official, I am signed up for the 2021 Mars Society Virtual Convention. Yes, Raging Chicken will be attending this year’s Mars Society Convention from October 14-17. brings together prominent scientists, policymakers, entrepreneurs and space advocates to discuss the significance of the latest scientific discoveries, technological advances and political-economic-social developments that could affect plans for the human exploration and settlement of Mars. The Mars Society was founded in 1998 by Robert Zubrin, who Motherboard writer Abraham Riesman calls, the “Right-Wing Mars Guru.” Down the rabbit hole I go.
Monday Apr 05, 2021
Monday Apr 05, 2021
On tonight’s program, I am thrilled to welcome Cyril Mychalejko to the show. Cyril is a new progressive columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times & The Intelligencer. His column brings a sorely needed left/progressive voice to the pages of the papers that serve one of the most hotly contested Congressional districts in the state: PA-1.
To give you a window into Cyril’s background, let me simply paraphrase from his introductory column for the Courier Times. Cyril is a son of Bucks County. He grew up in Holland, went to St. Bede Elementary School, graduated from Council Rock High School, and went to Bucks County Community College where he edited the student newspaper. He finished college on the West Coast and just kept going after that. His writing, activism, and teaching has taken him all over the country — and the world. He’s organized anti-Iraq war protests in upstate New York, knocked on doors in Bucks County for former Democratic Congressman Patrick Murphy, and campaigned against free trade deals like the FTAA and CAFTA in Florida. He’s also worked as a human rights observer and accompanier in Ecuador monitoring a violent mining conflict, participated in human rights and solidarity delegations in Central America, and taught at an international school in the Kurdish region of Iraq. His writing has also appeared in progressive publications such as Truthout, Upside Down World, The Indypendent, Toward Freedom and Common Dreams.
Cyril certainly wasted no time jumping into the political fray. On March 24, Cyril turned his lens to an on-going issue in the Pennridge School district - something you have heard me talk about in the past. His article, “Turning Point USA a Trojan horse of right-wing extremism for Pennridge students?,” focuses on a growing concern by local parents and students about the far-right group - Turning Point USA - gaining access to the halls of the high school. Turning Point USA has been flagged by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center for their documented cases of racism, bigotry, and white nationalism. He also raises questions about the behavior of some members of the Pennridge School Board who have fanned the flames of extremism. I am hoping this is the first of many occasions to have Cyril join us here on Out d’ Coup.
- Cyril's newsletter: https://cyrilmychalejko.substack.com/
- Follow Cyril on Twitter: @cmychalejko
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 Mar 26, 2021
Friday Mar 26, 2021
Georgia Republicans pass a slew of voter-supression measures. As reported in The Guardian, the new legislation “requires voters to submit ID information with both an absentee ballot request and the ballot itself. It limits the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, allows for unlimited challenges to a voter’s qualifications, cuts the runoff election period from nine to four weeks, and significantly shortens the amount of time voters have to request an absentee ballot.”
According to an explosive new article in The Intercept, Ken Klippenstein obtained internal documents showing that Amazon managers and executives have been fully aware that drivers often resort to peeing in bottles and even pooping in plastic bags due to the pressure to meet package quotas and an intense schedule.The report drops as Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama enter the last week of voting on unionization.
In a failed attempt at witty snark, Amazon Executive Dave Clark also took to Twitter to respond to news that Bernie Sanders would be travelling to Bessemer to join workers on the picket line. The tweets landed like a brick.
Oh, and we should mention that Amazon workers in Italy went on strike over labor conditions this week.
Speaking of strikes, Columbia University graduate workers continue their strike for a second week. Key demands in the more than two-year negotiations for their first contract include a neutral arbitrator in harassment cases, union coverage for more student workers and a pay increase.
And, graduate student workers at NYU began voting on their own strike authorization on Tuesday. The strike authorization vote was called after more than 9 months of negotiations in which the graduate student union made significant concessions.
Rutgers University says that all students must be vaccinated to return to in-person classes in fall 2021. Rutgers is one of the first universities in the nation to begin to roll out vaccination and prevention protocols for the next academic year.
It’s time to take a deep dive into the shit-show that is the Harrisburg Mayoral race. Republican Charter School grifter turned Democrat, Otto Banks, had his residency challenged in court this week and is allowed - for now - to stay on the ballot. Banks bought a house in Harrisburg in August 2020 to run for mayor, but never used his utilities, which raised questions if he was actually living in the city. The judge presiding over the case sided with Banks.
Dr. Rachel Levine was confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of Health by the United States Senate this week and made history by being the highest ranking transgender official in United States history.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases have begun to surge again in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as both states move quickly to open up businesses and return kids to in-person classes. The surge is being attributed in part to the spread of the more contagious variants of COVID-19
Cyril Mychalejko, the new progressive columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times & The Intelligencer, shines a spotlight on how the white supremacist-adjacent Turning Point USA has made inroads it the Pennrigdge School district. Cyril Michalejko will be out Out d’Coup LIVE on Monday, April 5. We’ll dig in.
PASSHE Chancellor Dan Greenstein feels the heat.
Sean gets snubbed on State Street. We’ll talk about that later on.
DO NOT WAIT to head on over to Twitter and follow Sisters of the Night Caucus, “bewitching political talk from your favorite PA witches!”
NASA gets ready to launch its Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, in early April. Ingenuity is attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover. The Rover dropped the debris shield covering the little helicopter. NASA has identified a 33 x 33 foot patch of the red planet for Ingenuity’s airfield. This will be the first attempt at powered flight on Mars.
Ingenuity is carrying a postage sized piece of fabric from the Wright Brothers’ aircraft that made its historic flight at Kitty Hawk, NC.
Lego announces its biggest and most detailed Space Shuttle set, yet.
I got my first vaccine shot.
Free Will Brewing releases