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Activism, politics, and beer from PA-based Raging Chicken Press
Episodes
Friday May 05, 2023
Friday May 05, 2023
Four Proud Boys, including their leader Enrique Tarrio, were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
The corruption doesn’t stop when it comes to Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. New reporting in the Washington Post this week exposed that Leonard Leo the architect of the right-wing legal juggernaut, the Federalist Society, instructed Kellyanne Conway to use her nonprofit organization to pay Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, tens of thousands of dollars. Leo told Conway to make sure to leave Ginni Thomas’s name off all the paperwork.
That reporting comes on the heels of revelations by ProPublica that billionaire Harlan Crow paid the private school tuition for Thomas’s great-nephew, who Thomas was raising “as a son.” Thomas did not disclose the tuition payments as part of his legal obligations to do so.
North Carolina becomes the latest state to try to further restrict abortion. The Republican majority in passed a new 12 week abortion ban, but the state’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, says he’ll veto the legislation.
Bernie Sanders unveils a new bill that calls for an increase of the federal minimum wage to $17/hour.
Meanwhile, Iowa becomes the latest state to rollback labor protections for children, now allowing for children as young as 14 to work in roofing, construction, demolition, light manufacturing, and assisting customers with fireworks. 16 and 17 year olds will also be able to serve alcohol in restaurants. The bill joins similar ones passed in Arkansas and Missouri that are part of a push by conservative lobbying groups.
Labor market is going strong as unemployment declines to 3.4%, adding 253,000 jobs.
Republican frontrunner for NC governor mocked school shooting survivors and once justified shooting protesters
The Freedom Foundation is holding a conference in Denver this July to train right-wing school board activists, anti-union teachers, and white-washed curriculum.
PA House passes bill that will add LGBTQ protections to the state’s nondiscrimination law.
Moms for Liberty is holding their conference in Philadelphia this summer ahead of this year’s school board and municipal elections.
Criticism of president of Thomas Jefferson Hospital Mark Tykocinski blew up following revelations that he has a habit of liking tweets that question the science behind COVID an call gender reassignment surgery “child mutilation.”
Artificial Intelligence pioneer, Geoffrey Hinton, leaves Google and warns about the potential dangers of rapidly deploying AI.
Monday May 01, 2023
Monday May 01, 2023
On this episode of Out d'Coup LIVE, we'll be digging into the Pennridge School Board's decision last week to hire the far-right Vermillion Education to rewrite the district's social studies curriculum. The contract to hire Vermillion was posted to the agenda 24 hours before the meeting and at least four members of the board had no idea it was coming. Tonight, we'll get into the school board meeting, Vermilion's background, and increasing moves by Pennridge to turn the school district into a Christian Nationalist haven.
Vermillion Education is a four-month old company founded by former Hillsdale College teacher, Jordan Adams. Adams is a graduate of the private, conservative Christian Hillsdale College and served as the Associate Director for Instructional Resources in the Barney Charter School Initiative at Hillsdale College. The Barney Charter Initiative seeks to establish a national network of charter schools using Hillsdale's K-12 curriculum.
LINKS:
- "Pennridge School Board wants to hire company with ties to Hillsdale College to help write curriculum," Jenny Stephens, Bucks County Beacon | https://bit.ly/3NnczF0
- "Hillsdale College Comes to Pennridge School District via Vermillion Education," Peter Greene, Bucks County Beacon | https://bit.ly/3LJadil
- Pennridge school board hires consultant with ties to conservative college to review curriculum," Maddie Hanna, Philadelphia Inquirer | https://bit.ly/3oOrKN6
- "What is Vermillion Education and why Florida school boards should care," Katie LaGrone, ABC Action News, Sarasota, FL | https://bit.ly/3VnYCIN
- Florida School Board rejects consultant with ties to Christian college after backlash," Kristina Watrobski, ABC7, Sarasota | https://bit.ly/3LjaIOV
- Jordan Adams at 2020 White House Conference on American History, led by Hillsdale College President, Dr. Larry Arnn. The panel followed President Trump's executive order to create a commission to promote "patriotic education." Adams is the last speaker, but the whole panel provides useful context CSPAN/White House | https://www.c-span.org/person/?127772...
- Influence Watch | Barney Family Foundation | https://bit.ly/3NB3NTI
Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, & their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.
Saturday Apr 29, 2023
Saturday Apr 29, 2023
Raging Chicken's Friday Politics Roundup for April 14, 2023. We're here to break down the good, the bad, and the ugly in state and national politics. A lot happened this week and we're running on empty.
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.
Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.
Friday Apr 21, 2023
Friday Apr 21, 2023
GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy announced his party’s demands in the latest round of public hostage-taking around the nation’s debt ceiling. McCarthy and House republicans are calling for massive cuts to social programs, the elimination of the student-loan debt forgiveness plan, new work requirements for welfare recipients, cuts funds for improving the IRS, repeals green energy programs and incentives, and takes back any unspent COVID funds.
It seems that flooding our communities with guns and stoking fear, hate, and misinformation on conservative media is producing a new form of gun violence. This week, several young people were shot - and some killed - as they accidentally knocked on the wrong door or mistakenly got into the wrong car. This is the culture of vigilantism that conservatives funded by the NRA and the gun industry have been grooming us for.
In Liberty, MO, Ralph Yarl, a 16 year old African American kid, who was going to pick up his sister, but knocked on the wrong door. He was nearly killed.
In Fort Edward, NY, Kaylin Gillis, a 20 year old white woman, was looking for a friend’s house and mistakenly drove up the wrong driveway. She was shot and killed.
In Elgin, Texas, Two competitive cheerleaders, Heather Roth and Payton Washington, were shot after mistakenly getting into the wrong car. Roth suffered a grazing wound while Washington was sent to a hospital in critical condition.
According to new reporting in Politico, the Rutgers University faculty unions are considering getting back on the picket lines because the administration is dragging its feet in finalizing their “framework deal” that led the unions to suspend their historic weeklong strike. It was the first strike by faculty in Rutgers’s 257 year history.
The strike won historic victories on wages and job security for adjunct faculty. At the same time, graduate student workers and workers at Rutgers Biomedical Health were still expressing concerns about the deal as several key issues about their working conditions remained to be hammered out.
After a gun store opened up near several schools in Lower Merion, PA, the township’s board of commissioners unanimously passed a new ordinance that limits where guns can be sold in the township. Starting immediately, firearms businesses can no longer operate within 1,000 feet of public schools, they cannot operate out of homes, can only operate in commercially zoned areas, and they must follow new safety regulations. Commissioner Dan Bernheim said if the new ordinance “moves the needle ever so slightly…that’s the right thing to do.”
On Wednesday night an old, 660 pound satellite came crashing down to Earth in a part of the Sahara desert, near the Sudan-Egypt border.
And SpaceX’s first test flight of its massive Starship rocket exploded a few minutes after launch.
Monday Apr 17, 2023
Monday Apr 17, 2023
This week I welcome Chris Ullery to the show. Chris covers extremism and social justice for the Bucks County Courier Times's PA State Team. We'll be talking about his new investigative piece, "Libraries to locker rooms: How a religious law firm is changing PA school policies." Co-written with Bethany Rodgers, USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania capital bureau investigative journalist, Chris exposes how a deep-pocketed, religious law firm is working with right-wing school boards across Pennsylvania to change policies and sow division.
Chris Ullery has been a reporter with the Bucks County Courier Times since 2015, covering municipal government, infrastructure and the Central Bucks School District. His mostly self-taught skills in the Python computer programming language have helped him flesh out and analyze years of voter registration data, track COVID-19 cases at the start of the pandemic in 2020, and build a 10-year database of 911 call logs in Bucks County. In addition to using his programming experience to track extremist movements, he will work with local newsrooms in the USA Today Network to help tell stories by the numbers. Chris Graduated Frostburg State University in 2014 with a B.S. in English (major in Literature, minor in Journalism) near his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland.
LINKS:
- Chris Ullery, "Libraries to locker rooms: How a religious law firm is changing PA school policies," Bucks County Courier Times | https://bit.ly/3ojlrki
- Follow Chris on Twitter | https://twitter.com/ulleryatintell
- All Chris's reporting | https://www.phillyburbs.com/staff/5573447002/chris-ullery/
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/.
Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.
Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u
Friday Apr 14, 2023
Friday Apr 14, 2023
Florida passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a 6-week abortion ban, thanks to a legislature dominated by Republicans. Florida’s current 15 week ban is held up in court, but if that ban is upheld, the 6-week ban will automatically go into effect.
A Federal appeals court refused to suspend the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, but upheld a ban on patients being able to sent the pills by mail. That pretty much guarantees the case will be headed to the right-wing dominated US Supreme Court.
A 21-year-old Air National Guardsman was arrested for his role in leaking on Discord classified documents related to the war in Ukraine. According to the New York Times, Jack Teixeira led a group of “20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, as they bonded over guns, racist memes, video games and international politics.”
Marjorie Taylor Green does the only thing she’s consistent on - inject reactionary bile into the public discourse. This time she comes out in support of the National Guardsman to leaked classified documents to Discord tweeting out, “Jake Teixeira is a white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more. Ask yourself who is the real enemy?”
Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Germany’s largest media company and new owner of Politico, is all in on a dystopian climate future. In a series of internal emails and messages published in Die Zeit this week, “I am all in for climate change, arguing that humans have always done better in warmer periods. “We shouldn’t fight climate change but adjust to it,” he said. For good measure, he also wrote in a longer message on his foreign policy views, “Free west, fuck the intolerant Muslims and all the other riff-raff.”
The Fort Lauderdale, FL area received more than two feet of rain over 12 hours on Wednesday, flooding the region and shutting down major airports. The rain amounts to about a third of Fort Lauderdale’s annual rainfall in one shot. The area’s previous record rainfall set in 1979 was 14.59 inches.
Chris Ullery and Bethany Rodgers published an explosive investigation in the Bucks County Courier Times on how the religious law firm, the Independence Law Center, is writing anti-LGBTQ policy for school boards all across Pennsylvania.
Abortion rights and health care advocates urged state lawmakers and Gov. Shapiro to stop sending public money to support the anti-abortion organization, Real Alternatives, which uses deceptive practices to push patients away from having an abortion while posing as reproductive health clinics. The Wolf Administration allocated more than $7.2 million to Real Alternatives and Gov. Shapiro is continuing the practice, with $6 million in his proposed budget.
Will Bunch makes the case for a state-takeover of Temple University. He argues, “The best way to restore Temple as a public good — once again serving Philadelphia and surrounding communities as an affordable and accessible way up the ladder — would be to make it (and, arguably, the three other state-supported schools) a fully public university.”
And award-winning author, Jean Kwok, flew in from the Netherlands to address the Central Bucks School Board about their moves to ban her book.
Amazon enters the AI race with “Bedrock.”
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, rocked.
Currently reading Rick Perlstein’s, “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus,” and The Bone Shard Emperor, by Andrea Stewart, which is book #2 of the her Drowning Empire trilogy.
Don’t Let Paul Martino & His Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.
Monday Apr 10, 2023
Monday Apr 10, 2023
A new report from ProPublica exposed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s secret luxury trips from megadonor Harlan Crow. Thomas never disclosed the gifts as required by law. Republican media is crying about it wondering why people are being so mean to billionaires and their minions.
Tennessee House Republicans expelled two black representatives for protesting guns.
It doesn’t get any better for the Catholic Church. A new report on the Baltimore Diocese released last week shows more than 150 priests sexually abused more than 600 children over the past 80 years. The Church knew and covered it up. NOT just a couple bad apples.
New court rulings look to ban the abortion medication Mifepristone as two cases are likely headed the Supreme Court.
Jean Kwok, author of Central Bucks newly banned - sorry, “challenged” - book, Girl in Translation is heading to the school board to contest the board’s move.
Perkiomen Valley students stage a walkout to protest new moves to ban books at their schools.
Kutztown University joins in the austerity game, putting four programs in moratorium including Spanish, Philosophy, German, and Spanish Education.
Monday Apr 03, 2023
Monday Apr 03, 2023
This week I welcome Karen Feridun back to the show. Karen is the founder of Berks Gas Truth and co-founder of Better Path Coalition who organize the PA Climate Convergence. We'll be talking about a renewed push for hydrogen to power a green economy coupled with initiatives for carbon capture and storage. Sounds great, right? We'll get to the truth of the matter.
This October the PA Climate Convergence will bring advocates, activists, and concerned residents to Harrisburg to tell Gov. Shapiro, lawmakers, and regulators that they are having the wrong conversation on climate and need to change their stance. We’ll talk about why lawmakers are keeping PA from being part of the solution to the climate crisis and what all of us can do to change that.
LINKS:
- Berks Gas Truth: https://gastruth.org/
- PA Climate Convergence: https://www.pennsylvaniaclimateconvergence.org/
- Better Path Coalition: https://www.betterpathcoalition.org/
Friday Mar 31, 2023
Friday Mar 31, 2023
Donald Trump was indicted yesterday for misuse of campaign funds to pay hush money to porn star Stromy Daniels. He is the first former U.S. president to ever be charged with a crime.
Trump’s indictment comes less than a week after he launched his presidential campaign with a large rally and speech in Waco, TX. Waco was the site of the 1993 raid of the militant Branch Davidian religious compound that led to the deaths of nearly 80 people. Waco has been a rallying cry for white supremacists and the extreme right ever since.
38 migrants were killed and 27 seriously injured in a fire at a Mexican detention center in Ciudad Juarez. The continued unjust and cruel immigration policies in the U.S. - the “Remain in Mexico” policy, for example - helped create the conditions for the deaths. Will Bunch was dead on:
"I wonder how much of the American downplaying of this nightmare in Ciudad Juárez is willful ignorance on our part — a refusal to confront our own shameful role in this episode. That’s because the reason that refugees are overrunning the Mexican city — some estimates place the number at 20,000 — is that U.S. policy is forcing these migrants to stay south of the American border, their actual goal."
According to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, up to about 15 million people are now at risk of losing health insurance as COVID era rules that expand Medicaid and CHIP benefits are rolled back.
A new study in the journal Nature, projects that deep water current around Antarctica could slow by 40% by 2050 if the current trajectory of climate change is not dramatically altered. A disrupted current could dramatically affect the climate, the flow of fresh water and oxygen, and the circulation of nutrients necessary to sustain marine life.
Some first-graders in Waukesha, Wisconsin won’t be singing “Rainbowland,” by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton. They were supposed to sing the song about acceptance, coming together, and loving one another in their spring concert. Why? Because school administrators concluded that the song violated the district’s new “Controversial Issues in the Classroom,” policy initiated by a new right-wing dominated school board.
This week’s horrific mass school shooting in Nashville is being used by right-wing politicians and pundits to stoke anti-trans hate.
New reporting by Maddie Hanna in the Philadelphia Inquirer shows that Paul Martino’s PAC, Back to School USA, is gearing up for the culture war. The PAC’s website says it will be “taking the fight directly to the liberal teachers’ union and special interest groups that are responsible for indoctrinating our children.” The Back to School USA PAC is planning on holding an April 7th fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago with right-wing founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe.
Newly elected Representative Summer Lee is wasting no time in making her voice heard. Summer Lee is a co-sponsor of the newly introduced “Assault Weapons Ban of 2023.” She took to the House floor this week
PA Senators Bob Casey and John Fetterman and OH Senator Sherrod Brown introduced the “Railway Accountability Act” that would help prevent the kind of disasters we just witnessed in East Palestine, OH.
A coalition of more than two dozen environmental, faith, business, and healthcare groups sent a letter to Gov. Josh Shapiro this week urging him to keep Pennsylvania’s commitment to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as part of Shapiro’s stated commitment to getting PA to net-zero emissions by 2050.
And Temple University’s president Jason Wingard steps down after an authorization of a no-confidence vote by the Temple’s faculty union; a strike by graduate students, and the murder of Temple University Police Sgt. Christopher Fizgerald.
And, yes, the Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves hits the big screen today!
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.
Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.
Monday Mar 27, 2023
Monday Mar 27, 2023
This week I welcome Cyril Mychalejko back to the show. Cyril is the editor-in-chief of the Bucks County Beacon and host of their bimonthly podcast, "The Signal." On today's show, we'll be digging into the latest with the creeping extremism on Bucks County school boards and the people working to take back public schools from right-wing ideologues. We'll also get the latest updates from the Beacon and their current fundraising drive to support and expand hard-hitting, independent media in Bucks County.
LINKS:
- Bucks County Beacon: https://buckscountybeacon.com/
- Support the Beacon: https://buckscountybeacon.com/support-the-beacon/
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.
Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.
Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u