Thom Hartmann tells us that the “party of Lincoln” has managed to make the act of breathing a partisan issue; according to a new study from the American Lung Association, about 156 million Americans are breathing poisonous air...the Trumpers have cut funding on a collaboration between NOAA and Princeton to do climate modeling and forecasting as Thom tells us (more here), and I’m not even going to dignify the typically idiotic Trumpist excuse for this...and yes, the Bellotti decision in 1978 authored by Lewis Powell was the beginning of all of this madness letting corporations run amok, and yep, Lee Zeldin of the EPA will basically ask “how high?” when Trump tells him to jump on this issue...and of course, the “party of states rights” is going after EPA Superfund programs in New York and Vermont that allows those states to “claw back” funds from dirty energy companies for disaster cleanup from extreme weather...looks like coal plants will be exempted from regulations also, so now there’s more mercury in our air for our kids to breathe, and also #47 is rolling back vehicle emission standards, along with reducing EPA enforcement (and oh yeah, Musk and his merry band of incels are trying to gut the EPA itself)...it is indeed up to us to protest as our means allows, since, as Thom says, we can’t rely on most politicians and our bought-and-paid-for corporate media...
...and as far as the Trumpists themselves are concerned, Farron Cousins lets us know that they’re basically at each other’s throats, apparently (and oh yeah, let’s just throw Laura Loomer into this mix because of course...pass the popcorn)...
...and Sam Black of More Perfect Union tells us about Mack Trucks moving jobs to Mexico, where, as the report tells us, they can pay workers about a tenth of what they would make in this country (and oh yeah, they laid off about 350 workers at the plant in the Lehigh Valley, where they’d made the trucks since the company’s founding)...and of course, Big Orange Cheetoh and his lies (and his beyond-ridiculous tariffs) are part of this story...didn’t know Mack Trucks was now owned by Volvo, and of course the savings from paying Mexican workers lousy wages versus their U.S. counterparts will go right into stock dividends, buybacks, and other forms of executive compensation (and this indeed goes back to the ruinous NAFTA trade deal, and #47’s USMCA didn’t do a lot to help with this either...and oh yeah, the trucks made in Mexico are exempt from those ridiculous tariffs of course...a North American minimum wage sure makes sense to yours truly FWIW, but good luck with that I know)...
...and the one person decrying practices such as Volvo’s and other overseas carmakers more than anyone else has been Bernie Sanders, and in this clip, we hear from a few Republicans about why they came to a recent Bernie/AOC rally...we have more that unites us than that which divides us; welcome to the fight...
...and Scott Pelley of CBS and “60 Minutes” spoke out a couple of days ago about the departure of Bill Owens, one of the show’s executive producers who had a lot to do with maintaining the integrity of the show’s content...Pelley put his remarks in the context of the parent company, Paramount, currently trying to obtain a merger that needs the approval of Bronzer Beelzebub...kudos to Pelley for speaking out (and this show has definitely concocted some typical corporate media garbage, but it's done a lot of good work also to be fair)...
...and happy 92nd birthday to the incomparable Willie Nelson.
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