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Books, News

1,100+ Banned Books Across 26 States: Report Shows ‘Shocking’ Censorship

Above: photo / Adobe Stock

“What is happening in this country in terms of banning books in schools is unparalleled in its frequency, intensity, and success,” said the director of PEN America’s Free Expression and Education program.

A report published Thursday by the free expression group PEN America details an “alarming” and unprecedented surge in book banning across the United States, with 86 school districts in 26 states prohibiting more than 1,100 titles in classrooms and libraries over just the past eight months.

“Book challenges in American schools are nothing new, but this type of data has never been tallied and quite frankly the results are shocking.”

Titled Banned in the USA, the report finds that districts representing 2,899 schools with a combined enrollment of more than 2 million students banned 1,145 unique book titles by 874 different authors, 198 illustrators, and nine translators between July 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022.  

In total, the new report documents 1,586 instances of individual books being banned as a right-wing censorship campaign and broader war on public education sweeps the country, prompting pushback from libraries, students, and local residents. Some book bans have been reversed in recent months thanks to student resistance.

The top three banned titles, according to PEN America’s analysis, are “centered on LGBTQ+ individuals or touch on the topic of same-sex relationships: Gender Queer: A Memoirby Maia Kobabe banned in 30 districts, All Boys Aren’t Blueby George M. Johnson, banned in 21 districts, and Lawn Boyby Jonathan Evison, banned in 16 districts.”

“Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez, a love story between a Black teenage boy and a Mexican-American girl set in 1930s Texas, was also banned in 16 districts,” the report notes. “The Bluest Eye by the late Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison is the fifth most banned book, in 12 districts.”

PEN compiled a list of the books subject to bans here.

Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN America’s Free Expression and Education program and lead author of the report, said in a statement Thursday that “book challenges in American schools are nothing new, but this type of data has never been tallied and quite frankly the results are shocking.”

“Challenges to books, specifically books by non-white male authors, are happening at the highest rates we’ve ever seen,” said Friedman. “What is happening in this country in terms of banning books in schools is unparalleled in its frequency, intensity, and success.”

“Because of the tactics of censors and the politicization of books we are seeing the same books removed across state lines: books about race, gender, LGBTQ+ identities, and sex most often,” Friedman continued. “This is an orchestrated attack on books whose subjects only recently gained a foothold on school library shelves and in classrooms. We are witnessing the erasure of topics that only recently represented progress toward inclusion.”

According to PEN America, Texas—where the state legislature is dominated by Republicans—leads the country with the most documented book bans at 713. Pennsylvania ranks second with 456 bans, followed by Florida with 204.

“A probing look at the surge in book bans across the country exposes an alarming pattern of mounting restrictions targeting specific stories and ideas and the widespread abandonment of established procedures aimed to safeguard the First Amendment in public education,” said Suzanne Nossel, PEN America’s CEO.

“By short-circuiting rights-protective review processes,” Nossel added, “these bans raise serious concerns in terms of constitutionality, and represent an affront to the role of our public schools as vital training grounds for democratic citizenship that instill a commitment to freedom of speech and thought.”

PEN’s report also raises concern over state legislators’ increasing introduction and approval of “educational gag orders to censor teachers, proposals to track and monitor teachers, and mechanisms to facilitate book banning in school districts.”

The group notes that 175 educational gag order bills have been introduced in 40 U.S. states and 15 such measures have become law in 13 states.

“Parents and community members deserve a voice in shaping what is taught in our schools,” Nossel said Thursday. “But the embrace of book bans as a weapon to ward off narratives that are seen as threatening represents a troubling retreat from America’s historic commitment to the First Amendment rights of students.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Books, Politics

A Virtual Lexicon of Trump’s Outrageous behavior recounted in ‘A Sacred Oath’

Former Defense Secretary, Mark Esper has a new memoir that is available, “A Sacred Oath”, in which he reveals his time spent during the Trump administration.  And like many that have served under Donald Trump, Esper fell from his grace, getting fired several days after the 2020 election.

The book is a whopping 752 pages, where he holds nothing back, capturing Trump as the ill-tempered, ill-informed President who was overly concerned with power and self-image.

Below are just some of the headlines and quotes from his book released and available for purchase starting May 10. 

‘Esper says Trump wanted to reactivate McChrystal, McRaven to court-martial them over criticism’ (The Hill)

“Worse yet, people were removed from positions simply because the White House wanted to replace them with more hard-core Trump loyalists, regardless of qualifications,” Esper wrote of Trump’s motive towards those that did not fall in line with his political agenda. 

‘Former Pentagon chief Esper says Trump asked about shooting protesters’ (NPR)

“We reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at [Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen. [Mark] Milley and said, ‘Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?’ … It was a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue just hung very heavily in the air.”

‘Mark Esper says Trump’s refusal to attend Biden’s presidential inauguration was ‘a final act of petulance’: book’ (Business Insider)

“Donald Trump did not even bother to attend the Inauguration — the first sitting and able president to skip his successor’s inauguration since 1869,” Esper wrote in his book, “It was a final act of petulance that defied tradition, tarnished our democracy, and further damaged Biden’s legitimacy with millions of Americans.”

‘Trump was the ‘biggest leaker of all’ in his administration and it was ‘generally bad’ for the country, his former Pentagon chief says’ (Business Insider)

“The individual motivations for the leaks ranged from advancing a preferred policy outcome to enhancing the leaker’s own role or credentials to currying favor with the president. It was a noxious behavior learned from the top. The president was the biggest leaker of all. It turned colleague against colleague, department against department, and it was generally bad for the administration and the country,” Esper writes in memoir.

As one would easily predict, Trump attempted to censor the release of the book. In response to a 60 Minutes interview with Esper promoting his book, the former President provided a statement on the interview, calling Esper a “Yesper”, “Weak and Totally Ineffective”. 

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News, Observation, Politics

What’s at stake as Supreme Court appears intent on overturning Roe v. Wade – 3 essential reads

A leaked draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito suggests the Supreme Court is on the brink of overturning two rulings, including Roe v. Wade, that guarantee the right to abortion in the U.S.

The Supreme Court confirmed that the document, obtained and first reported on by Politico, is real, but said “Although the document described in yesterday’s reports is authentic, it does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

The opinion is due to be issued later in the year. The leaked document indicates that a conservative majority in the court is on track to end a woman’s constitutional right to abortion, opening the door for states to enact bans.

Although a seismic development in the long-running legal battle and social debate over abortion rights, the development is not entirely unexpected. In recent years, pro-abortion rights advocates have been ringing alarm bells over threats to Roe. Legal scholars, health experts and sociologists have helped explain in The Conversation U.S. what is at stake and what it would mean for American women should the historic ruling be overturned.

1. How Roe changed women’s lives

A lot has changed in the nearly 50 years that separate the constitutional enshrining of the right to abortion in the U.S. to the brink of ending that right.

Constance Shehan, a sociologist at the University of Florida, provides a snapshot of life for women prior to the landmark case. In 1970, the “average age at first marriage for women in the U.S. was just under 21. Twenty-five percent of women high school graduates aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in college and about 8 percent of adult women had completed four years of college,” she notes. But today, she says, “roughly two generations after Roe v. Wade, women are postponing marriage, marrying for the first time at about age 27 on average. Seventeen percent over age 25 have never been married. Some estimates suggest that 25 percent of today’s young adults may never marry.”

How much of this change in the experiences of American women is due to Roe? And if it is overturned, will the trends be reversed? Such questions are difficult answer. But there is evidence that carrying through with an unwanted pregnancy may have a detrimental effect on a woman’s education – and that, in turn, has an impact on career opportunities and income, writes Shehan. “Two-thirds of families started by teens are poor, and nearly 1 in 4 will depend on welfare within three years of a child’s birth. Many children will not escape this cycle of poverty. Only about two-thirds of children born to teen mothers earn a high school diploma, compared to 81 percent of their peers with older parents.”

Medical abortion isn’t the only option for young women seeking abortion. As Shehan notes: “With the availability of a greater range of contraception and abortion drugs other than medical procedures available today, along with a strong demand for women’s labor in the U.S. economy, it seems unlikely that women’s status will ever go back to where it was before 1973. But Americans shouldn’t forget the role that Roe v. Wade played in advancing the lives of women.”

2. Who might be affected?

“One important group’s voice is often absent in this heated debate: the women who choose abortion,” writes Luu D. Ireland at UMass Chan Medical School. She notes that 1 in 4 American women have the procedure at some point in their life, yet because of the perceived stigma involved, their perspective is largely missing. As an obstetrician/gynecologist, Ireland does, however, hear on a daily basis stories from women who opt for an abortion.

She notes that while abortion is a routine part of reproductive health care for many, and women of all backgrounds choose to end their pregnancies, unintended pregnancies are more common in certain groups: poorer women, women of color and those with lower levels of formal education.

“Women living in poverty have a rate of unintended pregnancy five times higher than those with middle or high incomes. Black women are twice as likely to have an unintended pregnancy as white women,” she writes.

The reason women opt to terminate a pregnancy varies. The most common reason is that the timing is wrong – it would interfere with education, careers or caring for family members. The second most cited reason is financial – the women seeking an abortion just can’t afford the associated costs of raising a child at that time. One impact of abortion restrictions, research has shown, is that women unable to get one “are more likely live in poverty or depend on cash assistance, and less likely to work full-time,” Ireland writes.

More than just financial risks

Financial problems are one result of restricting safe, available access to abortions. Another is a jump in the cases of pregnancy-related deaths. Amanda Stevenson, a sociologist at University of Colorado Boulder, looked into what would happen should the U.S. ends all abortions nationwide.

To be clear, this is not what would happen should the Supreme Court overturn Roe – rather, it would allow states to implement bans based on the ending of a constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion. Nonetheless, Stevenson’s research gives context as to risks involved for women who may find themselves in states that do not allow abortion, and who lack the means to get to a state that does.

She notes that staying pregnant actually carries a greater risk of death than having an abortion.

“Abortion is incredibly safe for pregnant people in the U.S., with 0.44 deaths per 100,000 procedures from 2013 to 2017. In contrast, 20.1 deaths per 100,000 live births occurred in 2019,” she writes. Stevenson estimates that “the annual number of pregnancy-related deaths would increase by 21% overall, or 140 additional deaths, by the second year after a ban.” The jump in deaths would be even higher among non-Hispanic Black women.

Matt Williams, Breaking News Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Breaking News, News, Observation, Politics

AOC Says Democrats Must ‘Leave It All on the Field’ to Defend Abortion Rights

Other progressive lawmakers echoed that message, with Rep. Cori Bush declaring: “Abolish the filibuster. Codify Roe. Expand the Supreme Court. Protect abortion rights by any means necessary.”

After a leaked draft ruling provided the most concrete evidence yet that the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority is set to end the constitutional right to abortion, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez late Monday said Democrats in Congress must pull out all the stops to enshrine Roe v. Wade into federal law as “people’s futures and equality are on the line.”

“We need all of the above. This is an emergency.”

“People elected Democrats precisely so we could lead in perilous moments like these—to codify Roe, hold corruption accountable, and have a president who uses his legal authority to break through congressional gridlock on items from student debt to climate,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote in a pair of tweets. “It’s high time we do it.”

“If we don’t, what message does that send? We can’t sit around, finger point, and hand-wring,” the New York Democrat added. “It’s time to be decisive, lead with confidence, fight for a prosperous future for all, and protect the vulnerable.”

In September 2021—weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court let Texas’ draconian abortion ban take effect—the House of Representatives passed the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), legislation that would enshrine into federal law the right to abortion care free from medically unnecessary restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods, which are commonplace in states across the U.S.

“Removing medically unjustified restrictions on abortion services would constitute one important step on the path toward realizing reproductive justice,” the legislation states. “This Act is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy—cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others—who are unjustly harmed by restrictions on abortion services.”

“If there aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes.”

But the bill has stalled in the U.S. Senate thanks to opposition from the entire Republican caucus and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), an opponent of abortion who has previously voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Earlier this year, Manchin joined Senate Republicans in filibustering the WHPA.

Other progressive lawmakers joined Ocasio-Cortez in calling on Democratic leaders to do everything in their power—including launching another push to abolish the 60-vote legislative filibuster—to defend abortion rights from the Supreme Court and Republicans, who are reportedly scheming to pursue a nationwide abortion ban if they take control of Congress in November and the high court overturns Roe.

“This will endanger the very people who need access to legal abortion,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said of the leaked draft ruling authored by right-wing Justice Samuel Alito. 

The draft opinion states that Roe, a 1973 decision, was “egregiously wrong from the start” and should be overturned along with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 ruling that largely reaffirmed Roe.

“The Senate must pass the House legislation to codify Roe, abolish the filibuster, and expand SCOTUS,” Tlaib added late Monday.

Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) tanked their party’s attempt to temporarily weaken the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation earlier this year and—to the dismay of progressives—Democrats have done nothing since to diminish the 60-vote rule’s power.

“Abolish the filibuster. Codify Roe. Expand the Supreme Court. Protect abortion rights by any means necessary,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) tweeted Tuesday. “We need all of the above. This is an emergency.”

In a joint statement after Politico published Alito’s draft opinion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) condemned the document as an “abomination,” arguing it would mark “one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”

But the Democratic leaders didn’t provide any indication that they intend to target the filibuster as part of a renewed effort to pass the WHPA.

Speaking to CBS News Monday night, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)—the lead sponsor of the WHPA in the Senate—said congressional Democrats are “going to support states that resist” the Supreme Court but lamented that options at the federal level are “limited” due to the party’s narrow majority in the upper chamber.

Such an excuse for inaction is unlikely to satisfy progressive members of Congress or advocates who are planning to take to the streets in the nation’s capital and across the country Tuesday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, urged his colleagues to “pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW.”

“And if there aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not,” Sanders added, “we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes.”

Originally published on Common Dreams and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Elon Musk, Twitter

Elon Musk’s Latest Tweet Says it All, or Does it?

Perhaps in a moment of incoherence, this three-tweet set was launched. It is just plain goofy (unless he is buttering up “the right” for after mid-terms…?)

In what looks like some kind of twisted attempt at being diplomatic, Elon Musk’s latest tweet manages to clarify his stance regarding “free-speech“ about as much as a mud bath clarifies a cupcake.

Leading off with a bizarre attack on what he Calls “the far left “, he explains that it is his contention that they “hate everyone including themselves”.

Standing alone this is already a bizarre statement, which seems like a far right talking point, typical of the Joe Rogan school of anti-cancel culture and anti-so-called “woke-mob”.

He follows this up with a disclaimer of sorts, as bland as it can be stating that he is “no fan” of the far right, either.

One would have to be forgiven if they thought that this implied, in its very wording, an actual bias toward the far right which is what many already believe.

Ending his three-tweet soufflé on the flat “Let’s have less hate and more love” the responses, not surprisingly, were a very loving mix of WTF and ????

To be fair, there were also lots like this:

And this:

But, the way his tweets were so oddly posted, there was definitely a sense among “lefties” that he was biased. And it didn’t take a genius, but merely @cjwalker21, to retort:

It actually seems odd, that Elon Musk would wade (or dive head first) into a “left vs. right” argument that has no hope of any kind of resolution. And pretending that the disagreements are equal on some level and love can just be ratcheted up as if it was cheap rocket fuel, seems odd…

Then, in what’s gotta qualify as “far left’ in Elon’s book, this gem:

https://twitter.com/Grizzy_333/status/1520210804330704897?s=20&t=4N4AdzxcqVPa3BiO9XkCjg

Honestly, if you just look at the numbers, maybe you don’t see taxes as the answer, but considering the company Elon is in (Zuckerberg and Bezos?) there’s clearly something wrong with this picture?

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Elon Musk, Twitter

Elon Musk owns Twitter after $44 Billion: What’s Next?

Video

Freedom of Speech is declared driving force for Takeover

Twitter Inc. announced that it has agreed to be acquired by an entity that is wholly owned by Elon Musk. The news comes after it was widely leaked that negotiations were underway over the weekend and that a deal was imminent.

Going forward the company will be privately held and current stockholders will be compensated at $54.20 for each share of common stock that they own as of completion of the deal. This represents a 38% premium over the closing price on April 1st when Musk’s 9% stake was announced.

The board voted unanimously to the proposal and, though subject to the approval of Twitter’s shareholders, and applicable regulatory approvals the agreement is expected to go through in 2022.

What will follow is unknown, but speculation is rampant

Since the announcement on April 1st that Elon Musk had purchased approximately 9% of Twitter and this Saga began, there has been a busier than usual frenzy of speculation regarding the possibility that has now come to pass.

On the most superficial level, there was an odd kind of measured jubilation on the political Right, with speculation that Musk might re-instate Trump and others who have been permanently banned (although Trump himself indicated that he would decline if invited back) and a sense of horror on the Left – with an implied mistrust of the world’s richest human, connecting this situation to ongoing debates over wealth taxes and economic inequality overall.

On a deeper track are those closer to the situation – such as Jack Dorsey, who expressed support and openly criticized the current board and public structure in elucidating tweets, such as the one below.

Looking back at some of the harmony and love shared over bitcoin and other major topics an alliance, or at least a consulting status for @Jack could be amazing in terms of what could come of this – a private Twitter with Musk at the helm, in terms of a new direction for social media and all online business and how they evolve going forward.

While it may seem presumptuous to think it won’t be a disaster, there are deeper issues that would indicate that a lot more thought might have gone into this than a superficial look reveals.

Elon Musk has proved, and explained to anyone that will listen, that his motives and goals for any business endeavor are in a new category of entrepreneur, and his success, often against incredible odds, are a testament to the power of this mindset.

With Tesla, he took on nothing less than the most powerful, entrenched (and arguably corrupt) special interest group in history, the fossil fuel industry, and somehow, due perhaps as much to timing as to any particular strategy or plan, prevailed.

That this takeover could mark the beginning of real change in “Web2” and social media, regarding of the risk of a private individual excepting near absolute control, it is a welcome change, based on the reality that the status quo, at Twitter and basically all the so-called internet giants could not be any worse.

Let’s hope that the public and very visible lead up to this deal will be followed in the near future by a continuation of that openness and that changes and plans will be announced as they happen, which would be entertaining at the least, and exhilarating at best.

There’s a lot more to unpack in this, not just in the reactions and opinions that will surely flood now that the next step is upon us. but in a fruitful and valuable deeper look into the real motivations and potential of this new deal.

For that, please stay tuned, and for now, please let me know what you think about Twitter’s decision and new owner.

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Breaking News, Hot-Lynx, Politics

Breaking: Trump Held in Contempt and Faces $10k in Fines per day Until Docs Delivered

The New York Times has reported that Former President Donald J. Trump was ordered to turn over materials sought by Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and will be fined $10,000 per day until he does so.

On Monday judge, Arthur F. Engoron held Donald J. Trump in contempt of court for failing to turn over documents to the state’s attorney general, which was previously anticipated but is nevertheless an extraordinary turn of events.

Trump will be assessed a fine of $10,000 per day until he turns over the documents. The ruling essentially implies that the judge concluded that Mr. Trump had failed to cooperate with the attorney general, Letitia James, and did not follow the court’s orders.

As quoted by the Times: “Mr. Trump: I know you take your business seriously, and I take mine seriously,” remarked Justice Engoron of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, before he held Mr. Trump in contempt and banged his gavel.

Alina Habba, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said she intended to appeal the judge’s ruling.

Although Trump’s legal team plans to appeal the ruling the news is still significant and represents a history for the New York attorney general.

Read More at:

New York Times

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Climate Solutions, Earth Day, Social Media

Social Media Giants’ Climate Misinformation Policies Leave Users ‘In the Dark’: Report

“Despite half of U.S. and U.K. adults getting their news from social media, social media companies have not taken the steps necessary to fight industry-backed deception,” reads the report.

Weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified disinformation as a key driver of the planetary crisis, three advocacy groups published a report Wednesday ranking social media companies on their efforts to ensure users can get accurate data about the climate on their platforms—and found that major companies like Twitter and Facebook are failing to combat misinformation.

The report, titled In the Dark: How Social Media Companies’ Climate Disinformation Problem is Hidden from the Public and released by Friends of the Earth (FOE), Greenpeace, and online activist network Avaaz, detailed whether the companies have met 27 different benchmarks to stop the spread of anti-science misinformation and ensure transparency about how inaccurate data is analyzed.

“Despite half of U.S. and U.K. adults getting their news from social media, social media companies have not taken the steps necessary to fight industry-backed deception,” reads the report. “In fact, they continue to allow these climate lies to pollute users’ feeds.

The groups assessed five major social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok—and found that the two best-performing companies, Pinterest and YouTube, scored 14 out of the 27 possible points.

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, Pinterest has won praise from groups including FOE for establishing “clearly defined guidelines against false or misleading climate change information, including conspiracy theories, across content and ads.”

“One of the key objectives of this report is to allow for fact-based deliberation, discussion, and debate to flourish in an information ecosystem that is healthy and fair, and that allows both citizens and policymakers to make decisions based on the best available data.”

The company also garnered points in Wednesday’s report for being the only major social media platform to make clear the average time or views it allows for a piece of scientifically inaccurate content before it will take action to combat the misinformation and including “omission or cherry-picking” of data in its definition of mis- or disinformation.

Pinterest and YouTube were the only companies that won points for consulting with climate scientists to develop a climate mis- and disinformation policy.

The top-performing companies, however, joined the other firms in failing to articulate exactly how their misinformation policy is enforced and to detail how climate misinformation is prioritized for fact-checking.

“Social media companies are largely leaving the public in the dark about their efforts to combat the problem,” the report reads. “There is a gross lack of transparency, as these companies conceal much of the data about the prevalence of digital climate dis/misinformation and any internal measures taken to address its spread.”

Twitter was the worst-performing company, meeting only five of the 27 criteria.

“Twitter is not clear about how content is verified as dis/misinformation, nor explicit about engaging with climate experts to review dis/misinformation policies or flagged content,” reads the report. “Twitter’s total lack of reference to climate dis/misinformation, both in their policies and throughout their enforcement reports, earned them no points in either category.”

TikTok scored seven points, while Facebook garnered nine.

The report, using criteria developed by the Climate Disinformation Coalition, was released three weeks after NPR reported that inaccurate information about renewable energy sources has been disseminated widely in Facebook groups, and the spread has been linked to slowing progress on or shutting down local projects.

In rural Ohio, posts in two anti-wind power Facebook groups spread misinformation about wind turbines causing birth defects in horses, failing to reduce carbon emissions, and causing so-called “wind turbine syndrome” from low-frequency sounds—a supposed ailment that is not backed by scientific evidence. The posts increased “perceptions of human health and public safety risks related to wind” power, according to a study published last October in the journal Energy Research & Social Science.

As those false perceptions spread through the local community, NPRreported, the Ohio Power Siting Board rejected a wind farm proposal “citing geological concerns and the local opposition.”

Misinformation on social media “can really slow down the clean energy transition, and that has just as dire life and death consequences, not just in terms of climate change, but also in terms of air pollution, which overwhelmingly hits communities of color,” University of California, Santa Barbara professor Leah Stokes told NPR.

As the IPCC reported in its February report, “rhetoric and misinformation on climate change and the deliberate undermining of science have contributed to misperceptions of the scientific consensus, uncertainty, disregarded risk and urgency, and dissent.”

Wednesday’s report called on all social media companies to:

  • Establish, disclose, and enforce policies to reduce climate change dis- and misinformation;
  • Release in full the company’s current labeling, fact-checking, policy review, and algorithmic ranking systems related to climate change disinformation policies;
  • Disclose weekly reports on the scale and prevalence of climate change dis- and misinformation on the platform and mitigation efforts taken internally; and
  • Adopt privacy and data protection policies to protect individuals and communities who may be climate dis/misinformation targets.

“One of the key objectives of this report is to allow for fact-based deliberation, discussion, and debate to flourish in an information ecosystem that is healthy and fair, and that allows both citizens and policymakers to make decisions based on the best available data,” reads the report.

“We see a clear boundary between freedom of speech and freedom of reach,” it continues, “and believe that transparency on climate dis/misinformation and accountability for the actors who spread it is a precondition for a robust and constructive debate on climate change and the response to the climate crisis.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY  and republished

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Climate Solutions, News

These energy innovations could transform how we mitigate climate change, and save money in the process – 5 essential reads

Building solar panels over water sources is one way to both provide power and reduce evaporation in drought-troubled regions. Robin Raj, Citizen Group & Solar Aquagrid

Stacy Morford, The Conversation

To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is an important source of clean energy. Scientists and engineers see that plus far more potential.

They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their owners money and also reducing transportation emissions.

With scientists worldwide sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers and costs of climate change, let’s explore some cutting-edge ideas that could transform how today’s technologies reduce the effects of global warming, from five recent articles in The Conversation.

1. Solar canals: Power + water protection

What if solar panels did double duty, protecting water supplies while producing more power?

California is developing the United States’ first solar canals, with solar panels built atop some of the state’s water distribution canals. These canals run for thousands of miles through arid environments, where the dry air boosts evaporation in a state frequently troubled by water shortages.

“In a 2021 study, we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California’s canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people,” writes engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. They would also expand renewable energy without taking up farmable land.

Research shows that human activities, particularly using fossil fuels for energy and transportation, are unequivocally warming the planet and increasing extreme weather. Increasing renewable energy, currently about 20% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation, can reduce fossil fuel demand.

Putting solar panels over shaded water can also improve their power output. The cooler water lowers the temperature of the panels by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius), boosting their efficiency, Bales writes.

2. Geothermal power could boost battery supplies

For renewable energy to slash global greenhouse gas emissions, buildings and vehicles have to be able to use it. Batteries are essential, but the industry has a supply chain problem.

Most batteries used in electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are lithium-ion batteries, and most lithium used in the U.S. comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia. China is the leader in lithium processing.

Geologist and engineers are working on an innovative method that could boost the U.S. lithium supply at home by extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region.

Brines are the liquid leftover in a geothermal plant after heat and steam are used to produce power. That liquid contains lithium and other metals such as manganese, zinc and boron. Normally, it is pumped back underground, but the metals can also be filtered out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oYtyEVPGEU8?wmode=transparent&start=0 How lithium is extracted during geothermal energy production. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources.

“If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand,” write geologist Michael McKibben of the University of California, Riverside, and energy policy scholar Bryant Jones of Boise State University.

President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act on March 31, 2022, to provide incentives for U.S. companies to mine and process more critical minerals for batteries.

3. Green hydrogen and other storage ideas

Scientists are working on other ways to boost batteries’ mineral supply chain, too, including recycling lithium and cobalt from old batteries. They’re also developing designs with other materials, explained Kerry Rippy, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Concentrated solar power, for example, stores energy from the sun by heating molten salt and using it to produce steam to drive electric generators, similar to how a coal power plant would generate electricity. It’s expensive, though, and the salts currently used aren’t stable at higher temperature, Rippy writes. The Department of Energy is funding a similar project that is experimenting with heated sand. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fkX-H24Chfw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Hydrogen’s challenges, including its fossil fuel history.

Renewable fuels, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, provide a different type of storage. Since they store energy as liquid, they can be transported and used for shipping or rocket fuel.

Hydrogen gets a lot of attention, but not all hydrogen is green. Most hydrogen used today is actually produced with natural gas – a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen, in contrast, could be produced using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, but again, it’s expensive.

“The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical,” Rippy writes. “The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.”

4. Using your EV to power your home

Batteries could also soon turn your electric vehicle into a giant, mobile battery capable of powering your home.

Only a few vehicles are currently designed for vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, but that’s changing, writes energy economist Seth Blumsack of Penn State University. Ford, for example, says its new F-150 Lightning pickup truck will be able to power an average house for three days on a single charge.

How bidirectional charging allows EVs to power homes.

Blumsack explores the technical challenges as V2H grows and its potential to change how people manage energy use and how utilities store power.

For example, he writes, “some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call ‘peak shaving’ – drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours.”

5. Capturing carbon from air and locking it away

Another emerging technology is more controversial.

Humans have put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries that just stopping fossil fuel use won’t be enough to quickly stabilize the climate. Most scenarios, including in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, show the world will have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well.

The technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air exists – it’s called direct air capture – but it’s expensive.

Engineers and geophysicists like David Goldberg of Columbia University are exploring ways to cut those costs by combining direct air capture technology with renewable energy production and carbon storage, like offshore wind turbines built above undersea rock formations where captured carbon could be locked away.

The world’s largest direct air capture plant, launched in 2021 in Iceland, uses geothermal energy to power its equipment. The captured carbon dioxide is mixed with water and pumped into volcanic basalt formations underground. Chemical reactions with the basalt turn it into a hard carbonate.

Goldberg, who helped developed the mineralization process used in Iceland, sees similar potential for future U.S. offshore wind farms. Wind turbines often produce more energy than their customers need at any given time, making excess energy available.

“Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment,” Goldberg writes.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Stacy Morford, Environment + Climate Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Politics

How Trump Could Actually Steal the 2024 Election

Video

The same people behind the January 6 insurrection are now trying to overthrow the government in a slow-motion coup.

If they succeed, you can kiss our democracy goodbye. 

Trump ultimately failed to overturn the 2020 election because a few election officials — secretaries of state in particular — rightfully certified the results despite heavy pressure from him and his enablers to overturn them.

In 37 states, the secretaries of state are the chief elections officers. That means they oversee elections and voter registration. In 2020, they held the United States’ rickety democracy together by certifying Joe Biden’s win.

But what happens if secretaries of state won’t protect democracy? 

In most states, they are elected. And it’s precisely those elections that Trump and his cronies are targeting.

Trump’s choice in Georgia is Jody Hice (high-se), who voted against certifying the 2020 election in the Georgia House.

His choice in Michigan is Kristina Karamo (kah-rah-mo), who falsely claimed to have witnessed election fraud as a pollster.

In Arizona, Trump has endorsed Mark Finchem (fin-chum), a QAnon-supporting member of the Oath Keepers militia who participated in the January 6 insurrection.

At least 20 other candidates now running for secretary of state do not believe in the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

They’re part of a quiet movement kicked off by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. 

The plan is to take over the machinery of our democracy from the ground up – so that in the 2024 presidential election, only Trump loyalists will be certifying elections. 

[CLIP: “We’re taking action. And that action is we’re taking over school boards, we’re taking over the Republican Party through the precinct committee strategy. We’re taking over all the elections.”]

Thousands of Republicans who have taken up Bannon’s call have also signed up to be local elections officials and poll workers. 

We can’t allow our democracy to be overtaken like this. 

These positions, especially secretaries of state, are the last lines of defense in a democracy. 

And we’ve seen what happens when secretaries of state put partisan interests ahead of election integrity.

In 2018, Brian Kemp ran Georgia elections as its secretary of state — while he was running for governor against Stacey Abrams. During his tenure, Kemp oversaw the purging of almost 1 and a half million voter registrations and the closing of more than 200 polling places. In the weeks leading up to the election, he put more than 50,000 voter registrations on hold, 70% of which belonged to Black people. He won by 55,000 votes.

And remember back in the 2000 presidential election, when Al Gore won the popular vote? Nonetheless, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who had been co-chair of George W Bush’s statewide campaign, ended up calling Florida for Bush, which handed him the election. 

Trump and Bannon’s goal is to replicate these abuses across America and put into power Trump loyalists who care more about electing Trump than upholding democracy. 

Voter suppression is nothing new. But it’s now occurring on a scale we haven’t seen before: an entire party’s election strategy aimed at thwarting the will of voters.

So what can we do about this?

First, spread the word about the GOP’s authoritarian plan. Make sure your friends and family know what the stakes are this fall.

Next, get involved locally. Volunteer to be a poll worker or join a campaign. From school boards to secretaries of state, every position matters.

And of course, vote! Check your registration early and make a plan to cast your ballot.

In 2020, millions of people organized, volunteered, and voted to keep American democracy alive. We, the people, must  work to elect public servants who will uphold democracy and stand up to those who are hellbent on undermining it. 

Let’s get it done.

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Hot-Lynx

Former Trump Aide Mark Meadows involved in ongoing voter fraud allegations

The former Trump chief of Staff has been “administratively removed” from the voter rolls in the state of North Carolina. 

Officials are currently investigating whether or not he was fraudulently registered to vote and cast a ballot for the 2020 presidential election. This comes as county election officials discovered he was registered in both North Carolina and Virginia. 

Meadows represented NC in Congress up until March 2020 when he went to work for Trump at the White House.  

Director for the Macon County Board of Elections, Melanie Thibault told CNN Meadows lived in Virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there. 

Records showed that Meadows last voted in Macon County, North Carolina for the 2020 general election via absentee by mail. The investigation shows that he registered to vote weeks before the 2020 election at a mobile home where Meadows and his wife never allegedly lived or visited as reported by CNN. 

Read More at:

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Books

When are book bans unconstitutional? A First Amendment scholar explains

There was a surge in book banning in 2021. photo credit / Adobe Stock

Erica Goldberg, University of Dayton

The United States has become a nation divided over important issues in K-12 education, including which books students should be able to read in public school.

Efforts to ban books from school curricula, remove books from libraries and keep lists of books that some find inappropriate for students are increasing as Americans become more polarized in their views.

These types of actions are being called “book banning.” They are also often labeled “censorship.”

But the concept of censorship, as well as legal protections against it, are often highly misunderstood. A 2021 campaign ad for Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin focuses on a book with what one mother claimed was “explicit material.”

Book banning by the political right and left

On the right side of the political spectrum, where much of the book banning is happening, bans are taking the form of school boards’ removing books from class curricula.

Politicians have also proposed legislation banning books that are what some legislators and parents consider too mature for school-age readers, such as “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” which explores queer themes and topics of consent. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s classic “The Bluest Eye,” which includes themes of rape and incest, is also a frequent target.

In some cases, politicians have proposed criminal prosecutions of librarians in public schools and libraries for keeping such books in circulation.

Most books targeted for banning in 2021, says the American Library Association, “were by or about Black or LGBTQIA+ persons.” State legislators have also targeted books that they believe make students feel guilt or anguish based on their race or imply that students of any race or gender are inherently bigoted.

There are also some attempts on the political left to engage in book banning as well as removal from school curricula of books that marginalize minorities or use racially insensitive language, like the popular “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Defining censorship

Whether any of these efforts are unconstitutional censorship is a complex question.

The First Amendment protects individuals against the government’s “abridging the freedom of speech.” However, government actions that some may deem censorship – especially as related to schools – are not always neatly classified as constitutional or unconstitutional, because “censorship” is a colloquial term, not a legal term.

Some principles can illuminate whether and when book banning is unconstitutional.

Censorship does not violate the Constitution unless the government does it.

For example, if the government tries to forbid certain types of protests solely based on the viewpoint of the protesters, that is an unconstitutional restriction on speech. The government cannot create laws or allow lawsuits that keep you from having particular books on your bookshelf, unless the substance of those books fits into a narrowly defined unprotected category of speech such as obscenity or libel. And even these unprotected categories are defined in precise ways that are still very protective of speech.

The government, however, may enact reasonable regulations that restrict the “time, place or manner” of your speech, but generally it has to do so in ways that are content- and viewpoint-neutral. The government thus cannot restrict an individual’s ability to produce or listen to speech based on the topic of the speech or the ultimate opinions expressed.

And if the government does try to restrict speech in these ways, it likely constitutes unconstitutional censorship.

What’s not unconstitutional

In contrast, when private individuals, companies and organizations create policies or engage in activities that suppress people’s ability to speak, these private actions don’t violate the Constitution.

A school board in Tennessee in February 2022 ordered the removal of the award-winning 1986 graphic novel on the Holocaust, ‘Maus,’ by Art Spiegelman, from local student libraries.

The Constitution’s general theory of liberty considers freedom in the context of government restraint or prohibition. Only the government has a monopoly on the use of force that compels citizens to act in one way or another. In contrast, if private companies or organizations chill speech, other private companies can experiment with different policies that allow people more choices to speak or act freely.

Still, private action can have a major impact on a person’s ability to speak freely and the production and dissemination of ideas. For example, book burning or the actions of private universities in punishing faculty for sharing unpopular ideas thwarts free discussion and unfettered creation of ideas and knowledge.

When schools can ‘ban’ books

It’s hard to definitively say whether the current incidents of book banning in schools are constitutional – or not. The reason: Decisions made in public schools are analyzed by the courts differently than censorship in nongovernment contexts.

Control over public education, in the words of the Supreme Court, is for the most part given to “state and local authorities.” The government has the power to determine what is appropriate for students and thus the curriculum at their school.

However, students retain some First Amendment rights: Public schools may not censor students’ speech, either on or off campus, unless it is causing a “substantial disruption.”

But officials may exercise control over the curriculum of a school without trampling on students’ or K-12 educators’ free speech rights.

There are exceptions to government’s power over school curriculum: The Supreme Court ruled, for example, that a state law banning a teacher from covering the topic of evolution was unconstitutional because it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the state from endorsing a particular religion.

School boards and state legislators generally have the final say over what curriculum schools teach. Unless states’ policies violate some other provision of the Constitution – perhaps the protection against certain kinds of discrimination – they are generally constitutionally permissible.

[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

Schools, with finite resources, also have discretion to determine which books to add to their libraries. However, several members of the Supreme Court have written that removal is constitutionally permitted only if it is done based on the educational appropriateness of the book, but not because it was intended to deny students access to books with which school officials disagree.

Book banning is not a new problem in this country – nor is vigorous public criticism of such moves. And even though the government has discretion to control what’s taught in school, the First Amendment ensures the right of free speech to those who want to protest what’s happening in schools.

Erica Goldberg, Associate Professor of Law, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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News, Politics

America’s Top 15 Earners and What They Reveal About the U.S. Tax System

by ProPublica

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.Series: The Secret IRS Files Inside the Tax Records of the .001%

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

Periodically, we get a glimpse into the financial lives of the ultrarich. A pro athlete signs a huge contract, a tech CEO sells a boatload of shares in their company, or a billionaire heir unloads a Manhattan penthouse. Based on these nuggets of information, the media speculates as to how much income the rich might bring in every year. But nobody actually knows.

Thanks to an analysis of its unprecedented trove of IRS data, ProPublica is revealing the 15 people who reported the most U.S. income on their taxes from 2013 to 2018, along with data for the rest of the top 400.

The analysis also shows how much they paid in federal income taxes — and it demonstrates how the American tax system, which theoretically makes the highest earners pay the highest income tax rates, fails to do so for the people at the very top of the income pyramid.

The top 400 earners pay noticeably lower tax rates than the merely rich; and, if you include payroll taxes, a married couple making $200,000 a year could end up paying higher tax rates than a person making $200 million a year. (The full analysis is here; it includes selected names beyond the top 15.)

Names That Won’t Surprise You

Scan the names on the list of the top 15 income earners and you’re certain to recognize several names — or at least the names of the companies they founded. Bill Gates hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft for over a decade, yet he still earned the most during the years we studied, reporting an average yearly income of $2.85 billion — and an effective federal income tax rate of 18.4%. Steve Ballmer, his former colleague, is also a well-known public figure, both for his time as Microsoft CEO and his current ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team.

Ballmer’s average annual reported income of $1.05 billion landed him in the 10th spot on the list, and his effective federal income tax rate was 14.1%. The other side of the PC/Mac wars is represented here by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Her average reported income of $1.57 billion ranked fifth-highest; she paid an effective tax rate of 14.8%. (ProPublica sought comment from everyone mentioned in this article. Nobody disputed the numbers cited here. Unless otherwise noted, representatives for people named in this article either declined to comment, declined to comment on the record or did not respond to requests for comment.)

Another well-known billionaire sits just below Gates on the list: Media and tech mogul and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, with an average reported income of just over $2 billion, paid an effective income tax rate of 4.1%, by far the lowest rate among the top 15. (A spokesperson told ProPublica for an earlier article that Bloomberg “pays the maximum tax rate on all federal, state, local and international taxable income as prescribed by law,” and cited Bloomberg’s philanthropic giving.)

The presence of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — either the first- or second-wealthiest person in America, depending on the day — won’t shock most people, but Bezos’s annual reported income during these years of $832 million put him only at number 15. He paid an effective tax rate of 23.2%; as we’ve previously reported, Bezos had so little income in a couple of recent years that he was able to pay $0 in federal income taxes in those periods.

Who Are These Others and Why Are They Paying Higher Tax Rates?

Tech billionaires dominate the top 15, but hedge fund managers account for a full third of the names on this list, and some of their incomes were just as huge. Most of them paid relatively high effective tax rates, especially compared to most of the tech sector representatives. Hedge fund managers often make their money through short-term trades, which are taxed at a much higher rate than when tech titans cash in on long-term investments.

The highest-earning hedge funder is Ken Griffin, founder of the Chicago-based firm Citadel. From 2013 to 2018, he reported an average income of nearly $1.7 billion, putting him fourth on the list. Griffin paid a tax rate of 29.2% during these years. (A spokesperson for Griffin said the tax rates in the IRS data “significantly understate” what Griffin pays, because they were lowered by charitable contributions and do not reflect local and state taxes. He also said Griffin pays foreign taxes, which aren’t included in IRS calculations of effective tax rate.)

Israel Englander, co-founder of Millennium Management, paid at a 30.8% rate, while the co-founders of Two Sigma Investments, David Siegel and John Overdeck, paid tax rates of 31.6% and 34.2%, respectively.

Some of this variation in rates reflects how people structure their businesses under tax law. Income earned by publicly traded corporations is taxed at the company level. When it’s passed on to big shareholders, such as tech billionaires, it can come in the form of dividends, which are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. By contrast, the income from some manufacturing companies and hedge funds flows directly to company owners, who pay taxes on it, resulting in higher effective tax rates on average.

Where Are the Heirs?

Lists of the world’s wealthiest individuals are always heavily populated by heirs, ranging from descendents of old money to scions of more recently minted fortunes. Dozens of heirs made ProPublica’s list of 400 biggest income earners. Descendents and relatives of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, claim 11 spots.

The DeVos family, heirs to the Amway fortune, also have multiple members in the top 400. Perhaps the best known is Betsy DeVos, who served as U.S. secretary of education during the Donald Trump administration. With a reported annual income of $112 million, she was the 389th-highest earner in this period.

Much like the tech titans who top the list, most of these heirs get their income from dividends or long-term investments, which are taxed at a lower rate. Their effective tax rates ranged from as low as 10.6% for Betsy DeVos to a high of 23% paid by Walmart heirTom Walton.

Don’t Forget the Deductions

Another key way that some top earners reduced their tax liability was to claim significant deductions, often in the form of large charitable contributions. This is particularly true for wealthy investors who are able to make their donations with shares of stock. Thanks to a generous provision of the tax code, they can then deduct the full value of the stock at its current price — without having to first sell it and pay capital gains tax.

Michael Bloomberg achieved a tax rate of 4.1% from 2013 to 2018 by taking annual deductions of more than $1 billion, mostly through charitable contributions. From 2013 to 2017, he also wrote off an average of $400 million each year from what he’d paid in state and local taxes. The 2018 tax overhaul limited that deduction to $10,000 — but also introduced a huge new deduction for pass-through companies that Bloomberg benefited from.

Wait — What About the Celebrities?

The earnings of actors, musicians and sports stars are a subject of nonstop scrutiny in the media, yet few celebrities cracked the list of the top 400 earners, which would have required them to report annual incomes of at least $110 million.

ProPublica’s trove has data on many celebrities. One who came close to the top 400 is basketball superstar LeBron James, who averaged $96 million a year in reported income. Grammy-winning singer Taylor Swift also came within reach of the top 400, averaging $82 million in reported income during these years. Actor George Clooney would have had to double his average income of $55 million to crack the top 400.

THE TOP 15

Here are the details on the top 15 income earners. Read the full analysis of the top 400 here.

For the full list of America’s top 400 income earners and their tax rates, along with our methodology, click here.

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News, Observation, Politics

Airbnb’s Ukraine moment is a reminder of what the sharing economy can be

As desirable vacation destinations go, war-torn Ukraine must surely rate low. But in the first month of Russia’s invasion, Airbnb bookings in Ukraine boomed, as people around the world used the accommodation platform to channel more than US$15 million in donations to the country.

As with other forms of direct donation, using Airbnb to channel aid to Ukraine has been problematic. The company was relatively quick to waive the 20% commission it usually charges on transactions. But stopping scammers from setting up fake accounts to collect money from well-meaning donors has proven more difficult.

It’s a story that illustrates both the potential and limitations of the so-called sharing economy.

Idealistic visionaries once imagined the internet would connect individual buyers and sellers, peer to peer (or P2P), without the need for intermediaries and their commissions. But this promise of market democratisation and inclusivity has largely failed to materialise.

Instead, the platforms that have arisen – eBay, Uber, Airbnb and so forth – are very much like traditional capitalist enterprises, putting the squeeze on rivals, exploiting labour, and making their founders and executives among the wealthiest people on the planet.

Platform capitalism

The founders of these companies didn’t necessarily begin with such ambitions. Airbnb’s founders, for example, started their website in 2007 to provide an alternative to mainstream hotels and motels, enabling anyone to offer a spare room or residence for short-term stays in the expensive San Francisco market.

Now Airbnb’s market capitalisation rivals that of the world’s biggest hotel chain, Marriott. In 2021, Airbnb reported US$1.6 billion in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, compared with Marriott’s US$2 billion.

Co-founder and chief executive Brian Chesky’s personal fortune is an estimated US$14 billion, placing him 157th on Forbes’ world billionaires list.

The fortunes made by the dominant sharing platform have not all come from technological innovation.

Uber, for example, has squeezed taxi cooperatives, reduced wages for drivers and normalised precarious “gig work”. Airbnb has been criticised for contributing to rental affordability and supply problems, as property owners chase higher returns from the short-stay market.

There’s little that is democratic about these platforms. The owners have the last say in the equation, dictating which actions and exchanges are allowed or cancelled.

Creating a true sharing economy

Our research on the sharing economy shows that digital platforms can be a powerful tool for individuals to collaborate in developing solutions to their needs. But for the promise of the sharing economy to be realised, platforms must be far more open, democratic and publicly accountable than they are now.

As the non-profit P2P foundation argues, peer-to-peer networks create the potential to transition to a commons-oriented economy, focused on creating value for the world, not enriching shareholders.

For that to happen, all users must have input into decisions about why a platform exists and how it is used.

Examples of what is possible already exist. Perhaps the best known is Wikipedia – a hugely valuable service that runs on volunteer labour and donations. It’s not perfect but it’s hard to imagine it working as a for-profit enterprise.

There are many attempts to create collectively owned, more democratic sharing platforms. In New York, for example, drivers have organised to create ride-sharing alternatives to Uber and Lyft based on cooperative principles. Such endeavours are known as platform cooperativism.

But these ventures routinely struggle to raise the money needed to develop their platforms. Members also vary largely in their knowledge of business practices, particularly the skills needed to manage democratic decision making.

To help these platforms thrive, we need public policies that assist them to raise funds. We also need programs that deliver financial and business education to platform members.

Beyond these practical difficulties, users also need to have a stake in how these platforms run for them be a fully transformative version of the sharing economy.

We’ve drifted a long way from the early hopes for the sharing economy. But it’s not too late to change course and work to co-create more equitable, human-focused models of exchange.

Daiane Scaraboto, Associate Professor of Marketing, The University of Melbourne and Bernardo Figueiredo, Associate Professor of Marketing, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Breaking News, News, Politics

Trump Interview touches Ivanka, Jan. 6th Regrets and More

In new interview with The Washington Post today, ‘former guy’ Donald Trump ramped up his replies like someone about to run for re-election.

He commented on the fact that his daughter, Ivanka, was interviewed by the January 6th committee for eight hours this week and declared that this was a “shame and harassment”, while also stating that he did not know what she had or hadn’t divulged to the members of the committee.

Trump also said that he did not know what Jared Kushner, Ivanka’s husband, had said to the committee, but that he had offered both Ivanka and Jared “privilege” if they wanted it. Both of them declined, according to Trump.

Regarding the now ‘infamous’ 7 hour and 37 minute gap in the call logs for then President Trump on January 6th , which took place precisely as the Capitol building was being violently assaulted by his followers, Trump claimed that he had not destroyed any logs from that day and that he did not make any calls on any “burner phones”.

While claiming that he has a “very good” memory, he also stated that he was unable to recall who he had talked to during the time of the gap on January 6th.

“From the standpoint of telephone calls, I don’t remember getting very many” he said, adding subsequently, “Why would I care about who called me? There was nothing sensitive about it. There was no secret”.

Plotting or plodding, the announcement to run still unspecified

Overall the interview comes across as guarded, if Trump’s loose cannon style could ever be described that way.

Many of the topics, other than the comments on the January 6th committee above, were variations on themes Trump has used while he waits to officially declare (or not) for the 2024 Presidential race.

Mentioning the previous comments he had made regarding his health being a factor in his decision to run (or not) in 2024, Tump said that, while that was a consideration, he was currently in good health and then elaborated:

“You always have to talk about health. You look like you’re in good health, but tomorrow, you get a letter from a doctor saying come see me again. That’s not good when they use the word again,”

Continuing his now trademarked tease regarding the official decision to run he then closed with:

“I don’t want to comment on running, but I think a lot of people are going to be very happy by my decision,” adding: “Because it’s a little boring now.”

Not boring was the announcement today, via press release, that a motion has been filed to hold Trump in contempt and levy a $10k per day fine if he fails to comply.

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News, Observation, Politics

NY Attorney General files for Trump to be held in Contempt and $10,000 daily fine

photo collage / Lynxotic

The New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, filed a motion requesting from a state judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt. The former president has continually failed to comply with the official ruling that he turn over necessary documents. The details were in a press release published today by the office.

The judge had ordered Trump to follow the order for documents and information initially by March 3rd and was later extended further to a March 31st deadline. The state AG office reportedly requested documents on 8 separate occasions, and according to the filing, Trump has yet to produce any of the subpoenaed documents and on top of that has raised objections about it.

In a statement, James said “The judge’s order was crystal clear: Donald J. Trump must comply with our subpoena and turn over relevant documents to my office,” continuing he said “Instead of obeying a court order, Mr. Trump is trying to evade it. We are seeking the court’s immediate intervention because no one is above the law.” 

In addition to the New York state attorney general is asking the judge to issue an order of contempt, the ruling also has requested that Donald Trump be fined $10,000 each day until he complies with the ruling and provides the requested documentation. 

In the filing it states: “The Trump Organization is not presently searching any of Mr. Trump’s custodial files or devices, and has no intention of doing so between now and April 15, 2022”.

As reported by the NYT a spokesperson for the Trump Organization responded to the AG’s request as both “baseless” and the investigation referred to as a “witch hunt“.

On a very busy April 7th for the Trump ‘non-campaign’ an interview with The Washington Post was also published today. In this somewhat guarded interview Trump answered queries on the January 6th committee’s interviews with Ivanka and Jared, and on his intentions to declare himself as a candidate for the 2024 Presidential election.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

New Analysis Details ‘Master Class in War Profiteering’ by US Oil Giants

“Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street,” said Lukas Ross at Friends of the Earth.

An analysis released Tuesday by a trio of groups highlights how Big Oil has cashed in on various crises over the past year—including the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the global climate emergency—while enriching wealthy shareholders.

“Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

The new report from BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen explains that there are two main tactics that fossil fuel giants use to benefit investors: “First, they repurchase shares of their own stock and retire them, reducing the number of shares outstanding and driving up the value of each share remaining in investors’ hands.”

“Second, they increase dividends, the quarterly payments investors receive for owning shares,” the report continues. “Oil and gas dividends, historically bigger than other sectors’, have spiked in recent months, outstripping every other industry group.”

“Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, oil and gas companies have kicked both tactics into overdrive,” the groups found, based on reviewing public statements and securities filings from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered fossil fuel corporations.

During the first two months of 2022, “seven companies’ boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock—a 15% increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021,” the report states. “Six of those decisions came in February 2022, after Russian warmongering lifted stock prices. The total since the start of 2021 is $45.6 billion.”

The analysis also reveals that in January and February, 11 companies raised their dividends—”often extravagantly”—and notes that “nine were increases of more than 15% and four were increases of more than 40%.”

“Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings—a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses,” the document points out.

“So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends,” the report adds. “Four of these companies—Pioneer, Chesapeake, Conoco, and Coterra—announced variable dividends beginning August 2021, as prices began to rise.”

Chris Kuveke of BailoutWatch said in a statement that “Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

“Two years after winning multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Trump administration, these newly flush companies are pocketing billions from an international crisis, and they don’t care how it affects regular Americans,” Kuveke added.

As Public Citizen researcher Alan Zibel put it: “Big Oil executives are reaping windfall profits while accelerating the climate crisis and sticking consumers with the bill.”

Zibel also acknowledged efforts to blame President Joe Biden for rising prices, rather than industry profiteering.

“The oil industry and their allies on Capitol Hill falsely claim that the Biden administration’s acceptance of mainstream climate science is stifling investment in the domestic oil industry,” he said. “But the industry’s actions show that they are intently focused on funneling cash to their shareholders rather than lowering prices for consumers.”

According to Lukas Ross, climate and energy program manager at Friends of the Earth: “This is a master class in war profiteering. Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street.”

“Oil companies drove us into a climate crisis and are now price gouging us to extinction,” he warned. “Congress and President Biden must take action by passing a windfall profits tax to rein in Big Oil’s cash grab.”

The new analysis follows the introduction of multiple bills targeting Big Oil’s windfall profits, including a proposal spearheaded by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) designed to crack down on such behavior in all sectors, not just the fossil fuel industry.

Sanders on Tuesday morning held a hearing to call out how corporate greed and profiteering are fueling inflation. During his opening remarks, the chair took aim at Big Oil specifically while listing some examples.

“Yesterday, at a time when gasoline in America is now at a near-record high at $4.17 a gallon, guess what?” Sanders said. “ExxonMobil reported that its profit from pumping oil and gas alone in the first quarter will likely hit a record high of $9.3 billion.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “Big Oil CEOs are on track to spend $88 billion this year not to decrease supply constraints, not to address the climate crisis, but to buy back their own stock and hand out dividends to enrich their wealthy shareholders.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations plans to hold a hearing Wednesday titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” Top executives from BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Shell USA are set to appear before the panel.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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News, Observation, Politics

Biden Urged to Fire Entire USPS Board for Complicity in ‘Devastating Arson’ by Trump and DeJoy

This article originally appeared at Common Dreams. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. of New Jersey on Monday urged President Joe Biden to terminate all six sitting members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors for their “silence and complicity” in the face of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and former President Donald Trump’s full-scale assault on the beloved government mail agency.

“Through the devastating arson of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors sat silent,” Pascrell wrote in a letter to Biden.

“Their dereliction cannot now be forgotten. Therefore, I urge you to fire the entire Board of Governors and nominate a new slate of leaders to begin the hard work of rebuilding our Postal Service for the next century.”

–Bill Pascrell, Jr

While the president does not have the authority under current law to fire DeJoy—a Republican megadonor to Trump who was unanimously appointed by the USPS Board of Governors last May—Biden does have the power to remove postal governors “for cause.” At present, the board consists entirely of Trump appointees—two Democrats and four Republicans.

Pascrell argued Monday that “the board members’ refusal to oppose the worst destruction ever inflicted on the Postal Service was a betrayal of their duties and unquestionably constitutes good cause for their removal.”

Election season chaos comes back to haunt

Far from opposing DeJoy’s sweeping operational changes—which resulted in massively disruptive, nationwide mail delays that persisted through the November election and holiday season—USPS governors publicly praised the postmaster general, with one Republican board member gushing in September that “the board is tickled pink, every single board member, with the impact” DeJoy was having on the agency.

That glowing assessment of DeJoy’s performance during his first several months on the job did not comport with the experiences of postal workers—who in some cases resisted DeJoy’s policies—or the agency’s own internal evaluations, which showed that widespread delays followed the postmaster general’s changes.

DeJoy put his damaging policy moves on hold in August amid nationwide outrage and accusations that he was working to disrupt the election for Trump’s benefit. With the presidential election now in the past, DeJoy has recently signaled he plans to push ahead with his agenda.

In his letter to Biden, Pascrell wrote that the “continued challenges in preserving our Postal Service to survive and endure are gargantuan, and so demand bold solutions to meet them.”

“To begin that work,” Pascrell added, “we must have a governing body that can be trusted to represent the public interest.”

There are currently four vacancies in top leadership positions at USPS, including three governor spots and the deputy postmaster general role. If Biden fills the remaining vacancies—USPS governors must be confirmed by the Senate—Democrats will have a majority on the board and potentially the votes needed to remove DeJoy from office.

“Trump confessed he was wrecking USPS to rig the election. His toady Postmaster General DeJoy carried out that arson. It’s time to clean house,”

Pascrell tweeted Monday. “DeJoy should be fired but also prosecuted.”

Asked about Pascrell’s demand during a briefing on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “It’s an interesting question.”

“We all love the mailman and mailwoman,” said Psaki. “I don’t have anything for you on it. I’m happy to check with our team on it and see if we have any specifics. I’m not aware of anything, but we’ll circle back with you.”

Read Pascrell’s full letter:

Dear President Biden:

After several years of unprecedented sabotage, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is teetering on the brink of collapse. Through the devastating arson of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors sat silent. Their dereliction cannot now be forgotten. Therefore, I urge you to fire the entire Board of Governors and nominate a new slate of leaders to begin the hard work of rebuilding our Postal Service for the next century.

According to a report by the USPS Office of Inspector General, operational changes imposed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy “negatively impacted the quality and timeliness of mail service nationally” and were “implemented quickly and communicated primarily orally,” resulting in confusion and inconsistent application across the country. As DeJoy’s efforts to dismantle mail sorting machines, cut overtime, restrict deliveries, and remove mailboxes slowed mail nationally, Donald Trump himself openly admitted that his administration was withholding funding for the Postal Service in order to make it harder to process mail-in ballots.

Things became so bad that on August 14, 2020, I filed a complaint with our state’s Attorney General calling on him to seek indictments against your predecessor and the Postmaster General for election subversion. Postal operations have continued to severely lag benchmark levels under DeJoy and this slate of Governors. This holiday season, USPS reported an unprecedented level of mail disruption, with only 64 percent of first-class mail delivered on time in late December. Through it all, the Governors were either silent or in support of DeJoy’s havoc.

The members of the USPS Board of Governors have but one central responsibility: “represent[ing] the public interest.” Members may be removed by the President “only for cause.” The board members’ refusal to oppose the worst destruction ever inflicted on the Postal Service was a betrayal of their duties and unquestionably constitutes good cause for their removal.

As America’s perhaps most enduringly trusted institution, a central economic and social engine for every community in America, and a vital vanguard of the democratic tradition, the Post Office must play an essential role in our national life for generations to come. The continued challenges in preserving our Postal Service to survive and endure are gargantuan, and so demand bold solutions to meet them. To begin that work, we must have a governing body that can be trusted to represent the public interest. Thank you for your continued dedication to saving our Post Office.

Sincerely,

Bill Pascrell, Jr.

Member of Congress

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News, Politics

Biden bets a million barrels a day will drive down soaring gas prices – what you need to know about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Several sites, such as one near Freeport, Texas, store the hundreds of million of barrels in the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Department of Energy via AP

Scott L. Montgomery, University of Washington

The Biden administration on March 31, 2022, said it plans to release an unprecedented 180 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat the recent spike in gas and diesel prices. About a million barrels of oil will be released every day for up to six months.

If all the oil is released, it would represent almost one-third of the current volume of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It follows a release of 30 million barrels in early March, a large withdrawal until the latest one.

But what is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, why was it created, and when has it been used? And does it still serve a purpose, given that the U.S. exports more oil and other petroleum products than it imports?

As an energy researcher, I believe considering the reserve’s history can help answer these questions.

Origins of the reserve

Congress created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 in response to a global oil crisis.

Arab oil-exporting states led by Saudi Arabia had cut supply to the world market because of Western support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Oil prices quadrupled, resulting in major economic damage to the U.S. and other countries. This also shook the average American, who had grown used to cheap oil.

The oil crisis caused the U.S., Japan and 15 other advanced countries to form the International Energy Agency in 1974 to recommend policies that would forestall such events in the future. One of the agency’s key ideas was to create emergency petroleum reserves that could be drawn on in case of a severe supply disruption.

The map shows the locations of the oil held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Department of Energy

The Energy Policy and Conservation Act originally stipulated the reserve should hold up to 1 billion barrels of crude and refined petroleum products. Though it has never reached that size, the U.S. reserve is the largest in the world, with a maximum volume of 714 million barrels. The cap was previously set at 727 million barrels.

As of March 25, 2022, the reserve contained about 568 million barrels.

Oil in the reserve is stored underground in a series of large underground salt domes in four locations along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, and is linked to major supply pipelines in the region.

Salt domes, formed when a mass of salt is forced upward, are a good choice for storage since salt is impermeable and has low solubility in crude oil. Most of the storage sites were acquired by the federal government in 1977 and became fully operational in the 1980s.

History of drawdowns

In the 1975 act, Congress specified that the reserve was intended to prevent “severe supply interruptions” – that is, actual oil shortages.

Over time, as the oil market has changed, Congress expanded the list of reasons for which the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could be tapped, such as domestic supply interruptions due to extreme weather.

Prior to March 2022, about 280 million barrels of crude oil had been released since the reserve’s creation, including a 50 million release that began in November 2021.

There have only been three emergency releases in the reserve’s history. The first was in 1991 after Iraq invaded Kuwait the year before, which resulted in a sharp drop in oil supply to the world market. The U.S. released 34 million barrels.

The second release, of 30 million barrels, came in 2005 after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina knocked out Gulf of Mexico production, which then comprised about 25% of U.S. domestic supply.

The third was a coordinated release by the International Energy Agency in 2011 as a result of supply disruptions from several oil-producing countries, including Libya, then facing civil unrest during the Arab Spring. In all, the agency coordinated a release of 60 million barrels of crude, half of which came from the U.S.

In addition, there have been 11 planned sales of oil from the reserve, mainly to generate federal revenue. One of these – the 1996-1997 sale to reduce the federal budget deficit – seemed to serve political ends rather than supply-related ones.

A better way to avoid pain at the pump

President Joe Biden’s November decision to tap the reserve was also seen as political by Republicans because there was no emergency shortage of supply at that time.

Similarly, the latest historic release of 180 million barrels could also be seen as serving a political purpose – in an election year, no less. But I believe it also seems perfectly legitimate in terms of fulfilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s original purpose: reducing the negative impacts of a major oil price shock.

Though the U.S. is today a net petroleum exporter, it continues to import as much as 8.2 million barrels of crude oil every day.

[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

But in my view, the best way to avoid the pain of oil price shocks is to lower oil demand by reducing global carbon emissions – rather than mainly relying on releases from the reserve.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Nov. 24, 2021.

Scott L. Montgomery, Lecturer, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Business, News, Observation, Politics

Workers in New York Vote to Form Amazon’s First-Ever Union in US

“We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space, because while he was up there, we were organizing a union,” said Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union.

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Pixels / Adobe Stock

Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York won their election Friday to form the retail giant’s first-ever union in the United States, a landmark victory for the labor movement in the face of aggressive union-busting efforts from one of the world’s most powerful companies.

According to an initial tally released by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), there were 2,654 votes in favor of recognizing a union and 2,131 against. The number of disputed ballots, 67, is not nearly enough to change the outcome.

The historic unionization drive was spearheaded by the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a worker-led group not affiliated with any established union. Christian Smalls, the president of ALU, was fired by Amazon in 2020 after he led a protest against the company’s poor workplace safety standards in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

“When Covid-19 came into play, Amazon failed us,” Smalls said during a press conference after the union victory was announced. “We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space, because while he was up there, we were organizing a union.”

Long-time labor journalist Steven Greenhouse wrote Friday that “the unionization victory at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island is by far the biggest, beating-the-odds, David-versus-Goliath unionization win I’ve seen.”

“America’s wealthiest, most powerful, most seemingly indispensable company has lost to a pop-up coalition of workers,” Greenhouse added. “A generation, the younger generation, is stirring.”

Amazon, which spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants in 2021 alone, worked hard to crush the unionization effort, forcing employees to attend hundreds of captive-audience meetings and threatening workers with pay cuts and other potential consequences.

But the company’s union-busting campaign wasn’t enough to overcome the upstart revolt led by ALU, which was founded just months ago.

Derrick Palmer, a co-founder of ALU and an employee at the Staten Island warehouse, said he expects Friday’s victory to be one of many.

“This will be the first union,” said Palmer, “but moving forward, that will motivate other workers to get on board with us.”

Widespread celebration followed the official announcement of the union’s election win, with progressive lawmakers and activists hailing the victory as a potential watershed moment for the U.S. labor movement, which has struggled for decades in the face of corporate America’s relentless assault. Union membership in the U.S. declined by 241,000 workers in 2021, according to Labor Department figures.

“The organizing victory at Amazon on Staten Island is a signal that American workers will no longer accept exploitation,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday. “They’re tired of working longer hours for lower wages. They want an economy that works for all, not just Jeff Bezos.”

The union has much work ahead of it. As HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson noted, the union must now negotiate “a first collective bargaining agreement with one of the most powerful companies in the world.”

“It can take years for a union to secure a first contract, and some never manage to,” Jamieson wrote. “Amazon would have a strong incentive not to offer the union a decent deal, for fear it would only encourage more unionization elsewhere.”

 Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Business, Climate Solutions, News, Politics

As Consumers Pay, Oil CEO’s Refuse to Testify to Congress About Soaring Prices

“While Americans struggle with high gas prices, these companies are doing victory laps, showering their already wealthy executives and shareholders with billions in stock buybacks and bonus compensation,” said one watchdog group. “They should be ashamed.”

As people across the United States face record-high gas prices—compounded by rising grocery bills and prices for other essentials—executives at three major oil companies are refusing to testify before Congress about what their firms could do to lessen the burden on U.S. households, leaving Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates to condemn the companies for profiting amid lower and middle-class people’s financial pain.

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, had invited the CEOs of EOG Resources Inc., Devon Energy Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. to testify next week, only to be rebuffedTuesday by the executives, who have personally profited off gas prices which averaged $4.24 per gallon on Monday.

“I invited these companies to come before the committee and make their case, but apparently they don’t think it’s worth defending,” Grijalva said in a statement Tuesday. “Their silence tells us all we need to know—that cries for more drilling and looser regulations are nothing more than another age-old attempt to line their own pockets.

Since oil and gas prices began rising earlier this year as traveling and commuting increased, and went up further following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the fossil fuel industry has claimed the Biden administration should release more permits for drilling on public lands and accelerate approval of permits for building energy infrastructure, with the American Petroleum Institute pushing for what Grijalva called “a domestic drilling free-for-all” earlier this month.

Lawmakers including Grijalva have argued that the companies could easily stabilize gas prices immediately, considering the billions of dollars in profits EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum raked in last year.

Instead, watchdog group Accountable.US said Tuesday, Occidental Petroleum planned to use $3 billion for stock buybacks in 2022, while Devon Energy gave nearly $2 billion in share buybacks and dividends to shareholders last year. EOG Resources gave CEO William R. Thomas a $150,000 raise in 2021, making his total compensation $9.8 million.

“We want to work with them to reduce gas prices, but it seems as though they’re too busy taking in record profits while refusing to pass savings on to consumers,” said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), a member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) sarcastically expressed empathy for the “spineless” executives who refused to testify before Grijalva’s committee.

“It is hardly surprising that EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum are dodging accountability by refusing to testify in Congress,” said Kyle Herrig, president of watchdog group Accountable.US. “While Americans struggle with high gas prices, these companies are doing victory laps, showering their already wealthy executives and shareholders with billions in stock buybacks and bonus compensation. They should be ashamed.”

Grijalva noted that while the industry has used the Russian invasion of Ukraine to call for even more freedom to drill for oil and gas, fossil fuel companies hold leases on 26 million acres of land.

“These same companies already have over 9,000 approved permits they can use whenever they want,” Grijalva told Public News Service on Tuesday. “And the very companies with thousands of acres of existing leases and hundreds of unused permits are the same ones shouting that they need more land for drilling.”

According to Accountable.US, the three companies refusing to speak to Grijalva’s committee “are among the top leaseholders of public lands oil and gas leases with 4,114 leases covering nearly 1.5 million acres.”

Companies including BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Shell have also been invited to testify at upcoming hearings on their business practices and impacts on consumers. In February, board members from the four companies refused to testify about the firms’ climate pledges.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted last week that oil prices dropped in recent days, but no savings were passed onto consumers.

“The bewildering incongruity between falling oil prices and rising gas prices smacks of price gouging and is deeply damaging to working Americans,” Schumer said last week. “The Senate is going to get answers.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY  and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Business, News, Observation, Tech

Congressional Chair Asks Google and Apple to Help Stop Fraud Against U.S. Taxpayers on Telegram

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Apple / Telegram

The chairman of a congressional subcommittee has asked Apple and Google to help stop fraud against U.S. taxpayers on Telegram, a fast-growing messaging service distributed via their smartphone app stores. The request from the head of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis came after ProPublica reports last July and in January revealed how cybercriminals were using Telegram to sell and trade stolen identities and methods for filing fake unemployment insurance claims.

Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., who chairs the subcommittee (which is part of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform), cited ProPublica’s reporting in March 23 letters to the CEOs of Apple and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The letters pointed out that enabling fraud against American taxpayers is inconsistent with Apple’s and Google’s policies for their respective app stores, which forbid apps that facilitate or promote illegal activities.

“There is substantial evidence that Telegram has not complied with these requirements by allowing its application to be used as a central platform for the facilitation of fraud against vital pandemic relief programs,” Clyburn wrote. He asked whether Apple and Alphabet “may be able to play a constructive role in combating this Telegram-facilitated fraud against the American public.”

Clyburn also requested that Apple and Google provide “all communications” between the companies and Telegram “related to fraud or other unlawful conduct on the Telegram platform, including fraud against pandemic relief programs” as well as what “policies and practices” the companies have implemented to monitor whether applications disseminated through their app stores are being used to “facilitate fraud” and “disseminate coronavirus misinformation.” He gave the companies until April 7 to provide the records.

Apple, which runs the iOS app store for its iPhones, did not reply to a request for comment. Google, which runs the Google Play app store for its Android devices, also did not respond.

The two companies’ app stores are vital distribution channels for messaging services such as Telegram, which markets itself as one of the world’s 10 most downloaded apps.The company has previously acknowledged theimportance of complying with Apple’s and Google’s app store policies. “Telegram — like all mobile apps — has to follow rules set by Apple and Google in order to remain available to users on iOS and Android,” Telegram CEO Pavel Durov wrote in a September blog post. He noted that, should Apple’s and Google’s app stores stop supporting Telegram in a given locale, the move would prevent software updates to the messaging service and ultimately neuter it.

By appealing to the two smartphone makers directly, Clyburn is increasing pressure on Telegram to take his concerns seriously. His letter noted that “Telegram’s very brief terms of service only prohibit users from ‘scam[ming]’ other Telegram users, appearing to permit the use of the platform to conspire to commit fraud against others.” He faulted Telegram for letting its users disseminate playbooks for defrauding state unemployment insurance systems on its platform and said its failure to stop that activity may have enabled large-scale fraud.

Clyburn wrote to Durov in December asking whether Telegram has “undertaken any serious efforts to prevent its platform from being used to enable large-scale fraud” against pandemic relief programs. Telegram “refused to engage” with the subcommittee, a spokesperson for Clyburn told ProPublica in January. (Since then, the app was briefly banned in Brazil for failing to respond to judicial orders to freeze accounts spreading disinformation. Brazil’s Supreme Court reversed the ban after Telegram finally responded to the requests.)

Telegram said in a statement to ProPublica that it’s working to expand its terms of service and moderation efforts to “explicitly restrict and more effectively combat” misuse of its messaging platform, “such as encouraging fraud.” Telegram also said that it has always “actively moderated harmful content” and banned millions of chats and accounts for violating its terms of service, which prohibit users from scamming each other, promoting violence or posting illegal pornographic content.

But ProPublica found that the company’s moderation efforts can amount to little more than a game of whack-a-mole. After a ProPublica inquiry last July, Telegram shut some public channels on its app in which users advertised methods for filing fake unemployment insurance claims using stolen identities. But various fraud tutorials are still openly advertised on the platform. Accounts that sell stolen identities can also pop back up after they’re shut down; the users behind them simply recycle their old account names with a small variation and are back in business within days.

The limited interventions are a reflection of Telegram’s hands-off approach to policing content on its messenger app, which is central to its business model. Durov asserted in his September blog post that “Telegram gives its users more freedom of speech than any other popular mobile application.” He reiterated that commitment in March, saying that Telegram users’ “right to privacy is sacred. Now — more than ever.”

The approach has helped Telegram grow and become a crucial communication tool in authoritarian regimes. Russia banned Telegram in 2018 for refusing to hand over encryption keys that would allow authorities to access user data, only to withdraw the ban two years later at least in part because users were able to get around it. More recently, Telegram has been credited as a rare place where Russians can find uncensored news about the invasion of Ukraine.

But the company’s iron-clad commitment to privacy also attracts cybercriminals looking to make money. After the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Congress to authorize hundreds of billions of small-business loans and extra aid to workers who lost their jobs, Telegram lit up with channels offering methods to defraud the programs. The scale of the fraud is yet unknown, but it could stretch into tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars. Its sheer size prompted the Department of Justice to announce, on March 10, the appointment of a chief prosecutor to focus on the most egregious cases of pandemic fraud, including identity theft by criminal syndicates.

Article first published on ProPublica by Cezary Podkul and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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