As someone who spent 15.5 hours canvassing door to door to defeat the recall against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, I’ve got my happy face on tonight. Not least because it wasn’t a squeaker but showed strong support for the governor and achieved an honest to goodness trouncing of a specimen of one our nation’s plagues: right-wing talk radio hosts, the showmen of America’s political megachurches. […]
The “I have a dream” speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on August 28 1963 was not the first version ever spoken before a mass audience. The video below shows King inspiring a crowd on June 23, 1963, in Detroit as part of the “Walk for Freedom” that drew 125,000 participants. The event was organized […]
Doug LaMalfa, a Donald Trump puppet, represents California’s 1st District, where the raging Dixie Fire has already burned 679 square miles in Plumas County, destroying the town of Greenville, eight of whose residents are counted as missing. He also represents Paradise, Magalia, and Concow, towns wiped out three years ago by the Camp Fire, which killed 86 people. Two of my very good […]
“Maka ki ecela tehani yanke lo!” —The war cry of Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó). Translation: “Only the Earth lasts forever.” (1876) “There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.”George Armstrong Custer (1876) The Custer Myth is a living thing, which refuses to die despite the efforts of careful historians to reduce it to uncontroverted facts. Almost everything […]
Secretary of Interior Debra Haaland has recommended to President Joe Biden that he restore the boundaries and protections of three national monuments—Grand Staircase-Escalante designated by President Bill Clinton in 1996, and Bears Ears and the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, designated by President Barack Obama in 2016. In the latter case, Republicans whined about the naming as a supposed abuse of authority by Obama. By […]
Last week, Ford Motor Co. debuted its Ford Lightning, an F-150 pickup truck that is all-electric. Many people went bananas. Now, they said, we’ll really see EVs take-off because we’ve got an automobile manufacturer that knows how to build a truck that looks like a truck, not that goofy futuristic Tesla Cybertruck. By Meteor Blades Before I […]
51 years ago, halfway through a 13-month prison sentence for refusing the draft, I missed the first Earth Day. But for most of the half century since then I’ve spent at least part of my time engaged in environmental advocacy, frequently working with or highlighting the work of people for whom environment means life. By […]
As soon as the word “infrastructure” shows up in a commentary most readers bail out. Everybody knows it’s crucial to our civilized existence, but could anything be more boring to actually discuss? For the next several months, however, discussion of the Biden-Harris proposal for the greening of the nation’s physical and human infrastructure is going to be ferocious. By Meteor […]
The Zero Emission Transportation Association (ZETA) has issued a policy platform with 34 recommendations for adoption by the incoming Biden-Harris administration and the 117th Congress to phase out tax credit limits on sales of electric vehicles (EV) by 2030. By Meteor Blades ZETA’s first recommendation would reform the federal EV tax credit. Currently, this lets EV buyers get up […]
While the U.S. economy plunged into recession last year, with at least 25 million Americans now unemployed, furloughed, or working for less pay than before the coronavirus struck in February 2020, there were record-breaking new installations of renewable energy sources. By Meteor Blades Installations already operating generated 20% of all electricity produced in the U.S. in 2020, according to Bloomberg New […]
As you may recall, when the Donald Trump arrived in the White House in 2017, he called for a review of national monument designations made by presidents under the Antiquities Act of 1906. There was a pre-determined result. Trump was keen on eliminating or shrinking two national monuments in Utah that President Barack Obama and President Bill […]
Some Native tribes are buying back ancestral lands snatched from them It’s expensive and the process can take years, but many American Indian tribes have been buying back lands taken from them, often at gunpoint or through connivery, during the colonization period of U.S. history. By Meteor Blades Even after they buy it, there is a complicated […]
By law, the federal government is required to weigh costs and benefits of proposed new regulations. Unless a dollar value is placed on such benefits—such as improved health and longer lives—the calculation doesn’t pass muster. Under the Trump regime, that was exactly what happened. The value it put on actions to address the climate crisis […]
The Interior Department announced Thursday that it will hold four initial teleconference consultations next month as part of a virtual listening tour with Indigenous Americans spanning the department’s 12 regions. The idea is to strengthen the government-to-government relationship between the tribes and federal authorities and repair some of the damage inflicted by the Trump regime. […]
Another 1.38 million Americans filed applications for initial unemployment benefits last week, with 16 million more now receiving continuing benefits from state or federal programs than was the case at this time last year. Some 25.5 million workers—15% of the workforce—are either unemployed, furloughed, or have seen their hours and pay cut because of the pandemic. Most of the unemployed will sooner or later go […]