Nina-Bytes: It Pays to Be an Insider

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Burr’s Brother-in-Law Called Stock Broker, One Minute After Getting Off Phone With Senator

After what has certainly been an exhausting month, I thought we'd close off October with an old fashioned story about corruption in American politics. Do you remember the coronavirus insider trading in government scandal from back in the spring of 2020? In March of that year, we learned that several U.S. Senators dumped millions in stock on Wall Street right before the virus became an inescapable fact and Wall Street melted down. The scandal involved members of both major American political parties, but the actions of two Republican Senators who downplayed the severity of the virus threat at the time, stood out most; Kelly Loeffler and Richard Burr. 

You can read more about it by clicking the links in this article, but the short version is summed up well by David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

"Given the disconnect between what they knew and the public’s understanding, Burr and Loeffler had an opportunity to sound the alarm. They could have broken ranks with other congressional Republicans and told the country to take the situation more seriously. They could have criticized Trump for not doing more. Such criticism, coming from Trump’s own party, would have received major attention. It would have had the potential to alter Trump administration policy and, by extension, the course the disease took.

But Burr and Loeffler did virtually nothing to protect the health and safety of their constituents or of Americans in other states. (Burr went so far as to co-write an article for FoxNews.com bragging about the country’s readiness.) Here’s what the two senators did instead: They sold large amounts of their personal stock holdings, cashing in before the market sharply declined, as the severity of the virus became apparent to everyone."

 

Frankly, this should have been a huge story; this kind of pandemic profiteering by elected officials is beyond outrageous. It's not even remotely a stretch to say that people literally died so rich public officials could bank a profit here. Unfortunately we live in an environment of pervasive corruption and zero accountability, so most of the Senators were eventually cleared by the Department of Justice and the whole scandal just melted away.

As this October 28th report on ProPublica from Robert Faturechi reminds us however, most is not all; former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and soon to be retiring North Carolina Senator Richard Burr remains in the SEC's crosshairs. Turns out there's still an ongoing insider trading investigation into trades made by both Burr and his crooked brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth. And if the Securities and Exchange Commission filing about it is any indication, things are not going well for the Senator. From Faturechi's article:

"After Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped more than $1.6 million in stocks in February 2020 a week before the coronavirus market crash, he called his brother-in-law, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

They talked for 50 seconds.

Burr, according to the SEC, had material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus.

The very next minute, Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, called his broker.”

Well sheeit; how's that for getting your hand caught in the cookie jar? In an environment of legalized bribery where it's almost impossible to prove a give corruption case against powerful public officials, I think Burr might have just found a way to get there. So, presumably arrest warrants for Burr and Fauth (who Biden inexplicably reappointed to the National Mediation Board despite most of this already being in the public sphere) will be forthcoming, right? Don't bet on it sparky. We are after all, talking about a country that just recently realized there's an ethics problem with senior Federal Reserve staff owning and trading stock while controlling much of the American economy. 

No, my money is on Richard Burr riding off into the sunset like none of this ever happened; much the same way Loeffler did. Burr's retirement from the Senate will quell public outrage, and there is no appetite for prosecuting this sort of corruption in Washington. Opening up that can of worms might threaten all the other corrupt Senators in office, and that's a club too numerous and too powerful for even a motivated Department of Justice to challenge. Membership does after all, have its privileges.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Capitalism, Carbon, and Neoliberal Climate Denial

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

The ‘Sensible’ Climate Compromise Is Not Sensible

Look, I'm not trying to be a killjoy here, but sooner or later as a society we're going to have to talk about flavors and levels of self-deception in the fight to prevent climate catastrophe. Take for example this well-argued October 27th article by Alexander Sammon over on The American Prospect. As you may have heard, Joe Manchin and Big Oil are current eviscerating Biden's environmental agenda in real time; an agenda that was already a milquetoast liberal compromise fantasy, quite frankly. Discussing the now-gutted climate crisis mitigation measures in the Build Back Better Act, Sammon notes that the Biden climate strategy currently centers around tax credits to two technologies; nuclear energy and carbon capture, utilization, and storage or CCUS.

As the author points out however, there's a pretty big reason why that's a terrible idea:

"So alongside the remaining clean-energy and electric-vehicle tax credits, beefed-up support for nuclear and carbon capture is what Joe Biden is going to take to Glasgow’s COP26 climate talks as proof of the United States’ willingness to tackle climate change head on.

The inconvenient problem is that those technologies don’t exist, at least not in any meaningful way. In the name of compromise, Build Back Better is now forgoing proven, cost-effective technologies for unproven ones, because that, evidently, is less ideological."

Sammon then goes on to demonstrate that we're lightyears away from producing enough nuclear power to meet our energy needs despite plenty of pre-existing subsidies, and that CCUS technology is basically a pipe dream that rewards the worst carbon-spewing supervillains to boot. Finally, Alex really brings home the bacon by pointing out that betting all your chips on fantasy ideas instead of investing in clean-energy solutions we've had for decades, is itself a form of climate science or climate change denial. 

That last point is key. and what I've taken to calling the "neoliberal flavor of climate science denial" is an issue that deserves more regular discussion in our society. When we talk about climate science or climate crisis denial, most people think of astroturf campaigns by fossil fuel companies, or the unhinged ravings of reactionary right wing politicians. It rarely ever occurs to people to consider whether acknowledging climate catastrophe, and yet refusing to take meaningful action to prevent it because your donors profit from the situation, isn't also clearly a form of denial?

And therein lies the problem I have with this piece. I'm not trying to pick on Alex; he's absolutely correct that doing only a fraction of what is required to stop climate catastrophe is its own form of denial. Which unfortunately means writing an article that doesn't acknowledge there's no way to stop climate catastrophe without getting rid of capitalism, is also its own form of denial. Sammon is certainly not alone in this; just this morning I read a piece by a left leaning academic who admitted we're all barbeque unless we get rid of capitalism, but proposed we forget about trying for now because it's impossible. Clearly, the denial runs deep.

Can you hear me in the back? If you're for preventing climate catastrophe and averting a mass extinction event, you're against capitalism. You can't scream "I refuse to acknowledge this" at a boiling planet and pretend you're on the right side of this issue. There is no halfway position here; there's no acceptable compromise between killing the planet for profit and saving the people, no matter what "reasonable center" you start working from. It's capitalism, or the planet, and the rich guys have clearly made their choice already.

So the question I pose to the left-leaning media, who I agree with on so many other issues is simple: which side are you on? I'd choose quickly my friends; before capitalism gets around to deciding you're an acceptable sacrifice too.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Give the Devil Her Due

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Explosive Report Says GOP Congress Members Helped Plan Jan. 6 Capitol Attack

Well my friends, it's good to know that during my recent illness-related absence, I really didn't miss anything important in the ongoing Pork Reich putsch storyline. You know what's coming next, right? I promised myself I wouldn't do this twice in one week, but I feel like events have forced my hand here. In the immediate aftermath of the coordinated fascist coup attempt in the U.S. on January 6th, 2021, I published an essay explicitly laying out the key details of what just happened. From that essay:

"This was a planned insurrection, attended by (ex) members of the military and American law enforcement, aided by Capitol Hill Police and the Department of Defense, funded by rich fascists, inspired by right wing media, as well as an openly fascist Republican Party and the goddamn president of the United States; this wasn’t harmless, people literally died and members of Trump’s fascist mob clearly had designs on committing politicized acts of violence against their perceived enemies."

As confirmed by every new piece of evidence revealed since, I was right. This was a planned coup attempt and the plotters do indeed reach into the highest levels of the Republican Party and the private sector. Of course its easy to say in hindsight that this was obvious, but frankly that wasn't a popular opinion in either the mainstream media or the online circles I was writing in at the time. Now, this October 25th article by William Rivers Pitt over on Truthout, really just puts the icing on the cake.

Pitt's report (which isn't paywalled) draws from two recent blockbuster stories in the mainstream media; one at The Washington Post, and the other in Rolling Stone. The first story reveals that a key team of Trump advisors, lawyers, and other conservative minions rented a space in the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. to use as a "war room" in ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. election. Why did someone rent a "war room" if this was a political protest that spontaneously got out of hand? You'll have to ask Republicans; who are clearly lying because they're guilty of trying to run a coup to keep Trump in power.

The second report is even more explosive and damning; it's not every day you hear that a sitting Congressman offered Trump supporters blanket pardons in the event of a successful fascist coup after all. On October 24th, Rolling Stone reported that two January 6th (coup) organizers have described "participating in “dozens” of planning briefings" ahead of the coup attempt, with multiple Republican members of Congress and Trump White House staffers. As Pitt notes for Truthout:

"The report describes two January 6 protest insiders who claim they worked “back to back to back” with several Republican House members — Representatives Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene — and their senior staffers, who they allege were “intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.”

Now this list of names is interesting for two reasons. First, it looks awfully similar to the list of people I (and others) insisted Biden's Department of Justice should immediately arrest back in March of this year. Furthermore, the list includes the name of Lauren Boebert; who actively live-tweeted out the location of the Speaker of the House during the coup attempt. Clearly, the Congresswoman from QAnon was quite busy in the post election period. 

Of course none of this is particularly shocking, but it does all add up to a conclusion so obvious even the American political class can't ignore it; January 6th was a premeditated attack on the U.S. capitol to overturn the results of the election. In other words, it was a coup attempt; and since it was conducted by fascists, it was a fascist coup attempt. Will the fact that everyone knows that now change one single thing about how this plays out? Maybe, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for justice if I were you.

Jokes aside, I didn't post this blog just for sweet "I told you so" action. This is serious, and the coup is clearly not over. As a rule, reactionary putsch attempts have to be stopped, and fascists have to be confronted. You don’t beat these people by giggling nervously and ignoring them; that’s how they beat you. Refusing to go after billionaire fascists and their in-pocket politicians after a coup attempt isn’t just cowardly, it’s suicidal.

Lock 'em up Merrick, or god help us all come 2024.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Little Pig Power Plays in the American Police State

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

The bigger problem revealed by a viral fight between NYC police and subway riders

Like many left wing analysts, I spend a lot of time studying and writing about violent, racist, and fundamentally reactionary policing in America. Although widespread police brutality against everyday people protesting the murder of George Floyd has opened some eyes about the violence and racism inherent to U.S. policing, there remains precious little discussion in the mainstream about the institutional power police wield in our society. Protected by qualified immunity, aligned with reactionary political power, and armed to the teeth, American cops have become a "troopified" overseer class that exists above the law, and by extension, above the peasantry.

Well, if this October 24th opinion piece by Matthew Guariglia on NBCNews.com is any indication, the public at large is starting to notice. Yes, you read that correctly, NBC News. Using a viral video of a man having his rights violated for asking two New York cops why they aren't wearing masks on the Subway platform as a starting point, the author asks tough questions about authority and oversight that no police reform advocate wants to touch. Although Guarariglia focuses on covid prevention regulations, his prose makes it quite clear he's talking about larger questions of power and control in our society; as does the video. From the article:

"It’s bad enough that mask mandates seemingly do not apply to the officers often tasked with enforcing them. But the altercation in New York City highlights a deeper problem: The way police seek to penalize or harass anyone who dares question the unofficial and ultra-legal privileges of being an officer.

Mask mandates are a canary in the coal mine. If there is no plausible way to get all officers to wear a small strip of fabric that does quantifiable good for the public, what does that say about the institution as a whole? Who really controls police?"

Hot damn, now we're cooking with gas! Of course, the answer is that nobody really controls police; even politicians that want to remove violent cracker cops are terrified of police unions and the political consequences of feuding with armed reactionaries who exist above the law. Furthermore, it's still very much taboo to talk about the nexus between policing, reactionary vigilante violence, and fascist street politics, in the public discourse; you certainly won't find anything about that it in Guariglia's article here. Did you know that on the night Trump lost, New York cops literally rioted on behalf of their favorite fascist failson? Apparently, neither does the mainstream media. 

Look, I'm not going to pretend an opinion piece on NBC is the blow that turns the tide against bootlickers and appeasement-loving police reformers. You can't reform an institution built to suppress and segregate marginalized people on behalf of capitalist exploiters; there's nothing good there to reform. But as long as we're still talking about bad apples, and worthless body cameras instead of the institutional power police command and represent, few people will truly understand why abolition is the only answer. If articles like this one take us one baby step forward, I'm all in favor of that.

 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Ahead of the Curve

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Personally, I have never quite mastered the important internet art of relentless self promotion. In fact, that might be why this blog generally tops out of a few hundred readers. If there is one thing I've learned in my time publishing analysis online however, it's that sometimes you have to toot your own horn a little; if only because nobody is going to do it for ya. So today we're going to try something a little different; I'm counting coup with some help from bigger voices in the progressive media sphere online. 

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article arguing that most mainstream media coverage of the reconciliation bill fight in the US Senate amounted to complicit codswallop and "corporate-sponsored fan fiction for lanyards." In that article I noted that anarcho-capitalist billionaires and corporate America had poured millions into stopping the Build Back Better Act at all costs. This including buying off Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema; whose support is necessary to pass the bill. Finally I observed that corporate media was engaging in active propaganda on behalf of their rich owners by pretending this was any sort of good faith political dispute. The whole mystery was a stalling tactic, and as of now it appears to be working.

Well, it turns out that I'm not the only person who noticed:

 

TV Reports on Manchin and Sinema Leave Out Their Financial Conflicts 

In this October 22nd report by Spencer Snyder over at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, we find documented evidence that the willful blindness I observed in print media carries over to cable news coverage. In a review of twenty-one news programs covering the reconciliation bill fight (including programs from major players in corporate cable news), the author identified a total of forty-five seconds spent discussing conflict of interest issues; also know as corruption. Indeed, ABC's "Good Morning America" actually had former Senator Heidi Heitkamp on to admonish folks for questioning Manchin and Sinema's motives in stopping the bill. 

The article also goes on to detail Manchema's flagrant conflicts of interest; including donor money, Machin's one-step-removed coal empire, and Sinema's obviously corrupt relationship with a lobbying group in cahoots with Big Pharma. Finally, Snyder hammers away at cable media for spinning a narrative that ultimately sides with corporate power and the two corrupt Senators, while blaming the left for refusing to surrender. This is all great stuff, but given that I already wrote all of these same things, you probably could have guessed I'd feel that way.

 

Joe Biden Is Poised to Gut His Own Political Agenda; and the Democrats’ Electoral Prospects

In this October 21st article by Luke Savage in Jacobin, the author looks at the same corruption and coverage I did, and comes to the same conclusion; the fix is in and the media is in on it. In fairness to Savage, he then uses this discussion to point out that the Democratic Party (and Joe Biden; who was tepidly supporting the progressive position when I published) is also complicit in letting corporate lobbyists and two Senators hijack the negotiations. From the article:

"In exposing the deep dysfunction of America’s political institutions, the reconciliation battle has also, yet again, laid bare the structuring contradiction of the Democratic Party as a vehicle for real reform. Having begun the process by proposing trillions in big programs and new spending, the party’s subsequent negotiation with itself looks set to yield something both ideologically feeble and electorally counterproductive.

Among other things, that’s because the Democratic coalition is less a coherent ideological formation than it is a Frankenstein hodgepodge of progressives, public interest groups, liberally minded voters and corporate lobbies — with the latter, by virtue of its influence in DC, bottomless reserve of campaign cash, and de facto purchase of many elected representatives almost invariably carrying the day."

 

Now, I want to be clear; I'm absolutely not accusing either of this guys of plagiarism. What I'm suggesting you to do is look at the dates all three of these pieces were published, and then ask yourself one simple question. Why wouldn't someone who wanted to be informed on the cutting edge of left wing political analysis, subscribe to ninaillingworth.com, this blog, and all the social media services listed in my signature at the bottom of this post? 

Exactly, such a decision would be inexplicable; which is why you should sign up if you haven't already my friends.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Nobody Gets Out Unscathed

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

Lancet Report Warns Planetary Crisis Will Spur More Infectious Diseases, Climate Refugees

One of the more important things living through the early stages of climate catastrophe has taught me, is that most people have no real concept of what we mean when we say this is a global crisis. Oh sure, folks realize that some animals might die, and coastal property might sink below the sea, but most people seem pretty certain that somehow, they'll survive a global collapse of our biosphere just fine. As a recent report published in the Lancet (and timed to precede the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow) details however; climate crisis is already killing people far away from the "frontiers" of global warming, and it's going to kill a lot more.

As Jessica Corbett writing in Common Dreams details in this story, the report is a collaborative effort by dozens of recognized academics and UN experts, and the findings are grim. From a rise in infectious disease spread, to extreme heat, and fatal air pollution, the Lancet report makes it clear that on our current trajectory, climate change "will become the defining narrative of human health." Literally millions upon millions of lives are at stake here, and that's from knock on health effects of climate crisis alone; doctors are calling it a "code red" health situation.

Pointing to the nationalist failures in addressing the coronavirus crisis, the report's authors also note that "tackling climate change requires all countries to deliver an urgent and coordinated response." As lead author Maria Romanello says "it's time to realize that no one is safe from the effects of climate change." In a sane world, this would be understood as a rational call for socialism in the face of our collective impending global heat death. Here however, it's clearly a reference to the Glasgow conference. 

In fairness the report isn't all doom and gloom; even at this late an hour, there is still time to pull our society back from the brink. The authors note that with the current global incentive to invest in a coronavirus recovery, it is possible to spend that money on curbing carbon emissions in the name of global health. Once again, it's a great idea, for a world where guys like Joe Manchin don't need a new boat. Sadly, we're not living in that sane kind of world, so I guess we're all doomed.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Rigged Games, Supervillains, and Neofeudalism

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

U.S. Billionaires Got 70% More Wealth Under COVID. They Didn’t Deserve Any of It.

A little over a week ago, I published a blog that briefly touched on the historically unprecedented levels of financial inequity in our society. In that post I theorized that this phenomenon was both a contributor to, and side effect from, our society's ongoing transition to a state of capitalism I, and others, have been calling neofeudalism. In this Jacobin article by Luke Savage, we get a glimpse of what that actually looks like in the context of an ongoing class war during a pandemic; and it's predictably infuriating. 

Using data from an Institute for Policy Studies report, Savage reports that the combined wealth of America's billionaires has risen by seventy percent during the pandemic. This includes the minting of a hundred and thirty one new billionaires; creating a situation where just under seven hundred and fifty people "now own almost 70 percent more wealth than half the country combined." Although Savage doesn't mention it, the report also notes that this comes during a pandemic when eighty-nine million people in the U.S. have lost their jobs. "We're all in this together" my shiny pink ass.

 

Although the numbers are staggering, it's tempting to write them off as pandemic profiteering. As Savage notes however, the real driving force behind this intense concentration of wealth during the pandemic is keystroke hot money injected into financial markets by central bankers. In other words; this is plutocratic disaster capitalism on steroids. As nearly everyone on the left predicted, the pandemic relief strategy of just giving rich people a bunch of money to buoy the stock markets, worked out well for rich people and not so much for the rest of us.

 

This pandemic windfall is of course on the heels of, and in addition to, the unprecedented transfer of wealth granted to America's rich by Donald Trump's barely-remembered tax cuts. Furthermore, all of this wealth concentration must be understood in the context of a lobbying fight against even moderate tax increases, that these same rich people are waging against Joe Biden's Build Back Better Act as we speak. Clearly, it's always a good time to be rich in America; which brings me to my larger point.

 

Unfortunately, explaining precisely how I think neofeudalist capitalism works is beyond the scope of this blog. I can however easily tell you what it looks like. And what it looks like is a society rigged so that no matter what happens, good or bad, the billionaires always win. It looks like a society where the political solution to every crisis, or even the absence of a crisis, is to give billionaires more public money. Most importantly, it looks like a society prepared to herd eight billion people off the ecological cliff so knock off supervillains like Jeff Bezos and Charles Koch can pocket unheard-of wealth for just a little while longer. 

 

I have seen the enemy, and he is Musk.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: A Question of Priorities

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

Senate Quietly Adds $10 Billion to Pentagon Budget While Blocking Climate Action

Look, I don't want to say that the mainstream media always lies, because most of the time they don't really have to. As I've explained before, it's pretty easy to abuse context, or lack thereof, to distort how the news is perceived, while still technically reporting "the truth." Recently for example, I've watched this technique being deployed while reporting on various aspects of federal spending by the Biden administration. Consider for a moment the wildly different ways our record $778 billion defense budge for 2022, and the social spending in the budget reconciliation bill are being reporting.

Not only is the focus on reporting the highest possible spending number (over 10 years) when reporting the reconciliation bill, but the media also credulously accepts the complaints of so called budget hawk Senators demanding huge funding cuts for social and environmental programs. As Sharon Zhang notes over on Truthout however, nobody even bats an eyelash when those same "budget hawks" fall all over themselves to give the Pentagon more money than it asked for! Sorry kids; we're pawning your future so Lockheed Martin can bill the government for more Javelin missiles we absolutely don't need. This situation is not only absurd, but it's an active threat to what passes for American democracy. Oh, and also all life on earth.

As I've written recently; figuring out why Democrats can't pass the Build Back Better Act isn't a convoluted mystery. The answer is bald-faced corruption; anarcho-capitalist billionaires and corporations have bribed two Senators to sink it at all costs. Maybe you can argue that the political media in America can't report that because bribery is effectively legal. I don't agree with that argument, but it exists. A truly adversarial free press however, would at least report the fact that these guys are shoveling cash at a carbon-spewing war machine, at the same time as they're crying that the country's coffers are too short to pay for climate crisis reduction programs. 

The problem here of course is that we don't have a free and adversarial press. We have a corporate propaganda machine actively partnered with the war machine, to make bucket loads of money keeping America perpetually prepared for, or engaging in, another war. Social spending costs rich people money, while weapons contracts make rich people money; this isn't that complex. Obviously in an economy built on blood and oil, the survival of the species just doesn't rate. 

Maybe poor kids and polar bears should hire themselves some lobbyists.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”