CAPITALIST TENTACLES & FRONTS

RENEE PARSONS—The question remains whether any amount of ‘reform’ can make the FISA Court acceptable from a Constitutional perspective or whether continued existence of the Court is necessary given its unabashed record of facilitating near-unanimous approvals to conduct surveillance, in other words, the Court is needed for the mindless approval of surveillance applications to create the false impression for a gullible public that there is an independent Constitutionally-valid process at work.

BILL SPENCE—No less than 23 former fire chiefs and emergency leaders attempted to warn the government for months in 2019 that more resources were urgently needed to tackle bushfires. What did the government do? Some would say, “nothing”. But actually, that is not true. On top of ignoring the warnings from their own fire experts, government officials spent most of their time actively opposing any moves to limit climate damage and prevent bushfires.

GEORGE WUERTHNER—Collaboration is always a one-way street. It is about reducing the areas protected as wilderness. It is a philosophy of “splitting the baby.” As King Solomon recognized, if you truly love a child (or a wild place), you cannot cut the baby in half and get anything that is alive.

DAVID SWANSON—Bloomberg, like Buttigieg and Biden, regularly promotes misleading health-insurance industry attacks on Medicare for All. Bloomberg, like Biden and Trump, has repeatedly advocated cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits (but not military spending) – once calling for higher Medicaid co-pays so poor people would “think twice before they use services.” He’s promoted the right-wing line that the Wall Street meltdown was caused not by greed, fraud, or predatory lending, but by the curtailment of the racial discrimination in lending known as “redlining.”

DIEGO SANTIAGO DIEZ—What a shame that he turned from the heartland and the working class to New York City and their various gangster classes! Indeed, he could have taken his New York City, Italian-American, chip-on-his-shoulder viewpoint and brought some insights to different cultures and ideologies within America and planet Earth, but because he is a US liberal and anti-socialist he preferred self-worship, identity politics and non-evolution.