Bruce King, former governor of New Mexico, often baffled people with his convoluted use of words. Like the time he vetoed a loan shark bill he’d previously agreed to sign. “But, Governor,” squealed the lenders’ lobbyists, “we had your commitment!” Unfazed, King said, “Now, boys, we all know that a commitment is not a promise.”
In this case, King’s linguistic backflip was virtuous, for it killed a bad bill. But now come banking giants themselves doing a shameful backflip on their widely publicized scout’s honor promise to do the right thing for humanity on a true life-and-death issue: climate change.
It was only two years ago that Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and other Wall Street behemoths loudly proclaimed their conversion to environmental responsibility. In ads, interviews and speeches, they solemnly vowed they would no longer finance new coal, oil and other fossil fuel projects, which are the major cause of global warming. The bankers promised to protect the “fragile ecosystem and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.” Hooray!
But that was so yesterday — way back in 2022. Today, the prevailing political winds are coming from howling right-wingers denouncing environmental values and “woke capitalism.” So, the pusillanimous bankers are now saying that a promise is not forever (or even two years) — as they default on their enviro responsibility. Instead, they’re refocusing on a messy mix of fossil fuels, and — maybe — they’ll toss in a few clean energy projects. Or not.
Chase bank weaseled out of its latest climate action commitment with corporate claptrap, declaring that reducing fossil fuel investments “will not successfully achieve the necessary transition of the global energy system.” Yeah, so why bother? Forget what we promised way back when.
Then Wall Streeters wonder why people distrust and despise them!
Perhaps you heard about the recent surge of invasive foreigners into Eagle Pass, Texas — the Rio Grande border town that finds itself at the hot center of the US-Mexico immigration crisis.
Only, this “invasion” (as Donald Trump’s MAGA crowd likes to call it) was not by Latin Americans, but by Anglos descending on Eagle Pass from the North! Indeed, it was an invasion by Trumpista partisans claiming to be “God’s Army.” Organized as a Christian Nationalist crusade, they boasted that a mighty convoy of 700,000 trucks from all across the US would be streaming toward Eagle Pass to “Take Our Border Back.”
What a show of strength! But just when you think the whole country has gone full-tilt bonkers, reality shows up. “God’s Army” actually consisted of about 20 trucks, a babbling rant by Sarah Palin, and a forlorn crowd of ... maybe 200 people. Seriously. That was it. The greased pig contest for children at a small county fair in Texas draws more than that.
And, very significantly, many of the Trump “patriots” who came from afar were stunned to find that his frantic claims of hordes of rampaging criminals flooding into the US didn’t exist. “That’s kind of eye-opening,” said one who’d made the long trek to repel the “invaders.” And a 29-year-old local resident expressed the rude truth about the loudly ballyhooed caravan: “What is all of this for? For show,” he exclaimed!
Adding to the sleazy spectacle, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had convened a dozen other immigrant-bashing GOP governors in Eagle Pass to take advantage of the caravan’s political glow. Imagine their chagrin that their number of high-powered governors, political staffers and media entourages outnumbered the crowd.
For an honest depiction of God’s Army, go to Vote Common Good: votecommongood.com
Here’s our big word of the day: Extraterritoriality. nnIt expresses a sketchy legal theory asserting that rulers in one state have a right to enforce their laws in another state. The most prominent use of it was in the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, requiring officials in Northern anti-slave states to capture and return escaped slaves to their plantation “owners” in the South, thus applying Southern slave laws in Northern jurisdictions. This abomination was finally repealed in 1864.
But, 160 years later, here comes another faction of right-wing zealots trying to revive the slave-law concept of extraterritoriality — this time applying it to any and all American women who dare to make their own reproductive health decisions. I’m ashamed to say that this repressive use of the doctrine is being led by my state’s misogynistic governor, Greg Abbott, and our corrupt attorney general, Ken Paxton — two tyrannical men who’ve already saddled Texas women with the most draconian abortion ban in the country, including piously forbidding abortion in cases of rape and incest.
Thus, for women to obtain their inherent right to control their own bodies, they’re forced to travel to nearby states. Uh-uh, bark brutish Texas’ political extremists, we’ll ban that, too! Thus, they’ve pushed a flagrantly-unconstitutional scheme to outlaw the use of public roads to drive out-of-state for care, and they’ve even sanctioned right-wing vigilantes to follow suspected medical travelers to doctors beyond our borders. And, going full-tilt totalitarian, the Abbott-Paxton posse has demanded that out-of-state-care groups hand over the names and addresses of Texas women they’ve helped to get out-of-state care.
Talk about government overreach! Big Brother isn’t just watching ... he’s stalking you. To oppose this brutish repression — and to keep it from coming to your state — contact RewireNewsGroup.com/abortion.
I no longer receive my local newspaper, the Austin-American Statesman.nOh, the paper still comes, but it’s just paper, minus the news part — news that our community once counted on to keep up with local government doings, corporate shenanigans, citizen actions and other critical features of our city’s democratic life. What happened? Wall Street profiteers swept in a few years ago to conglomeratize, homogenize and financialize the Statesman.
It’s now a money cog in the Gannett/USA Today chain of some 200 major dailies that the syndicate seized. Indeed, Gannett itself is wholly owned by SoftBank, a Japanese hedge fund. Those distant bankers are not interested in local news, but in slashing news staffs to fatten their profits. In Austin alone, Softbank has cut two-thirds of the paper’s journalists since taking over — and coverage of local stories has also plunged by two-thirds.
Interestingly, the Statesman recently ran a front-page piece about a local union protest by flight attendants demanding fair wages. On that same day, the paper also reported that Uber and Lyft drivers were striking in Austin. But wait — at the same time, the Statesman journalists were picketing right in front of the paper’s office, protesting the greed of SoftBank/Gannett and the demise of local news. Curiously, Statesman editors did not consider this local news about our newspaper to be news, so they cravenly kept this important information from the people.
Austin was not alone in this news blackout by the chain’s managers. Journalists at a dozen other Gannett papers — from Akron to South Bend — were picketing, yet none of those papers ran a peep about their journalists’ defense of local news. Nor did Gannett’s flagship paper, USA Today, mention this nationwide union rebellion by its own journalists.
To support journalists and real journalism, go to newsguild.org.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2024
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