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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

(Kushner’s company) hounded low-income tenants with a barrage of lawsuits, eviction notices, and late fees, and a court has determined that $3.25 million in damages should be awarded to the plaintiffs.

I can’t imagine how much the defendants spent in their desperate moves to make those civil charges evaporate, and, further, to prevent this news from surfacing.

If I were hearing this case, and if there was a significant amount of legitimate compensatory damages, as there seems to be here, I would have crippled them with the punitive kind.

Making scum like these people disappear from American society won’t be easy, but it’s obligatory on our part.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

Dozens of grassroots environmental groups exerted enough pressure in Congress such that West Virginia senator Joe Manchin was forced to abandon his bill that would have propped up Big Oil for another decade or so.

From this:

Manchin’s bill would have “streamlined” the permitting process for energy projects, implementing the fossil fuel industry’s wish list—undermining the protections of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Clean Water Act (CWA), undercutting opportunities for public comment and Tribal consultation, and setting obstacles to those seeking legal redress. It was an attempt to further silence frontline communities, who even under the current regulatory system bear the inequitable burden of health impacts from fossil fuel pollution.

We’re teetering on the edge.  From all of us, thanks to those who invested their money and time into making sustainability a little bit closer to reality.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

No one expects 100% candor from American politicians, but some people consistently amaze us with their bald-faced lies.

The latest phenomenon is jumping ship from the “Stolen Election.”  Here we have people like Dr. Oz in his Pennsylvania senate race, who, in exchange for Trump’s endorsement, were backing the former president’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favor of Biden, driven by massive voter fraud.  Now they find that they’re alienating too many independent voters, so they’re changing direction.

If I were trying to decide between Oz and his opponent, I might be thinking to myself, “Look, dude, either there is evidence that the election was stolen or there isn’t.  What you’re telling me is that you stood behind Trump’s position knowing goddamn well that there was zero evidence of these outrageous lies.  You convinced millions of the American people that our democracy had failed, and that the election should be handed to a pathological liar, in particular, someone you knew had lost.  Call me woke, but that doesn’t work for me.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

There are many peculiar aspects to Trump and the adoration he receives from his supporters.

As indicated at left, one of the most bizarre elements at play here is that Trump, a billionaire, is aggressively putting the bite on his base to pay for his legal fees, a large group comprised mostly of poorly educated working class white people.

Note that this is unusual, if not unique, even among cults.  You will fail to name a cult leader, living or dead, who has successfully pulled off a move like this.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

A lack of interest in politics is actually worse than the way it’s described here.  That’s because bad leaders damage more than just my income, my rights, etc.  They damage everyone except those who donate to their campaigns.

There is not a single thing a decent person could possibly want for American society: education, healthcare, environmental responsibility, equal justice for all, etc. that is not actively destroyed by evil people in positions of power.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It’s hard to think of something more antithetical to American values than this photo of long-time Trump advisor Roger Stone, seated among the top echelon of the Proud Boys, smiling at the camera and displaying the “white power” signal.

I’m not naïve enough to think that we can rid this nation of bigotry, but we can (and we must) remove overt displays of it from the top levels of our federal government.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The two top legal experts interviewed in the video below believe so.

The civil case charging Trump and three of his kids with massive amounts of fraud is a good example. The most obvious defense is “I didn’t do it. It’s possible that one of my accountants did it, but I knew nothing about it.”

Here, however, NY Attorney General Letitia James, in her 220-page complaint, made it clear that there is evidence showing that Trump himself personally directed each one of the fraudulent acts his organization committed on lenders, insurance companies, etc.

Keep in mind also that she has referred this case to criminal prosecution at both the federal and state level.

OK, but will this be what takes Trump down?   I’m sure we’d all like to see federal charges of seditious conspiracy, as that’s the charge at the core of his treasonous behavior.  In the end, however, it doesn’t really matter.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

From senior energy analyst Robert Rapier:

Every time someone says “Trump made us energy independent, and we lost that under Biden” — I ask them to back that up.
The most important thing is to get them to define energy independence. What do they think it means? If it means we don’t import oil, then that hasn’t been true since the 1940s. If it means we export more energy than we import, then we became energy independent in 2019 (following a decade of soaring oil and gas production), but we remain energy independent today.

(more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

My stats as a political prognosticator aren’t excellent.  As my mom likes to point out, “Craig, you’ve been predicting that Trump is going to be criminally prosecuted since a few months into his term.”

Having said that, I really can’t see how 80 million women voters aren’t going to remove as many GOP congressmen as they can get their hands on in the midterms.  Uneducated men may be less sympathetic, but I simply can’t see how criminalizing abortion is going to play at all well with the U.S. electorate as a whole.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

Most of what we know about astrophysics we learned over the past few decades, and that certainly includes the idea that everything we see around us came from stars that exploded billions of years ago.

I believe that, within the next 100 years, human civilization will either destroy itself by means of our tribalism and near-total disregard for the well-being of others, or it will somehow be saved by the further advancement of science.

In either case, it appears that religion will be a casualty.  When all our questions about our existence as human beings and the universe around us are answered by science, there will be little reason to hold onto our ideas concerning the supernatural.

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