Who Needs Clean Air Anyway?  🌻🌻🌻

Deconstruction: Reportedly the Koch Brothers don’t give a hoot about abortion or LGBTQ rights, in fact in 2015 David Koch described himself as a libertarian who believes people should be left alone to do what they want.  However, somewhere along the line the self-described libertarian Kochs figured out that the best way to push their corporate agenda was to team up with the religious right because while pushing for the privilege to trash the environment to enhance your billionaire status might not be the kind of populist cause that wide swaths of the country find appealing, fighting against abortion and the right of those socially “offensive” LGBTQ folks to live their best lives is rather energizing for those on the religious right. So here we are in 2022, and through the combined efforts of industrialists like the Kochs who care nothing about the environment but do love making boatloads of money and those on the religious right who fervently believe, or at the very least pretend to believe, that life begins the very moment a sperm touches an egg and who also find the idea of LGBTQ people living in their midst untenable, a large portion of the country lost reproductive rights this week, the EPA lost much of it ability to clean up the environment, and the right to privacy is teetering. Remember when Steve Bannon said he wanted to deconstruct the administrative state, making it impossible for the EPA to clean up the environment is only the beginning, the Court’s decision will also make it more difficult for the government to do a lot of other things we need it to do.  And as if all that isn’t enough yesterday afternoon the Supreme Court, loaded with all those justices that the Kochs and their cronies bought previewed what’s next by announcing that it would take on Moore v Harper, a North Carolina redistricting case. That case is hugely significant because should the conservative majority on the Court rule as they are likely to rule, they’ll sign off on some variation of the “Independent State Legislature theory,” giving state legislators the exclusive right to regulate elections, putting them above the law even if their state constitutions say that state courts should get the final say.  To put it simply, if local politicians in those states so gerrymandered that despite being populated by equal amounts of Democrats, Republicans and Independents their legislative bodies are 70 percent Republican decide that they don’t like the results of an election where for example some Democrat like Biden won over some Republican like the FG, all they’ll have to do is override the results, basically what they tried to do in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia in 2020, only unlike then next time it could be legal. Happy Fourth of July everyone.   

What to Do?  President Biden who spent most of the week overseas focused on dealing with the war in Ukraine and celebrating Turkey’s sign off on admitting Finland and Sweden into NATO finally criticized SCOTUS and came out in support of eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to pass reproductive rights legislation.  While that sounds good it’s probably not going to do much since Senator Manchin, who despite his personal views on abortion, says he’ll support narrowly drafted Roe preserving legislation, and Senator Sinema who is pro-choice are still opposed to tossing the filibuster aside. Their view is that further weakening the filibuster will just make things worse if and when the Republicans retake the Senate, making anything that is passed now subject to be overturned at some date in the not too distant future, not a reach since Republican leader Mitch McConnell says that were he to regain control he would introduce legislation banning all abortions everywhere in the US, and if all he needed was 51 votes, he probably could do it.  Of course McConnell who likes to brag about how he got his Justices on the Court at the expense of fair play slammed Biden for criticizing the Court calling his comment dangerous. By the way the Democrats’ tenuous  control of the Senate is even more tenuous right now as Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who is retiring at the end of this term, is hospitalized, recovering from surgery for a broken hip.  That said, there is some potential good news out there.  It looks like Georgia’s Senator Warnock, who at one point was tied in the polls with Republican challenger Herschel Walker, is now leading by 10 points while Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman is leading Mehmet Oz by 9 points.  Sure it’s early, but it looks like voters are waking up to Walker’s and Oz’s oddities while also pushing back at the recent abortion decision.

January 6 Committee:  The right wing knives are out for former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson, not all that surprising given what she had to say about the FG and insurrection day at the White House.  While the overblown controversy about whether the FG did or didn’t grab his Secret Service Agent’s clavicle has dominated the news, the reality is that no one, including Mark Meadows has discounted anything else that Hutchinson said, and certainly no one has done so under oath.  As to Meadows, according to the NYTimes it appears that before Hutchinson’s earlier March 7 deposition, an intermediary for the former Chief of Staff “contacted her to say that her former boss valued her loyalty,” wink, wink, nudge, nudge.  As to loyalty it also appears that the FG, his PAC and another one run by CPAC Chair Matt Schlapp whose wife Mercedes worked in Communications for the FG White House, has been paying the legal fees of somewhere around ten former FG staffers, another neat yet mob-like way to get people to keep their mouths shut.  And all that is in addition to the $1 million that the FG’s PAC funneled to Mark Meadows not too long ago.  Hmmm.  One person who has clearly gotten the stay loyal message is the very pardoned former Lt. General Michael Flynn who plead the Fifth even when he was asked under oath if he thought that the January 6^th violence was justified and again when he was asked if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power in the USA.  Of course, if SCOTUS signs off on that whole Independent State Legislature thing, peaceful transfer of power could be a bigly problem going forward.   

And:  It turns out that Monkeypox is a thing. The government is now providing vaccines to certain health care workers and members of the most vulnerable populations which for now includes those who’ve been exposed and gay and bisexual men who have had sex with multiple and/or anonymous partners over the past two weeks. With around 80 cases diagnosed in NYC and more undiagnosed cases likely out there, the city has already run out of its initial 1000 shot supply although it is expected to receive 6000 more doses very soon. That said, don’t panic and don’t try to get one of those coveted appointment slots unless you are in the vulnerable population.   

Enjoy the holiday.