Good news, everyone: TC Energy has scuttled the Keystone XL pipeline. So the next time someone says speaking out doesn't work, and organizing doesn't work, and activism doesn't work, you tell them that the Keystone XL pipeline died not because the politicians killed it, but because the people killed it. And note well that TC Energy used to call itself TransCanada, which means that the Keystone XL pipeline also sullied their name so badly they had to change it -- which, again, is our work.
Steve Wamhoff, writing in Fortune, reminds us that President Biden's proposal to tax "unrealized capital" would go a long way toward ensuring that the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk actually pay some damn taxes. And note well that when Republicans say they don't support tax hikes, what they really say is they want billionaires to go on paying no taxes while you try to decide which bill you can get away with not paying this month because you don't make enough money.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) points to "dark money" influencing Sen. Manchin of West Virginia, and notes that the For the People Act, which he famously opposes, would curtail the power of dark money. Good for her for pouncing on this, and let me say for the record that folks who find her "shrill" are either just repeating what they've heard or pretending to be "independent" thinkers. Independence isn't about deploying tired arguments in unexpected places, after all, but about transcending those arguments.
A cavalcade of charlatans testify to all sorts of nonexistent side effects to vaccines at an Ohio House committee meeting, and tempting as it is to joke about all the quarters and hammers and airplanes that have slammed into my shoulder since I got vaccinated, I feel compelled to point out that some of the folks who spewed at the hearing have advanced degrees, which should remind us, if anything does, to attend what folks say and do more than the letters after their names. This is a world, after all, where Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D.
When I read that "The Future of Elder Care is Here – and It’s Artificial Intelligence," I hasten to say AI is a tool, and nothing more, and don't imagine it won't occasionally give you useless info. But you know our stupid elites will use AI to replace actual people so they don't have to pay their salaries and benefits, at which point nursing homes all over the world will be little more than death camps. Wanna stop that from happening? Fight for good folks to make a decent wage to do good jobs. You know, like President Biden's original American Jobs Plan might have done.
Finally, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, now running for state Attorney General, defends his support for our recently-defeated ex-President, going so far as to say "Trump is the center of the Republican Party." You mean the American people aren't the center of the Republican Party? I'm old enough to remember when a politician would say that even (especially!) if he didn't mean it! I guess winning office in a Republican-dominated state sure makes some people soft after a while. And so does blind devotion to an irredeemable asshole. But sooner or later, Trump votaries will know when they're being pandered to. Won't they?
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