VENEZUELA’S LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS

By Carlos Ron, Valdai Club.

December 6, 2020




https://popularresistance.org/venezuelas-legislative-elections/



A Defiant Stand Against Neo-Colonialism.

Venezuela wins just by carrying out this election. The legislative process, stalled for years, will return to normal under a plural assembly that truly resembles the country’s current political landscape and positions itself in favour of self-determination and national sovereignty, writes Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America and President of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among Peoples.

Latin America has caught the world’s attention as it has become the electoral battleground between progressive movements and the neo-colonial aspirations of the Washington Consensus. In Bolivia, Luis Arce, the candidate from Evo Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism, won the presidential election, reverting the bloody coup that, to the convenience of transnational lithium interests, had forced the indigenous leader out of office only a year before. A week later, neoliberalism’s birthplace became its next burial ground, as Chileans approved a historic referendum to change the Constitution left in place by Augusto Pinochet’s military regime.

On December 6, it will be Venezuelan’s turn to challenge US hegemony by simply holding elections that the White House has been attempting to block for months. The Government and even the moderate opposition are set on defying the US policy which in recent years has mainly promoted failed unconstitutional attempts at regime change.

According to the Constitution, on January 5, 2021, a new National Assembly must take office, ending the mandate of the prior members who did not successfully bid for re-election. Juan Guaidó, who the US has supported as “Interim President”, will no longer be an elected official and can no longer claim Venezuela’s government or, more importantly, its assets. That is why the US refuses to recognize the legitimacy of this election, pressures allies into doing the same, and effectively prevents part of Venezuela’s opposition from participating.

Nonetheless, Venezuelans will carry out the parliamentary elections as an exercise of national sovereignty in the hopes that a new National Assembly can engage in concrete actions to circumvent the blockade and end the dismantling of Venezuela’s productivity.
A Return To Politics

This will be Venezuela’s 25th electoral process in 21 years. The new National Assembly will have an increased number of seats to reflect population growth, from 165 to 277 members. Over 14,000 candidates of all political tendencies will be competing. Out of the 107 political organizations contending the elections, 98 define themselves as opposition, yet they have split with the more extremist sector led by Guaidó by participating in the election, refusing to support unconstitutional attempts to change the government, and by rejecting the illegal US “sanctions” aimed at coercing the Venezuelan President into resigning or propelling the military to overthrow him.

Since winning control of the National Assembly in 2015, the Venezuelan opposition embarked on an extremist plan to oust President Nicolas Maduro. The first item on the Assembly’s agenda was an attempt to initiate legal procedures to remove him from office — a version of lawfare like the one applied to overthrow independent leaders such as Paraguay’s Lugo in 2012 or Brazil’s Rousseff in 2017.<.p>

The failure of this strategy led to more extreme tactics that also failed: violent street demonstrations in 2017, an assassination attempt using drones in 2018, a failed military uprising in 2019 led by the self-proclaimed Guaidó, and even an incursion of mercenaries in 2020. As a result, an ample sector of the opposition distance itself from Guaidó. Some parties even rebelled against their leadership and sued them in order to guarantee their electoral participation.
Maximum Pressure Against Democracy

Despite the pandemic, the Trump Administration has applied its “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela. State Department officials spoke of a “Monroe Doctrine 2.0” in reference to the 1823 position against the presence of foreign powers in the American continent. As the US embarks on a new Cold War with China, continues to accuse Russia of interference, and escalates its aggression towards Iran, Venezuela seems like a logical target for a regime change operation. President Maduro’s Venezuela is perceived as an open door for US rivals in the region.

For years now, Venezuela sought to break its dependency on the US and engage with other strategic partners. These alliances helped Venezuela avoid a severe Covid-19 crisis. US “sanctions” and overcompliance in the financial sector prevented companies from selling supplies to Venezuela in fear of retaliation. China, Russia, and Iran, however, are among the countries that provided Venezuela with medicine and protective equipment while also helping to design Venezuela’s response: For example, a March delegation of Chinese experts helped design Venezuela’s Covid-19 response and Russia has included Venezuela in the Sputnik V tests.

In contrast, the US increased its interference in Venezuela’s politics by indicting President Maduro under dubious charges and launching a threatening military operation in the Caribbean. In September, the US Treasury sanctioned Indira Alfonzo, head of the National Electoral Council as well as an opposition leaning rector. Later that month it also issued sanctions to five opposition leaders who agreed to participate in the elections. Many others considering participating were also threatened with visa restrictions. The US actively worked to undermine the election process and prevent other countries from recognizing it. Rather, it demands pre-conditions that include President Maduro stepping down before any elections can take place.

The US questions the same electoral process that in the past elected their allies to the current National Assembly, as well as to other municipal, state and national offices. Furthermore, the long-time opposition leader, Timoteo Zambrano, claims that the current electoral process has even more guarantees for the opposition than ever before. This will be verified by international observers who will accompany the process include experts from organizations such as the Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America (CEELA), now led by a former minister in Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe’s cabinet as well as jurists, religious leaders, and political activists from around the world.
Looking Ahead

Venezuela wins just by carrying out this election. The legislative process, stalled for years, will return to normal under a plural assembly that truly resembles the country’s current political landscape and positions itself in favour of self-determination and national sovereignty. The case against blocking Venezuelan assets in US and European banks -$6 billion — will also fall apart with Guaidó out. The new US Administration will have to decide if it will continue to recognize a non-existent government with no clear or constitutional path to legitimacy or if it will return to real politics and engage the Venezuelan Government.

The new National Assembly will no longer be a platform for politicians to plead for US intervention, rather it can push legislation to overcome the blockade and it can turn into a new space for political dialogue between government and opposition. Challenges will continue, but the US will need to reassess its Monroe Doctrine once again. For Venezuela, and the Latin American progressive movement, however, these elections will be another victory of resistance and resilience.

LOSING JOBLESS BENEFITS IS NOT ONLY STRESSFUL

By Avie Schneider, NPR.

December 6, 2020




https://popularresistance.org/losing-jobless-benefits-is-not-only-stressful/




The coronavirus pandemic has thrown millions of Americans out of work — and over the past nine months, up to 20 million have filed for unemployment. Supplemental federal unemployment benefits of $600 per week — a lifeline for many — expired in July and more are set to go away at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t act.

But beyond the economic consequences, not having that financial safety net can lead to serious health problems for those affected, according to new research. Dr. Seth Berkowitz, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine who co-authored some of that research, says that in extreme cases, it may even contribute to deaths that are not directly caused by the coronavirus itself.

Among people who saw their income disrupted by the pandemic, those getting unemployment insurance “had much lower risk of food insufficiency, much lower risk of missing housing payments, lower depressive symptoms, lower anxiety to symptoms, were less likely to delay care,” he tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep.

“It’s incredibly disruptive for people,” Berkowitz says. That can be especially true for people with chronic illnesses — diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol — who may no longer be able to afford their medicine, he says.

“All of those get disruptive if you start having to worry about the most basic needs: How do you put food on the table for you and your children? How do you keep a roof over your head if you’re so stressed out and anxious and have a lot of depressive symptoms?” Berkowitz adds.

Another recent study makes the case that evictions are tied to an increase in coronavirus cases and deaths. The authors of the study found that the lifting of eviction moratoriums could have resulted in between 365,200 and 502,200 excess coronavirus cases and between 8,900 and 12,500 excess deaths.

Berkowitz says he hopes the emerging research about the connection between health and pandemic assistance can help convince policymakers about the importance of economic relief such as unemployment benefits.

“Both for ongoing pandemic relief, because I think the economic effects of the pandemic will be with us for a while, but also just for long-term unemployment insurance reform,” Berkowitz says. “People will lose their jobs through no fault of their own all the time. And so unemployment insurance is really an important part of social insurance.”

Can the loss of unemployment insurance kill people?

“I think it’s very likely that if you’re not able to manage your chronic conditions, that if you’re not able to put food on your table, if you’re evicted or forced out of your home, that that could result in worsening health,” Berkowitz says. “And as an extreme, people could die as a result of not having the resources needed to stay healthy and stay alive.”

Eisenhower’s Ghost Haunts Biden’s Foreign Policy Team

Nicolas J. S. Davies December 5, 2020




https://citizentruth.org/eisenhowers-ghost-haunts-bidens-foreign-policy-team/



Biden’s officials have spent their careers in a hall of mirrors and revolving doors that conflates and confuses defense with corrupt, self-serving militarism, but our future now depends on rescuing our country from that deal with the devil.

In his first words as President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, Antony Blinken said, “we have to proceed with equal measures of humility and confidence.” Many around the world will welcome this promise of humility from the new administration, and Americans should too.

Biden’s foreign policy team will also need a special kind of confidence to confront the most serious challenge they face. That will not be a threat from a hostile foreign country, but the controlling and corrupting power of the Military-Industrial Complex, which President Eisenhower warned our grandparents about 60 years ago, but whose “unwarranted influence” has only grown ever since, as Eisenhower warned, and in spite of his warning.

The Covid pandemic is a tragic demonstration of why America’s new leaders should listen humbly to our neighbors around the world instead of trying to reassert American “leadership.” While the United States compromised with a deadly virus to protect corporate financial interests, abandoning Americans to both the pandemic and its economic effects, other countries put their people’s health first and contained, controlled or even eliminated the virus.

Many of those people have since returned to living normal, healthy lives. Biden and Blinken should listen humbly to their leaders and learn from them, instead of continuing to promote the U.S. neoliberal model that is failing us so badly.

As efforts to develop safe and effective vaccines begin to bear fruit, America is doubling down on its mistakes, relying on Big Pharma to produce expensive, profitable vaccines on an America First basis, even as China, Russia, the WHO’s Covax program and others are already starting to provide low-cost vaccines wherever they are needed around the world.


Chinese vaccines are already in use in Indonesia, Malaysia and the UAE, and China is making loans to poorer countries that can’t afford to pay for them up front. At the recent G20 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned her Western colleagues that they are being eclipsed by China’s vaccine diplomacy.

Russia has orders from 50 countries for 1.2 billion doses of its Sputnik V vaccine. President Putin told the G20 that vaccines should be “common public assets,” universally available to rich and poor countries alike, and that Russia will provide them wherever they are needed.

The U.K. and Sweden’s Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine is another non-profit venture that will cost about $3 per dose, a small fraction of the U.S.’s Pfizer and Moderna products.

From the beginning of the pandemic, it was predictable that U.S. failures and other countries’ successes would reshape global leadership. When the world finally recovers from this pandemic, people around the world will thank China, Russia, Cuba and other countries for saving their lives and helping them in their hour of need.

The Biden administration must also help our neighbors to defeat the pandemic, and it must do better than Trump and his corporate mafia in that respect, but it is already too late to speak of American leadership in this context.

The neoliberal roots of U.S. bad behavior

Decades of U.S. bad behavior in other areas have already led to a broader decline in American global leadership. The U.S. refusal to join the Kyoto Protocol or any binding agreement on climate change has led to an otherwise avoidable existential crisis for the entire human race, even as the United States is still producing record amounts of oil and natural gas. Biden’s climate czar John Kerry now says that the agreement he negotiated in Paris as Secretary of State “is not enough,” but he has only himself and Obama to blame for that.


Obama’s policy was to boost fracked natural gas as a “bridge fuel” for U.S. power plants, and to quash any possibility of a binding climate treaty in Copenhagen or Paris. U.S. climate policy, like the U.S. response to Covid, is a corrupt compromise between science and self-serving corporate interests that has predictably proved to be no solution at all. If Biden and Kerry bring more of that kind of American leadership to the Glasgow climate conference in 2021, humanity must reject it as a matter of survival.

America’s post-9/11 “Global War on Terror,” more accurately a “global war of terror,” has fueled war, chaos and terrorism across the world. The absurd notion that widespread U.S military violence could somehow put an end to terrorism quickly devolved into a cynical pretext for “regime change” wars against any country that resisted the imperial dictates of the wannabe “superpower.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell privately dubbed his colleagues the “fucking crazies,” even as he lied to the UN Security Council and the world to advance their plans for illegal aggression against Iraq. Joe Biden’s critical role as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was to orchestrate hearings that promoted their lies and excluded dissident voices who would have challenged them.

The resulting spiral of violence has killed millions of people, from 7,037 American troop deaths to five assassinations of Iranian scientists (under Obama and now Trump). Most of the victims have been either innocent civilians or people just trying to defend themselves, their families or their countries from foreign invaders, U.S.-trained death squads or actual CIA-backed terrorists.

Former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz told NPR only a week after the crimes of September 11th, “It can never be legitimate to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done. We must make a distinction between punishing the guilty and punishing others.” Neither Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine, Libya, Syria or Yemen was responsible for the crimes of September 11th, and yet U.S. and allied armed forces have filled miles upon miles of graveyards with the bodies of their innocent people.

Like the Covid pandemic and the climate crisis, the unimaginable horror of the “war on terror” is another calamitous case of corrupt U.S. policy-making leading to massive loss of life. The vested interests that dictate and pervert U.S. policy, in particular the supremely powerful Military-Industrial Complex, marginalized the inconvenient truths that none of these countries had attacked or even threatened to attack the United States, and that U.S. and allied attacks on them violated the most fundamental principles of international law.

If Biden and his team genuinely aspire for the United States to play a leading and constructive role in the world, they must find a way to turn the page on this ugly episode in the already bloody history of American foreign policy. Matt Duss, an advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, has called for a formal commission to investigate how U.S. policymakers so deliberately and systematically violated and undermined the “rules-based international order” that their grandparents so carefully and wisely built after two world wars that killed a hundred million people.

Others have observed that the remedy provided for by that rules-based order would be to prosecute senior U.S. officials. That would probably include Biden and some of his team. Ben Ferencz has noted that the U.S. case for “preemptive” war is the same argument that the German defendants used to justify their crimes of aggression at Nuremberg.

“That argument was considered by three American judges at Nuremberg,” Ferencz explained, “and they sentenced Ohlendorf and twelve others to death by hanging. So it’s very disappointing to find that my government today is prepared to do something for which we hanged Germans as war criminals.”

Time to Break the Cross of Iron

Another critical problem facing the Biden team is the deterioration of U.S. relations with China and Russia. Both countries’ military forces are primarily defensive, and therefore cost a small fraction of what the U.S. spends on its global war machine – 9% in the case of Russia, and 36% for China. Russia, of all countries, has sound historical reasons to maintain strong defenses, and does so very cost-effectively.

As former President Carter reminded Trump, China has not been at war since a brief border war with Vietnam in 1979, and has instead focused on economic development and lifted 800 million people out of poverty, while the U.S. has been squandering its wealth on its lost wars. Is it any wonder that China’s economy is now healthier and more dynamic than ours?

For the United States to blame Russia and China for America’s unprecedented military spending and global militarism is a cynical reversal of cause and effect – as much of a nonsense and an injustice as using the crimes of September 11th as a pretext to attack countries and kill people who had nothing to do with the crimes committed.


So here too, Biden’s team face a stark choice between a policy based on objective reality and a deceptive one driven by the capture of U.S. policy by corrupt interests, in this case the most powerful of them all, Eisenhower’s infamous Military-Industrial Complex. Biden’s officials have spent their careers in a hall of mirrors and revolving doors that conflates and confuses defense with corrupt, self-serving militarism, but our future now depends on rescuing our country from that deal with the devil.

As the saying goes, the only tool the U.S. has invested in is a hammer, so every problem looks like a nail. The U.S. response to every dispute with another country is an expensive new weapons system, another U.S. military intervention, a coup, a covert operation, a proxy war, tighter sanctions or some other form of coercion, all based on the supposed power of the U.S. to impose its will on other countries, but all increasingly ineffective, destructive and impossible to undo once unleashed.

This has led to war without end in Afghanistan and Iraq; it has left Haiti, Honduras and Ukraine destabilized and mired in poverty as the result of U.S.-backed coups; it has destroyed Libya, Syria and Yemen with covert and proxy wars and resulting humanitarian crises; and to U.S. sanctions that affect a third of humanity.

So the first question for the first meeting of Biden’s foreign policy team should be whether they can sever their loyalties to the arms manufacturers, corporate-funded think tanks, lobbying and consultant firms, government contractors and corporations they have worked for or partnered with during their careers.

These conflicts of interest amount to a sickness at the roots of the most serious problems facing America and the world, and they will not be resolved without a clean break. Any member of Biden’s team who cannot make that commitment and mean it should resign now, before they do any more damage.

Long before his farewell speech in 1961, President Eisenhower made another speech, responding to the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. He said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed…This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.


In his first year in office, Eisenhower ended the Korean War and cut military spending by 39% from its wartime peak. Then he resisted pressures to raise it again, despite his failure to end the Cold War.

Today, the Military-Industrial Complex is counting on a reversion to the Cold War against Russia and China as the key to its future power and profits, to keep us hanging from this rusty old cross of iron, squandering America’s wealth on trillion-dollar weapons programs as people go hungry, millions of Americans have no healthcare and our climate becomes unlivable.

Are Joe Biden, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan the kind of leaders to just say “No” to the Military-Industrial Complex and consign this cross of iron to the junkyard of history, where it belongs? We will find out very soon.

Biden HHS Pick Backed Medicare for All, Pressed Obama For Tough Action Against Pharma

To run the Department of Health and Human Services, Joe Biden has selected a Democrat who has touted his support for Medicare for All and previously demanded the Obama administration take tough action against the pharmaceutical industry to lower the price of prescription drugs.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Biden is nominating former Congressman and current California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to run HHS. The announcement follows Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo abruptly dropping out of consideration for the job, following The Daily Poster’s report on her agreeing to health care lobbyists’ demands that she provide legal immunity to nursing home corporations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As recently as 2017, Becerra declared, “I've been a supporter of Medicare for all for the 24 years that I was in Congress,” and he said he would fight to create such a system in California, where it was considered in the legislature.

As HHS Secretary, Becerra would be in a position to facilitate states waivers to make it easier for states to create Medicare for All systems.

If confirmed to the job, Becerra would also be in a position to take the action on drug prices that he previously urged the Obama administration to take — though it remains unclear whether Biden would support such a move.

Back in 2016, Becerra was one of the 51 House Democratic lawmakers who signed a letter calling on Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary to use so-called “march-in rights” to effectively rescind exclusive patents for medicines whose research and development was originally funded by government agencies.

“Too many families and providers are facing an extraordinary challenge from unreasonably priced pharmaceuticals,” the lawmakers wrote. “The failure to act in the past has undoubtedly sent an unfortunate signal that prices for federally-funded inventions can be set as high as a sick or dying consumer will pay.”

Between 2010 and 2016, the federal government invested more than $100 billion in research that led to new medicines, according to Bentley University researchers -- but the Clinton administration gave a huge gift to pharmaceutical lobbyists in 1996 when it repealed a rule requiring that those medicines be offered to consumers at a reasonable price. The federal government, however, still has “march in rights” to produce patented medicines when prices become exorbitant, according to the Congressional Research Service.

That’s exactly what Becerra and his colleagues were asking Obama’s administration to do -- but Obama’s administration delivered yet another win for the pharmaceutical industry by rejecting the initiative. The HHS secretary at the time was Sylvia Burwell, who was also reportedly under consideration for the position under Biden.

This year, Becerra was one of 34 state attorneys general to sign a letter demanding the federal government use march-in rights to make the early-onset COVID treatment remdesivir -- whose research and development was sponsored by the government -- more widely available and affordable to all.

“We urge the federal government to use its march-in rights to help increase the supply of this drug and lower the price so it is accessible to our state residents,” the attorneys general wrote in August.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Sludge reported that “unlike many of the leading Democrats who ran in the presidential primary, former Vice President Joe Biden has not embraced the use of march-in rights against pharmaceutical companies.”

As HHS secretary, Becerra will also be in a position to facilitate proposals to allow American pharmacists and wholesalers to import lower-priced FDA-approved medicines from other countries. Becerra voted for drug importation as a House lawmaker. Clinton’s HHS Secretary Donna Shalala killed a drug importation plan in 2000 after a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers passed it through Congress.

Six corporations that talk green and spend dirty

For months, this newsletter has exposed the spread of vaccine misinformation on Facebook. Why? The United States will only free itself from the grips of the pandemic once the number of people vaccinated reaches a critical mass. Studies show that social media is a major driver of vaccine hesitancy.

On November 18, Popular Information reported that Facebook still did not have a policy against vaccine misinformation. On December 3, that finally changed. Facebook announced that it would begin removing "false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of [COVID] vaccines."

Popular Information will be monitoring Facebook closely to see if the company makes good on its promise. But the new policy is significant and demonstrates the ability of independent accountability journalism to drive positive change.



Six corporations that talk green and spend dirty
Judd Legum Dec 7



This is a special joint edition of Popular Information and HEATED, a climate newsletter by journalist Emily Atkin. HEATED is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the planet earth. Sign up HERE.


U.S. Sen David Perdue (R-GA) and Sen Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) speak at a campaign event on November 13, 2020. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)


Last week, 42 major corporations signed a letter calling on President-elect Joe Biden to work with Congress to enact "ambitious” climate policies. But, since Election Day, at least six of those companies have also donated to Republican candidates whose victories in the Georgia Senate run-offs would make meaningful climate legislation effectively impossible.

Organized by the non-profit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), the letter says the world is already experiencing "rising costs of climate change," including "record wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and other extreme weather." It says swift action in 2021 is "a business imperative," and that unless Congress takes steps now, "future generations will face far greater environmental, economic, and health impacts."

The public statement stands in stark contrast to recent political spending of several participating corporations. Since Election Day, signatories including Microsoft, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and General Motors have contributed thousands of dollars to the high-stakes re-election bids of Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA)—races which will determine control of the Senate.

If either Loeffler or Perdue win on January 5, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will remain in charge—an outcome which experts agree would cripple the outlook for ambitious climate policy. Comprehensive climate legislation would be “off the table for at least two more years,” Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois, recently told Reuters.

Climate scientists say a further delay of two years for comprehensive climate policy would be enormously consequential. Still, many companies had no problem quietly funding races that would almost certainly prevent that outcome, while loudly declaring their commitment to climate action.
Microsoft defends its $5,000 campaign contribution to Perdue as “engagement”

One of the signatories of the C2ES letter is Microsoft. The company has positioned itself as an advocate not just for aggressive climate action, but against corporate greenwashing.

“The time of raised ambitions and grand announcements without clear action plans is also past,” the company’s chief environmental officer wrote last year. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said the world "is confronted with an urgent carbon crisis," and Microsoft President Brad Smith pledged that the company will "use its voice" to "advance public policies" to address climate change.

Just days before signing the letter, however, Microsoft was knowingly funding a candidate whose victory would keep the Senate in Republican hands. On November 19, Microsoft's corporate PAC donated $5,000 — the maximum allowable contribution — to Perdue's campaign.

In a statement to Popular Information and HEATED, a Microsoft spokesperson defended its donation:


We recognize that to make progress on the issues that matter to our customers and to our business, we must engage with candidates and officeholders who hold a range of views. Given the breadth of our policy agenda, it’s unlikely we’ll agree on every issue, but we’ve learned that engagement—even when individuals hold different positions—is an essential part of achieving progress.

Microsoft is trying to have it both ways. When its executives are making a glitzy announcement, climate change is an issue of paramount importance. But when Microsoft is asked to justify a contribution to a political candidate who would obstruct climate action for years, climate change is just one of many issues. Donating to a candidate that denies basic climate science is part of Microsoft's strategy of "engagement" with politicians that hold "a range of views."

Microsoft's approach is not atypical, and helps explain why a robust response to the climate crisis remains elusive. Big corporations will do anything to convince their customers they are committed to addressing climate change, unless that thing is changing the current U.S. political landscape to be less hostile to climate policy.
Five other corporations that signed the climate letter and then donated to Perdue, Loeffler or both

Popular Information and HEATED found five other companies that signed the C2ES letter but also donated to Perdue and Loeffler since Election Day. There may be more; the most recent campaign finance data from corporate PACs, filed on December 3, only includes donations made until November 23.

Bank of America signed the letter urging Congress to act. The company has said there is a "climate crisis" and "climate change can no longer be ignored." “The 2010s were a lost decade when it comes to ameliorating climate change. As we head into the 2020s, we need to move forward very fast,” Bank of America's Haim Israel said.

At the same time, on November 10, Bank of America's corporate PAC donated $5,000 to Perdue.

Asked how that donation was consistent with its call for ambitious action on climate in the next Congress, a Bank of America spokesperson said the company had no comment.

General Motors also signed the C2ES letter as part of a broader public relations offensive on climate change. In a November 23 letter to environmental groups, it embraced President-elect Biden's call to move the U.S. auto industry into an "all-electric future."

On November 16, General Motors' corporate PAC also donated $5,000 to Perdue.

The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Goldman Sachs has said that "climate change is one of the most significant environmental challenges of the 21st century," and "urgent action by government...is necessary to curb greenhouse gas emissions." It also said that "delaying action on climate change will be costly for our natural environment, to humans and to the economy."

Goldman Sachs signed the C2ES letter calling on Biden and the new Congress to take aggressive action on climate change. But on November 12, Goldman Sachs' corporate PAC donated $5,000 to support Perdue, and thus the effort to keep McConnell in control of the Senate.

The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Ford has said that "addressing climate change impact is a salient human rights issue and a strategic priority for Ford." The company pledged to work with "elected officials to shape policy actions that address climate change, protect the environment and promote technology innovation."

The company, which signed the letter urging the new Congress to act on climate, has claimed it has "consistent internal and external policy and messaging that is aligned with our overall climate change strategy."

On November 10, Ford's corporate PAC donated $5,000 to Loeffler. On November 17, it donated $1,000 to Perdue.

The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Dominion Energy, which operates coal-fired power plants and lobbies for the construction of natural gas pipelines, is an unlikely signatory of the letter urging action on climate change. But it is attempting to craft a more progressive image on the issue. "Climate change is one of the most challenging issues of our time, and Dominion Energy is committed to doing our part to reduce carbon and methane emissions," the company website says.

On November 18, Dominion Energy's corporate PAC donated $5,000 to Perdue.

The company did not respond to a request for comment.
“The stakes could not be higher”

The outcome of the Georgia Senate run-offs will define Joe Biden’s presidency. They will also define the fight for a livable planet.

The stakes of the upcoming Congressional term “could not be higher” when it comes to climate change, the Washington Post reports. “As Biden’s term soon begins, the world faces ever more dangerous and irreversible levels of warming because of the continued buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from not just the United States but countries around the world.”

The safest level of warming is 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Achieving that, according to the IPCC, requires the world to slash its carbon emissions by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030. Then it must reach net-zero around 2050. This is the only scenario at which the catastrophic health, economic, and ecological impacts of warming are reversible.

Meaningful climate policy is, in other words, a gargantuan task that must be accomplished very quickly. And it’s very unlikely the entire world will achieve it if the United States does not lead, because the United States has contributed more to climate change than any other country in the world.

There’s a lot Biden could do on climate change without the support of a Democratic Congress — re-joining the Paris climate accord, reinstating Obama’s climate regulations, and implementing more executive-level climate regulations across the federal bureaucracy, to name a few. But that only brings the U.S. back to where it was four years ago. The fastest way Biden could advance the U.S. toward effective climate action would be to pass an economic stimulus package focused on clean energy. But experts agree that likely wouldn’t happen with a Republican Senate.

Fossil fuel executives, for their part, are counting on this to be the case. “Biden is not going to be able to ram through a costly, zero-carbon mandate through a Republican Senate,” Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and oil executive, recently told Bloomberg. “Obama couldn’t do it with control of both the House and the Senate.”
Perdue and Loeffler have no record of supporting bipartisan action

The climate-friendly corporations donating to Perdue and Loeffler aren’t just supporting a Republican-led Senate. They’re supporting two candidates with no record of supporting the type bipartisan climate policy they claim is an urgent priority.

Perdue has long been an outspoken climate denier, and has shown little evidence of changing his stripes. In a debate with Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff in October, he said the climate was changing but refused to acknowledge that greenhouse gases are the cause. Perdue also is “a first cousin of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and golfing buddy of Trump,” who “vowed to protect the coal industry and was endorsed by the Koch-affiliated Super PAC, Americans for Prosperity," the Intercept reported.

Loeffler, according to InsideClimate News, is a “former energy executive” and “the richest member of the U.S. Senate.” Though she’s said little about climate change in general, she doesn’t have to; she’s positioned herself “as an ardent supporter of President Trump and his pro-fossil fuel agenda.” That agenda is not just to ignore climate change, but to make it worse by propping up fossil fuels and slowing down the clean energy transition.

Pros And Cons Of Prosecuting Trump After His Presidency

https://www.theonion.com/pros-and-cons-of-prosecuting-trump-after-his-presidency-1845807991




Both state and federal prosecutors have reportedly considered filing charges against President Donald Trump for charges stemming from before his presidency and his time in office, but many warn that such a move could cause more harm than good for the country. The Onion looks at the pros and cons of prosecuting Trump.



PRO

Constant litigation would be huge hit among nostalgic Trump supporters.

Courtroom sketch artists could use the work.

What good is having a Deep State if you can’t take down a few true-blue patriots?

Well, it is a customary thing you do to criminals.

Would make his 2024 comeback story that much more impressive.

CON

Derails Trump’s plans to dedicate remaining years to charitable endeavors.

That smug look on Chuck Todd’s face.

Would end his 74-year streak of not being held accountable for actions.

Jury duty such a pain in the ass.

Rest of nation could be charged with aiding and abetting.

Biden Campaign Pushing Away Progressives

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN-JSxYeobk&ab_channel=HardLensMedia