Sunday, August 29, 2021
CALIFORNIA KIDS TO TEACHERS’ PENSION FUND: DIVEST FROM OIL
By Marcy Winograd,
Common Dreams.
August 27, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/california-kids-to-teachers-pension-fund-divest-from-oil/
The nation’s second largest pension fund invests in the climate crisis.
The kids are mad as hell—and so are teachers who want their California teacher pension fund, CalSTRS, to join 1,000 other institutions collectively divesting $14.5 trillion from the fossil fuel industry that threatens climate catastrophe. The retirement fund divestment fight, led by retired teachers in Fossil Free CA and students from Youth vs Apocalypse and Earth Guardians, estimates CalSTRS’ portfolio investments in fossil fuels at $16 billion, mostly in oil and gas delivery systems, but $6 billion in direct investments in oil behemoths, with $400 million in Exxon-Mobil, $350 million in Chevron, $250 million in BP and $108 million in Enbridge Inc. This is the same corporation sending attack dogs to maul water protectors protesting drilling at river crossings on indigenous land, where Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline will send sludgy tar sands through Minnesota. The estimated pollution from the pipeline is equivalent to 50 coal powered plants running for 50 years.
Fossil Free CA and other divestment advocates, including this author, warn that CalSTRS, the nation’s second largest pension fund with a $310 billion dollar portfolio, just behind CalPERS’ $444 billion in holdings, risks sticking its members, over 700-thousand active and retired California teachers, with stranded assets—unless the pension fund moves the money before it’s too late, too late for the portfolio, too late for the planet.
CalSTRS’s resistance to divestment from Big Oil comes at a financial cost to rank and file public school teachers. In 2019, the Corporate Knights, a Toronto-based research firm, published a study showing that had CalSTRS divested during the last decade the teacher retirement fund would have generated an additional $5.5 billion. Forbes reports that during that same decade, the energy sector of big fossil fuel companies, such as Exxon (ejected from the Dow in 2020), Chevron and BP, shrunk to the smallest investment sector in Standard and Poor’s (S & P) index of the 500 largest US publicly traded companies. This year oil companies underperforming the index saw their credit ratings cut in half.
To put it in teacher terms, Big Oil is not earning a passing fiscal grade.
Divestment advocates argue now is the time to starve the fossil fuel industry of capital to prevent new oil production. Otherwise, the burning of these fuels will heat the Earth higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the tipping point for climate catastrophe.
Advocates point to the recent International Energy Agency (IEA) -report “Net Zero by 2050,” in which the world’s energy advisors turn a thumbs down on new oil projects, “The contraction of oil and natural gas production will have far-reaching implications for all the countries and companies that produce these fuels. No new oil and natural gas fields are needed in the net zero pathway …”
By investing in Exxon, Chevron, BP, Occidental Petroleum, Phillips 66, Royal Dutch Shell, and other oil companies, CalSTRS is encouraging new oil production and undermining the IEA.
Ultimately, the decision to divest from fossil fuels lies in the fiduciary hands of CalSTRS’ board members, who have yet to vote for divestment, despite repeated testimony and activism from teachers and middle schoolers at board meetings. On November 6, 2019, the CalSTRS investment committee was recessed for hours after middle school students drove home their divestment message with a protest dance and recording of climate activist Greta Thunberg’s recent speech to the UN. Iman, an 11 year old member of Earth Guardians Bay Area Crew, told the press, “I live in Richmond right next to the oil refinery. I can see with my own eyes the urgency for closing down fossil fuel companies. We are at the beginning of mass extinction.”
A vociferous opponent of divestment is CalSTRS Chair Harry Keiley, a Santa Monica Malibu teacher who advocates leveraging institutional heft to demand oil companies transition to renewables, a tactic rejected by climate champion former Vice President Al Gore, who testified before the CalSTRS board in April, 2021. “I have been less than impressed with carbon-intensive companies to play a meaningful role in bringing about change,” said Gore.
CalSTRS board member Denise Bradford, the former Chair of the CTA Retirement Committee, joins Keiley in opposing divestment from fossil fuels. Both she and Keiley declined to respond to this writer’s recent emails.
Fiona Ma, California’s State Treasurer, in 2019 joined with students and teachers calling for divestment. This year, CA State School Superintendent Tony Thurmond publicly stated his support for CalSTRS to divest. Betty Yee, California’s State Controller who declared in 2019, “the fossil fuel era is ending,” is a question mark, much like several others on the CalSTRS board.
As summer wildfires swept through Northern California, students wearing gas masks covered in “oil” (black molasses) marched through downtown Santa Monica, calling on CalSTRS Chair Keiley to support their divestment campaign. Sporting signs that read “Investing in Oil Makes Teachers’ Money Spoil”—”Harry, you are drowning us in oil” and “CalSTRS funds pipelines,” the students wove their way through the farmers market and Third Street Promenade, chanting, “No more fossil fools.”
In a 7/19/21 OpEd in the Sacramento Business Journal Keiley defends his anti-divestment stance, pointing to CalSTRS’ successful nomination and backing of dissidents for the Exxon Board of Directors. “For ExxonMobil, divestment would have taken away our influence and ability to effect change, especially on the board,” writes Keiley, adding, when necessary, we escalate our engagement, such as the shareholder-approved proposal we filed with Phillips 66 to report on how the company’s lobbying activities align with the Paris Climate Agreement.” Keiley’s point of view reflects CalSTRS’ stated “Perspective on fossil fuel divestment,” posted on the pension fund’s website.
Critics argue CalSTRS’ investments are propping up a dying and deadly industry, even as Chevron boasts of drilling 25 new oil wells worldwide, and Exxon-Mobil undertakes the world’s largest oil production in Guyana, set to release 125 million metric tons of CO2 per year from 2025-2040. “CalSTRS’ insistence on engaging with fossil fuel companies rather than divesting from them comes right out of the industry’s playbook,” says Jane Vosburg, a retired English teacher and co-founder of Fossil Free CA. She adds, “While large parts of the world are burning up and others drowning in floods, the CalSTRS board stays married to Big Oil. What has been the result? Threats to indigenous people’s land at the Dakota Access Pipeline and Enbridge’s Line 3, three new oil executives, including one from Enbridge, on Exxon’s board and billion-dollar losses for teachers.”
The 35,000-strong United Teachers of Los Angeles, the largest union under the umbrella of the California Teachers Association, passed a resolution in 2019 in favor of divestment, but CTA’s Sacramento lobbyist Jennifer Baker has opposed such a move. In 2017, Baker wrote a letter in opposition to California Assembly Member Ash Kalra’s bill to divest from Energy Transfer, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, a much-protested oil route stretching from North Dakota to Illinois, threatening ancestral lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
Interestingly, over the last 10 years, Energy Transfer lost 5% of its stock value while the S & P went up, returning 13.6% annually. CalSTRS, according to its posted (6/30/20) financial reports, invested $42 million in Energy Transfer debt securities.
One does not need a crystal ball to predict waning returns for the fossil fuel industry; one does not need a doctoral degree in political science to know that alienating public education allies—youth, people of color, the indigenous—comes with political risks; one does not even need a degree in education to understand that teachers profiting from investments in global warming send a contemptuous message to their students facing the prospects of rising sea level, floods, drought, forest destruction—and human misery.
Anaya Sayal is part of the Youth Vs Apocalypse CalSTRS divestment team. The longer CalSTRS waits to divest, she says, “the worse the situation will get, so we need to act now, otherwise future generations will be drowning in climate issues that will be significantly more difficult to fix than for us right now.”
Take Action
Email Board@CalSTRS.com to urge the board to vote to divest.
Join Fossil Free CA and sign their petition.
Sign the Youth Vs Apocalypse & Earth Guardians Petition to CalSTRS.
SUPREME COURT ALLOWS EVICTIONS TO RESUME DURING PANDEMIC
By Mark Sherman,
Associated Press.
August 27, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/supreme-court-allows-evictions-to-resume-during-pandemic/
Washington — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is allowing evictions to resume across the United States, blocking the Biden administration from enforcing a temporary ban that was put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The court’s action late Thursday ends protections for roughly 3.5 million people in the United States who said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to Census Bureau data from early August.
The court said in an unsigned opinion that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reimposed the moratorium Aug. 3, lacked the authority to do so under federal law without explicit congressional authorization. The justices rejected the administration’s arguments in support of the CDC’s authority.
“If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it,” the court wrote.
The three liberal justices dissented. Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the three, pointed to the increase in COVID-19 caused by the delta variant as one of the reasons the court should have left the moratorium in place. “The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90% of counties are experiencing high transmission rates,” Breyer wrote.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was “disappointed” by the decision and said President Joe Biden “is once again calling on all entities that can prevent evictions — from cities and states to local courts, landlords, Cabinet Agencies — to urgently act to prevent evictions.”
It was the second loss for the administration this week at the hands of the high court’s conservative majority. On Tuesday, the court effectively allowed the reinstatement of a Trump-era policy forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their hearings. The new administration had tried to end the Remain in Mexico program, as it is informally known.
On evictions, Biden acknowledged the legal headwinds the new moratorium would likely encounter. But Biden said that even with doubts about what courts would do, it was worth a try because it would buy at least a few weeks of time for the distribution of more of the $46.5 billion in rental assistance Congress had approved.
The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the pace of distribution has increased and nearly a million households have been helped. But only about 11% of the money, just over $5 billion, has been distributed by state and local governments, the department said.
The administration has called on state and local officials to “move more aggressively” in distributing rental assistance funds and urged state and local courts to issue their own moratoriums to “discourage eviction filings” until landlords and tenants have sought the funds.
A handful of states, including California, Maryland and New Jersey, have put in place their own temporary bans on evictions. In a separate order earlier this month, the high court ended some protections for New York residents who had fallen behind on their rents during the pandemic.
The high court hinted strongly in late June that it would take this path if asked again to intervene. At that time, the court allowed an earlier pause on evictions to continue through the end of July.
But four conservative justices would have set the moratorium aside then and a fifth, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said Congress would have to expressly authorize a new pause on evictions. Neither house of Congress has passed a new evictions moratorium.
The administration at first allowed the earlier moratorium to lapse July 31, saying it had no legal authority to allow it to continue. But the CDC issued a new moratorium days later as pressure mounted from lawmakers and others to help vulnerable renters stay in their homes as the coronavirus’ delta variant surged. The moratorium had been scheduled to expire Oct. 3.
Landlords in Alabama and Georgia who challenged the earlier evictions ban quickly returned to court, where they received a sympathetic hearing. U.S. Judge Dabney Friedrich, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said the new moratorium was beyond the CDC’s authority.
But Friedrich said she was powerless to stop it because of an earlier ruling from the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that sits above her. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit likewise refused to put the CDC order on hold, prompting the landlords’ emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.
The earlier versions of the moratorium, first ordered during Trump’s presidency, applied nationwide and were put in place out of fear that people who couldn’t pay their rent would end up in crowded living conditions like homeless shelters and help spread the virus.
The new moratorium temporarily halted evictions in counties with “substantial and high levels” of virus transmissions and would cover areas where 90% of the U.S. population lives.
The Biden administration argued that the rise in the delta variant underscored the dangers of resuming evictions in areas of high transmission of COVID-19. But that argument did not win broad support at the high court.
Destiny vs Hasanabi / Kamala Harris IN TROUBLE / Tulsi MASK OFF
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtO29j9n-L8
STRIKE AT PORTLAND NABISCO BAKERY SPREADS TO FIVE OTHER FACILITIES
By Jamie Goldberg,
Oregon Live.
August 27, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/strike-at-ne-portland-nabisco-bakery-spreads-to-5-other-facilities/
Oregon – A strike that began at the Nabisco bakery in Northeast Portland on Aug. 10 has spread to five other facilities across the United States and gained national attention with both politicians and celebrities voicing support for the workers.
Workers at the Nabisco distribution center in Norcross, Georgia, on Monday became the latest group of employees to go on strike. Approximately 1,000 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers union are now on strike across six Nabisco bakeries and distribution centers nationwide.
The strike began in Portland earlier this month when about 200 workers walked off the job after Mondelez International, the parent company of Nabisco, proposed scheduling changes during contract negotiations that workers say would limit overtime pay and proposed providing new hires with a more costly healthcare plan. The new offer comes after the company eliminated its pension plan in 2018.
Mondelez International said in a statement that it was disappointed with the strike and felt it had proposed a competitive offer that would set up the “U.S. bakeries for future investment and long-term success.”
Laurie Guzzinati, a spokesperson for Mondelez, said production is continuing at the facilities where workers are on strike and the company doesn’t anticipate any disruption in the distribution of Oreos, Chips Ahoy and the other cookies and crackers that Nabisco produces.
The growing strike, however, has drawn national attention and support from democratic politicians, and at least one celebrity.
Actor Danny DeVito indicated last week that he would boycott Nabisco products until the demands of workers are met. He tweeted “NO CONTRACTS. NO SNACKS” — a slogan that has now become commonplace at the 24-hour picket line outside the Northeast Portland bakery. In a tweet last week, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called on Mondelez to treat its workers with “dignity and respect.”
Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan spoke at a rally organized by the workers last week and Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, plans to join workers on the picket line this weekend. The Oregon Legislative Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Caucus, as well as Oregon’s U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden and U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer each sent letters this week to Dirk Van de Put, CEO of Mondelez International, voicing support for the striking workers.
“As the pandemic rages on and we continue to ask the most of our essential workforce, we reject race-to-the-bottom employment practices,” Merkley, Wyden and Blumenauer wrote.
Cameron Taylor, a business agent at Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers Local 364 in Portland, said the union met with Modelez this week, but negotiations remain stalled. Still, he said his members have been encouraged by the response they’ve seen.
“It’s gained traction and sparked a response from people that’s kind of surprising,” Taylor said. “It’s our fight, but I think it’s kind of struck a nerve with the public.”
Rep. Wlnsvey Campos, D-Aloha, a member of the BIPOC caucus, said that advocates have to stand in solidarity with frontline workers, like those at the Nabisco factories, who have been asked to work long hours and risk their health during the pandemic, and too often have not received the respect and compensation they deserve.
“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen the sacrifices of frontline workers and particularly with this strike we’ve heard stories of workers who have been working brutal hours, some 12 days in a row,” Campos said. “All the while, Nabisco has been sending their jobs elsewhere, they have been looking for ways to reduce their pay and benefits.”
The strike comes on the heels of Nabisco shutting down factories in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and Atlanta earlier this summer.
Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International President Anthony Shelton accused Nabisco in a statement earlier this month of closing the bakeries with union jobs and sending them to Mexico. Mondelez said no work was sent to Mexico as a result of the factory closures this summer.
THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’ SCAM CONTINUES
By Caitlin Johnstone,
Caitlin's Newsletter.
August 27, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/the-war-on-terror-scam-continues/
ISIS has reportedly claimed credit for an explosion near Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. As of this writing there are around 90 dead including 13 US military personnel, though to read western mainstream media reports you’d think only US troops died and not scores of Afghans as well.
This was the deadliest attack in a decade on US troops in Afghanistan, which is odd to think about considering how many people the US military has killed during that time; just between January and July of this year the war killed 1,659 civilians. The way the US war machine has shifted to relying more on highly profitable missiles and bombs and unmanned aircraft to avoid the bad PR of flag-draped bodies flying home on jets is making the murder of foreigners a safer profession than working at a convenience store.
Because US military casualties of this size have become more rare despite their being spread throughout the world in nations whose people don’t want them there, news of those 13 deaths is being met with shock and astonishment instead of being regarded as a very normal part of foreign military occupations. People are acting like these were mall cops in Ohio and not military forces overseeing the tail end of a 20-year war overseas, and pundits and politicians are demanding more bombs and more military interventionism in response to people on the other side of the world attacking them in their own country.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement calling on the US to “redouble our global efforts” in the war on terror in response to the attack, seizing the opportunity to promote more “we fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” nonsense.
“Terrible things happen when terrorists are allowed to operate freely. This murderous attack offers the clearest possible reminder that terrorists will not stop fighting the United States just because our politicians grow tired of fighting them,” McConnell said. “I remain concerned that terrorists worldwide will be emboldened by our retreat, by this attack, and by the establishment of a radical Islamic terror state in Afghanistan. We need to redouble our global efforts to confront these barbarian enemies who want to kill Americans and attack our homeland.”
Yep, yeah, that makes sense Mitch. My neighbor attacked me when she caught me in her house at night going through her valuables. This proves she’s always wanted to attack me in my home. I need to go fight her over there so I don’t have to fight her here.
What the US actually needs to do is get the absolute fuck out of the entire region and stop creating more and more violent extremists with insane acts of mass military violence for power and profit. The very last institution on earth who should be trying to do something about ISIS is the institution whose actions created ISIS in the first place.
But of course acting in accordance with that self-evident fact is too much to ask of the US government, and Biden has announced that he has ordered his commanders “to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities.”
So the US war machine will continue to rain down highly profitable explosives upon Afghanistan for as long as it likes, using this attack as justification for more military operations instead of taking it as yet another sign that what it has been doing is not working and keeps making things worse.
Step 1: Destroy nations, kill millions and displace tens of millions in military interventions for power and profit.
Step 2: Wait for some of those people to hate you and want to fight back.
Step 3: Use their desire to fight back as justification to repeat Step 1.
The “war on terror” is the greatest scam ever invented.
Afghanistan Vet Worried By Biden's Response To Kabul Blast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOUMVBLd1hw
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