#Senate#Democrats opened an investigation on Thurs into #Trump’s meeting w/ #oil & #gas execs last month to determine whether Trump offered a “policies-for-money transaction” [#bribe ] when he asked for $1B for his 2024 campaign so he could retake the White House & delete #POTUS#Biden’s #climate#regulations.
If you sit down and talk with Republicans,
which I advise against doing,
you will notice that they justify nearly every one of their awful policies with a call to states’ rights.
They say they want to take power away from national representatives in Washington, D.C., and redistribute it to state and local governments,
which, they claim, are best equipped to determine the best policies for their constituents’ particular, parochial concerns.
They use this appeal to “federalism” to shield them from moral accountability for their disastrous actions.
Republicans will say, for instance, that their intention is not to take away abortion rights but merely to let the states decide when a person can be forced to give birth against their will.
They are lying, of course.
We know this because whenever Republicans get the power to impose their views by national fiat, they happily do so, states’ rights be damned.
Republicans are for local control right up until a local prosecutor declines to deport an immigrant or a city council decides to ban assault weapons.
Still, “states’ rights” remains their battle cry,
and few things expose the full measure of their antipathy toward democratic norms and civil rights than what they do with the power they’ve given to the states.
Most people are aware of the horrors that await when Republicans take control of statehouses and governors’ mansions.
For recent examples, consider Greg Abbott’s murder moat in Texas, or Glenn Youngkin’s crusade against abortion rights and Pornhub in Virginia.
Fewer, however, recognize the horrors that lie in store when Republicans commandeer the machinery of the law.
Put simply, whichever rights the Supreme Court does not succeed in obliterating, Republican-controlled state courts and Republican attorneys general eagerly chisel away, state by state.
They are the people who, under their own authority, can bend the law to their will and weaponize it against vulnerable communities.
There are currently 27 of them, and they include future Newsmax hosts like
Kansas AG Kris #Kobach, who finds his joy in suing to stop Joe Biden’s student debt relief program;
Florida AG Ashley #Moody, who spends her days fighting whatever “wokeness” conspiracy exists in her head at any given moment;
and Texas AG Ken #Paxton, who has effectively decided to make up his own immigration laws and enforce them at the point of a gun.
Republicans realized long ago that state AGs represent the steel gauntlet inside the velvet glove of states’ rights.
They also realized that they needed an organization to help them make that vision real,
so in 1999 they created one: the
💥Republican Attorneys General Association.💥
Much like the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee or any number of partisan-affiliated outfits, #RAGA identifies candidates, supports their efforts to win elections, and imposes national Republican priorities at the state level
—though that’s far from all it does.
The association sees its mission as “Defending the Rule of Law. Keeping America Safe”
and hails itself as “America’s last line of defense.”
You’d think that means keeping states safe from criminals and fraudsters,
but in most cases RAGA AGs think they’re “defending” us from transgender kids who need to use the bathroom or Uber drivers who take people across state lines to get abortions.
RAGA prosecutors share a hatred of reproductive rights, a love of guns, and an obsession with persecuting the LGBTQ community.
You probably didn’t need me to tell you that, though:
Hating women and gay people while using a .450 Bushmaster as a masculinity supplement when the testicle tanning wears off is simply standard GOP operating procedure these days.
But RAGA AGs are also committed to doing the dirty work for every other hellish Republican policy idea,
from destroying the environment to gutting voting rights to undermining vaccines, because apparently states need “defending” from science, facts, and public health.
No matter what awful thing they’re doing, the AGs always have enough money to do it.
In exchange for this largesse, these corporations get more than one-off lawsuits or the occasional friendly AG.
Beyond backing individual officials, RAGA is involved with bigger, broader strategies.
RAGA attorneys general work hand-in-hand with preferred Trump judges to shape our national laws through targeted cases designed for appellate and eventually Supreme Court review.
They make rulings that trigger nationwide injunctions.
In recent months, RAGA AGs in 19 states have asserted their right to get access to the private medical records of patients seeking care out of state
—most likely so they can be prosecuted for receiving an abortion when they come back home.
In 13 states, RAGA AGs have threatened to sue companies over their diversity and inclusion programs.
Most of the time, the law is hiding in shadows, obscured under thick layers of jargon and confusing rules of procedure.
But RAGA attorneys general are not trying to hide the ball. They’re proud of their work.
These people are elected officials (many with ambitions for higher office), so when they menace a vulnerable community, they want you to know about it.
#Norway taxes its #fossilfuel industry and offers free #university degrees to students, while #Australia subsidises fossil fuel expansion and imposes high costs on university education for its youth. Budget allocations reflect choices and priorities, revealing significant differences between the two nations.
Is the government taking more from students through #HECS than it collects from the #Petroleum#Resources Rent Tax? #prrt#auspol
Biden administration bans drilling in nearly half of #Alaska#petroleum reserve
"The Interior Department will block oil drilling on over 13 million acres in the Western Arctic, including about 40% of the land of the NPR-A – home to protected animal species including polar bears and caribou.
The Biden administration [also] moved to block the Trump-approved Ambler road in the Alaskan wilderness, the access point for a proposed copper mine."
Immersive performance/exhibit co-created/produced by a colleague at the Natural History Museum is up through the 28th of January! Taking up the #shipping and #petroleum effects on lives in #ToxicLA#OilBeach#LosAngeles
Mah juxtaposes the petrochemical industry’s destructive corporate worldviews with environmental justice struggles in the US, China, and Europe: multiscalar activism—a form of collective resistance that spans local, regional, national, and planetary sites and scales and addresses the interconnected issues of #EnvironmentalJustice, #climate, #pollution, health, extraction, land rights, workers’ rights, systemic #racism, and toxic #colonialism
If anyone for some reason is looking for a review essay assignment on #petroleum, #shipping, #capitalism, Mah's Petrochemical Planet would go well with Oil Beach and Negative Ecologies by David Bond.
Today in Labor History August 19, 1953: The U.S. CIA and British MI6 help Iranian royalist troops overthrow the liberal-leaning Premier Mohammed Mossadegh. As Prime Minister, he introduced reforms such as social security, land reforms and higher taxes including on rental income. He also nationalized the nation’s petroleum industry, which the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC), later known as British Petroleum (BP) could not tolerate. As a result, they installed the brutal, pro-Western Shah Mohammed Pahlevi. The brutality of his regime, the torture, secret police, disappearances and mass imprisonment of opponents, set the stage for the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and over 40 years of US aggression against Iran.
Shell estimated to make hundreds of millions trading russian gas since the Ukraine invasion
👉 Only three companies traded more russian liquified gas, two of them russian,
👉 while only four countries supplied more to Shell’s traders in 2022.
On 8 March 2022, #Shell was embarrassed. Shell’s then-CEO Ben van Beurden said sorry and promised to stop dealing in all russian hydrocarbons: no #oil, no #petroleum products, no #gas
The 72nd annual Statistical Review of World Energy, something of a bible (or at least yearbook) of global energy use, has been published today. The link to the actual report is buried in obscurity at the bottom of the page:
This is the report formerly known as the BP (British Petroleum) Annual Statistical Review. The report was transferred to the Energy Institute and KPMG in February of this year.
Key findings:
COVID-19 continues to impact global energy consumption, generally, and within specific regions and energy classes. There's both some recovery and regions (notably China, with reduced aviation fuel usage) continued reduction from pre-COVID levels.
Overall energy growth slowed, though usage increased, "3% above the 2019 pre-COVID level".
Renewables reached 7.5% of total primary energy consumption, up 1% annually.
CO2 emissions "continued to rise to a new high growing 0.8% in 2022 to 39.3 GtCO2e, with emissions from energy use rising 0.9% to 34.4 GtCO2."
Oil consumption continued to increase (rising by 2.9 million barrels/day to 97.3 m b/d) as did prices ($101/bbl Brent crude).
Natural gas prices reached record levels, whilst demand declined 3% annually.
Fossil fuel share is steady at 82%.
Coal usage increased globally, along with prices.
Renewables (excluding hydro) grew 14%.
The report now also includes coverage of lithium carbonate and cobalt prices and production.
Dear Friends, #ClimateDiary 1/3
PM2.5 (particulate matter, 2.5 micrometers) was 151 at 06:00 when this photo was made. These particles are from #Quebec, #Canada#WildFires. In Quebec the rate of wildfires so far this year is 600x more than average. 160,000 hectares have burned. #Pennsylvania and #NewJersey are at very high fire risk. Risk is added by chances for #DryThunderstorms. They are a feature of #desert climate.
My first book, City of Black Gold (2019), is a history of Kirkuk - where the #oil industry started in #Iraq - that explains how ethnicity as a political practice grew out of the intersections of colonialism, nation building, urbanization, and #petroleum.