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“What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.”

-- Theodor W. Adorno

News and Opinion

This is an article worth reading in full. This extract doesn't do it justice. Cook really nails the intellectual and cultural roots of our present demise in a concise statement.

A liberal elite still luring us towards the abyss

A group of 30 respected intellectuals, writers and historians has published a manifesto bewailing the imminent collapse of Europe and its supposed Enlightenment values of liberalism and rationalism. The idea of Europe, they warn, “is falling apart before our eyes”, as Britain prepares for Brexit and “populist and nationalist” parties look poised to make sweeping gains in elections across the continent. The short manifesto has been published in the liberal elite’s European house journals, newspapers such as the Guardian. “We must now fight for the idea of Europe or perish beneath the waves of populism,” their document reads. Failure means “resentment, hatred and their cortege of sad passions will surround and submerge us.” ...

In one sense, their diagnosis is correct: Europe and the liberal tradition are coming apart at the seams. But not because, as they strongly imply, European politicians are pandering to the basest instincts of a mindless rabble – the ordinary people they have so little faith in. Rather, it is because a long experiment in liberalism has finally run its course. Liberalism has patently failed – and failed catastrophically. These intellectuals are standing, like the rest of us, on a precipice from which we are about to jump or topple. But the abyss has not opened up, as they suppose, because liberalism is being rejected. Rather, the abyss is the inevitable outcome of this shrinking elite’s continuing promotion – against all rational evidence – of liberalism as a solution to our current predicament. ...

Liberalism, like most ideologies, has an upside. Its respect for the individual and his freedoms, its interest in nurturing human creativity, and its promotion of universal values and human rights over tribal attachment have had some positive consequences. But liberal ideology has been very effective at hiding its dark side – or more accurately, at persuading us that this dark side is the consequence of liberalism’s abandonment rather than inherent to the liberal’s political project. ... The liberal’s professed concern for others’ welfare and their rights has, in reality, provided cynical cover for a series of ever-more transparent resource grabs. The parading of liberalism’s humanitarian credentials has entitled our elites to leave a trail of carnage and wreckage in their wake in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and soon, it seems, in Venezuela. We have killed with our kindness and then stolen our victims’ inheritance. ...

At its worst, it has unleashed quite literally an arms race, one that – because of a mix of our unconstrained creativity, our godlessness and the economic logic of the military-industrial complex – culminated in the development of nuclear weapons. We have now devised the most complete and horrific ways imaginable to kill each other. We can commit genocide on a global scale. Meanwhile, the absolute prioritising of the individual has sanctioned a pathological self-absorption, a selfishness that has provided fertile ground not only for capitalism, materialism and consumerism but for the fusing of all of them into a turbo-charged neoliberalism. That has entitled a tiny elite to amass and squirrel away most of the planet’s wealth out of reach of the rest of humanity. ...

And so the liberal impulse has driven us to the brink of extinguishing our species and possibly all life on our planet. Our drive to asset-strip, to hoard resources for personal gain, to plunder nature’s riches without respect to the consequences is so overwhelming, so compulsive that the planet will have to find a way to rebalance itself. And if we carry on, that new balance – what we limply term “climate change” – will necessitate that we are stripped from the planet. What is needed to save us is radical change. Not tinkering, not reform, but an entirely new vision that removes the individual and his personal gratification from the centre of our social organisation. This is impossible to contemplate for the elites who think more liberalism, not less, is the solution. Anyone departing from their prescriptions, anyone who aspires to be more than a technocrat correcting minor defects in the status quo, is presented as a menace. Despite the modesty of their proposals, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US have been reviled by a media, political and intellectual elite heavily invested in blindly pursuing the path to self-destruction.

Sovereignty

The US government and its assorted client states have no business whatsoever issuing orders and ultimatums decreeing that a government of a sovereign nation must restructure itself, but here we are. Sovereignty is such an alien concept in a collective reality tunnel that has been shaped by propaganda to view imperialism, American exceptionalism and nonstop interventionism as perfectly normal that we now have the American establishment simultaneously (A) shrieking about Russian clickbait on Facebook as an unforgivable act of war, and (B) using crushing sanctions, CIA covert ops, and an active campaign to delegitimize a nation’s leadership in order to topple an entire government. This wild discrepancy is justified with the unquestioned assumption that the US has something called “moral authority” in the world, while Russia and Venezuela lack moral authority, despite the US being responsible for innumerable acts of butchery and destruction which are grossly immoral by any metric.

In a recent talk with Fox’s Ann Coulter, sniveling war pundit Bill Maher cited the Monroe Doctrine to argue that the US has every right to tell Venezuela what it’s allowed to do with its own country and its own allies because South America is “our backyard.”

“Today, Venezuela — this is the front page of the New York Times — Venezuela, okay, they have a guy, an opposition leader who finally stood up, and we are backing him,” Maher said. “And Russia warned us to back off because they’re backing the dictator. This was the Monroe Doctrine! This is our backyard! And Russia is now telling us to back off of what goes on in Venezuela, because they know they can? Because they’re so emboldened? That doesn’t bother you?”

This freaky slave owner talk is so normalized for reasons which are inseparable from the reasons why our world is as messed up as it is. ...

The current US-led coup against Venezuela is a violation not just of the sovereignty of Venezuela, but of the sovereignty of all the nations which have been bullied into and pushed along with it by a much more powerful nation and by the power-serving goons in their own governments. The United States government is the very last organization which should be “helping” a nation topple its government; US interventionism is so consistently disastrous that wanting them to “help” in Venezuela is dumber than wanting Edward Scissorhands to help change diapers at the local daycare center. Everyone knows this on some level, but the servile relationship the world has with the US empire has normalized complicity in absolutely insane agendas all around the world.

US slaps sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company

Trump Administration Seizes Venezuela Oil Assets, Renews Threat of Military Action If Maduro Stays

The Trump administration intensified its interference in politically-fractured Venezuela on Monday by announcing the seizure of billions of dollars in assets connected to the nation's state-owned oil company, a move critics decried as part of a "dangerous" U.S. policy to help opposition forces overthrow elected president Nicolás Maduro. National Security Adviser John Bolton and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced the sanctions imposed via executive order against Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA)—a primary source of income and foreign currency for the country—at a White House press briefing on Monday afternoon. They were joined by Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council.

.@AmbJohnBolton on sanctions against PDVSA, #Venezuela state-owned oil monopoly: "Today's measure total's $7 billion in assets blocked today. Plus, over $11 billion in lost export proceeds over the next year." pic.twitter.com/EqNC5mg9wl

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 28, 2019

Mnuchin vowed the United States "will continue to use all of our diplomatic and economic tools" to back Juan Guaidó, who has declared himself Venezuela's "interim president." The secretary made clear that "the path to sanctions relief for PdVSA is through the expeditious transfer of control to the interim president or a subsequent, democratically-elected government."

As CNBC reported:

Mnuchin said PDVSA has long been a vehicle for embezzlement and corruption by officials and businessmen. The sanctions will prevent the nation's oil wealth from being diverted to Maduro and will only be lifted when his regime hands control of PDVSA to a successor government, he added.

[...]

Under the sanctions, U.S. companies can continue to purchase Venezuelan oil, but the payments must be held in an account that cannot be accessed by the Maduro regime.

"If the people in Venezuela want to continue to sell us oil, as long as that money goes into blocked accounts, we'll continue to take it," Mnuchin said. "Otherwise we will not be buying it."

In addition to tightening economic restrictions on the Maduro government as a way to bolster the position of Guaidó, Bolton also issued a fresh threat of military action by telling reporters in the White House briefing room that Trump "has made it clear that all options are on the table" when it comes to next possible steps.

"This is very dangerous," world-renowned economics professor and senior U.N. advisor Jeffrey D. Sachs warned on CNN Monday afternoon. He expressed concern that the administration's actions could cause immense suffering among the Venezuelan people, similar to the consequences endured by citizens of other countries subjected to U.S. interventions. "The problem here is that these efforts by the United States to change other countries' governments often lead to catastrophe," Sachs noted, "as has happened all through the Middle East in recent years."

"Very often Washington says, 'Somebody must go,'" he continued. "And this is how our foreign policy often works—it's very arrogant [to say] who should rule in another country. By the way, Maduro is not a decent, pleasant man—but on the other hand, for Washington to just announce that a self-declared politician is the president, is kind of an American regime change tradition."

John Bolton, Laugh Factory

The national security adviser, John Bolton, said $7bn of PDVSA assets would be immediately blocked as a result of the sanctions while the company would also lose an estimated $11bn in export proceeds over the coming year.

Bolton said the sanctions were an attempt to alleviate “the poverty and the starvation and the humanitarian crisis” currently gripping the South American nation and stop “Maduro and his cronies” looting the assets of the Venezuelan people. ...

So this notepad that National Security Advisor John Bolton was holding today at the White House briefing on Venezuela says:

"Afghanistan -> Welcome the Talks. 5,000 troops to Colombia."

If confirmed this would be a pretty terrible OPSEC breach.https://t.co/KS0Issfvps pic.twitter.com/IOrSprG567

— Rao Komar (@RaoKomar747) January 28, 2019

The notepad Bolton was holding as he took to the stage hinted at just how potentially dangerous it could be. A handwritten note on its yellow pages appeared to read: “5,000 troops to Colombia”.

Venezuelan attorney general orders Guaidó investigation as crisis deepens

Venezuela’s political crisis deepened on Tuesday as the country’s attorney general ordered an investigation into the opposition leader, who last week declared himself interim president in a rare challenge to the incumbent, Nicolás Maduro. Tarek Saab, a Maduro loyalist, announced that Juan Guaidó – who has received the backing of the US and other regional powers including Brazil and Colombia – would be investigated over his supposed role in “serious crimes that threaten the constitutional order”.

Venezuela’s public prosecutor would seek to prevent Guaidó leaving the country and freeze his bank accounts, the state-run broadcaster VTV reported.

The move came just hours after the US tightened the screws on Maduro by announcing sweeping sanctions against the country’s state-owned oil company PDVSA in what experts said was an attempt to economically asphyxiate his regime.

Guaidó appeared to take the threat of imprisonment in his stride. He said: “We are here, we will keep acting and working to confront the humanitarian crisis.” The US national security adviser, John Bolton denounced the “threats” from Saab – who he described as the “illegitimate former Venezuelan attorney general”.

“There will be serious consequences for those who attempt to subvert democracy and harm Guaido,” Bolton tweeted.

New Zealand refuses to back Guaidó as interim president

In a stark departure from its allies, the New Zealand government is refusing to take sides in the escalating Venezuelan leadership crisis, declining to give official recognition to either leader. ... On Monday New Zealand’s closest neighbour, Australia, recognised Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has also urged countries to “pick a side” in the crisis. ...

New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, has refused to add New Zealand’s name to the list backing Guaidó. “It is not New Zealand’s practice to make statements of recognition of governments,” Peters said.

Attempted Coup in Venezuela with Abby Martin, Greg Wilpert, Paul Jay

The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela

Written in 2014 during the Obama adminstration, this article by Eva Golinger gives insightful background to the current crisis in Venezuela and Washington’s role in stirring it up.

Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the U.S. government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado- two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February (2014) – have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez’s political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado’s NGO Sumate and her electoral campaigns.

These Washington agencies have also filtered more than $14 million to opposition groups in Venezuela between 2013 and 2014, including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014. This continues the pattern of financing from the U.S. government to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela since 2001, when millions of dollars were given to organizations from so-called “civil society” to execute a coup d’etat against President Chavez in April 2002. After their failure days later, USAID opened an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas to, together with the NED, inject more than $100 million in efforts to undermine the Chavez government and reinforce the opposition during the following eight years.

At the beginning of 2011, after being publicly exposed for its grave violations of Venezuelan law and sovereignty, the OTI closed its doors in Venezuela and USAID operations were transferred to its offices in the U.S.. The flow of money to anti-government groups didn’t stop, despite the enactment by Venezuela’s National Assembly of the Law of Political Sovereignty and National Self-Determination at the end of 2010, which outright prohibits foreign funding of political groups in the country. U.S. agencies and the Venezuelan groups that receive their money continue to violate the law with impunity.

[Check out the article for more detail of U.S. meddling in Venezuela's elections and the millions of U.S. tax dollars that have been dispatched to do dirty work there. - js]

New Deal: U.S. To Leave Afghanistan In 18 Months

US charges Chinese telecoms giant with stealing trade secrets

Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, was charged with a series of crimes by the US on Monday, in an escalation of hostilities between the world’s biggest economic powers. The US justice department said Huawei had based its global expansion on “lies and deceit”. It accused the firm and its executives of stealing trade secrets, laundering money, obstructing justice and defrauding banks to elude US sanctions.

Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general, said criminal offending at Huawei went “all the way to the top of the company”. He announced that grand juries in Seattle and New York had issued indictments on 23 criminal charges.

Kirstjen Nielsen, the US homeland security secretary, said Huawei had operated a scheme that had been “detrimental to the security of the United States” by undermining sanctions against Iran. The company, which is the world’s biggest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Huawei is accused by the US of stealing robot technology from T-Mobile for making smartphones. The FBI said it obtained emails showing that in 2013, the company offered bonuses to employees based on the value of information they stole from other companies and sent home via an encrypted email address. Engineers from Huawei measured and took photographs of the robot, “Tappy”, and even stole a piece of it for replication in China, prosecutors said, and were falsely disowned as rogue employees by the company when they were caught.

The company and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, are also accused of defrauding banks and lying to the US to get around economic sanctions on Iran. They claimed to have sold an Iranian subsidiary but had actually sold it to themselves, US prosecutors said. Meng, 46, who is the daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested in Canada on 1 December following a request by the US, which will now seek to extradite her.

Huawei: China calls US charges 'immoral' as markets slide

China has condemned the US government’s indictments against Huawei as “unfair and immoral” and urged Washington to stop its “unreasonable suppression” of the Chinese telecommunications company after it was charged with a series of crimes. ... Wen Ku, a senior official at the ministry of industry and information technology, told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday the indictments were “unfair and immoral”.

China’s foreign ministry expressed “grave concern” over the latest development and complained that US authorities had “mobilised state power to blacken” some Chinese companies “in an attempt to strangle fair and just operations”. It added that the charges were the result of “strong political motivation and political manipulation”. It said: “We strongly urge the United States stop the unreasonable suppression of Chinese companies including Huawei and treat Chinese companies fairly and justly.” ...

The news prompted a slide across Asian stock markets, amid fears the Huawei case could damage the prospects for a long-awaited trade deal between China and the US.

The Truth About NATO, Venezuela Chaos, New Age of Censorship

Risk of no-deal Brexit ‘very high’, says key EU negotiator

The risk of accidentally crashing out of the EU without a deal has been described as “very high” by a key EU architect of the Brexit deal, with parliamentary backing for changes to the backstop likely to be met with a brick wall in Brussels. Senior Conservative MPs are seeking to form a majority in a Commons vote on Tuesday calling for Theresa May to demand an alternative plan to the Irish backstop for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.

But on Monday, EU officials and diplomats said the amendment tabled by the Tory MP Graham Brady, and backed by Downing Street, failed to offer any clue as to what alternative arrangement parliament could support. With the votes on Tuesday unlikely to offer any clarity on what MPs can unite behind, the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, offered a sober analysis of the chances of a deal being ratified in Westminster.

She said: “We need to have a majority that doesn’t just get agreement over hurdle of a meaningful vote by a narrow majority but we need to have a stable majority to ensure the ratification. That’s quite a big challenge. There’s no negotiation between the UK and EU – that’s finished. “There’s no point beating about the bush – the agreement was defeated with a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons. That’s a crushing defeat by any standards. It’s quite a challenge to see how you can construct out of the diversity of opposition a positive majority for a deal.”

Weyand said of the two years of talks due to end on 29 March: “There’s a very high risk of a crash out not by design, but by accident. Perhaps by the design of article 50, but not by policymakers.”

Brexit will leave the UK 'unstable' for decades with violence on the streets and independence referendums in Scotland and Northern Ireland, EU intelligence secret report warns

Violence could erupt on the streets of Britain in the wake of Brexit according to a secret report by European officials. Senior intelligence officials warned that civil unrest and rioting is almost inevitable and the UK will be left 'unstable' for decades.

The EU report also claims there will be independence referendums in both Scotland and Northern Ireland with 18 months of the UK leaving the EU.

The claims emerged today amid mounting concern at furious pro-Brexit protests in cities including London and Leeds that have seen MPs abused and arrests following scuffles with police.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock yesterday refused to rule out martial law being imposed after a no deal Brexit - admitting the powers were available amid claims officials have been 'war gaming' the possibility.

Wargaming for Brexit as May’s Government Faces More Setbacks

British officials are war-gaming various strategies for coping with the disruption of Britain leaving the European Union without an exit deal, including declaring a state of emergency and martial law to avert disorder provoked by possible food shortages and energy outages.

Details emerged of Operation Yellow Hammer, the contingency planning underway for a so-called no-deal Brexit, ahead of important parliamentary votes this week that could result in Britain postponing its departure by nine months or even more.

Operation Yellow Hammer has provoked the wrath of hardline Brexiters, who say the war-gaming is excessive and the leaking of what the government is considering is just designed to scare rebel lawmakers into accepting the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement the House of Commons rejected earlier this month. ...

Some civil servants have compared the likely disruption to the impact of a war. Defense officials told Sky News Sunday the army is stockpiling food, fuel, spare parts and ammunition in readiness. “An army marches on its stomach. If supply lines break down, they struggle,” an official said.

Here's the roll call for this un-American attack on the constitution.

Senate Advances Combating BDS Act After Shutdown Delay

The United States Senate voted 74-19 on Monday to advance a bill that would give cover to states to pass laws banning business with supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel - a move supported by many Jewish and pro-Israel organizations but opposed by free speech advocates and some left-wing Jewish groups.

The bill, known as S.1, was the first measure to be introduced in the new session of Congress this January. It is actually a combination of four bills: One that codifies then-President Barack Obama’s 10-year, $38 billion military aid deal with Israel; measures to support the Jordanian government and add sanctions on Syria; and, most controversially, the Combating BDS Act, which would support the 26 states that have already passed measures forbidding state entities from contracting or investing with groups that boycott the Jewish state. ...

[Chuck] Schumer was among more than 20 Democrats who voted for it, including possible presidential contender Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Those who voted no included Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts - both of whom are running for president - as well as 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Sanders explained that his vote was over the Combating BDS Act’s First Amendment implications.

The shutdown lost the U.S. economy $3 billion it will never recover, CBO says

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report Monday that said the longest shutdown in U.S. government history cost the U.S. economy $11 billion — $3 billion of which it will never recover. Most of the damage will be reversed when federal workers return to their jobs, though President Donald Trump has already warned that another government shutdown may be looming as Congress attempts to come to a deal to fund border-security measures. ...

"Among those who experienced the largest and most direct negative effects are federal workers who faced delayed compensation and private-sector entities that lost business," the CBO report said. "Some of those private-sector entities will never recoup that lost income."

A Member of Congress Tried to Go to an Immigration Activist’s ICE Check-in. ICE Tried to Block Her.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., said that what she saw Monday morning while accompanying a New York immigration activist to his mandated check-in at the New York field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement left her with serious concerns about the agency’s secrecy and the way it treats the people it summons to its offices. “It is very clear to me that there has been some skirting of the law, that the free flow of the public has been obstructed arbitrarily and unilaterally to create a pressurized environment in which human rights could be violated,” Clarke told the immigration activist’s friends and supporters at Foley Square, outside the federal building where the ICE check-in had taken place.

Clarke was accompanying Ravi Ragbir, the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, whose attempted deportation by ICE a year ago during a check-in generated a massive street protest and a strident condemnation from the federal bench. Ragbir has several ongoing legal proceedings — including a First Amendment lawsuit alleging that ICE is targeting him for deportation based on his political speech — and federal courts in both the 2nd and 3rd Circuits of the U.S. Court of Appeals have issued stays forbidding ICE from deporting him until those proceedings are resolved. Even so, Ragbir’s supporters weren’t entirely sure that ICE officials wouldn’t attempt to deport him anyway, and so they asked elected officials, including Clarke and current as well as former members of the New York City Council, to escort Ragbir when he kept his appointment at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. ...

When Ragbir took the elevator to the ninth floor this morning, he was accompanied by his lawyers; his wife, Amy Gottlieb; and Clarke. Outside the waiting room, an officer in a Department of Homeland Security uniform, who refused to identify himself beyond the first name “Matt,” informed the group that they had been instructed specifically that only Ragbir and one of his lawyers, Alina Das, would be allowed in. “The wife can’t go in,” the DHS officer said. Das asked whose order the officer was enforcing, and whether she could speak to him. The officer disappeared briefly, then returned and reiterated the order: The lawyer and the client could go in. Ragbir’s wife and the elected officials supporting him could not. As for the request to discuss the matter, the DHS officer said the ICE supervisor wouldn’t speak to Ragbir’s entourage. “He says he doesn’t have to talk with you,” the DHS officer said of the person giving the orders.

“That’s not true,” responded Clarke, who was recently named to the House Homeland Security Committee, now controlled by fellow Democrats. Clarke eventually made it past the guards, where she began pressing ICE officials to justify the ban. A delegation of current and former City Council members, including Williams and Mark-Viverito, soon joined the delegation on the ninth floor, but were again refused access by the Homeland Security officer. After a quarter-hour or more, Clarke emerged into the hallway to announce that after her conversation with ICE officials, Gottlieb and the elected officials would be allowed into the waiting room. But she was quickly countermanded by the Homeland Security officer, and the stand-off continued until Ragbir and Das emerged from the meeting room. He was free to go, but must check in again in six months. ... Clarke, who was returning to Washington immediately, said her first order of business would be to speak with the new Democratic Homeland Security Committee chair “about the policies, practices and procedures in respect to removal, due process, and public accommodation for those who have to utilize the services of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Democrats Plans To Water Down Med4All

Citing $750 Million Tax Break for Amazon While Students Suffer, Teachers Walk Out in Virginia

Fed up with plummeting school funds and low teacher salaries in a state that recently offered hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to one of the world's richest companies, unionized teachers and their allies in Virginia traveled to the state capital on Monday to demand state legislators begin fighting for them and students instead of for powerful corporations.

The grassroots group Virginia Educators United and the 50,000-member Virginia Education Association (VEA) urged teachers to take a personal day to lobby state lawmakers and demand more funding for school renovations, teacher pay, and supplies. ...

The rally and march comes two months after the trillion-dollar multinational corporation Amazon announced it had selected Northern Virginia as one of the regions where it would set up a new headquarters. In exchange for bringing its business to the state, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam was prepared to give Amazon $750 million in tax breaks.

Meanwhile, teachers across the state have struggled to educate children effectively, with school funding falling by nine percent since 2008's Great Recession. Educators in Virginia earn $9,000 less than the national average, and teachers have told the press about unreliable heating systems, printers, and copiers due to poor funding. The Guardian also reported on Monday about the thousands of poorly insulated plywood trailers owned by Virginia school districts, where tens of thousands of students go to class each day as districts are unable to build new classrooms.

"It Can't Be Warren and It Can't Be Sanders": Wall Street Executives Make 2020 Preferences Known

The first 2020 Democratic presidential primary is still over a year away, but Wall Street executives are reportedly already freaking out about two likely progressive candidates: Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "It can't be Warren and it can't be Sanders," the CEO of a "giant bank" anonymously told Politico, which reported on Monday that Wall Street executives are "getting panicked" about the presidential prospects of the Senate's two fiercest financial sector critics.

Warren launched an exploratory committee for president last month, vowing to take on the "corruption" that is "poisoning our democracy." Sanders, for his part, has yet to publicly announce a bid for the White House—but Yahoo News reported on Friday that the Vermont senator plans to launch his campaign "imminently."

Both progressive senators have placed scrutiny of Wall Street's size, record of large-scale fraud, exorbitant CEO pay packages, enormous political influence, and lack of stringent regulations at the center of their political agendas for years, and deep-pocketed bankers who have profited immensely from President Donald Trump's tenure are worried that one of the two could ascend to the White House and threaten their pocketbooks.

"Bankers' biggest fear," Politico reported, is that the 2020 Democratic presidential "nomination goes to an anti-Wall Street crusader" like Warren or Sanders.

If you're on this list, you're doing something wrong https://t.co/aX8U7EGPpV pic.twitter.com/C5NRmWxVpr

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 28, 2019

'We Believe in Primaries': Ocasio-Cortez's Team Welcomes Any Democrat Who Wants to Challenge Her in 2020

After The Hill reported on Tuesday that some House Democrats are working to recruit a primary candidate to take on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2020, the freshman congresswoman's team welcomed any potential election opponent and vowed to continue fighting for the interests of the American public. "We believe in primaries as an idea. We're not upset by the idea of being primaried. We are not going to go out there being anti-primary—they are good for [the] party," said Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent. "If voters in the district feel that they can be better represented, that will be their choice on primary day. In the meantime, we're going to be doing our dead-level best to make sure we are representing the needs and the will of our constituents."

Speaking to The Hill after the outlet granted anonymity to levy the criticisms, one House Democrat claimed to have already begun recruiting potential primary challengers to run against Ocasio-Cortez. "What I have recommended to the New York delegation is that you find her a primary opponent and make her a one-term congressperson," the Democrat said. The unnamed lawmaker went on to proclaim that "numerous council people and state legislators" have "been waiting 20 years for that seat"—referring to the district Ocasio-Cortez won by upsetting powerful Wall Street Democrat Joe Crowley last year.

Ocasio-Cortez was quick to respond to her anonymous colleague's remarks, declaring in a tweet on Tuesday that they reveal "how disconnected some folks here are."

"That broken mentality, that public office is something you wait in line for, instead of earning through hard organizing, is exactly what voters want to change," the New York congresswoman added. ...

Responding to The Hill's reporting on Tuesday, Capital & Main journalist David Sirota concluded that "the biggest political threat" to Ocasio-Cortez likely "isn't a primary, but is instead notoriously corrupt Albany trying to use redistricting to eliminate or cut up her congressional district."

From Premature Deaths to Planet-Heating Emissions, Analysis Reveals Costs of Trump's Fossil Fuel Giveaways

A new Associated Press analysis shows that while the Trump administration's deregulation of the fossil fuel industry is likely to save oil and gas companies billions of dollars, the cost in terms of human death and suffering as a result of the environmental devastation will be incalculable.

While the report, published Sunday, estimates that the fossil fuel industry could save up to $11.6 billion, other consequences include up to 1,400 more premature deaths per year, a jump of about a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions that will further warm the planet, increased risk of water contamination, and fewer safety checks to prevent oil spills. ...

Short-term profits for the .01%; climate catastrophe for all living things. Great deal.
https://t.co/4b4wz6idEA // #pipelines #NoDAPL #StandWithStandingRock pic.twitter.com/wPl1AWhZIS

— Ted Dreier (@T3Doc) January 28, 2019

The administration has targeted nearly 80 environmental rules, according to a New York Times investigation published last month, but the AP study focused on the impacts of efforts to rescind or scale back 11 specific regulations:

1. the 2015 Department of Transportation (DOT) rule that required safety upgrades to prevent oil-carrying "bomb trains" from derailing and exploding;
2. the 2016 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule requiring oil and gas companies to limit methane emissions during fracking and flaring;
3. the Interior Department's 2016  rule that required dirty energy companies to reduce methane emissions on public and tribal lands;
4. the EPA's 2015 rule that aimed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants;
5. elements of the 2015 EPA rule designed to prevent spills from toxic coal ash dumps;
6. the 2015 Interior rule that aimed to protect drinking water from fracking contamination;
7. safety regulations implemented after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill with the purpose of preventing future offshore drilling disasters;
8. elements of the 2016 Interior rule that mandated more intense inspections of devices designed to prevent oil spills;
9. reporting requirements from the 2015 EPA rule restricting toxic air pollution from refineries;
10. the 2016 EPA rule stating it was "appropriate and necessary" to limit mercury emissions from oil- and coal-fired power plants; and
11. a 2016 DOT proposal that aimed to implement stricter fuel efficiency standards.

While the rollbacks analyzed are at different stages of implementation—five are pending and six are final—environmental and consumer advocacy groups have launched various legal challenges, citing the public and planetary health risks that many, including University of Chicago professor Michael Greenstone, a top economist for the Obama administration, claim federal agencies are understating.

Joshua Tree national park 'may take 300 years to recover' from shutdown

The former superintendent of Joshua Tree national park has said it could take hundreds of years to recover from damage caused by visitors during the longest-ever government shutdown. “What’s happened to our park in the last 34 days is irreparable for the next 200 to 300 years,” Curt Sauer said at a rally over the weekend, according to a report from the Desert Sun. Sauer retired in 2010 after running the park for seven years.

The park reopened Monday after the record 35-day shutdown, and park workers returned to a state of chaos, including damaged trees, graffiti and ruined trails. The reduced ranger supervision during the shutdown saw increased vandalism at the park, causing officials to announce on 8 January that Joshua Tree would temporarily close. It was announced a day later that officials were able to use recreation fee revenue to avoid the closure.

“While the vast majority of those who visit Joshua Tree do so in a responsible manner, there have been incidents of new roads being created by motorists and the destruction of Joshua trees in recent days that have precipitated the closure,” said park spokesman George Land in the news release. ...

“There are about a dozen instances of extensive vehicle traffic off roads and in some cases into wilderness,” David Smith, the current Joshua Tree national park superintendent, told National Parks Traveler after announcing the need to close. “We have two new roads that were created inside the park. We had destruction of government property with the cutting of chains and locks for people to access campgrounds. We’ve never seen this level of out-of-bounds camping. Everyday use area was occupied every evening.”

“Joshua trees were actually cut down in order to make new roads,” he added.

'Absolutely Unconscionable': Trump EPA Refuses to Limit Toxic Chemicals That Contaminate Drinking Water of Millions

In a decision deemed by critics unsurprising but also "absolutely unconscionable," the Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reportedly plans to refrain from regulating a pair of toxic chemicals linked to kidney and testicular cancer, even though they are contaminating millions of Americans' drinking water.

Sources familiar with an unreleased draft plan approved last month by acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told Politico that the chemicals PFOA and PFOS will remain unregulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, meaning that "utilities will face no federal requirements for testing for and removing the chemicals from drinking water supplies, although several states have pursued or are pursuing their own limits."

The chemicals "have been used for decades in products such as Teflon-coated cookware and military firefighting foam, and are present in the bloodstreams of an estimated 98 percent of Americans," Politico pointed out. That means, given that they have "contaminated groundwater near hundreds of military bases and chemical plants," any intensive regulation of them would force companies such as 3M as well as the Defense Department to spend billions of dollars on cleanup efforts.

"If these sources are right, the EPA is essentially telling the more than 110 million Americans whose water is likely contaminated with PFAS: 'Drink up, folks,'" warned Environmental Working Group senior scientist David Andrews, Ph.D. "The most efficient and equitable way to remove these chemicals from the nation's drinking water supply is to use the agency's authority to set legal limits... It's a national problem, and it needs a national solution."

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

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