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Murphy Climate Policy Relies On “Market Mechanisms” – Subsidies And Incentives

Another Round Of Aspirational Goals

“No one is going to be forced to do anything, in any way.” ~~~ NJ Gov. Murphy on his climate goals and policies (Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/15/23)

Gov. Murphy just said the quiet part out loud. Political leaders are not supposed to admit that they are just engaging in symbolic gestures and empty platitudes instead of governing. He sounded like Joe Biden, pledging to Wall Street that “nothing would fundamentally change”.

(I should probably change the headline, which was written based on the text of the EO and before I read the Philadelphia Inquirer story quote. Gov. Murphy not only admitted his EO was toothless, he bragged about it! Murphy is terrified of the right wing “meme machine” – I suspect that the same cowardice is what led to him approve the Black Bear Hunt and withdraw DEP’s proposed boiler replacement rule proposal.)

Gov. Murphy again issued another round of highly spun Executive Orders on climate today.

The Governor keeps moving the goalposts – but he lacks a kicker, a holder, a snapper, and an offensive line to block, so there is no way he makes the last minute field goal to win the game.

The Gov. again used the same zero credibility environmental cheerleaders in another self congratulatory over the top press release.

My first reaction was: “I can’t believe he did it again!”

[Update – again exposing the fraudulent faux green cheerleaders, my friend Jeff Tittel nails it: (Philly Inquirer story

And Jeff Tittel, a longtime environmental activist, said the governor did not appear to have “any new program or funding mechanisms to get it done.”

“Executive orders without implementation are hallucinations,” Tittel said. ~~~ end update]

This time around, I won’t waste any effort reminding readers that a Governor’s Executive Order is toothless.

The Gov.’s Executive Order #315 did that for me – read it and weep: (emphasis mine):

3. Nothing in this Order shall be construed to confer any legal rights or additional limitations upon entities whose activities are regulated by State entities; nothing shall be construed to create a private right of action on behalf of any such regulated entities or other persons; and nothing shall be used as a basis for legal challenges to rules, approvals, permits, licenses, or other action or inaction by a State entity. Nothing in this Order shall be construed to supersede any federal, State, or local law.

4. Nothing in this Order shall be construed to limit the operation of any lawfully existing electric generating unit, or the construction or operation of any proposed electric generating unit, consistent with applicable laws and regulations. Nothing in this Order shall be construed to create any additional limitations on entities whose activities are regulated by State entities.

I stand by my claim last week that Gov. Murphy’s environmental and climate agenda is “flaccid” – and I’ll add another descriptor: “impotent”.

The Gov. also exposed his Neoliberal Wall Street corporate ideology.

The Gov.’s climate policies are “market based”, meaning: lots of corporate subsidies (incentives), but little or no regulatory mandates:

1. It is the policy of the State to advance clean energy market mechanisms and other programs in order to provide for 100 percent of the electricity sold in the State to be derived from clean sources of electricity by January 1, 2035.

Tomorrow morning the electric utilities in NJ could enter into purchase contracts for renewable energy credits from Canadian hydropower and midwestern wind generation.

That would meet the 100% clean energy standard the Gov. set, but it would not reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one pound.

[Update: David Cruz’ story gets it right:shout out to FWW and other real activists:

But outside, members of local and statewide organizations criticized Murphy for a lack of progress on environmental issues. “The governor continues to issue executive orders and make proclamations. He takes to Twitter to tweet about his green credentials but the communities who are facing these fossil fuel projects, they’re not buying the hype. They want real concrete action from this governor to deny these fossil fuel projects,” said Matt Smith, New Jersey state director of Food & Water Watch.

False Claims About “Loopholes” Let Murphy DEP Off the Hook

False Claims About Local Control Of Development Divert From State Regulatory Powers

Reliance On Cherry Picked Data From Chemical Industry Funded Groups Misleads Readers

It looks like this is going to be a multi-part series, because today NJ Spotlight published round two of their firehose of puff and spin on water resources and land use issues, sponsored by the misleadingly named (after a good old American and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania), the Wm. Penn Foundation.

As I revealed yesterday in Part One, the Wm. Penn Foundation is actually a creation of the Haas family, the money behind giant corporate chemical polluter Rohm & Haas.

Can anyone imagine the outcry if a media outlet printed a series on public health, sponsored and shaped by the disgraced criminal Sackler family Foundation (hiding the role of Purdue Pharma) and that series of stories never once mentioned the pharmaceutical industry or the health disaster caused by their drug, oxycontin?

Well, that is exactly what the Haas family – hiding behind the facade of Wm. Penn Foundation – has done to NJ Spotlight and the environmental groups who take their corporate polluter blood money.

It’s not hard to understand why a major corporate chemical manufacturer would not fund environmental groups to focus on government regulatory and enforcement programs and instead point the pollution finger elsewhere. That’s also why they fund land preservation and non-point pollution projects. That’s why they target and fund water quality monitoring of streams like Lopatcong Creek, instead of, for example, chemical water quality monitoring or analysis of sediments and fish tissue in the Delaware River and bay.

Just like the Sackler family would not put their neck in the noose by funding projects on oxycontin and collection of data on over 100,000 drug over-dose deaths.

I hope to begin to get to the substance of the issues that were misrepresented, so let me start with this “big picture” broad overview.

The thrust of yesterday’s coverage on the Highlands – highlighted in the subtitle “Highlands loophole lets development grow, fertilizer fuels lake pollution – is that “loopholes” in the Highlands Act are the source of the problem.

That is false. I will write a specific post on the Highlands issues soon.

Today, Tom Johnson writes a “big picture” overview  – that repeats exactly that same “loophole” falsehood:

To some, it points to the need to take a tougher stand on new projects impacting water quality. “Right now, we have a baker’s dozen of warehouse projects around the state that have real water quality impacts,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. The DEP needs to close regulatory loopholes that allow these projects to move forward, he said.

That too is false.

It is not “loopholes” but lack of DEP enforcement that “allow these projects to move forward.” (Hey Tom, your bias is showing: DEP approval of a bad project is not “moving forward”, it’s moving backward!)

This is not an accident. It is an intentional outcome of the Wm. Penn funding.

As I wrote yesterday, the Wm. Penn Foundation (Haas family) does not fund work on laws, regulation and government planning. They support local and voluntary private sector projects  that target non-point source pollution, land preservation, and voluntary “ecological restoration” projects.

Wm. Penn funds NGO groups that either don’t work on DEP regulatory issues or that don’t understand DEP regulations or that just spin to divert attention and provide cover for DEP.

I fired off this letter to Doug O’Malley:

Doug – DEP issues Water Quality Management Plan approvals for warehouses, most new development, and water infrastructure.

The Clean Water Act Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program establishes legally enforceable numeric caps on total pollutant loads (point and non-point) and pollutant reduction requirements in impaired waters (cumulative impacts). The TMDL requirements are enforced in DEP permit programs (land use and water quality and water allocation and stormwater).

The Surface Water Quality Standards include enforceable “anti-degradation” requirements that are designed to prevent degradation of high quality waters (in light of cumulative impacts). Again, anti-degradation (and numeric and narrative water quality standards) are enforceable in DEP planning and permit programs.

Those regulations provide adequate authority to deny permits.

There are no “loopholes”. I’ve been working on this for 35 years. Where have you been?

There is lack of DEP enforcement. Surely you must know that.

Yesterday’s story on the Highlands made exactly the same false claim about “loopholes” in the Highlands Act.

All this does is let DEP off the hook.

Do better.

BTW, tell NJ Spotlight reporters that they don’t have to rely on Wm. Penn funded groups for cherry picked data and amateur assessments of current water quality conditions and trends in water quality. The Clean Water Act mandates that DEP publish Statewide Water Quality Reports (known as the Section 305(b)/303(d) integrated Report)

*For groundwater pollution data, DEP used to issue Private Well Testing Act reports, but no longer does so.

For threats to public drinking water supplies, see DEP’s Source Water Assessment Program – find the needle buried in the DEP website haystack and hit the link to find specific threats to specific water systems. Then wade through to the end of those documents to find the real threats buried at the end. Of course the data re over 20 years old. DEP doesn’t do that anymore.

And don’t even ask about the legislatively mandated annual Clean Water Enforcement Act Report – DEP stopped issuing that many years ago (2010) in blatant violation of law, but with no accountability, no media, no environmental group criticism, and no consequences.

Much more to follow.

NJ Spotlight Delaware Watershed Series Was Paid For By Wm. Penn Foundation

NJ Spotlight Sources Were Funded By Wm. Penn Foundation

New Media Model: Corporate Foundation Funded Propaganda Parades As News

This is all part of a broad toxification of the environmental movement, which has taken a regressive turn toward collaboration with big business, wealthy donors and corporate-backed foundations. Green groups that embrace market-based initiatives, rather than stand up for sensible regulation and strict enforcement of environmental laws, are the ones that get lavish funding. ~~~ Christopher Ketcham, The Daily Beast

This is Part One of a series to expose and correct the falsehoods and misleading spin being presented in the NJ Spotlight’s “Special Series” on the Delaware Watershed that began today.

A half-dozen reporters spent months researching and reporting the NJ Spotlight News series “Water’s Edge: Trials and tributaries of the Delaware River Watershed.”

No wonder we can’t get any coverage of the DEP and real planning and regulatory issues.

NJ Spotlight ran two grossly misleading stories today on the Highlands, warehouse development, logging and the Golden Wing warbler, issues I’ve written about extensively.

As one of the authors of the Highlands Act and a former DEP staffer to Gov. McGreevey’s Highlands Task Force, I was appalled and offended by that coverage.

But before I get to the substance of those articles and explain why they were misleading, I need to set the context, which NJ Spotlight completely failed to do.

Let’s begin at the bottom of the first NJ Spotlight story – where we find a very revealing disclaimer (shrouded in comforting green, of course!):

So who  is the William Penn Foundation that just bought this “news” coverage? What is their organization’s mission? Who serves on their Board and sets strategic policy? What is their agenda? How much funding are we talking about?

Readers deserve to know all this and more – but NJ Spotlight doesn’t even provide a link to the Wm. Penn Foundation website. There is lots of critical information and context that is not provided.

NJ Spotlight fails to even mention the rather large fact that the Wm. Penn Foundation is spending more than $100 million dollars on a Delaware Watershed Initiative or how much of this funding was provided to NJ Spotlight.

NJ Spotlight fails to mention that many of their so called “expert” sources they cite are paid by the Wm. Penn Foundation. This is Foundation manufactured propaganda, not news.

NJ Spotlight fails to mention that the Wm. Penn Foundation’s Delaware Watershed Initiative is explicitly designed to focus very narrowly on a small set of voluntary and local policy and management tools – primarily land preservation by willing sellers, so called “restoration”, and only on non-point source pollution.

NJ Spotlight fails to tell readers that Wm. Penn explicitly rejects government intervention (planning, regulation, and enforcement), point source pollution (industrial and sewage treatment plants), and severely limits the scope of “activism” and “advocacy” and “media” it funds.

I’ve previously criticized Spotlight’s coverage for exactly these failures, see:

• NJ Spotlight Drinks Penn Foundation Kool-Aid, Attacks Nationally Leading Government Regulatory Protections

• “The Elite Charade” – Philanthropic Foundation Fail

• A “New Era” In Elite Foundation Abuse (buying Yale University spin)

• The Light Of Reality Briefly Emerged, But Foundation Funded Corporate “Greens” Moved Quickly To Shut It Down (Voluntary State Plan failures and warehouses)

But the reality is far worse.

The Wm. Penn Foundation is not some objective public interest operation – they have a strongly pro-corporate and anti-governmental and anti-regulatory ideological agenda. They leverage that agenda with their funding.

The Wm. Penn Foundation was created by the chemical industry – their Board is stacked by the Haas chemical family (of Rohm & Haas).

Take a look at who the Wm. Penn Foundation are, facts we exposed in response to the influence of Wm. Penn Foundation funding in shaping the science on endocrine disruptors:

I) Who Is The Wm. Penn Foundation And Who Do They Represent?

The study was funded by the Wm. Penn Foundation. The Foundation has allocated over $100 million to various projects in the Delaware River Watershed, including the Pinelands and non-profit groups that do advocacy work in the Pinelands, own land and operate commercial concessions in the Pinelands, and appear before the Pinelands Commission, including the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, NJ Audubon Society, and NJ Conservation Foundation.

By their own statements, the Wm. Penn Foundation’s Delaware initiative was designed as a parallel program to Clean Water Act based government planning and regulatory programs. They fund projects that work only on voluntary programs to address non-point source pollution.

They do not work on point source pollution or government planning and regulatory programs that regulate corporations or industrial chemical discharges.

They promote non-regulatory, voluntary, local, and market based initiatives: (Delaware River watershed initiated admits this:

“The DRWI was designed and launched in the absence of any state or federally mandated watershed-wide requirement for restoration or protection of water quality. It is an NGO-led watershed protection program driven by the cumulative effort, strategic thinking, and vision of over 50 organizations…

And they openly acknowledge the top down Foundation money driven astro-turf nature of that initiative and its limited focus to non-point pollution (intentionally letting regulators and major corporate “point source” polluters off the hook) Delaware River watershed itself admits that it is a grantmaking strategy:

“While the DRWI was conceived and designed in partnership with others as a William Penn Foundation grantmaking strategy, our hope is that, through the process of building and refining the Initiative with the input of dozens of participants and stakeholders, there is a framework of relationships and practice that will endure beyond our grantmaking that can methodically address nonpoint source pollution over time.”

This narrow focus of Wm. Penn Foundation limits and distorts the advocacy work of the environmental and conservation groups they fund and misleads the public.

Wm. Penn Foundation has over $3.2 billion in assets and $175 million in revenue (2020). Senior managers are paid over $280,000/yr.

But before we get to the science and findings of the study, let’s start here and see who the Wm. Penn Foundation is and who they represent:

“The Haas story begins, unsurprisingly, with an exceptional couple. Otto Haas came to Philadelphia from Germany in 1909 to begin expansion of his company, Rohm and Haas. The company, which started as a maker of leather tanning materials, grew to become a massive specialty chemical manufacturer, and Otto found success beyond his wildest dreams. In 1945 he used some of his wealth to start a foundation to address post-war social issues, particularly focused on helping fatherless children. This foundation eventually became the William Penn Foundation, a Philadelphia-centric institution that works on all manner of important causes, including education, conservation, and culture.”

It seems reasonable to assume that the Haas family and their family Foundation have shared corporate economic and regulatory interests with their corporate polluter friends, the “massive chemical manufacturer” Dupont family corporation, founded 100 years earlier just down the road in Wilmington, Delaware. In fact, the Rohm and Haas corporation is listed as a Dupont subsidiary.

And would it be rude of me to observe that the Haas family hails from Germany – world leader in chemicals in 1909 – and that the Dupont Corporation did a lot of business with Germany, including Nazi Germany?

Do you think it is a coincidence that a Foundation, founded by a major industrial chemical manufacturer, does not fund projects that address: 1) chemical industry created toxic chemicals, 2) their permitted discharge, 3) the scientific assessment of the adverse impacts of those chemicals, or 4) the government planning, regulatory, and remedial programs to reduce and cleanup those pollutant discharges?

Dupont plays the same corrupt game in their Orwellian named “Clear Into The Future”

The world’s largest toxic corporate polluter, Dupont, also funds a Delaware Estuary program – with the Orwellian title “Clear Into The Future” – and a group mentioned in the NJ Spotlight coverage. Of course, Dupont does not fund science and regulation to hold them accountable for the toxic pollution of the river and bay.

I worked for 1 year at the Pew Charitable Trust’s fisheries management program as Mid-Atlantic Regional Manager:

“Regional fishery managers have a new opportunity and stronger legal and scientific tools to protect fish populations from overfishing,” said the Pew organization’s Bill Wolfe. “The Mid-Alantic Fishery Management Council needs to commit to improving fisheries management, end overfishing and rebuild stocks to healthy, sustainable levels.

Pew was founded by the Sun Oil Company. Senior managers there openly told me that Pew fisheries programs not only did not work on or fund, but were not allowed to even talk about off shore oil and gas development impacts on fisheries, or the effects of chemical pollution on water quality or fisheries, or Clean Water Act regulatory programs, or the government issued fish consumption advisories due to toxic chemical pollution.

So, just like Pew imposed a blackout on science and regulation that effects the corporate bottom line of the oil and gas industries, so too does the Wm. Penn Foundation with respect to the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

II) Who Controls The Wm. Penn Foundation?

Let’s look at the extraordinary members of the Corporation and the Board of the Wm. Penn Foundation“

• Lorena E. Ahumada – corporate lawyer
• Katherine H. Christiano, Chair – puppet – Also Chair of a Foundation founded by Haas
• Andrew Haas (keeping control in the family)
• Christina Haas, Vice Chair (keeping control in the family)
• David Haas (keeping control in the family)
• Janet Haas, M.D. (keeping control in the family)
• Peter Haas, Secretary (keeping control in the family)
• Sarah Haas (keeping control in the family)
• Thomas Haas (keeping control in the family)
• Donald Kimelman – keeping it elite: former managing Director of Pew
• Marcel Pratt – Corporate lawyer and Managing Partner (token “diversity”)
• Robert Victor – Senior VP, Comcast
• Suzanne Welsh – (keeping it elite and corporate. Retired head of finance at Swarthmore

The Board of the Foundation is dominated and controlled by the Haas family, who made and make their money in chemical manufacturing.

III) Conclusions – The Corruption Is Obvious

• It is no coincidence that a corporate dominated chemical industry family founded Foundation serves corporate interests.

• It is no coincidence that the Foundation uses it’s money to fund science and watershed projects that do not impact, in any way, major corporate chemical polluters.

• It is no coincidence that a “massive” chemical industry founded Foundation does not fund scientific research or non-profit group advocacy that focuses on regulatory mandates and the devastating adverse impacts on human health and the environment caused by chemical pollution.

• It is no coincidence that a “massive” chemical industry founded Foundation focuses only on non-point source pollution (nutrients and sediment runoff) and not chemical pollution and advocates management strategies that are limited to private landowner voluntary land management and voluntary land conservation (acquisition), not regulation of point source discharges of chemicals.

• It is no coincidence that the groups who accept Wm. Penn Foundation funds are controlled by the Foundation and their advocacy work is directed and limited by the Foundation grant agreements and persuasion of money and further funding.

• As a result of the power of Foundation funding, scientists bias their research (design, methods, data, findings, and conclusions) so as not to offend the interests of their funders. This produces junk science.

• The Penn Foundation money is expanding its influence, to include funding media to provide favorable coverage. Specifically, Wm. Penn Foundation funds NJ Spotlight (they are disclosed as a “major funder”) and yet despite this blatant conflict, NJ Spotlight reports regularly on Penn Foundation funded work in a very favorable light and quotes Penn Foundation funded groups and employees as primary sources in their stories (all without disclosing these conflicts in the story). In other words, Penn Foundation not only shapes but literally buys favorable news coverage on topics and issues of their choosing (which “news” should be labelled “sponsored content”).

Here are the ethics requirements of the journal in which this research was published:

Role of the funding source

You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, it is recommended to state this.

This was the disclosure, which does not specifically comport with the ethics requirements:

Acknowledgements

We thank J. Cohl, M. Schreiner, A. Boetsman, L. Carper for sample collection. We also thank R. Lane, D. Tush, J. Dietze, M. Wilson for laboratory analysis and data management. Funding was provided by the William Penn Foundation through the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University Delaware Watershed Research Fund and State of New Jersey Pinelands Commission.

Note how the Penn Foundation laundered their money through academic institutions.

That’s not how the Pinelands Commission originally described the focus of the research and funding.

As I wrote back in April 2016, I called out the Pinelands Commission for masking Penn Foundation funding when they wrote in a March 30, 2016 memo:

Grant Proposal Presentation Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) have been linked to reproductive and developmental abnormalities in fish and amphibians. Surface-water discharge of wastewater is a major point source of EDCs to aquatic systems and on-site septic systems and chemical use associated with development and agriculture represent non-point sources of EDCs. Commission and USGS scientists propose to sample surface water, fish, and frogs at on-stream and off-stream sites with potential point and non-point sources of EDCs and compare these results to minimally impacted reference sites. All animals will be assessed histologically for measures of endocrine disruption and surface water from all sites will be analyzed for approximately one hundred known or suspected EDCs. A letter of intent was accepted and a full proposal requested for possible funding through the Delaware Watershed Research Fund. 

As I will shown in Part Two, the Penn Foundation money has now expanded to control and influence not only non-profit group advocacy, buy favorable media, and produce junk science, it also has tainted the independence and credibility of government agencies, such as the USGS and Pinelands Commission staff, who conducted the Wm. Penn funded research.

Corporate Wind Lobbyist McCurry – Touted As Providing “Diversity” – Quietly Resigns

Another Embarrassing Setback For Gov. Murphy’s Flaccid Environmental Agenda

[Update Below – McCurry Resignation Letter & Pinelands Commission comment]

Reliable NJ sources tell me that Gov. Murphy’s Pinelands Commissioner Davon McCurry recently quietly submitted his resignation.

McCurry was sworn in as a Pinelands Commissioner just last January 14, 2022:

McCurry is currently Deputy Head of Government Affairs And Market Strategy for Orsted, the off shore corporate wind developer and friend of the Murphy Administration.

Prior to his position with Orsted, McCurry served a similarly very brief tenure as head of Legislative Affairs at the Murphy DEP.

And prior to that, McCurry served as brief term at a low level in Murphy’s Governor’s Office of Constituent Relations.

I see a pattern of careerism and political opportunism, not commitment and resolve. [Note: amazingly, McCurry himself confirms this in his resignation letter – see below]

At the time of his nomination, based upon McCurry’s corporate and political ties, we raised ethical issues and requested that the State Ethics Commission conduct a review of potential:

b) corporate conflicts of interest of McCurry and Orsted, (he’ll be forced to recuse as well, including on matters related to PSE&G, who owns a 25% interest in Orsted)

The Ethics Commission apparently agreed to do so.

We are not aware of the outcome of that ethics review or the disposition of that case or whether it is related to McCurry’s resignation.

I did not follow and am unaware of McCurry’s record at the Pinelands Commission, with the exception of his bow to DEP Commissioner LaTourette’s pressure and YES vote in support of a terrible Murphy DEP logging plan to virtually clearcut 1,400 acres of Pinelands forest.

I don’t anticipate that the Pinelands Commission, Gov. Murphy’s Office, Orsted corporation or the conservation groups – all of whom applauded his nomination – to be issuing any kind of public statements or press releases explaining McCurry’s abrupt resignation.

We also don’t expect any news coverage by media cheerleaders like NJ Spotlight.

But we will ask for their comments (but don’t expect to get a response).

[Update: The Pinelands Commission replied to my request for comment by providing the McCurry resignation letter. In a  January 30, 2023 letter, McCurry wrote that his departure was “due to personal reasons and commitments.”

Very odd that, as a Commissioner, he wrote the letter to Acting Director Grogan (Commission Staff) instead of fellow Commissioner Chairperson Matos or the Governor who nominated him or the Senate who confirmed him. He also essentially admits his own careerism:

Dear Director Grogan:

Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to serve as a Member of the New Jersey Pinelands Commission. During this time, I have gotten to review some complex applications, meet and work with dedicated staff, and serve as a trustee to this incredible resource.

I am writing you today to submit my resignation with immediate effect due to personal reasons and commitments. Please know this opportunity has aided in both my personal and professional growth. Additionally, I am thankful for the small role I played in furthering the mission of the agency during my short time.

I wish you, my fellow Commissioners, and the staff the very best. If ever you wanted to connect further, you can reach me on my personal email at Redacted .

All the best,

Davon McCurry

The Commission replied as follows:

Hello Bill,

I have enclosed the resignation letter that the Pinelands Commission received from Davon McCurry. His personal e-mail address has been redacted from the letter.

Mr. McCurry’s term expired on June 28, 2022. He served an additional 7 months before electing to resign. His resignation was effective January 30, 2023.

We have no further information and will not be issuing any official statements or comments, Thanks,

Biden’s State Of The Union Straw Man Sets Stage For Cuts To Social Security & Medicare

The Greatest Living Journalist Is Now A Blogger

The Ideological Attack And War On The New Deal Is Over – It’s Now Bipartisan

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. ….. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. ~~~ “Beyond Vietnam – A Time To Break Silence”  (Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967)

A very intelligent friend of mine – a history buff and brilliant writer – who shall remain nameless, sent me an essay this morning largely focused on his Manichean delusional World War 2 video game movie of the Ukraine disaster.

This man was demanding US and NATO boots on the ground and a no-fly zone immediately after the Russian invasion – and he’s only gotten worse since (US first strike use of tactical nukes? Take out the Russian Naval fleet? Blow up pipelines and sabotage Russian infrastructure? Everything’s on the table).

We stopped communicating for months over his insane pro-war and anti-Russian views. He’s now attacking Biden for not doing enough.

So, today, I fired back.

I’m riffing on ideas from US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler famous 1935 book “War Is A Racket” – and Randolph Bourne’s far less well know but equally powerful 1918 essay “War Is the Health of The State” – and the predatory capitalism in John Perkins’ 2004 book “Confessions of An Economic Hitman” – and George Orwell’s body of work on propaganda and the Big Lie – and Professor John Mearsheimer’s analysis – and the “bipartisan” House Resolution 9 denouncing “the horrors” of  Socialism which included frontal ideological assaults on core principles of the New Deal – and most recently, Sy Hersch’s revelations on how the US blew up the Nordstream pipelines (which hugely increases corporate profits from US natural gas exports as LNG).

XXXX – as a fellow recipient, I’m astonished that you didn’t see the game Biden played on SS and Medicare in the SOTU.

Particularly after the House Resolution condemning Socialism, which included explicit ideological condemnations of the premises of SS and the entire New Deal (i.e. the anti redistribution and property rights quotes from Madison and Jefferson). I know you didn’t miss it, but here it is again, conflating grossly distorted historical catastrophes with and condemning core New Deal principles as “horrors of Socialism”:

Whereas the author of the Declaration of Independence, President Thomas Jefferson, wrote, ‘‘To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to  others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.’’;

Whereas the ‘‘Father of the Constitution’’, President James Madison, wrote that it ‘‘is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest’’;

And of course you ignore, particularly after Biden’s entire 40 plus year political career where he supported cuts to SS and championed the “shared sacrifice” “grand deal” numerous times on entitlements and austerity.

By accusing the Republicans of seeking to phase out (or sunset?) SS/MC, Biden crafted a straw man that sets the stage for cuts and “reforms” that “modernize” and “put the SS Trust Fund on a sound financial footing”.

Then, after the deal is done, Biden can brag that he “saved SS” from the evil Republicans and the Republicans can claim they merely guaranteed its solvency.

Remarkable you don’t find this game worth writing about, and instead choose to fall for the transparent and repeated propaganda ratchet by the Military Industry Complex and NeoCons: ie.: Just give Ukraine canon fodder just one more billion dollar US weapons system. Just one more….

I think the Ukrainian high official who recently was quoted as guaranteeing that US would provide F-16’s” (paraphrase):  “We asked for X, Biden said no. We later got X. We asked for Y. Biden said no. We later got Y. We asked for Z. Biden said no. We later got Z. We will get F-16’s:

XXXX, Ukraine is even a worse strategic and moral error than Iraq and Vietnam. (to be clear: both were US criminal wars of aggression).

But this time around, instead of showing the body bags, reporting on the My Lia’s and Tet Offensives that expose the military lies, mock the John Bircher and LBJ paranoia of the “Communist Domino Theory”, and reporting on the Pentagon Papers, the US media is engaged in pro-War big lie propaganda and replacing the RAND corporation and writing the Pentagon Papers as the news.

That Sy Hersch piece on US blowing up Nordstream was something, eh?  The fact that he had to publish it on Substack and was called a “blogger” by the mainstream press tells you all you need to know. Imagine, the greatest living journalist is now a blogger. Imagine that.