Stephan: This story is from Mexico, but I think it is a first Robin; there is going to be much more of this. In parts of the United States, and in many other parts of many other countries as well, water is going to become a major societal factor.
Residents queue for water from a water truck in García, near Monterrey, in June. Unlike the city’s poorer areas, Monterrey’s wealthy districts have higher water quotas, with tap water available 12 hours a day. The disparity has led to protests and arson attacks on water pipes. Credit: Julio César Aguilar / AFP / Getty
The water truck parks on a block, a 10-minute walk uphill from Rocio Vega Morales’ house, for 15 minutes at most. She has no clue what time the pipa will arrive in her neighbourhood, delivering the water she and her four children need to bathe, wash dishes and flush the toilet. It could be while she is at work, or in the middle of the night.
The drought in North Mexico means taps are dry in the city of Monterrey so pipas, primarily run by the city authority,are the only way to deliver water to homes and businesses. As people who cannot afford bottled water are drinking the brackish water from the trucks, anger is growing here that beverage companies with bottling plants here, including Coca Cola and Heineken, are […]
Jake Johnson, Staff Writer - truthout / Common Dreams
Stephan: This is what corruption looks like, and this report also gives a sense of scale. This is how corrupt the United States government is. And notice the skew; this money went mostly to Republicans. These are facts, not partisan assertions. SR deals with facts. It also shows the reality of the vampire capitalism that has overtaken the United States.
Activists simulate smoke coming from the back of a cardboard cut out of a dinosaur during an “End Fossil Fuel” rally near the U.S. Capitol on June 29, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty
The oil and gas industry, one of the most powerful corporate forces in American politics, has spent more than $200 million over the past year and a half to stop Congress from slashing carbon emissions as evidence of their catastrophic impact — from deadly heatwaves to massive wildfires — continues to accumulate in stunning fashion.
That topline estimate of the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying outlays and congressional election spending in the U.S. was calculated by Climate Power, which provided its findings exclusively to Common Dreams.
Nearly 80% of the industry’s campaign donations during the time period examined went to Republican candidates, according to Climate Power, whose analysis draws on data from OpenSecrets.
Until Wednesday night, when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced a surprise deal on climate investments, it looked as if the industry’s influence campaign had fully paid […]
Marianne Lavelle and Nicholas Kusnetz, - Inside Climate News
Stephan: I consider this good news. Not perfect but very good. I actually don't think the corruption that had to be paid to Manchin -- what a loathsome man -- is that big a deal, because I don't think it will be used. The pressure to move out of the carbon era is growing exponentially, and much faster than I think many in the carbon industries calculate.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) speaks to reporters before a hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on July 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty
To seal their surprise climate deal with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Senate Democrats conceded that their only hope for advancing a plan for a clean energy future in Congress was to bind it up in a lifeline for fossil fuels.
The legislation they propose to bring to the Senate next week still contains the heart of President Joe Biden’s climate plan—an historic $370 billion investment in transforming the U.S. power and transportation sectors and more than $60 billion in grants to help pollution-burdened disadvantaged communities achieve environmental justice.
But the package—now called the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022″—also would invest in ensuring a future for U.S. fossil energy in a carbon-constrained world. The legislation hikes tax incentives for expensive carbon capture technology 70 percent. It also requires that, for the next decade, the federal government offer tens of millions of acres offshore for oil […]
“Women who decided in their teens to be childfree are now, on average, nearly 40 and still do not have children.”
EAST LANSING, MICHIGAN —Are families about to find themselves on the endangered species list? Researchers from Michigan State University find that over one in five adults don’t want children. Interestingly, the survey also indicates that Americans are deciding against being a parent quite early in life, most often in their teens or early twenties.
Credit: Jacob Lund / stock.adobe.com
“We found that 21.6% of adults, or about 1.7 million people, in Michigan do not want children and therefore are ‘childfree.’ That’s more than the population of Michigan’s nine largest cities,” says study co-author Zachary Neal, an associate professor in MSU’s psychology department, in a university release.
Study authors used just three questions to separate “childfree” individuals from parents and other varieties of non-parents. The analyzed data comes from a representative sample of 1,500 adults who completed MSU’s State of the State Survey, conducted by the university’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.
Stephan: I have done numerous articles about the growing drive for secession in Red states, and here is a proposal of how it might be done, and what it would look like from a think tank in Alabama. Mainstream media isn't paying much attention to the Great Schism Trend but I think it should be taken quite seriously. The rise of White christofascist -- its not really Christianity -- nationalism is being explicitly promoted by members of Congress, and many state level officials. I also think, although they are not speaking out as blantantly, that there are Blue state officials who are simply tired of the racism, genderism. antisemitism, and sheer nastiness, being spewed by leaders, representatives, and senators from the Red states
There is more talk of secession and civil war in the United States today than at any time since the 1850s, and popular confidence in government appears to be at an all-time low. As a foreigner, I have no particular red or blue loyalties, but I have deployed with Americans on many occasions, and in some ways, their history is also mine. There is a chance that history will look at the culture wars of the 2010s as a prelude to the great disintegration of the 2020s, so it might be time to point out that confederation and preserving the union are not mutually exclusive.
The concept of sovereignty has a complicated history, and the unruly colonials of late eighteenth-century America added several twists. The US Constitution was a kind of archetype of modern federalism, providing an example that would be followed closely in Canada and Australia. The precise status of shared sovereignty in the early United States is famously controversial.
For the present purposes, it is enough to say that federalism implies a division of responsibilities so that state and […]
