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pete buttigieg
Progressives Warn Against Josh Shapiro as Kamala Harris Nears VP Choice
One critic argued Harris would risk alienating "precisely the people she needs to ensure her victory over Trump" if she picks Pennsylvania's governor as her running mate.
Aug 01, 2024
Reports that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is leaning toward selecting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate have sparked warnings from progressives who say his record and policy positions on key issues—from Palestine to public schools to climate—are cause for serious alarm and should be disqualifying.
Earlier this week, dozens of progressive leaders from across the United States wrote in a letter to Harris that Shapiro's "support for school vouchers is in direct conflict with our teachers union allies and the Democratic Party Platform, threatening to undermine labor support" in a general election matchup with Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The letter's signatories recommended Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear as possible alternatives to Shapiro, who last year relented to pressure and vetoed a school voucher program that he previously supported.
The Philadelphia Inquirerreported last month that Shapiro "says school vouchers are still a priority for him."
"Democrats need a credible and respected voice that has a track record of winning over and exciting an electorate, especially the ability to turn out young voters, immigrants, and independents in swing states," reads the progressives' letter, signed by the chair of the California Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus, the head of the Nevada Democratic Party, the executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, a member of the Ohio Democratic Party's executive committee, and others.
"Shapiro has... done far more than most Democrats to attack pro-Palestine antiwar demonstrators, in ways that call into question his basic commitment to First Amendment rights."
Shapiro's attacks on pro-Palestine demonstrators and uncritical support for Israel—as well as his support for Pennsylvania's anti-boycott, divestment, and sanctions law—have also drawn progressive ire.
"Shapiro has... done far more than most Democrats to attack pro-Palestine antiwar demonstrators, in ways that call into question his basic commitment to First Amendment rights," writer David Klion argued in The New Republic last week, noting that the Pennsylvania governor compared protesters rallying against Israel's genocide in Gaza to the Ku Klux Klan.
"Then, in an executive order, Shapiro updated his administration's code of conduct to forbid state employees from engaging in 'scandalous or disgraceful' behavior, a vaguely worded instruction that civil libertarians immediately interpreted as threatening pro-Palestine speech," added Klion, who warned Harris that picking Shapiro could "discourage precisely the people she needs to ensure her victory over Trump."
A coalition of pro-Palestine groups has launched a website dubbing Shapiro "Genocide Josh" and warning Harris against picking him as her running mate.
"The left must unite over the next four weeks to ensure that America doesn't fall down the path of fascism, authoritarianism, and runaway corporatism," the website states. "It is in Harris' and the Democrats' best interests to listen to their base and ensure that both their new VP pick and their platform support the majority of Democrats and Americans who want social and economic justice for workers and an immediate cease-fire in Palestine."
Progressive organizers Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, co-founders of the advocacy group RootsAction, warned in aCommon Dreams op-ed Monday that if Harris "chooses a running mate who intensely connects her to Biden's policies on the Gaza war that are so unpopular with much of the Democratic base, party unity—and the chances of defeating Trump—would be undermined."
On top of his attacks on pro-Palestinian demonstrators and promotion of school vouchers, Shapiro has also faced criticism for supporting corporate tax cuts.
The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote Thursday that Shapiro is currently "trying to accelerate an already scheduled cut" to Pennsylvania's corporate tax rate "from 9.9% to 4.9%" as Democrats at the national level push for a repeal of Trump's massive tax cuts for big business and the rich.
Harris herself attacked Trump during an Atlanta rally earlier this week for wanting to "give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations."
Harris is expected to announce her vice presidential pick ahead of a scheduled rally Tuesday in Philadelphia, part of a broader campaign swing through pivotal battleground states. According toPolitico, a Harris aide "cautioned against reading too much into the first city chosen for the tour," pushing back on speculation that the event's location confirms Shapiro will be Harris' running mate.
A survey released earlier this week showed that Trump is narrowly leading Harris in Pennsylvania, and it's far from clear that picking Shapiro as her running mate would help her win the state.
"Other names in the mix include Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg," Politico reported earlier this week. "Shapiro said on Tuesday that he had not spoken to Harris since July 21, the day that Biden dropped out."
Will Bunch argued in a column for The Philadelphia Inquirer "that it's no wonder that progressives seem to be lining up in the VP contest behind Minnesota's Walz, who like Shapiro has some policy wins on cherished liberal issues like expanding free school lunches but isn't lugging around political baggage like the Pennsylvania governor."
"Whether Harris, said to have close ties to Shapiro, sees it the same way will tell us a lot about her White House bid," Bunch added.
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A Dangerous Pipeline and Why Pete Buttigieg Would Be a Bad Choice for VP
Kamala Harris needs to lead the country in addressing this biggest of all problems: our climate crisis and the dominance of the fossil fuel industry in our politics and policies.
Jul 29, 2024
President Joe Biden lost a lot of support, especially among young voters and climate voters, when he approved the foolish Willow Project. The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) was equally unpopular with those groups but they rightfully placed most of the blame for that project on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V).
What a lot of people, including reporters, don’t realize is that Pete Buttigieg, as Secretary of Transportation, had (and still has) the power to stop MVP. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) reports to Buttigieg and PHMSA, as its name implies, has the authority and responsibility to ensure the pipelines are built and operated safely. But the MVP was not built—nor is it operating—safely. That is not an opinion pulled out of thin air by a climate activist. Rather it is the conclusion of a study done by TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), the company that wanted to build the Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL). That study was the subject of an article (pg 16) in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of Corrosion Management, a journal of the Institute of Corrosion.
This topic has been written about extensively for over a year. If reporters and other readers want to understand the particulars they can find them here. The long and short of it is that the TC Energy/KXL study proved that MVP’s corrosion-proof coating is “no longer fit for purpose.” That’s a pretty damning indictment, especially given the enormous diameter (42 inches) of MVP and the extremely high pressure it will be operating under. It’s particularly scary for all those who live within MVP’s blast zone.
MVP is made of thick steel. It isn’t going to corrode extensively tomorrow or anytime right away. But pipelines like MVP are built with the intention that they will operate for many, many decades, which is why legally they MUST have an adequate corrosion-proof coating. Otherwise they will corrode prematurely which could lead to a massive explosion. Delaney Tercero was 3 when a 10 inch gas pipeline exploded near her home because defective coating allowed the pipe to corrode. She died 2 days later in a hospital burn unit. Again, MVP is 42 inches.
The National Association of Pipe Coating Applicators (NAPCA) recommends that the pipe coating that was applied to MVP pipe should not be exposed to the harmful rays of the sun for more than 6 months. MVP pipe sat out in the sun for 6-7 years. A KXL pipeline manager, speaking at an oil and gas forum in Canada, said that, when the coating has deteriorated to such a degree, the pipe either needs to be replaced or sent back to the factory for stripping, cleaning, and recoating. He said this is a problem that can’t be remedied in the field. MVP pipe was neither replaced nor properly recoated. It was just quickly buried and covered up, as if that would make the problem go away.
Pete Buttigieg is obviously a very smart guy. He’s articulate, does his homework and has a knack for making members of Congress look ridiculous when they try to question him. If anyone can explain why the KXL coating study doesn’t apply to MVP, it would be Secretary Buttigieg. But neither he nor PHMSA nor MVP nor anyone else has ever offered that explanation. Buttigieg seems to pop up everywhere these days but he hasn’t met with the people who live next to MVP and been willing to address their fears about the defective pipe coating. And the reason he hasn’t is because he can’t explain away the KXL study’s obvious relevance to MVP which leaves him unable to defend PHMSA’s decision to allow MVP to operate.
And this problem isn’t limited to MVP. Pipeline giant, Williams, has just built pipelines in Louisiana and Pennsylvania using old pipe intended for the now-dead Constitution Pipeline in NY. That pipe has been sitting out in the sun for over a decade. Williams has now buried it right next to houses, schools, playgrounds, ball parks, through golf courses and under interstate highways.
Essentially, despite all their posturing, Pete Buttigieg and PHMSA are just part of the Good Ol’ Boy network that oversees much of our country’s energy regulatory system which remains heavily controlled by the fossil fuel industry. Up and down the chain of command people go along to get along, as pointed out in this article that Bill McKibben called landmark by Mike Soraghan of Politico’s E&E News. That system has resulted in America being the largest oil and gas producer ever, which is deplorable given the scientific consensus regarding climate change. It is why we are so far behind in achieving our climate goals.
Kamala Harris needs to lead the country in addressing this biggest of all problems. She needs to separate herself from the Good Ol’ Boy network. She should start by picking someone other than Pete Buttigieg to be her VP.
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This 2024 Election Is Like an X-Ray Image of the Metastatic Entrails of America
Hooray! We have free will and free choice: you get to live happily ever after in the stupor of our surrealistic dystopia, or you can (if you wish) bang your head against the padded walls of the insane asylum that is America.
Jul 13, 2024
It is as if we all synchronized our nightmares—or, rather, in a world of neoliberal austerity, we have run out of night-time horror tales and need to all share the same moth-eaten, unraveling, tedious bad dream. We have a tsunami of infected shit pouring mightily through our paper mache sea wall—a fierce, eternal heat wave, wars and genocides, fires, storms, poisons, plastics, and perverts oh my, and to make matters worse, our so called Democratic party has just discovered that the refrigerator went down in a blackout and the carton of milk turned as dank, sour, and foul as raw sewage. I am talking about Joe "I-supply-weapons-for-genocide" Biden, who just yesterday was as vibrant and clever as, uh... a normal person... and now, in a snap of the fingers, stares blankly into eternity like the two knotholes in your attic wall.
This sour milk emergency has provoked the Democratic Party big wigs—the people who could not possibly have known that Joe Biden's wits had taken the uptown A-Train to oblivion without so much as leaving a note—to run in every direction at once in a frantic search for a warm, corporate friendly body to stuff into the empty ballot. I swear that if Curly of Three Stooges fame had gotten Ilse Koch pregnant, she might have given birth to the Democratic Party. The admixture of evil and slapstick ineptitude defies imagination. How do you not fucking know that your standard bearer, your champion of freedom and apple pie, has been stumbling into walls and wandering naked in the woods at night?
We have stopped wars and kicked scoundrels out of office. But those were simpler times.
It appears as though the Democrats will finally put the gong show hook around grandpa's waist, and call Kamala, or Pete Buttigieg, or Ronald MacDonald out of the storage bin to save our democracy. Fortunately, we live in the greatest country ever created and have so much freedom that we can't figure out what to do with it all. We are free to vote for the Democratic clown car ticket, or the alternative, Night-of-the-Living-Dead party that just nominated Darth Vader and Heinrich Himmler as their candidates. Forgive me for my metaphoric extravagance—not the Vader/Himmler ticket, but Donald Trump and whatever evil fuckwit he bites in the throat to be his VP.
And the beautiful thing about a Donald Trump/Joseph Goebbels ticket is that your vote automatically brings forth Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Stephen Miller, and Ted Bundy... oops, I mean Ted Cruz.
That is the lovely thing about democratic freedom and your choice to be yourself and vote for whomever the fuck you want, so long as it is a Democrat or Republican. We get to vote Clown Car or Nazi wannabe in a free and fair election. You get to "drill baby drill" or bomb Gaza into the sea of Armageddon.
We have free will and free choice: you get to live happily ever after in the stupor of our surrealistic dystopia, or you can (if you wish) bang your head against the padded walls of the insane asylum that is America. If this was some other country, some other planet, some other dimension of being, we might be out in the streets shutting it all down, but there are Amazon orders to wait for, and Tik-Tok videos to watch. We live in our perfectly ordered reality where nothing can shake us up. If a giant lobster from Andromeda landed in Wyoming wielding inter-galactic death rays in either pincer—so what?
The U.S. has an honorable history of mass protest. We all recall that Abbie Hoffman nominated a pig for president in 1968 Chicago, and that the mighty U.S. army turned tail in Vietnam and left Henry Kissinger with a mouthful of blood and guts looking for new outlets for his cannibalism. We have stopped wars and kicked scoundrels out of office. But those were simpler times. A mere four years ago we had millions in the streets over the police murder of George Floyd. How did that fizzle out and leave us all washed up—a nation of beached whales? The big question is this: how passively can we watch the planet burn to a crisp and remain as fatalistic about our political perpetrators as we all appear to be?
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