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    powell memo

    Cuyahoga River on fire in 1952.

    Trump, Zeldin, and Wright Want to Set America’s Rivers on Fire Again

    The Trump administration is trying to turn back the clock on environmental and climate regulations. But they can’t control physics. Or the falling cost and rising efficiency of renewable energy.

    Bill Mckibben
    Mar 14, 2025

    I spent part of the morning reading the Powell memo—the famous document written by the future Supreme Court justice in August of 1971 arguing that American business and industry had to get its act together so it could dominate the country’s political life and prevent the threats to “the American system” from “the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.”

    In the short run, Justice Lewis Powell was unsuccessful—the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had been formed a few months before his memo, the Clean Water Act passed a few months after. As William Ruckelshaus, the first administrator of the EPA (and a Republican appointed by a Republican president) said, the agency “has no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment.” Over the next years the agency enacted a critical series of rules that—with surprising speed—cleaned America’s air, rivers, and lakes, and became the template for similar laws around the world.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    environmental protection agency
    Fox News

    Right-Wing Control of Media Has Crushed the Promise of US Democracy

    If progressives want to slow this speeding train heading toward single-party rule of America, they must get with the program and begin to support existing and build out new and powerful policy think tanks and media operations.

    Thom Hartmann
    Jan 15, 2025

    Republicans are using their massive structural media and social media advantage to try to destroy Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, and the California Democratic Party.

    It follows an old script, that’s recently been played out in Russia and Hungary, among other nations: Want to seize control of a nation and turn it into a neofascist state with the consent of the people? Just take control of the channels of public information and news, and then turn lies about your opponents and their supporters into a perceived reality.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    corporate media
    Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump Holds Election Night Event In West Palm Beach

    Trump Win Fulfills Oligarchy's 50-Year Plan for Right-Wing Takeover

    The billionaires have won. They have successfully killed the American Dream. And now we have to fight back.

    Thom Hartmann
    Nov 06, 2024

    When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat, Economic sophisms, 2nd series (1848)

    We just watched the final fulfillment of a 50 year plan. Louis Powell laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have follow it.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    oligarchy

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