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Beware–the most chilling article I’ve read in a while
We are already awash in misinformation and disinformation on the internet and on social media, some provided intentionally and systematically by foreign governments, material that oftentimes relies on sharing by people taken in by their own confirmation bias. The article copied below adds a new twist, pointing out how AI and unscrupulous actors already can monetize thoughtless and deceptive, but plausible, lies that could further loosen our grasp of what is and isn’t real.
This is not reason to despair, but it is a wakeup call to be ever more mindful and critical of the source of what one reads and hears.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
Everything below is the writing of Jack Brewster of Newsguard. I believe it originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal—but it is already available on multiple other websites.
It took me two days, $105 and no expertise whatsoever to launch a fully automated, AI-generated local news site capable of publishing thousands of articles a day—with the partisan news coverage framing of my choice, nearly all rewritten without credit from legitimate news sources. I created a website specifically designed to support one political candidate against another in a real race for the U.S. Senate. And I made it all happen in a matter of hours.
With OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a few lines of code, developers on freelancer websites such as Fiverr.com—the site I used to find my developer—can program websites to autonomously rewrite and publish articles from mainstream news outlets according to specific political preferences. Within a few weeks, I could even start earning programmatic ad revenue from my partisan AI content farm.
Purchasing an AI content farm on Fiverr.com is as easy as ordering on Uber Eats. I searched “AI generated news website” on the home page and up came dozens of developers offering to build my site. (Tel Aviv-based Fiverr, which was founded in 2010 and trades on the New York Stock Exchange, is just one of many online marketplaces for freelance professional services.) The prices ranged from $30 to build a basic AI news site to as much as $350 to “create the best automated news website monetized with ads ready to earn,” according to one lister.
I selected Huzafa Nawaz, drawn by his record (at the time) of 293 reviews with a 5.0 rating. The price—$80—also seemed more than reasonable.
Nawaz is a young Pakistani who told me he is “around 30” years old; he communicated with me in English, with limited proficiency, by instant message. He is among dozens of developers on freelance marketplaces who build fully automated AI websites from the ground up for a minimal fee. “I will create automated news website autoblog,” Nawaz’s posting on Fiverr stated. “If you are looking for an automated website to generate extra passive income without any effort, my gig is your best choice.”
Huzafa Nawaz’s Fiverr profile on April 10, 2024.
From there, all I had to do was answer a few questions about what kind of site I was looking for and the topics I wanted the site’s articles to cover. The domain and site hosting added an extra $25 to the total. The entire AI content farm cost me just $105, and I literally have to do nothing to operate it. It runs itself, auto-publishing dozens of articles a day based on the instructions that I gave to it.
Nawaz told me that he has now created “500 plus” AI news websites, each project taking him approximately “two to three days to complete.” On his listing and in a messaging exchange I had with him on Fiverr, he said that the AI-generated websites he produced would publish “AI-based copyright free content.” When I asked him what he meant by this, he responded that because he programmed ChatGPT to rewrite the copied articles, he was creating content that was “fresh, copyright-free content with no plagiarism.” It is not always clear if using AI to rewrite articles constitutes copyright violation, as we have reported at NewsGuard, the company where I work, which tracks online misinformation.
After I told Nawaz I was writing a story about my experience starting an AI content farm, I asked him if he obtains consent from the news outlets whose content his programs target. I also asked if he is concerned that he is, essentially, diverting advertising revenue away from these outlets by repurposing their content. His response was cryptic. “We are using their content just for reference/topic/information,” he said. “We care not using their content.”
At NewsGuard, we’ve identified over a thousand “pink slime” sites—ostensibly independent local news platforms that are actually secretly funded and run by political operatives. I instructed Nawaz to build an AI news website like this to cover Ohio politics news from a conservative perspective, critical of Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and supportive of his opponent in November, Republican Bernie Moreno. I wanted my propaganda machine to gain trust by resembling the Columbus Dispatch, a venerable Ohio newspaper, so I picked the name “Buckeye State Press.”
“Thank you for your order!” Nawaz messaged back. “Please share website login details and chatgpt API key. Thank you.”
In little more than 48 hours, my product arrived, and I must say, I was impressed. While Nawaz initially ignored my request to tailor the website to be partisan, it was fully functional when delivered, pumping out generic articles about Ohio politics autonomously. (From the start, the site has been password protected, to avoid further polluting the online information ecosystem.)
Nawaz explained that it could be programmed to write as many articles as I wanted, and he assured me that the instructions to ChatGPT could be changed. “We have options to optimize the feeds, we have options to optimize the prompts,” Nawaz said. “Everything can be tailored to your manner.”
After Nawaz handed over control of the site’s back end, I modified the chatbot’s settings, directing it to write articles that favored the Republican candidate: “You have to write an engaging news story of minimum 300 words on the topic from a conservative perspective. Promote Senate candidate Bernie Moreno if you can.”
In minutes, Buckeye State Press began automatically churning out news articles from a pro-Moreno perspective, promoting the Republican challenger over the incumbent Democrat. “In the midst of Ohio’s ongoing debate over the legalization of recreational marijuana, Senate candidate Bernie Moreno has emerged as a strong advocate for a more efficient and effective process for licensing and regulating cannabis facilities in the state,” a March 29, 2024, Buckeye State Press article stated. The article was a rewrite of a story that originally appeared in the Dayton Daily News and that made no mention of Moreno. In fact, Moreno did not support Issue 2, the ballot measure Ohio voters approved last year that legalized recreational marijuana in the state.
Other articles seemed straight out of an AI parody. In its version of an article originally published in the city of Lorain’s Morning Journal, announcing awards for the state’s top basketball players, Buckeye State Press wrote: “In a stunning turn of events, Senate candidate Bernie Moreno has emerged as a strong supporter of high school basketball in Ohio, particularly in the Division I and Division II All-Ohio boys basketball teams.” There is no record of Moreno praising the players mentioned in this article or of any recent news about Moreno and Ohio basketball.
Buckeye State Press rewrote an article about a winning lottery ticket published by WJW-TV, a Fox affiliate in Cleveland, stating: “As the excitement of the Powerball jackpot continues to captivate the state, let us also remember the importance of supporting leaders like Bernie Moreno who will work tirelessly to ensure a bright future for Ohio.” Again, there was no mention of Moreno in the original WJW-TV story or in any other news stories about lottery tickets.
My AI content farm even turned an obituary for a Youngstown woman originally published on the website of WKBN, the city’s affiliate, into pro-Moreno fluff. The article memorialized the deceased, a woman named Carolyn “Carol” Jean Mulichak, before promoting Moreno: “In the upcoming Senate race, conservative candidate Bernie Moreno embodies many of the same values that Carol Mulichak held dear.”
Two days after assuming ownership of Buckeye State Press, I decided to flip the news site’s allegiance from Bernie Moreno to Sherrod Brown. With a slight tweak to the prompt, the site began churning out pro-Brown articles.
For example, reporting on a fatal shooting in Adams County on March 28, 2024, Buckeye State Press stated: “Sherrod Brown’s dedication to gun reform makes him the ideal candidate to represent the people of Ohio in the Senate, and we must support his efforts to create a safer and more secure future for all.” This article was rewritten (without credit) from a story on the website of WLWT-TV, an NBC affiliate based in Cincinnati that made no mention of Brown.
Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in Toledo, Ohio, March 18. Photo: Jeremy Wadsworth/The Blade/Associated Press
Buckeye State Press also entirely concocted a story regarding Brown’s visit to the Ohio Fig Festival in the city of Mansfield. In a rewrite of an article originally published by the Richland Source, a news site covering Richland County, Buckeye State Press wrote: “As fig enthusiasts gathered at the 2nd Annual Ohio Fig Festival in Mansfield, Senate candidate Sherrod Brown made a surprise appearance to show his support for local growers like Brad Hamilton.” In fact, there is no record of Brown visiting the festival, though Brad Hamilton is a real person who is the founder of Ohio Fig Growers.
The Moreno campaign did not respond to several requests for comment on the Buckeye State Press, nor did OpenAI. A spokesperson for the Brown campaign declined to comment.
In response to email messages inquiring about Fiverr.com’s policies regarding AI content farms, including Nawaz’s listing in particular, a spokesperson for the company said, “The Fiverr freelancer’s profile you linked to specifies that he [Nawaz] is using copyright-free AI-generated content, so the listing itself does not violate our policy.” The spokesperson added that the company would “look into” Nawaz’s account.
Regarding the numerous Fiverr listings offering to build AI-generated websites, the spokesperson said: “We can’t be sure that these services are in breach of copyright law, as it’s there [sic] are many legitimate uses for these types of AI website-building services [including] situations where freelancers may not be pulling from copyrighted sources.”
Like rental properties and dividend stocks, AI content farms are an easy passive-income investment. The economics are straightforward. Setting up an AI content farm costs about $100, and ongoing costs include about $5 a month for a web-hosting company and the expense of running ChatGPT’s application-programming interface (API). That cost depends on the number of articles published; based on OpenAI’s listed API prices, my estimate is $3 or less a month to publish 50-100 articles a day.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, at the U.S. Capitol on March 15, 2023. Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
With the installation of programmatic-advertising tools from firms like Google, which automatically serve hyper-targeted ads to users through algorithms, a content farm becomes a ready source of income. If dealing with the ad technology seems beyond you, don’t fret. Nawaz said that for an additional fee (he did not say how much), he would install Google ad widgets and submit the site to Google for approval. Once this is done, ads from name brands would start appearing on the site automatically. Nawaz also offered to set up the site to automatically share its content with pages and groups.
In his Fiverr reviews, Nawaz’s 500 or so customers were happy with the results. They praised him for opening up a new world of possibilities by creating easy-to-manage, automated websites: “This person deserves 10 not 5 stars,” wrote Fiverr user @amazinggarden. Another, jacklafayette, wrote, “Wow what a helpful service. I will be working with him again.”
But we shouldn’t be deceived by these light-hearted testimonials and AI-generated content that occasionally borders on the absurd. The appearance of legitimacy is everything online, and pink-slime websites are a serious menace. They can generate viral falsehoods, like the November 2023 incident, reported by NewsGuard, in which a content farm falsely claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nonexistent psychiatrist had committed suicide. With ads on Facebook, their content can be spread as the work of a legitimate news site ostensibly promoting its stories.
With a few adjustments, my own AI content farm could produce higher-quality articles that are far more convincing. Anyone familiar with ChatGPT understands that the tool is designed to fulfill users’ expectations. For the charged election season ahead, that’s a problem.
Jack Brewster is enterprise editor for NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, and editor of Reality Check, NewsGuard’s newsletter. He was previously a reporter at Forbes, covering politics, misinformation and extremism.
What they mean for us locals–and a little concerning how they came about
Last Wednesday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an agency of the federal government, issued stringent national regulations concerning PFAS in public water systems. The new regulations will have local as well as national impacts.
PFAS (Per-and polyFluoro Alkyl Substances) made local news starting in 2017. Several members of this chemical family, PFHxS, PFOS, and PFOA, turned up at very high levels in the municipal wells of the City of Airway Heights. One must assume that the citizens of Airway Heights had been drinking PFAS-laden water for years. It appears that most or all of this (and other) PFAS contamination of public and private wells on the West Plains came from PFAS leached into the ground water after decades of use of PFAS-containing AFFFs, aqueous fire-fighting foams, at Fairchild Air Force Base. Six years later, in 2023, it finally came to light that AFFFs were also used for decades at Spokane International Airport (SIA)—and that SIA officials knew back in 2017.
The new EPA regulations of PFAS didn’t just come out of the blue. Awareness of the many health effects of PFAS has grown over decades, starting with animal studies done decades ago by the chemical companies themselves, studies that only came to light thanks to litigation starting around 2000. (See the film Dark Waters on Netflix.) Many subsequent studies of humans exposed to these chemicals have shown links to kidney and testicular cancers, developmental issues, heart disease, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, immune disruption, low birth weight and other issues.
As evidence mounted, in 2016, prior to the Trump administration, the EPA “published a voluntary health advisory for PFOA and PFOS” which warned that “exposure to the chemicals at levels above 70 parts per trillion, total, could be dangerous.” The new EPA ruleslimit PFOA and PFOS to 4 parts per trillion and PFHxS to 10 parts per trillion in public water systems. Why, you might ask, did it take seven years to go from an advisory to a rule, 70 ppt to 4-10 ppt? The details are complicated, but they go back to the role of Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA during the Trump administration:
Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House [under Trump] sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis [from PFAS], after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a “public relations nightmare,” newly disclosed emails reveal.
Details of the internal discussions emerged from EPA emails released to the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act.
The emails portray a “brazenly political” response to the contamination crisis, said Judith Enck, a former EPA official who dealt with the same pollutants during the Obama administration — saying it goes far beyond a normal debate among scientists.
Enck, the former EPA official, said she sees one troubling gap in the emails: They make “no mention of the people who are exposed to PFOA or PFOS, there’s no health concern expressed here.”
Back to the West Plains
Fortunately, a substantial portion of the population of the West Plains already was or soon would be connected to the much purer water of the extensive Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. The water would be transmitted via piping from the municipal wells of the City of Spokane. Airway Heights quickly switched to this source. In 2017 Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport were already connected to City of Spokane water.
However, thousands of people have been drinking water from private wells at their homes on the West Plains down-gradient from Fairchild and SIA for decades, wells many of which have levels of PFAS chemicals far exceeding the new regulations. And there is a glaring omission in the new regs: the new EPA rules requiring testing and water purification cover public Class A water systems—NOT private wells or even small (Class B) systems. That said, the new EPA rules will certainly serve as an example and a reference for those living down gradient.
It is times like these that it strains credulity to remember that it was under a Republican president that the Environmental Protection Agency was established. Current-day Republican default commentary on any environmental regulation meant to safeguard human health is always some combination of “it will cost too much,” “the science isn’t settled,” or “it will hurt the poor.”
But Republicans and industry groups, along with many mayors and county executives, said the Biden administration had created an impossible standard that would cost municipal water agencies billions of dollars.
Several questioned E.P.A.’s accounting as well as the science used to develop the new standard.
The American Water Works Association, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies and other groups representing water utilities estimated that the cost of monitoring and remediation of PFAS could be as much as $3.2 billion annually. The figure is based on an analysis conducted for the American Water Works Association by Black & Veatch, a firm of consulting engineers.
Communities with limited resources will be hardest hit by the new rule, they said.
“When regulations are set near zero, that is not something manufacturers or water systems can economically achieve,” Brandon Farris, the vice president of energy policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote in a letter to the E.P.A. “Regulations that are not economically achievable will lead to critical substances being manufactured outside of the U.S. where environmental protections are often less stringent.”
We must recognize reactions like this and attempts by SIO CEO Larry Krauter and SIO Board member and Spokane County Commissioner Al French to delay acknowledging the Airport’s PFAS problem are typical examples of Republicans putting money and politics over people’s health.
The PBS/American Masters documentary “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” was released last Friday, April 5. It was a major contribution to my understanding of the evolution of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the last sixty plus years. It documents the importance of the work of one man in shaping a movement—a movement over which he ultimately lost his influence.
The name William F. Buckley, Jr. was familiar to me. I was vaguely aware that he was educated at Yale, a prolific conservative political writer and commentator, and the founder and editor of “National Review,” the intellectual flagship of the conservative movement. I had a vague sense that Buckley was responsible for the intellectual underpinnings of American conservatism, such as they were. What I did not understand was that, thanks to Buckley’s origins, his formidable intellect, his rapier wit, his skill in debate, and a keen sense of politics, he managed lend a veneer of legitimacy to racist and classist views.
“The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” runs roughly an hour and forty minutes—time well spent. It is available to stream on PBS until May 3rd. It can also be found on YouTube. I found myself in passionate disagreement with most of Buckley’s premises, and it was easy to identify among these premises many arguments still relied upon by Republicans today—but I also found myself fascinated by Buckley’s ability (mostly) to pointedly disagree while still not being disagreeable. Within the documentary video coverage of Buckley’s encounters with James Baldwin and with Gore Vidal were especially revealing.
William F. Buckley, Jr. lived from 1925 to 2008. Parts of the documentary are narrated by his son, Christopher Buckley. Particularly delicious for me is the notation in Christopher’s wikipedia entry that in late 2008, even though he was, at the time, also writing articles for the National Review, he had an endorsement published in the Daily Beast titled “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama.”
I am tired of hearing that “Spokane County did X” or “a spokesperson for Spokane International Airport said Y.” Neither Spokane County nor Spokane International Airport (SIA) is actually capable of doing or saying anything. They are entities within which people, some of them elected, some appointed, and some salaried, make decisions. Those decisions then are communicated to the reading and listening public as if the entity itself were speaking.
Spokane International Airport is pushing back against a “disappointing” state Department of Ecology order to begin PFAS cleanup planning – stating the airport will move forward with its own investigation into the presence of the toxic chemicals.
The underlying issue here is the health of adults and children living on the West Plains whose well water is contaminated with high levels of Per- and polyFluoroAlkyl Substances (PFAS). The contamination is leaching in the West Plains groundwater from unintentional concentrations of PFAS in soil at Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport. At both locations aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) containing certain PFAS were used during practice fire-fighting exercises for decades. (See Science and the PFAS Story for more detail.)
The administration of Fairchild Air Force Base has been fairly transparent and proactive about Fairchild’s contribution to the problem of contaminated water, efforts to mitigate the exposure of the people affected, and planning to deal with the cleanup of Fairchild’s PFAS deposit.
In contrast, the administration of Spokane International Airport has endeavored to avoid disclosure of high levels of PFAS in test wells at SIA (known since 2017), failed to disclose those findings even after a regulatory change in 2021 required it, and actively lobbied the state legislature and the FAA not to ban the use of PFAS-containing aqueous film-forming foams(AFFF), even threatening legal action if the Washington State legislature were to pass a ban on the use of AFFF.
What the hell is going on here? The people in control at the Spokane International Airport (SIA) have known since 2017 that test wells on SIA’s property showed elevated levels of PFAS. Not only were they aware of the use of aqueous fire-fighting foams (AFFF) at SIA for decades, but AFFFs were still in use at SIA in 2017. These same people at SIA were doubtless aware of increasingly well-documented health risks of PFAS ingestion, the litigation concerning PFAS poisoning elsewhere in the U.S., and the fact that PFAS had shown up in the municipal wells and the bloodstreams of the people of Airway Heights. From all of this they had to have understood that Spokane International Airport harbored somewhere on its soil concentration of PFAS that was leaching and continues to leach into the groundwater of the West Plains—contamination that endangers the health and property of the people of the West Plains.
In view of all that, the second paragraph of Ms. Sullendar’s article is grimly laughable:
“The Spokane International Airport cares about the safety of our passengers, staff and communities we serve, which is why we diligently assess as many considerations as possible in our work,” reads a statement from Spokane International Airport spokesperson Todd Woodard.
The people living on the West Plains who draw their water from wells contaminated with PFAS from the Airport must not be among those whose “communities we serve.”
Furthermore, considering the lack of acknowledgement of the whole issue by the people in charge at SIA, indeed, their concerted efforts to twist out of the obvious, the earlier first paragraph statement that “the airport will move forward with its own investigation into the presence of the toxic chemicals” should be worrisome.
So for whom does SIA spokesperson Todd Woodard speak, since “Spokane International Airport” itself possesses neither an ass to kick nor a soul to damn?
The Board, for whom one is supposed to imagine that Mr. Woodward is speaking, consists of seven members (see P.S. below for the full roster). Prominent among them is Spokane County Commissioner Al French, who serves as vice chair. The board hires a chief executive officer (CEO). SIA CEO Larry Krauter oversees daily operations and reports to the board. How and if an issue is presented to board depends a lot on the mindset of the CEO and those members of the board with whom he closely associates. (The board formally meets only once each month.)
Spokane County Commissioner French, an architect and developer, has long been involved in commercial development of the West Plains. French’s sense of ownership and control over the Airport Board, as well as his association with and admiration for CEO Krauter is clear. It was on display in a bizarre eruption by French during an afternoon Spokane County Commissioner meeting in January 2023. Apparently bristling over recently-seated Commissioner Jordan’s desire for another week to consider a French-proposed new appointment to the Airport Board, Mr. French launched into an prepared half hour diatribe in which he extolled the virtues of CEO Krauter and excoriated the outgoing board member. You can watch French’s extended outburst here (start at 28:50) or read about it in a Spokesman article. (These meetings often last less than half an hour. This one extended to an hour and forty minutes.)
As if to further highlight their association, Commissioner French and SIA CEO Krauter both figure prominently on another Airport-related entity, a public/private group called S3R3 Solutions dedicated to growing business primarily on the West Plains. French is the chair and Krauter the vice chair of S3R3.
From the discovery of PFAS contamination in the soil and water on the property of Spokane International Airport in 2017 there was a clear moral choice for the leaders of both SIA and S3R3: work in good faith to protect the health of the community or withhold information, foot drag, and threaten lawsuits in the hope, somehow, of dodging the issue. They failed the test. For seven years they plunged ahead with condemnable disregard for the health of the people Mr. French was elected to serve.
Don’t expect an apology. That’s not the style. Expect more platitudes about “caring” and “balancing” like the one quoted above. How different all of this might have been if Commissioner French had prioritized transparency and human health.
Voters need to know who is actually speaking when an entity like Spokane International Airport is posed by the media as speaking for itself. Peel back the layers.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Airport Board Composition: Two are elected officials, Spokane County Commissioner Al French, who serves as Vice Chair, and City of Spokane City Council President Betsy Wilkerson, listed as a “Member.” Jennifer West serves as Secretary. Brooke Baker Spink, Nancy Vorhees, and Max Kuney are the other appointed members rounding out the seven. French, Spink, and In addition the Airport CEO is Lawrence J. Krauter A.A.E., AICP. and the General Counsel for SIA is Brian Werst. From the county website:
P.P.S. Ms. Sullendar’s article appeared Tuesday, April 2. The Airport Board met three business days earlier on Thursday, March 28. The agenda for that meeting contains no mention of the Department of Ecology or of PFAS. I am unable to locate minutes from any Airport Board meeting posted on line, so any Board discussion of the topic of PFAS is opaque to the public.
In contrast to the Easter of the aggrieved Christian nationalists
The double freakout stoked by Trump and circulated among his right wing Christian nationalist followers over Easter weekend was a marvel of inanity, hate, and misinformation. The calendric happenstance that Easter Sunday coincided this year with the long-designated date of March 31st as the “Day of Transgender Visibility” was one flashpoint for these folks. The other centered on the rules for a White House youth Easter egg art contest, which is part of the more than century old tradition of the White House Easter Egg Roll. Christian nationalists, being the dour, touchy folks that they are, couldn’t simply partake in the joy of the this traditional event sponsored (since 1977) by the American Egg Board. Instead, they accused President Biden and his administration of an “assault on the Christian faith” for contest rules (issued by the sponsoring Egg Board) that included (for years) that the egg decorations “must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements” (among other rules). What these poor touchy complainers are really protesting is respect for the separation of church and state.
Of course, the campaign of Mr. Trump, hawker of proprietary Bibles who compares the agony of Christ on the cross to his own supposed persecution, chimed in with “We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Is Trump really so ignorant of the history and substance of Christianity that he is uncertain whether “Catholics” are “Christians?” Given his past that would hardly be surprising.
At the end of Beaton’s post is a video (see below) that speaks in the terms of the Christianity in which I was brought up, Christianity that seeks to unite, not divide. This is a Christian message with which I can identify. Remember this Christian message as you consider what Christian nationalists are trying to sell us in the upcoming elections.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
Clicking the video link below starts you at 7:19 and runs for just two minutes. If you have a few more minutes I urge you to watch the clip from the beginning. It is well worth your time.
What is below is from the Todd Beaton post referenced above.
As is Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock—who is a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta—who put it quite eloquently in an appearance on CNN on Sunday, ripping Speaker Johnson and his ilk for their attacks over Biden’s Trans Day of Visibility proclamation
“Apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent, and I think he ought to think about that.
“This is just one more instance of folks who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith.
“Jesus centered the marginalized. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down but as a bridge to bring all of us together.”
We, as voters, want to believe that the representatives we elect will sincerely pursue our collective interest. Candidates for elective office are really good at letting us think their intentions and background are the same as our own. But are they? Among the examples, we are often left to guess if they factor into their decisions the growing risks to our lives, property, and health from global heating and environmental contamination—or do they—at their core—deny these risks as valid concerns?
The modern-day Republican Party’s stance on these issues is blatantly clear. Donald Trump is on record declaring that “Climate change is a hoax” and says that, if re-elected, he will “drill, drill, drill.” The Heritage Foundation’s Presidential Transition Project known as “Project 2025” and the (U.S.) House Republican Study Committee (RSC) both openly declare full-on climate change denial while advocating to roll back everything currently in place to address the issue.
The earlier brand of supposedly more moderate, middle-of-the-road Republicans like our now-retiring U.S. Representative from eastern Washington, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, would never, ever have let “climate change is a hoax” pass their lips. Instead, as adept politicians do, any mention of climate change within earshot of McMorris Rodgers immediately triggers a pivot. She pivots to “saving the dams” and “energy independence.” You have to extrapolate slightly to understand those words are code for drilling, digging up, and burning more carbon. A closer look at McMorris Rodgers’ background reveals a Fundamentalist Christian who is doctrinally and educationally incapable of understanding the science of human-caused climate change.
Like McMorris Rodgers, business-oriented Republican Spokane County Commissioner Al French is far too adept a politician to publicly state that he simply does not believe the science of global heating—or to publicly state that his thinks the health risks of drinking PFAS-laden well water are overblown. As voters we are left having to guess at the belief system that guides Mr. French in approaching these issues.
This “concern for the poor” rings hollow from a man who quietly blocked Spokane County from even considering administration of a grant to research the extent of PFAS contamination of private wells on the West Plains. His “concern” apparently didn’t extend to his constituents and their children, as well as their cattle, horses, chickens, and garden produce all of whom have been absorbing PFAS from these wells? Where is his actual, practical concern for these people (as opposed to a public face of support for the investigation once he could no longer block it)? Does he quietly and personally judge the health risks of PFAS well water contamination to be overblown?
Since neither Rep. McMorris Rodgers and Commissioner French will ever answer a head-on question about their underlying convictions about climate change and the dangers of PFAS, we are left to consider other lines of evidence.
Our Washington State Public Disclosure Commission is required by law to collect and make available “Financial Affairs Statements” from candidates for public office. It is a little recognized and little used resource.
Those seven companies make up fully half of the individual stock positions in his financial affairs statement. While these holdings are not definitive evidence of climate denial and denial of the health risks of PFAS, they certainly are suggestive—and that suggestion is entirely in line with the blatant climate denial and condemnation of environmental regulation that pervades the modern-day Republican Party.
In the months leading to this fall’s elections pay attention to not only to what Republicans say about these issues—but to what they do and invest in when out of the limelight. The latter two are more likely indicative of the underlying beliefs than their statements.
To be clear, I don’t believe that most Republicans have evil intent on these issues. They have strongly held convictions—and those convictions guide their actions, even while they understand the political advantages of not making those convictions clear to the voting public. Beware.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Stocks held within a mutual fund or an ETF (“exchange traded fund”) are more easily dismissed as indicators of one’s values than are individual stock holdings, unless, of course, the mutual fund or ETF is strongly specialized in a particular segment of the market—e.g. petroleum stocks.
I never took a formal course in economics but I grew up among people who lived through two world wars, the 1929 Stock Market Crash, and the Great Depression, people who understood that there was more to the price rises of inflation than the simple claim of too much spending or “printing” too much money. These people understood that when too much economic power was in too few hands prices would rise as a result of lack of competition. These people lived in the echo of the Gilded Age—a time with many economic parallels to our own. These were people who played the 1930s board game Monopoly and understood the meaning it meant to convey.
For decades now right wing think tanks and the talking heads they hire have been preaching the Republican gospel that inflation (a rise in prices) is always caused by too much government spending—too many dollars chasing too few goods—and ignoring than powerful companies can use “inflation” as an excuse to raise prices and then keep them high.
I recommend signing up for Dr. Reich’s Substack writing (along with me and 337,000 other subscribers). You can sign up here. (Better yet sit in on his free YouTube Course “Wealth and Poverty.” It is quite an experience.)
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
EVERYTHING BELOW IS THE WRITING OF ROBERT REICH, NOT MINE:
(1) Corporate profits reached a record high in the fourth quarter of last year.
(2) Inflation is still with us. The government reported Friday that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge rose 0.3 percent month-to-month in February, following a January uptick that was the largest in a year. Prices have risen 2.5 percent over the past 12 months — certainly better than inflation readings compared with a year ago but still stubbornly above the Fed’s 2 percent target. So-called core inflation, which strips out more volatile food and energy prices and is therefore a more reliable indicator of where prices might be headed, is still coming in more strongly than central bank officials would like to see.
The easiest explanation for both phenomena — record corporate profits and prices remaining elevated — is that corporations have enough monopoly power to keep prices high. (Corporations are also shrinking the size of the products you’re buying without lowering their prices — a variant of the same thing.)
This is one of the biggest reasons the American public is not crediting Biden with a great economy. Most people still aren’t feeling it.
But the mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about this.
Last November, the New York Times contacted me about contributing a NYTimes Opinion video. I suggested one on corporate monopolies keeping prices high. After lots of to-ing and fro-ing, the editor wrote: “One of our economists felt that it might be a little late, in that the rate of price increases is slowing…and so this particular take might not be as timely as I’d hoped.”
If Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola,which — surprise, surprise — announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi, and has also kept its prices high.
The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.
We’re seeing this pattern across much of the economy — especially with groceriesAt the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30 percent more for beef, pork, and poultry products than they were in 2020.
The problem goes well beyond the grocery store. In 75 percent of U.S. industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did 20 years ago.
It has sued to block the merger of Kroger and Albertson’s — two giant grocery chains. Kroger operates 2,750 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia. The company’s 19 brands include Ralphs, Smith’s, King Soopers, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, Mariano’s, Pick ’n Save and Harris Teeter. Albertsons operates 2,273 stores in 34 states. Its 15 brands include Safeway, Jewel Osco, Vons, Acme and Shaw’s. Together, Kroger and Albertsons employ around 700,000 people.
It’s suing Amazon for using its dominance to artificially jack up prices — one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation. It’s suing Apple for using its market power to control its apps and prevent other businesses from offering them.
It successfully sued to block the merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, which would have made consolidation in the airline industry even worse.
But given how concentrated American industry has become, there’s still a long way to go. Biden should make his antitrust enforcement against corporate power a centerpiece of his campaign.
Secondly, big corporations must not be allowed to use their power to gouge consumers.
“Giant corporations are using supply chain shocks as a cover to excessively raise prices and sometimes charging the same price but shrinking how much consumers actually get,” Warren charges.
The bill would empower the FTC (which would also get $1 billion in additional funding) and state attorneys general to stop companies from charging “grossly excessive” prices, regardless of where alleged price gouging took place in a supply chain.
(The legislation would also protect small businesses — those earning less than $100 million — from litigation if they had to raise prices in good faith during crises.)
The bill would also require public companies to disclose more about their costs and pricing strategies.
I don’t have any illusions that this bill will find its way into law soon. Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, and not all Democrats support it. Meanwhile, Republicans and their business backers are dead set against it — and are eager to blame continued high prices on Biden, not on corporations.
But this bill is just as necessary as aggressive antitrust enforcement — and an example of what could and will be done if Democrats sweep the 2024 elections.
The record profits of large corporations are coming out of the paychecks of average Americans, who are still struggling to get by.
Biden and the Democrats must say this loudly and clearly, and tell the public what they are doing — and will do — to stop corporate monopolies and price gauging.
