David Crump's Blog HumanityRenewed.com | HumanityRenewed

“How Republicans are Breaking Democracy”

Ari Berman has an informative article at Mother Jones magazine describing

the ongoing efforts of the Republican party — which is the minority party in this country, by the way — to dominate American politics.

Making it more and more difficult for people to vote is only one of their tactics. Berman outlines the others in “The Insurrection was Put Down. The GOP Plan for Minority Rule Marches On: How Republicans are Breaking Democracy.”

Below is an excerpt:

. . . This isn’t about which party wins elections, but whether democracy itself survives. Some anti-democratic measures were deliberately built into a system that was designed to benefit rich white men: The Senate was created to boost small conservative states and serve as a check on the more democratic House of Representatives, while the Electoral College prevented the direct election of the president and enhanced the power of slave states through the three-fifths clause. But these features have metastasized to a degree the Founding Fathers could have never anticipated, and in ways that threaten the very notion of representative government.

In the past decade, the GOP has dropped any pretense of trying to appeal to a majority of Americans. Instead, recognizing that the structure of America’s political institutions diminishes the influence of urban areas, young Americans, and voters of color, it caters to a conservative white minority that is drastically overrepresented in the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandered legislative districts. This strategy of white grievance reached a fever pitch when domestic terrorists emboldened by the president occupied the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory. But that unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results is a mere prelude to a new era of minority rule, which not only will attempt to block the agenda of a president elected by an overwhelming majority but threatens the long-term health of American democracy. “The will of the people,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1801, “is the only legitimate foundation of any government.” And now that foundation is crumbling. . .

Biden Continues Trump Policy of Holding Migrant Children in Detention Centers

What is the difference between the Republican and the Democratic parties?

A Republican bares his fangs while growling just before he bites you.

A Democrat bares his fangs while smiling just before he bites you.

Thus, the meme below offers a good summary of president Biden’s foreign policy in the early days of his presidency:

The same can be said about Biden’s domestic policies, unfortunately. Tatiana Cozzarelli has a timely article at the Left Voice describing the “new”

detention centers Biden is filling with unaccompanied minors at the border.

The article is entitled “Detention Centers for Migrant Children Aren’t Summer Camp, They Are Concentration Camps.”

Below is an excerpt, or click on the title above to see the entire article:

The Biden administration and the capitalist media are describing the detention camps for migrant children like summer camp. It’s indicative of exactly what the Democratic Party is: brutality and repression dressed up with butterflies and rainbows.

On Monday Joe Biden opened a new children’s concentration camp for unaccompanied migrants. It will hold up to 700 kids, from ages 13 to 17. This was

Beds for 700 children, ages 13 to 17, at the recently reopened detention facility. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

a camp that was closed under the Trump administration, who was widely criticized for keeping migrant kids in cages— for keeping migrant kids essentially in concentration camps instead of reuniting them with family members in the US. This camp is being re-opened by the Biden administration.

This is absolutely horrific. The children who enter this camp are not allowed to leave. In other words, these are children kept in prison, kept apart from family members waiting for them in the United States. It is exactly what we protested against during the Trump administration.

Why is Facebook Censoring My Wife’s Comments About Israel?

Recently, one of Terry’s (my wife) Facebook posts was flagged and deleted for violating Facebook’s content policies.

Her censored comment advocated for Palestinian human rights in the Israeli occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She noted that it was the Israeli government, not the occupied Palestinians, who were regularly committing acts of terrorism.

That particular political observation is no longer permitted by the Facebook censorship policies — which we all know are expanding rapidly.

It’s more evidence of the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country which would love to censor ALL criticism of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people living under its control.

Fortunately, the Jewish-led, Palestinian rights organization called Jewish Voice for Peace has begun a campaign on Facebook aimed at combating the Israel Lobby’s dangerous, anti-first amendment influence online.

They call it, “Facebook We Have to Talk: On Distinguishing Anti-Semitism from Anti-Zionism in Public Spaces.” Below is an excerpt:

In January 2021, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) announced a global campaign “Facebook, we need to talk” about the social media giant’s inquiry into whether criticism of the movement Zionism “falls within the rubric of hate speech as per Facebook’s Community Standards.”

In its current form, the controversy centers around forcing universities, social media platforms, and other public spaces to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) standard which defines current anti-Semitism to include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to Israel, overall a definition that would essentially shut down any criticism of the Zionist state.

According to Lara Friedman, the goal of Zionist groups who are pushing for this action “isn’t to get Facebook to deplatform antisemitism, but to get Facebook to deplatform criticism of Israel.”

In response, hundreds of activists, intellectuals and artists from around the world have launched a petition to ensure that Facebook does not include “Zionist” as a protected category in its hate speech policy—“that is, to treat ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for “Jew or “Jewish.” In its first 24 hours, the open letter gathered over 14,500 signatures, including such figures as Hanan Ashrawi, Norita Cortiñas, Wallace Shawn and Peter Gabriel.

“Cooperating with the Israeli government’s request,” the petition notes, “would undermine efforts to dismantle antisemitism, deprive Palestinians of a crucial venue for expressing their political viewpoints to the world, and help the Israeli government avoid accountability for its violations of Palestinian rights.”

A Christian Philosopher Reflects on Faith, Depression, and Persuasion

Jamie Smith is a friend and former colleague at Calvin University. He has

Philosophy professor at Calvin University, James K. A. Smith

written an autobiographical, meditative essay at The Christian Century reflecting on his slow but steady transformation as a Christian philosopher.

A serious bout of depression was pivotal in shaping Jamie’s newer perspective on the Christian’s role in influencing the world around us.

Jamie’s work is always well worth reading. His recent meditation on the power of human “affections” in contrast to intellect offers the mature insights of a wise man.

The essay is titled, “I’m a Philosopher. We Can’t Think Our Way Out of This Mess.” Below is an excerpt. Or you can click on the title to read the entire piece:

. . . There is a deep consonance between rhetoric and love, a longing that is the poetry of the affections. “The mind is drawn by love,” Augustine affirms in his Homilies on the Gospel of John. Thus he pleads, “Give me a lover and he feels what I am saying: give me one who yearns, give me one who hungers . . . give me one like this, and he knows what I am saying.” God’s revelation, he goes on to say, is not a message in a bottle, like bits of information sent across the abyss to be received by the intellect. Rather, God’s self-revelation is a magnet for desire. “This revelation is what draws. You show a green branch to a sheep and you draw her. Nuts are shown to a boy and he is drawn. And he is drawn by what he runs to, by loving he is drawn, without injury to the body he is drawn, by a chain of the heart he is drawn.”

What does it look like to bear witness to the truth in a way that is a tractor beam of the heart rather than a conqueror of the intellect? To write with allure rather than acuity? Writing that is revelatory not because it discloses but because it draws—pulling, enticing, inviting souls that are feeling their way in the dark to grab hold of the hand of grace? I have the sneaky suspicion this looks more like poetry than philosophy, that such work is accomplished more by novelists than theologians.

This change of mind is bound up with a vocational change of heart. Even early in my academic career, I had an unarticulated sense that part of my calling was to be a philosopher whose scholarship would serve wider audiences. Some describe this as the work of a public intellectual. I prefer to describe it as a kind of outreach scholarship, the hard work of translating philosophical insights for the sake of the church and the world. . .

Biden Continues US Imperialism in the Middle East

A few days ago I wrote here about the hypocrisy of US (and Israeli) military exploits in the Middle East. It was titled “A Tale of Two Missile Attacks.”

Today we learned that president Biden approved several new attacks in Syria. The ABC news headline reads, “US carries out airstrike against Iranian-backed militia in Syria.”

As I was preparing another post on this unfolding situation, I discovered Caitlin Johnstone’s article covering the same ground, in fine form. Her piece is titled “US Bombs Syria and Ridiculously Claims Self Defense.”

I remain ashamed to be an American today.

I have excerpted her article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.

Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases. . .

So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on “US locations” in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were “Iranian-linked”, a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force (emphasis mine). And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation.

This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.

The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against. This is completely backwards and illegitimate. Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.

It’s illegitimate for the US to be in the Middle East at all. It’s illegitimate for the US to claim to be acting defensively in nations it invaded. It’s illegitimate for the US to act like Iranian-backed fighters aren’t allowed to be in Syria, where they are fighting alongside the Syrian government against ISIS and other extremist militias with the permission of Damascus. It is illegitimate for the US to claim the fighters attacking US personnel in Iraq are controlled by Iran when Iraqis have every reason to want the US out of their country themselves.

Even the official narrative reveals itself as illegitimate from within its own worldview. CNN reports that the site of the airstrike “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks” in Iraq, and a Reuters/AP report says “Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.”

This is all so very typical of the American supremacist worldview that is being aggressively shoved down our throats by all western mainstream news media. The US can bomb who it likes, whenever it likes, and when it does it is only ever doing so in self defense, because the entire planet is the property of Washington, DC. It can seize control of entire clusters of nations, and if any of those nations resist in any way they are invading America’s sovereignty. . .

. . . This sort of nonsense is why it’s so important to prioritize opposition to western imperialism. World warmongering and domination is the front upon which all the most egregious evils inflicted by the powerful take place, and it plays such a crucial role in upholding the power structures we are up against. Without endless war, the oligarchic empire which is the cause of so much of our suffering cannot function, and must give way to something else. If you’re looking to throw sand in the gears of the machine, anti-imperialism is your most efficacious path toward that end, and should therefore be your priority.

America’s Richest .01% Pay Only 1/6th of the Taxes They Used to Pay

Several weeks ago Chuck Collins and Bob Ward (both at the Institute for Policy Studies) posted a brief summary at Inequality.org of their recent study, “Wealth Concentration: The Unique and Dominant Role of Tax Policy.”

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Collins and Ward demonstrate once again that the game is rigged. And it’s not rigged in favor of working people.

Every since Ronald Reagan sold America a bill of goods called trickle down economics, changing the tax code to lighten (or to sweep away!) federal taxes for the richest among us has become standard, operating procedure.

Their study is shocking enough, so I’ll just get to it:

America hasn’t stopped taxing its wealthiest citizens entirely.

But that’s where we’re headed.

According to a new IPS briefing paper, the richest .01 percent of Americans, about 33,000 lucky souls today, now pay just one-sixth of what they used to pay in tax, when measured as a percentage of their total wealth.

More Advice to Churches Divided by Trumpism, QAnon, Stolen Elections, and Other Myths, Part 2

[This is my second post addressing the problems of political divisions in American churches. You can read the previous post here.]

In the New Testament passages that I cited in the last post, Paul warns his young friend Timothy about the dangers created by church members who believe in mythology, promote mythology, and stir up divisive controversies and squabbles as they spread their favorite mythologies.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is simple: Don’t tolerate any of these things.

In 2 Timothy 2 he says, Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels . . . Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Let’s notice several issues in these letters.

First, what are the “myths” Timothy must combat? We can sidestep the debate over the specific content of the myths confusing Timothy’s churches. For our purposes, it is enough to understand what a myth was and how it functioned for those who believed it.

A myth was an invented story that explained why things are the way they are for those who believed it. Myths ordered a believer’s view of the world, bringing a sense of meaning and purpose to the devout.

For Christians, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, announcing the arrival of God’s kingdom on earth, is to accomplish all of these same things. But, of course, Christians believe that the Gospel is not a “myth,” in the common sense of that word, because we believe that the Gospel message is historical fact.

Second, we see that the contest between fact and fiction in religious debate is an ancient one. It is particularly dangerous to organize one’s view of the world around fancifully invented stories. As a Christian, I’d say that this is the problem with non-Christian religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Mormonism, to name only a few.

Third, anyone hoping to share the Gospel effectively with people devoted to mythology would do well to know the myths themselves and have some ability to point out their errors. Share the Gospel and knowledgeably point out the falsehoods of the myth. In other words, from a Christian perspective, replace fiction with facts. Then call for confession, repentance, and conversion.

Allowing a lie to shape the course of one’s life never pleases God.

Fourth, recognize the fact that not everyone will be willing to repent and change. Some people will prefer their mythology to the Truth of Jesus Christ. Here the leader/teacher must have wisdom. Recall, that Timothy was dealing with “church members” who claimed to be Christians.

They probably claimed to have a “new insight” that somehow enhanced or added to their Christian life. It would be tempting for a leader to think, “well they have some odd ideas, but they still confess Christ, so I’ll leave well enough alone.”

Bad idea.

People who cling to mythologies while continuing to profess faith in Christ are usually eager to share with others how much their mythical beliefs had added to their lives. Faith in Jesus is supplemented, and eventually usurped, by the mythology as the all-important elements of faith.

No faithful church leader can tolerate such compromise. No falsehood is EVER compatible with the truth of the Gospel. Controversy is inevitable. Paul judges it all very harshly. He concludes that such people have fallen into the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Division in the Body of Christ, foolish quarreling, replacing the centrality of worship and service to Jesus Christ with other competing priorities, causes, leaders, or belief systems is all the devil’s work. He loves to see it happen. Wise, godly leaders will respond accordingly.

Fifth, the Christian church is not intended to include anyone and everyone. It is, after all, the Body of CHRIST. The church must reach out to everyone, hoping to persuade everyone, but will finally recognize that the Family of God only includes those who surrender their hearts, minds, and wills to the Lord Jesus.

And this family never entertains mythology and lies.

So, when people choose to reject the burdens and responsibilities of Christian discipleship; when they cling to their mythologies and continue to spread contentious lies inside the church; when they decide that pastoral correction infringes upon their freedom to believe what they want, and they eventually decide to leave, the church has not been split. The wheat has been sifted from the chaff.

Remember that Paul also says:

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. (Titus 3:10-11)

If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. (2 Thess. 3:14)

The apostle John says about those who leave the church (rather than correct their false teaching) that “they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.” (1 John 2:19)

In fact, in 1 Corinthians 11:19 Paul even goes so far as to say, “No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.”

To show which of you have God’s approval…

You may have noticed by now that “church splits” are not what concern me most at this point in America’s post-Trump history.

The greater problem, I believe, is the way in which Trump’s presidency exposed the infantile “spirituality” of American evangelicalism, the widespread failure of evangelical leadership, the lack of deep, meaningful kingdom discipleship among so many who call themselves Christians.

The evangelical wing of American Christianity must take our recent political history as a wake-up call.

Unthoughtful cries for “church unity” are NOT what is most needed in this moment.

Instead, the more necessary cry is It’s Time for the Church to Grow Up?! Evangelicalism’s wholesale devotion to Donald Trump; the continuation of “Stop the Steal” rhetoric within the church (and much more) all demonstrate the failure of meaningful discipleship development inside our churches.

We don’t understand the Lordship of Christ.

We don’t understand the nature and meaning of the kingdom of God.

We don’t understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Seek God’s kingdom first.”

We don’t understand what it means to live as a citizen of God’s kingdom.

We don’t grasp the all-encompassing upside-down, inside-out nature of Jesus’ ethical teaching.

Don’t be distracted by the superficial calls of distress, wailing superciliously about the dreaded dangers of division.

Focus instead on meeting the needs of the hour: It’s Time for the Church to Grow Up!

[In the next post on this subject, I will finally get to the article that initially prompted my thoughts. Thanks for reading.]

Texas Robber Barons Hit the “Jackpot” While Poor Texans Freeze in Bed

Cristian Pineda died of hypothermia, shivering to death inside his Texas

home curled into a ball beneath layers of blankets. He was 11 years old.

Meanwhile, Jerry Jones, billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, declares that his Texas drilling company has “hit the jackpot” as natural gas prices shoot through the roof in Texas.

Jones is only the latest poster child for the evils of crony capitalism.

The rich get richer while the poor suffer, die, and get hit with sky-high price gouging. It’s the American way.

Below is an article by Camila Domonoske at NPR.org. She fills in the details:

The winter storms gripping much of the United States have devastated many families and businesses, with frigid temperatures and power outages causing particularly dire conditions in Texas.

But for oil and gas producers that have managed to keep production going, this is proving to be a big payday. Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, appears to be one of the beneficiaries.

Comstock Resources Inc., a shale driller that operates in Texas and Louisiana,

ARLINGTON, TEXAS – NOVEMBER 08: Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys watches action prior to a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at AT&T Stadium on November 08, 2020 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

told investors on an earnings call this week that the surge in natural gas prices was providing it with a major — albeit almost certainly temporary — financial boost. The company is publicly traded but Jones holds a majority of the shares.

“Obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot,” President and Chief Financial Officer Roland Burns said Wednesday.

The storm has reduced natural gas output at the same time that demand — for both home heating and power generation — has skyrocketed.

That’s resulted in catastrophic shortages, as well as some truly eye-popping prices for natural gas in the affected regions.

Many in the oil and gas industry have taken a blow because wells and pipelines have stopped working in the unexpected cold.

But Comstock was already ramping up production in anticipation that natural gas prices would increase, and now finds itself benefiting from what it described as “super-premium prices” of “anywhere from” $15 per thousand cubic feet to as much as $179 per thousand cubic feet.

For comparison, the company had sold the same gas last quarter for an average of $2.40 per thousand cubic feet.

An Apostle’s Advice to Churches Divided by Trumpism, QAnon, Stolen Elections, and Other Myths

John Fea recently posted his thoughts about an opinion piece written by

Francis Wilkinson at Chicago Business.com. Wilkinson’s editorial is entitled “America’s Churches Are Now Polarized Too.”

His article is interesting, and I will return to it in a future post. As I read this piece, I found myself reflecting on my recent readings in the New Testament letters of 1 and 2 Timothy.

Timothy was a close assistant to the apostle Paul. 2 Timothy was Paul’s final letter to his young co-worker, written shortly before Paul’s brutal execution in Rome.

Both letters overflow with advice on what it takes to be a faithful pastor in an agitated Christian community threatened by internal divisions.

In other words, Paul is coaching Timothy in how to deal with the 21^st century American church. For the more things change, the more they stay the same.

In this post I will print what I judge to be the most relevant sections of Paul’s advice to Timothy. It’s also very good advice for anyone calling him/herself a follower of Jesus Christ today.

I will deal more specifically with the relevance of Paul’s advice to the contemporary evangelical church in an upcoming post. For now, I will only draw your attention to Paul’s insistence on the importance of combating myths that challenge the truth of the Gospel.

One of the major problems confronting conservative churches today is the open circulation of destructive myths – political myths about Trump, elections, political parties, government agencies, and secular savior figures.

God’s people are called to remain fearlessly faithful to Truth. Truth is always the enemy of myths, whatever form they take.

1 Timothy 4:1ff

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. . .

If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed. Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.

1 Timothy 6:3ff

If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicionsand constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth. . .

2 Timothy 2:16ff

Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene. . .

Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

2 Timothy 4:3f

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

May we all ponder, pray, and act accordingly.

Amen.

Greg Palast on the History of Texas Electric Power

Greg Palast is an investigative reporter who has recently written about the

Texas power debacle (among other things). His piece is entitled “Texas Gets Lay’d: How the Bush Family Turned Off the Lights.”

Palast covers Texas’ history of deregulation and ability it gives the power companies freely to engage in extreme price gouging.

Not only was this crisis anticipated, not only did the power companies refuse to prepare, now those same companies are charging exorbitant prices for power they have failed to deliver.

You can’t make this stuff up. It’s called crony capitalism — and how much capitalism is not tied to cronyism in one way or another?

Below is an excerpt, or you can read the entire article by clicking on the title above:

Maybe because Texas gave us that wet-lipped huckster Ted Cruz, you think the state deserves to freeze in the dark.

I get that, but it’s not their fault, a least not the victims burning family heirlooms to stave off frostbite.

“What happened was entirely predictable,” power distribution expert attorney Beth Emory said of the blackouts. She told me this twenty years ago, after the first blackouts in Texas and California, following the cruel experiment called “deregulation” of the power industry.

Until 1992, the USA had just about the lowest electricity prices in the world and the most reliable system.

For a century, power companies had been limited by law to recovering their provable costs plus a “reasonable,” i.e. small, profit. But in 1992, George H. W. Bush, in the last gasps of his failed presidency, began to deregulate the industry.

“Deregulate” is a misnomer. “De-criminalize” describes it best. With the “free market” supposedly setting the price of power, Texas-based Enron was freed to use such techniques as “Ricochet,” “Get Shorty,” and “Death Star” to blow prices through the roof when weather shut down power plants. (This week was not the first game of Texas Gouge’m.)

Enron was not the only Lone Star power pirate. Houston Power & Light was “ramping” plants up and down at odd hours which whistleblowers said was deliberate.

Bush’s son “Shrub,” Texas Gov. George W. Bush, signed a law in 1999 forcing the state’s hapless customers to accept any price the “free” market dictated. Enron’s CEO Ken Lay showed his appreciation by becoming Baby Bush’s number one donor for Dubya’s presidential ambitions.

This week, wholesale electric prices in Texas, normally $50 per megawatt-hour, busted over $9,000/MWHR. Again. It happens with every cold snap and heat wave. One shop owner, Akilah Scott-Amos, showed the Daily Beast her electric bills which blew up from $34 per month to $450 for a single day.

“How Republicans are Breaking Democracy”

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Biden Continues Trump Policy of Holding Migrant Children in Detention Centers

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Why is Facebook Censoring My Wife’s Comments About Israel?

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Biden Continues US Imperialism in the Middle East

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America’s Richest .01% Pay Only 1/6th of the Taxes They Used to Pay

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Texas Robber Barons Hit the “Jackpot” While Poor Texans Freeze in Bed

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Greg Palast on the History of Texas Electric Power

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