There's nothing much that's "green" about Amazon

From yesterday. Certainly it is preferable to buy legitimately eco/climate-friendly products, when you can. But don't buy the hype.

You’ve probably heard: Amazon Prime Day is happening today and tomorrow (July 12 and 13). There are deals galore, and the internet is alive with timely listicles of Amazon products for every niche—including “eco-friendly” Amazon deals. But the problem is, there’s no such thing. For all its promises and posturing, Amazon is a company with massive negative environmental impacts, and Prime Day embodies some of its worst traits.

First off, there’s all that packaging and waste. Then there’s the transportation emissions ramped up by super-fast delivery. Adding insult to injury are the company’s half-measure, corporate carbon pledges, a flawed emissions self-reporting strategy, and fossil fuel partnerships. So, before you buy into the hype and add a ‘green’ products wishlist into your shopping cart, know that Amazon’s climate track record isn’t so prime. - Earther

Women take the lead in labor organizing

On a related matter, if it was up to me women would hold all political offices in this country, at least for a while. There's no question, from any rational standpoint, that things would be a lot better if that was to happen.

Over the course of the pandemic, the majority of essential workers were women. The majority of those who lost their jobs in the pandemic were women. The majority of those who faced unstable care situations for their children and their loved ones were women.

And now the majority of those organizing their workplaces are women.

Kroger workers are part of a surge in organizing led by women, women of color and low-wage workers impelled by this once-in-a-century pandemic. Many said they feel the pandemic has unmasked the hypocrisy of some employers — they were ​“essential” workers until their employers stopped offering protections on the job, good pay and commensurate benefits.

Among them, a deep recalibration is happening, dredging up questions about why they work, for whom, and how that work serves them and their families. For many it’s the chance to define the future of work. - In These Times

An effort to reform the appallingly corrupt charter industry kicks in

As of July 1. Hopefully this is a first step to entirely snuffing out the charter industry, along with any and all other efforts to destroy public education. Which is a big goal, and it won’t happen quickly or easily to say the very least.

Here are the significant gains.

The Department will make it difficult or impossible for charters run by for-profits to get grants...

There will be greater transparency and accountability for charter schools, state entities, and CMOs that apply for grants...

Regulations to stop white-flight charters from receiving CSP funding and ensure the charter is needed in the community...

Making progress on holding charters accountable and reducing waste, fraud, and profiteering is an extraordinarily difficult task. The goal of the charter lobby is to create as many charters as possible, make schools a marketplace, and eventually overtake our democratically governed schools. We have a long way to go in stopping that. But these regulations are an important first step. - Diane Ravitch's blog

ALEC is still at it

You don't see as much, on the progressive internet, about the American Legislative Exchange Council as you used to. It's still out there, and it's still despicable, and this is a good, current story about what it's still up to.

The Energy Discrimination Elimination Act is just one of the thousands of pieces of legislation ALEC has disseminated nationwide since its formation in 1973. According to a two-year investigation of “copycat” bills published in 2019 by USA Today, the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity, state lawmakers introduced nearly 2,900 bills based on ALEC templates from 2010 through 2018. More than 600 of them became law.

What explains ALEC’s track record? A big piece of the answer lies in the way the group spreads disinformation and hides its activities from the general public...

ALEC’s disinformation starts with how the group describes itself.

Originally called the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators, ALEC falsely claims it is a “nonpartisan” organization that enables private sector members to collaborate with legislators on policies and programs promoting what it calls “Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty”—a classic libertarian mantra.

Nonpartisan? Hardly. Virtually all of the roughly 2,000 state lawmakers, officials and staffers who pay a token fee of $200 for a two-year ALEC membership are Republicans.

Likewise, despite ALEC’s positive gloss, the principles it espouses would establish a corporatocracy. By “free markets,” ALEC means giving free rein to corporations by rolling back public health, environmental, consumer and voting protections; by “limited government,” it means radically downsizing the federal government; and by “federalism,” it means transferring authority from the federal government to governors and state legislatures, which corporations can more easily dominate. - Independent Media Institute

Doing something about dark money

This article gets into some recent efforts.

Politicians would be much more responsive to their constituents if these dark money donors had to show their game faces to the world instead of surreptitiously subverting the public’s health, fortunes and wellbeing.

But here’s good news. A workable strategy is emerging that can rip the masks from the faces of would-be oligarchs and force their deeds into the sunlight, the best disinfectant. Change for the better has already begun to work without the help or hindrance of Congress...

Eventually, citizens working together can find cracks in the campaign finance system and keep adding pressure until something gives way. This is precisely what democracy needs in this country now—added pressure so that campaign finance and our political system can work for all of us, not as a gamed system driven by the demands of the greedy among the wealthy. - DCReport

School deformer arrogance took a hit in 2021

I saw about the SCOTUS call on Maine. Not good, but it was no surprise, and it probably won't have wide practical effect. Opposition to school privatization in fact runs wide and deep.

But what voucher proponents had not counted on was the pushback—not just from the usual coalition of teachers’ unions, progressives, and grassroots public school advocates, but from bipartisan lawmakers in politically “red” states...

“The fact that private school voucher bills fail even in states where Republicans have full control shows that these schemes are not nearly as popular as Betsy DeVos and others say they are,” says Jessica Levin, the director of Public Funds for Public Schools, a national campaign that uses litigation, advocacy, and research to oppose vouchers and other forms of school privatization.

“There are multiple reasons for these failures,” she says, “including that Republicans representing rural areas know vouchers won’t benefit their constituents because of the lack of private schools in these areas and because public schools often are important for jobs and community-building.” - Jeff Bryant/The Progressive

78 trillion from ditching coal

Obviously, assumptions were made, in projecting out to a number like this. But, and unlike what you see from, say, right-wing propaganda mills (sorry, “conservative think tanks‘), they’re legitimate, fact-based assumptions.

The world would generate $78trn in net ‘social benefits’ by replacing coal with renewable energy, according to a new working paper from Imperial College Business School.

The net gain in switching from coal to renewable energy sources would be equivalent to about 1.2% of global GDP per year until the end of the century, according to the study. Per tonne of coal, that would represent a net gain of around $125 and $55 per tonne of avoided coal emissions. - Energy Monitor