Someone in power is finally starting to get it, on gas prices

I blogged about this before, here. Things need to pick up, fast, on this front.

Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP, four of the largest petroleum companies, are raking in record profits. Meanwhile, prices at the pump have surpassed the (non-inflation adjusted) highs of 2008. If that dynamic seems fishy to you, you’re in good company. First, U.S. House Democrats and President Joe Biden raised concerns. Now, Letitia James, New York State’s attorney general, is officially suspicious, as well.

On (April 14), the attorney general’s office launched a statewide investigation into whether or not the gas industry is engaging in price gouging. In other words: Are companies artificially inflating the cost of fuel and taking advantage of consumers? And in other, other words: Are you getting more screwed over than usual? The probe was first announced in a CNN report; Gizmodo confirmed the news in a phone call with Halimah Elmariah, James’ deputy press secretary. - Gizmodo

You probably gave about $900, give or take, to Big Weapons last year

The title's arguably misleading; obviously there's a very wide range. But if you paid much in taxes a lot of it certainly went to you-know-who.

Most of us want our tax dollars to be wisely used — especially around tax time.

You’ve probably heard a lot about corporations not paying taxes. Last year, individuals like you contributed six times more in income tax than corporations did.

But have you heard about how many of your tax dollars then end up in corporate pockets? It’s a lot — especially for corporations that contract with the Pentagon. They collect nearly half of all military spending.

The average taxpayer contributed about $2,000 to the military last year, according to a breakdown my colleagues and I prepared for the Institute for Policy Studies. More than $900 of that went to corporate military contractors. - Truthout

Rural opposition to renewables projects

In a way I certainly get this. I wouldn't want to be surrounded by solar panel glare, as opposed to pleasing greenery, myself. But win-wins can clearly be worked out. There's plenty of room.

The United States is experiencing a boom in utility-scale renewable energy projects, as solar and wind prices continue to fall and the Biden administration pushes for a fossil fuel-free electricity sector by 2035. Throughout the process, developers seeking vast expanses of cheap land for utility-scale facilities have faced pushback from the likes of Massachusetts fishermen, coal plant supporters, and environmental groups concerned about desert tortoises. Now, rural communities around the Midwest are mobilizing to restrict or ban large renewable energy projects. Experts say that some residents have been swayed by misinformation about the health impacts of solar and wind. But for most, the issue is tied to concerns about the loss of agricultural land in a region long-defined by its farming roots. - Grist

The real "crime wave" is in Trumper-run red states

This is actually no secret. But corporate "news" media is awfully close-mouthed about it.

A new study again confirms it: Republican-led states have higher murder rates than Democratic ones. While your Tucker Carlson-watching uncle may be utterly convinced that Portland, Oregon, has been burned to the ground, or regaling his email lists with any number of tales he heard directly from Donald Trump's inflamed appendix, the truth of the matter is that the states with high violent crime rates tend to be led by conservative Republican politicians.

So then, which causes which? That's not clear, but the Yahoo! News writeup of the study provides a nice, terse summary of what we know does predict violent crime rates. They "are found in areas that have low average education levels, high rates of poverty and relatively modest access to government assistance," which not coincidentally describes much of the deep-conservative South. It may be that fear of violent crime makes Americans more conservative; certainly, anyone with a passing familiarity with Fox News knows that America's top conservative news source got that way with hosts that scream in bug-eyed terror over all the ways that you, personally, are in imminent danger of being murdered by immigrants, or bilingual people, or the Socialisms, or anyone who thinks American police are straight-up murdering too many of the people they come in contact with these days...

But the reality remains: If you want to reduce violent crime, you fix up the schools to raise education levels, you institute programs to lift people out of poverty, and you provide government assistance to make sure people are at least getting food and a roof over their heads. Since all of these are things that Republicanism is absolutely bug-eyed dead-set against in any form, in any venue, we're hardly going out on a limb by saying A leads to B leads to C. - Daily Kos

A comprehensive guide to Big Tech's awfulness

And one of the most awful things is that there will continue to be massive grounds for adding to it, at least in the near future.

But between brutal antitrust battles, a lengthening laundry list of lawsuits, and persistent privacy problems, even the most dogged observer can find it difficult to remember the contours of a specific scandal or pinpoint when, exactly, we started thinking about that specific problem with that social network. To that end, the newly formed Tech Oversight Project has devised a one-stop Wiki filled with enough Big Tech badness to clog up a Congressional hearing.

At its launch, the Big Tech Wiki features around 90 separate links to pages on a diverse assortment of topics and issues. Viewers, for example, can find entries explaining Meta’s lobbying efforts against antitrust legislation listed alongside a breakdown of Google’s fraught relationship with the U.S. military. The Wiki also features pages dedicated to “Big Tech Lying to Congress” and “Big Tech as The New Big Tobacco.” - Gizmodo

Whiny twits in corporate "news" media

I for one will never, ever forgive corporate media, starting with the New York Times, for what they did to help put Trump in the White House. That they deserve to be regarded as the ultimate judges of what's acceptable and/or desirable, in the wake of that and so much else, is beyond farcical.

And what follows in the (New York) Times piece is the true chilling effect, a line that seems innocuous but really isn’t: “Free speech is predicated on mutual respect.” Is it? Where is this doctrine of Kumbaya (written) into constitutional theory? The American ideal of free speech is predicated on the idea that the government should not control printing presses, dictate what can be said out loud or limit how we peaceably assemble.

Lately, many free speech advocates wonder to what degree corporations, rather than government, are limiting discourse by virtue of the fact that only a few companies—Facebook, Twitter and Google—dominate the Internet. There is no legal argument that we all have to respect and like each other; we simply acknowledge that powerful institutions are not supposed to limit each other’s expression.

This editorial, with its appeal to niceties and decorum, flips this concept on its head, saying that discourse isn’t under threat by state and corporate power but by the fact the 99 Percent—students, readers, regular people—are getting too loud in a media ecosystem that is much more open and democratic than it was for previous generations...

What the Times editorial is saying is that protecting the right of writers and academics to say unpopular things requires self-censorship for those who don’t have the privilege of being employed in the intellectual class. A columnist says something transphobic? Don’t you dare tweet about it. A television host engages in some casual racism? Better not put it in your blog, or else you’re contributing to the hostile environment of shaming that leads to self-censorship. Self-censorship by other people, that is, whose right to express themselves is presumably more important than yours.

The Times editorial is less about free speech than it is a protest against a shift in the power balance, anger at a world in which journalists have more exposure to the readership class, and to the reader’s anger as well. - FAIR

Americans are driving and paying, just like always

I don't claim to know how things are going to end up, including politically.

“For now, gasoline demand has shown absolutely no signs of buckling under the pressure of higher prices, even as California nears an average of $6 per gallon,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

“It’s not impossible that gas prices would still have to climb a considerable amount for Americans to start curbing their insatiable demand for gasoline,” he said.

With the market slow to curb U.S. oil consumption, some experts are urging more action from governments — including leaders calling for more voluntary conservation.

The International Energy Agency — the West’s counterpart to OPEC — (two weeks ago) published a four-month plan to cut oil consumption by 2.7 million barrels a day, equivalent to all the cars in China.

The10-point plan calls for reducing highway speed limits by about 6 mph (estimated to save 290,000 barrels daily), working from home three days a week (170,000 barrels a day) and curtailing air travel for business (260,000 barrels daily).

Many of those practices echo pandemic-era behaviors, so they’re proven to be within reach, said Pete Erickson, climate policy program director at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Such efforts could still meaningfully impact energy markets, he added, without the disruption, isolation or scale of Covid-19’s lockdowns.

“From the perspective of trying to fill a Russia-size hole in the global oil market, it’s really significant what we’ve shown we can do through behavioral measures,” Erickson said.

“The U.S. is a major player in the oil market. It can make changes in its consumption faster than in its production — we have direct proof of that. And the scale of that [change] really matters,” he said.

To be sure, this approach is very different from what’s needed in the long term for climate, Erickson added. This short-term strategy doesn’t require building new infrastructure. That’s why it can work so quickly, but it’s also the reason it’s insufficient for deep and long-term change. - E&E News