Tag Archives: Jeffrey Weiss

We beat Valero and BlackRock!

Posted on by

The Navigator CO2 Pipeline — brought to you by the warm-and-fuzzy corporate duo of Valero and BlackRock — is officially dead. That’s right. We, the People, beat two Fortune 500 companies!

CO2 pipeline proposals by Summit and Wolf remain live rounds. But landowners along the Wolf route haven’t heard a peep from Wolf since March. And Summit just announced its pipeline would be delayed by two years. These developments are encouraging.

Here’s my analysis as to why we prevailed against Navigator and will eventually defeat Summit and Wolf: Continue Reading →

America needs a new peace movement

Posted on by

Other than a few persistent, isolated voices for peace, we mostly hear crickets. Thus the question I ask in this week’s program and have asked before: Where is the peace movement?

Forty years ago, the anti-nuclear-weapons movement was broad and vibrant. It embraced every conceivable strategy — from hammering missile silos to volunteering in campaigns of “pro-peace” candidates.

That movement accomplished a lot: The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, START, The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, US-Soviet citizen-diplomacy, and much more. There are still 13,080 nuclear weapons in the world, but that’s down from over 60,000 in 1986.

Change happened, as it always does, because hundreds of thousands of people marched, spoke out, got arrested, campaigned, and made more noise than the lumbering colossus of the federal government could ignore. Continue Reading →

War in Ukraine: No easy answers

Posted on by

CO2 PIPELINES. Rep. J.D. Scholten and I discuss legislation to restrict eminent domain. That conversation starts at the 30-minute mark of this week’s program. Legislation is moving in the Iowa House, and if you’ve got an opinion, now’s a great time to contact your rep and senator.

UKRAINE. There are no easy answers when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine. The predicted “new phase” of the war could even increase the risk of a nuclear exchange. Jeffrey Weiss and I discuss that.

I also ask Jeffrey how seriously we should take the resolution proposed by congressional Republicans to cut off military and financial aid to Ukraine. My own take: not very — though it probably won’t be retracted as was the letter from House Democrats to President Biden last October.

As Jeffrey sees it, there are a couple big-picture issues to keep in mind: “The US is spending close to a trillion dollars for the military-industrial complex and has a permanent war economy. The only people in the world who don’t know this are the people of the United States. Regarding this war specifically, one of the key questions we have to ask is what’s in the best interest of the people of Ukraine.”

MONOPOLIES. J.D. Scholten is tackling a problem that needs a bi-partisan fix. We discuss how Ticketmaster, Smithfield, Major League Baseball, and other corporate monopolies get away with gouging consumers due to weak anti-trust laws. Unless we do something, “the wealthy are going to get more wealthy and they’re leaving the rest of us behind,” says J.D. Continue Reading →

Ukraine

Posted on by

My guests are Jeffrey Weiss and Kathleen McQuillen — two of the most articulate and well-studied people I know when it comes to war, peace, and US foreign policy. Jeffrey’s a prof at Des Moines Area Community College. Kathleen’s the director of Catholic Peace Ministry. Both have been engaged in peace and justice work since the last millennium.

It’s a good conversation. I hope you’ll listen to the podcast or radio program and share your feedback. Covering several aspects of the war in Ukraine, Jeffrey, Kathleen, and I discuss NATO, the lack of media interest in other conflicts (Yemen, in particular), the risk of the war escalating, and what can and should be done by the US and its allies. Continue Reading →

Walking to Glasgow for climate

Posted on by

Rachel Mander is with the Young Christian Climate Network (YCCN). They are walking to Glasgow because the importance of the COP26 summit cannot be overstated. As the world’s most prominent climate scientists laid out recently, we have come to the do-or-die moment. A full-fledged transformation of how we live on planet Earth must happen NOW!

What these young people are doing is important and inspiring. Hopefully, world leaders preparing to gather at Glasgow are paying attention. Nations need to agree to a climate strategy that far outpaces the limited outcomes of the COP21 climate summit in Paris in 2015. Continue Reading →

Coral Reefs in Deep Trouble

Posted on by

A new report paints a disturbing picture of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The coral’s status has declined from “significant concern” to “critical,” as bleaching continues to kill more and more coral. The report fingers climate change as the primary culprit. It’s not just coral: One-third of all natural World Heritage sites are threatened by climate change. Continue Reading →

I won’t do what Biden told me to do

Posted on by

You might recall that, in a video captured by Kathy Byrnes at a campaign rally last January, Joe Biden told me, “Go vote for someone else.” Well, I’m not going to do that. I’m voting for Joe Biden because, even though climate leaders may disagree with Biden on specifics, we can work with him. The best I can hope from climate denier Donald Trump is to get thrown out of his rallies. Continue Reading →

Why I listen to Rush Limbaugh

Posted on by

Dear Friends, And yes, I mean “friends,” because there’s something I do for you that very few people would do: Listen to Rush Limbaugh. Why? So you don’t have to. Continue Reading →