• Google gave climate science deniers big bucks: As part of its investigations into “The Polluters,” The Guardian reports that Google, which has presented a public face of climate crisis “wokeness” and support for carbon-neutral policy, has contributed substantial sums to organizations notorious for their doubt-engendering disinformation campaigns on climate, which have included smears of scientists, attacks on climate legislation, and the promotion of rollbacks of Obama era environmental regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among the recipients: the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute (which has blasted Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg for “climate delusion hysterics”), the State Policy Network (which says there is no climate crisis), the American Conservative Union (whose chairman worked on Koch Industries’ aggressive anti-environmental campaigns), the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute (the Koch-funded libertarian outfit that has taken a variety of climate-science-denying stances). Bill McKibben, a long-time environmental activist who co-founded the climate organization 350.org, accused Google and other companies of “functional greenwashing” because of the conflict between their public pledges and pronouncements and their private donations. “Sometimes I’ll talk to companies, and they will be going on and on about their renewable server farm or natural gas delivery, and I say, thank you, but what we really need is for your lobbying shop in Washington to put serious muscle behind it. And they never do.”
• Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed several new gun reforms into California law. Among them: Assembly Bill 12 extends the duration of gun-related restraining orders to five years. Under the new law, when a judge signs a gun restraining order, a search warrant will also be issued to help law enforcement recover the weapons. Assembly Bill 339 requires individual law enforcement agencies to develop written standards regarding use of gun restraining orders. Assembly Bill 164 holds anyone with an out-of-state gun restraining order to the same restrictions on buying firearms in California. Assembly Bill 879 authorizes a crackdown on “ghost guns” by requiring background checks for the sale of firearm frames and receivers by licensed vendors. Senate Bill 376 caps the number of firearms unlicensed residents can sell to 50 per calendar year.
• California Now Has the Nation’s Strictest Private Prison Ban: The law prohibits any for-profit lockups—including immigration detention centers.
MIDDAY TWEET
• U.S. intervention in Afghanistan turns 18. How many Americans noticed?
On the 18th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, President Donald Trump said on Twitter, “… it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home.” He added, “WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN.” But rather than referring to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, Trump was actually talking about the role of U.S. troops in northern Syria, about which he had just made a serious decision. One wonders whether Trump would take greater interest in the longest official war in U.S. history if he had real estate interests in Kabul. He made absolutely no mention of Afghanistan on the anniversary of the war. But neither did most members of Congress.
There was a near blackout of the anniversary in the media as well. Of the major newspapers, only the New York Times paid some attention to it with a lengthy special called ‘We Are Inside the Fire’: An Oral History of the War in Afghanistan.
• Young climate activists target some efforts in their own backyard:
Climate groups in the U.S. are working to channel that youthful energy toward local policy battles, where they see higher chances of success.
In Washington state, young activists have joined a broad coalition pushing for a clean energy transition in the state, fighting for and, in many cases, winning ambitious policy battles, including the state's target to reach 100 percent clean energy by 2045, the strongest clean electricity law in the nation.
"It's not just taking back the White House and the Senate, not just passing federal legislation to address the crisis, but really making sure that we go deep on local ... actions," [said Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, the North American director of the pioneer climate activist organization 350.org].
• Economic Policy Institute: Teacher employment still hasn’t recovered from the Great Recession:
State and local government austerity since the recession has contributed to a significant shortfall in education employment. There are still 60,000 fewer public education jobs than there were before the recession began in 2007. If we include the number of jobs that should have been created just to keep up with growing student enrollment, we are currently experiencing a 307,000 job shortfall in public education. [...]
Teacher strikes in several states over the last few years have highlighted deteriorating teacher pay as a critical issue. My colleagues Sylvia Allegretto and Larry Mishel find that average weekly wages of public school teachers have fallen over the last two decades and the teacher wage penalty continues to grow, reaching a record 21.4% in 2018.