TRUMP’S PARTING QUID PRO QUO

 

The Republican Senate in November of 2017 approved the $1.5 Trillion Tax Relief Bill skewed to assist the wealthy and major corporations but not without an offer to repay some major part of the cost of debt.

 

That payment would involve a deal: the reassignment of public lands as well as Native American lands as leasable to private oil, gas, and energy companies just before the end of Trump’s first term in office. 

 

Those lands, the “Coastal Plain” of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge represent nearly 8 percent of the 19 million acres of publicly owned land that is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).  In addition, the Trump Tax Relief Bill also provided subsidies for oil and gas industries, cuts in federal investments for clean energy development, and the lessening of plans to control climate change.  But there’s more: Trump’s administration has added to the $8 Billion gas and oil companies already receive in tax benefits as well as reducing royalty rates to be paid to the U.S government for use of lands, etc. 

 

The “coastal plain” is nearly 1.5 million acres, but it is also the environmental and biological heart of the ANWR, supplying life to the migrations of thousands of caribou, providing safe denning for hundreds of polar bears, protecting endangered avian species, and maintaining large salmon resources.  And the home of indigenous peoples who depend on those resources for their culture and survival.  

 

Trump started the process for selling oil rights in the coastal plains just after his election loss on November 17^th.  The procedure included a 30 day window for oil companies to confidentially tell the government which pieces of land they would like to include in a possible lease.  

 

Like a car, it’s a lease that ends with an option to buy and own.  Or, the companies can turn it back over to the Native Americans after they've “developed it (aka mutilated) beyond recognition.  But, if profitable, the companies can purchase it and carry on.

 

Although distasteful, this is not really very new.  Land reform deals where Roman patricians gained financially over plebes through swindles of acreage and the emperor over those same patricians reach back to 500 BC, but oil companies have been salivating over this opportunity in the coastal plain of ANWR for decades.

 

Patterns of seismic blasting the '84 and '85.

Between 1984 and 1985, more than 20 oil companies found means and method to survey the lands under the coastal plains, leaving scars and pockmarks that lasted many years.  Findings were unclear, but in 1986, Chevron and BP got the opportunity to spend $40 million and drill down 3 miles to find the answer, an answer no one is allowed to know. The well was called KIC-1.  

 

We’ll never know if there was oil or not – unless BP or Chevron (now Standard Oil) give away their position when bidding on a lease. Through the work of their hordes of lawyers and subsequent court filings, the two companies were able to muzzle the Alaskan Department of Natural Resources from releasing any of the two companies’ data.   

 

As for Alaska?  A Republican state without income or sales taxes and dependent upon its 50% of all revenue from mandated lease sales, despite its effects upon its indigenous people?  They can easily look the other way as the political process continues.

 

If you were wondering what another four years of Trump might look like, this is just one small sample of what he would do and is doing to burn it down before leaving an office in shambles for the next President.  President Biden may find his hands somewhat tied if Trump and his gang can get the leases finalized before he is forced to leave office on the 20^th of January, but Biden does control the permitting process afterward and the future costs enough to make even BP or Chevron take pause.    

Let's hope he does.

 

Resources: Center for American Progress and NRDC

 

 

 

 

“HOPE IS A THING WITH FEATHERS – “

 

 

“Hope is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul – 

And sings the tune without the words – 

And never stops – at all - “

 

Thank you, Emily Dickenson, who in hurried verse warns next of the many threats to that small bird, “that sings the tune.”    I thought to write some screed today of the latest long-lasting attempts by Trump to wreak some more devastation upon the environment before January 20^th.  Alas, last Friday’s move to roll back the regulations protecting migratory birds, legal consequences which have stood in place since 1918, was too hard to swallow much less explain.  Add to that the black record of what has been done to our climate and natural landscape in the last four years, well, let’s lock up those straight razors, friend.  

 

“And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – 

And sore must be the storm – 

That could abash the little Bird 

That kept so many warm – 

 

So, then, on to a diatribe about all the vultures flying into the state of Georgia to manage the scads of money being sent through the Republic National Committee and the Republican wanna-be Senators in their prostrate performances for cash on FOX News outlets.  Calling Karl Rove, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, etc., being paid a king or queen’s ransom for consulting from purse money sent to the cult of Donald.  That’s a clear staircase to cynicism and beyond.  No thanks.

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land – 

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me."

 

That brings us to Georgia and the runoff for Senate.  Two seats and quite possibly an opportunity to take the possession of the Senate by the Democratic Party.  

 

Democratic candidate Ralph Warnock is running against Republican Kelly Loeffler. Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff is campaigning against Republican David Perdue.   

 

So, just maybe, this time Hope is not enough.  It’s time to pay the crumb.

 

The runoff is January 5^th.  Get involved.

 

Willing to – 

Write Postcards, man phone banks, work phone banks directly with candidate offices, contribute directly to Ossoff or Warnock or the Georgia Senatorial Campaign Committee, or support ongoing efforts to increase the civic participation of underrepresented and underserved communities of color in Georgi and elsewhere?  

 

Contact Indivisible Chicago now.  

 

We are “in Extremity.”  THANK YOU.

    

 

What is Juneteenth Day?

Wednesday, June 19^th is the 154^th Juneteenth Independence Day  

The date celebrates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the loss of the Civil War and the abolition of all slaves in the state of Texas.  This was two and a half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1^st. 

In Chicago, many events were held on the previous weekend, and a  number of concerts will be held in Hillside and the city.  Customary celebrations, like those held in Texas in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s provided an opportunity for simple freedoms like singing, dancing, and readings from worshipped artists.

Why June 19^th?  It was on that date in 1865 that Union soldiers under the command of General Granger finally washed ashore in Galveston to inform the Texans of what had transpired.  By and large, Texas and its citizens were not impressed.  The limited size of the Union force and the increased numbers of slave-holders fleeing southern states to Texas as the war ravaged their plantations made for little response or acceptance of the news.

Other stories and conspiracy theories, most likely apocryphal, surfaced as reasons for the delay in the announcement for over two years after the President’s Proclamation.  The soldier sent to carry the news to Texas was murdered by those who wanted to prevent such information from reaching the fields.  Plantation owners kept the information from their work force to maintain order and production.  The Union soldiers were complicit in keeping the information from slaves to assure cotton crops were picked before freedom.

In fact, slaves worked and tilled the fields for over two years after they had been acknowledged free men and women in the Capitol.

Despite the Lone Star pushback, after Lee surrendered in April of 1865, it was only a matter of time before the tide of change would sweep across the nation.  Texas Supreme Court decisions in the next decade reaffirmed the status of freedom for those brave African Americans who had cautiously celebrated their liberty in June in the streets of Galveston upon first hearing the news.

Other racial justice organizations will mark the day remembering the horrific history of the slave trade and its everlasting impact on a people and two continents separated by over 5000 nautical miles. 

Over 2 million died while crossing the Middle Passage into America. 

At least as many others perished during the forced transportation across West Africa to the waiting ports.

Estimates of total captives brought to America for slavery run as high as 12 million.

Several hundred captives were chained together below decks in deplorable conditions, suffering cramped contagion and death on the journey.

Insurance brokers provided for coverage in cases of drowning, but not simply deaths.  As a result, some historians visualize the Atlantic sea bottom marking the exact paths of ships with the mountains of bones left from throwing strings of sick or unwanted slaves overboard. Deplorable.

It’s small wonder that Juneteenth will likewise mark the strong, resentful argument for reparations by racial justice organizers like the Black Land and Liberation Initiative.  They and others symbolically revisit the issue by highlighting General William Sherman’s original order in 1865 by recognizing a national day of action.  According to writer Aviana Willis, “In 40 acres across 40 cities black people will take nonviolent direct action to occupy and reclaim spaces such as abandoned schools and empty lots, with the goal of putting these spaces into service of the community.”

(http://inthesetimes.com/article/20249/black-land-and-liberation-forty-acres-mule-juneteenth)

Black Land and Liberation Initiative states it clearly:  “We are people who have been enslaved and dispossessed as a result of the oppressive, exploitative, extractive system of colonialism and white supremacy.  In this system, our labor and its products have been taken from us for generations for the accumulation of wealth by others.”(http://blacklandandliberation.org/)

“We have been taught in school that the source of the policy of “40 acres and a mule” was Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, issued on Jan. 16, 1865. (That account is half-right: Sherman prescribed the 40 acres in that Order, but not the mule. The mule would come later.) But what many accounts leave out is

that this idea for massive land redistribution actually was the result of a discussion that Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton held four days before Sherman issued the Order, with 20 leaders of the black community in Savannah, Ga., where Sherman was headquartered following his famous March to the Sea. The meeting was unprecedented in American history.

“Today, we commonly use the phrase “40 acres and a mule,” but few of us have read the Order itself. Three of its parts are relevant here. Section one bears repeating in full: “The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes [sic] now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.”

“Section two specifies that these new communities, moreover, would be governed entirely by black people themselves: ” … on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves … By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro [sic] is free and must be dealt with as such.”

“Finally, section three specifies the allocation of land: ” … each family shall have a plot of not more than (40) acres of tillable ground, and when it borders on some water channel, with not more than 800 feet water front, in the possession of which land the military authorities will afford them protection, until such time as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their title.”

“With this Order, 400,000 acres of land — “a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast,” as Barton Myers reports — would be redistributed to the newly freed slaves. The extent of this Order and its larger implications are mind-boggling, actually.” (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/)

Stanton had gone to a group of African American preachers and ministers at the conclusion of the war, asking what would be an appropriate payment for the debasing of a race and people.  The answer was the assurance of future economic freedom by receiving land on which to farm, land that had been taken in Sherman’s march along the southeastern coast of the United States.  Sherman later threw in the single mule with the 40 acres – as many of the pack animals were now available after the war.

“And what happened to this astonishingly visionary program, which would have fundamentally altered the course of American race relations? Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor and a sympathizer with the South, overturned the Order in the fall of 1865, and, as Barton Myers sadly concludes, “returned the land along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it” — to the very people who had declared war on the United States of America.”

Only a small handful of states – Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota and South Dakota – do not recognize the date as a day for observance, a ceremonial holiday or state sanctioned holiday.  45 other states, including Illinois, recognize the date’s importance and its observance of the participation and achievements of African-Americans in the progress of our country.  

Oak Lawn: Apprehensive Agreement in Temporary Shelter Ordinance

An Apprehensive Agreement in Oak Lawn Temporary Shelter Ordinance

A standing room only crowd attended last night’s meeting of the Oak Lawn Board of Trustees to consider, among other orders of business, the newly revised draft of an ordinance to apply regulations for churches acting as temporary shelters.  Dr. Sandra Bury, the Village President moved the agenda to accommodate the audience’s obvious interest and placed the issue front and center.

The legal representative for the Village in this matter, Kevin Casey, took the podium and referenced the great amount of dialogue that had taken place since the meeting with church and shelter representatives the previous week.  That meeting with the Oak Lawn Planning and Development Commission saw another standing crowd and concern that too little collaboration had taken place between those who were constructing these regulations and those who worked with the poor and homeless. 

Casey outlined a number of proposed amendments to the original document:  the change of license approval from January of 2018 to October of 2018, the modification in the serving Oak Lawn homeless first to “making an attempt to do so”; an adjustment from keeping a record of names and data to be shared with the Village official(s) to a list kept by the church/program for seven years; an alteration to provide flexibility for shelter operators when facing extreme weather; and a revision of denying medical care programs to instead approved counseling, emergency treatment and access to flu shots.  

Earlier agreements had been reached during the week regarding changes in the limits of guests, revisions in staffing requirements, allowance for food preparation, and a revised hierarchy of appeals processes.

Casey identified both Pastor Peggy McClanahan of Pilgrim Faith Church and Tina Rounds of the BEDS Plus Program out of LaGrange as instrumental in helping collaborate this shift in the regulations. 

Both Pastor McClanahan and Ms. Rounds spoke later on.  Pastor McClanahan noted that “although this is not a perfect document,” she and many others were “hopeful that we can all work together to make this (ordinance) workable as we continue on.”  Tina Rounds offered BEDS Plus’ “commitment to the process and working together,” and she wished for the future “reasonable administration of this ordinance.”

Others spoke as well, but the most powerful of words provided for the Board of Trustees came from a young lady named Jennifer, who limped heavily to the podium.  She provided her name and described her residence as “Homeless.”  She kindly thanked the Board for the time to speak, and in an emotional explanation punctuated by tears Jennifer thanked them also for the kindness in providing for her and so many others.  “Even if you do not do this kindness directly,” she reminded, the effects of your goodness to someone reaches far beyond a single act.”  She described how it reverberated within a community and even through time to help and assist, long after the giver of such an act would know.  She described the pain and humility that are thwarted by such compassion and humanity.  As she struggled to return to her seat, the crowd responded in great applause. 

Trustee Vorderer moved to add the amendments to the ordinance.  Approved.

The Ordinance was called for the vote and during discussion; Trustee Robert Streit described the need to exercise some caution and restraint in moving so quickly.  The Village had received a call from the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and he wondered aloud whether the Village should wait on this measure – seeking more information from HUD as well as additional cooperation with shelter leaders. 

The Ordinance passed quickly after his words of concern and his dissenting vote.