All Creatures Great and Small

This story is yet another example of what happens when humans screw-up the balance of Nature. California wildlife managers are having to relocate mountain lions (Puma concolor), a threatened species, hundreds of miles to prevent them from eating endangered Sierra bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis sierrae) of which only 600 survive. The sheep are a genetically distinct subspecies and were listed in 1999 when their population was estimated at only 125. They live in 14 bands, and a single mountain lion can stop a small herd from expanding or even wipe it out.

At first the California wildlife agency resorted to lethal removal, but a law change appropriately requires that non-lethal methods be used first. So, a young female mountain lion that was preying on a sensitive herd was the first to be relocated a hundred miles away. At first her movements revealed by tracking data were erratic as she became accustomed to her new surroundings. Her latest location data shows she is still alive and settling in to her new territory. A five year old male cougar who had killed at least nine sheep since 2018, displayed more stubbornness when he was relocated a hundred miles away. He blazed a direct path back to his old hunting grounds.  Not be defeated by the lion, officials captured him again and sent him 200 miles away in the opposite direction. Lions have an acute sense of direction aided by excellent vision and smell, which they use to hunt and locate mates. The increased distance and direction change appeared not to faze him as he began walking in the correct direction within 24 hours of release. But, probably to his long-term benefit, he veered off course and has so far not returned home.

Officials did not think cougars they captured for relocation would not try to go back to where they were taken. The idea was to protect the sheep, at least for a while. Biologists think that lack of other big predators exterminated by man in the Sierras such as bear and wolves, allowed the cat to occupy a larger niche in the ecosystem--bad news for vulnerable sheep. So if man wants bighorn sheep to remain in the altered landscape, he will have to artificially strike a new balance between predator and prey, a task Nature does effortlessly. How long must the earth mourn, the green of the whole countryside wither? For the wickedness of those who dwell in it beasts and birds disappear, because they say, "God does not see our ways." Jeremiah 12:4

High Court Clears Lula

Update: An indication of turmoil the Bolsonaro regime is experiencing is the resignation of all three military chiefs of staff after he fired his Defense Minister. The resignations are unprecedented since the end of military government thirty-six years ago. Brazil has been hit hard by the pandemic with over 300,000 reported deaths. Bolsonaro is under increasing criticism for his handling of the public health emergency. Observers see the resignations as an attempt to increase his control of the government and his political support as he faces an increasingly serious challenge from former president Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva.  

{28.03.21}It what could be a major break for conservationists and the future of the Amazon rainforest, the Brazil Supreme Court cleared Luiz da Silva, former President, of his corruption conviction. Lula will undoubtably run for office in 2022 against the nationalist Jair Bolsonaro, who has made rainforest exploitation a major policy of his administration. The progressive Lula presents a serious challenge to Bolsonaro. He leads in major opinion polls.

Lula received a 600 day prison sentence at one point in his lengthy prosecution, but the Supreme Court found that the prosecution was unfair and intended to end in his conviction. Prosecutors wiretapped his phones and coordinated each step of his trial with the trial judge, Sérgio Moro. Moro later accepted an appointment as Minister of Justice in the Bolsonaro government. Moro also has connections to the US State Department, and paid a visit to the CIA during his 2019 US trip as Justice Minister. 

Lula may have benefited from an opinion shift in the country's power elite. Recently they have been critical of the Bolsonaro government's response to COVID-19. Bolosonaro made world headlines comparing the virus pandemic to the flu and refusing to wear a mask in public. The ensuing acceleration of the virus spread in Brazil has had tragic consequences.

The oligarchy's pact to remove Lula's leftist government as part of its desire to dismantle social programs was aided by the pandemic, which has devastated Brazil's health care infrastructure. Lula faces the greatest challenge of his lifetime--restoring Brazilian environmental protection, now that he is free. A recent study published in Biological Conservation indicates Environment Minister Ricard Salles began in ernest to deregulate environmental protections while the country was focused on battling the pandemic . Since Bolsonaro took office at the start of 2019, fifty-seven pieces of environmental regulation were set aside or weakened. Twenty-eight of these actions occurred during the first seven months of the pandemic. There was also a 70% drop in fines imposed for regulatory violations between March and August, 2020. Bolsonaro had made his intentions clear even before he became president. During the 2018 election campaign, he declared he would do away with the “industry of environmental fines” and combat the “eco-Shiites.”

'Toontime: Black Get Back, Brown Turn Around

credit: D. Whamond; Wackydoodle axes: Do you want fries with that?

After what the Party of Sedition wrought in Georgia last night, they should no longer be considered a liberal democratic institution. They have become a death cult organized around one leading principle--maintaining electoral viability through voter suppression and anti-democratic procedural rules. The Georgia legislation allows a POS dominated legislature to overrule local boards of election and select their members, thus insuring the candidates they want will win. In a repeat of Reconstruction-era oppression, Georgia troopers even arrested a black Democratic lawmaker wishing to witness the governor signing the repressive legislation that was passed with lightening speed in less than one day. Here is what a German said when asked by an American writer how the Nazis rose to power in a otherwise liberal democracy:

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security....To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop."

The same process is happening in Georgia and potentially in other states like Wisconsin and Iowa where the POS works feverishly to restrict access to the ballot box in ways that disproportionately affect minorities and youth, constituencies that tend to vote Democratic.

Their totalitarian strategy of milking the BIG LIE of a stolen election to change election laws in their favor is effective. Georgia governor Brian Kemp won office against a black woman by just about 55,000 votes after he had ordered a purge of the Georgia rolls as secretary of state removing thousands of black voters, and then refused to register 53,000 new voters gathered by his opponent Stacey Abrams. Abrams was 17,000 votes short of forcing a run off. As governor he has signed into law the largest contraction in voting rights in the state since the sixties. 

Sinclair Lewis warned us. It is happening here because we have neglected tending the garden of democracy. The Senate must pass the federal election standards if democracy is to withstand the creeping fascist onslaught. That requires crypto-reactionaries like Joe Manchin to get on the correct side of history.

Oh, Jimmy, where are you now when we need you!

End the Fillibuster--NOW

Whether you call it a "Jim Crow" relic or just partisan obstructionism, the filibuster has lost any functional purpose in the Senate. It has become a tool of bourbon obstructionists like Mitch McConnell. Either a bill has the support of a handful of Senators who are willing to grind the body to a halt, or it does not pass at all. Democrats, especially so-called "centrists" which US Person prefers to think of as DINOs, do not have the courage of their convictions, only the fear of losing their privilege. Changing the rule is not "breaking the place" because the institution is already broken.

The supermajority cloture rule was instituted in 1917 in order to pass wartime legislation. (arming merchant ships) The filibuster was historically used by white supremacists to block civil rights legislation like the anti-lynching law. See history of Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina or Richard Russel of Georgia. One hundred years later, only the context has changed in the Senate. The filibuster in its present, effortless incarnation (it literally can be invoked by email) will be used by the Party of Sedition to block voting rights reform, not to mention gun safety laws, taxing the rich and corporations, expanding Medicare, or other parts of Biden's agenda that they find objectionable. It took a hundred years and a pandemic for the choice to become inescapable--either you vote for democracy and social justice for all, or maintain a racist bulwark erected in the aftermath of the Civil War. To choose that path would be to disrespect the nation's extreme sacrifice to preserve a "more perfect Union". As the  stands now the Union is suffering from a filibuster-induced paralysis.

Exposure of the revanchists in the Senate who block social progress is the way forward; once exposed, the procedural rule should be altered to allow the upper chamber to function. Minority consent to move forward is neither necessary nor advantageous to the nation. In fact the rule has been used to place civil rights legislation out of bounds, in return for a dysfunctional chamber. Civil rights bills were doomed, but most other bills could pass with a simple majority. Southern elites realized the same thing Madison and Hamilton knew: supermajority requirements empower a small minority to game the system in their favor.

After the hard fought passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1965, the filibuster was no longer so tightly tethered to maintenance of white supremacy. The number of filibusters and cloture votes by both sides shot up. But McConnell has taken obstruction to new heights, where nothing can pass without a sixty-vote majority. Obstructionists need not even hold the Senate floor against a majority. Paralysis has ensued, as the founders predicted. To Alexander Hamilton, any rule that required a supermajority vote served “to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.” [emphasis added] The filibuster was, and is, a bargain with the devil. As a elderly black lady in Austin, TX once told US Person, aka "ace of spades", "They's the devil!". He cooly replied, "they are a reasonable facsimile, ma'am". So end this Faustian bargain, or would you prefer DC statehood. Mr. Manchin?

Two African Elephant Species Declared Endangered

After a century of habitat loss and unrelenting extermination, two African elephant species are declared endangered by extinction.  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) critically endangered, and the more numerous African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) endangered. Population of the two species combined is considered to be 415,000, down from 26 millions that once roamed the entire continent before European colonization began (1800).

Population of forest elephants has dropped 86% over three decades, while savanna elephants have suffered a 60% decline in fifty years.  Poaching for their ivory is a continuing mortal threat despite efforts to control or eradicate the world-wide illegal trade. IUCN director-general, Bruno Oberle, said in a press statement that,  “Several African countries have led the way in recent years, proving that we can reverse elephant declines, and we must work together to ensure their example can be followed.”  Botswanna is one such country that has managed its great elephant herds successfully. The country is currently home to more elephants than any other African country, and southern Africa remains a stronghold for 293,000, or 70%, of the estimated remaining African elephants. [photo credit: WWF]

In a related new story, a Colorado Springs, CO man, Iniki Vike Kapu, was banned for life from hunting earlier this month. The ban effectively prevents Kapu from hunting legally in 48 states of the Union. He was convicted of poaching big horn sheep, turkeys and deer since 2018. A Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson said, “Mr. Kapu’s crimes against wildlife are the essence of what defines a poacher by taking wildlife without regard for the laws protecting them...[He} is viewed as a serious threat to Colorado’s wildlife and his violations are among the worst. The severity and level of indifference for wildlife in this case are rarely seen and cannot be tolerated.” Kapu was forced to surrender the weapons he used for poaching.

Some Pistol!

This assault weapon (Ruger AR-556), which would be classified as a sub-machine gun if it were fully automatic instead of just semi-automatic, was purchased by the Boulder supermarket killer just six days before the slaughter. The weapon comes compete with a thirty round magazine designed for NATO 5.56mm (.223 high-velocity) caliber rounds. The barrel has a flash suppressor, and is threaded so you can attach a silencer if you want. The manufacturer has taken pains to exempt the weapon from ATF classification as a short barrelled, semi-automatic carbine. Just the thing for deer hunting if you are having a bad day! Rep. Boebert, have you got one of these?

Boulder's assault weapons ban was overturned in court on the grounds that it violated Colorado's state preemption law. That ruling came ten days before the supermarket slaughter. The city has decided to appeal the ruling in the wake of yet another mass shooting. A ban may not have stopped the killer since he lived in another suburb of Denver, Arvada, and did not purchase the machine pistol in Boulder. Local laws are of limited value in controlling mass shootings. Congress needs to reimplement the assault weapons ban passed during the Clinton administration. Biden, who supported the measure when he was in the Senate, has already stated publicly that he supports a new ban. Does this country really need to tolerate some 20,000 deaths a year (2019) due to mass shootings, facilitated by high-volume weaponry? US Person does not think so, nor should a rational citizen who is not anti-social.

COTW: Making a Pizza, Digitally

For all of you boomers out there challenged by the digitalverse while looking for a job, here is the chart for "making a pizza' in the 21st century:

Thanks to a reader for providing the above graphic to PNG--you know who you are! 

Giggles aside, the next chart is perhaps superficially unrelated to the one above. But think about it. Most of the new wealth created in this country is directly related to technology and computers. (Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Gates, Ballmer et al)

What this chart means is that the average wealth (assets-debts) of the top 1% is $11,700,814. The average wealth of the bottom 50% is $15,065! Most of that wealth for the bottom 50% is in depreciating assets like cars and other durable consumer goods, not financial assets that generally appreciate in value and produce income. Which brings US to the stock market and the private national bank known as the Federal Reserve. It has been restlessly pursuing a policy of asset inflation to stave off depression. That policy explains why the market and the economy are going in opposite directions. Here is the kicker: the top 10% own $29.6 trillion in stocks and equity funds, about $10 million per person. The bottom 50% hardly own any stocks, about $190 billion, or just $1,150 per person.

When the Fed sets monetary policy and expands its balance sheet to create the largest asset bubble in history, it knows who will benefit from that policy--the already rich. Life is not getting less expensive at the bottom. This gross inequity must be corrected, and one way to do that is with a wealth tax. Mr. Manchin, of the top 10%, are you listening?  Or do you care?