Welcome to the Kochtopus - The Koch Brothers Meet Mainstream Media

Why has it taken so long for credible main stream media to begin taking a closer look at Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who have quietly and almost single-handedly bankrolled the far-right Tea Party movement?

Are these guys (David and Charles Koch pictured left) really dangerous to Democracy?

New Yorker magazine reporter Jane Mayer pens a piece in the latest issue - but why so long for the Koch brother's names to be linked to the ultra right conservative causes they espouse? The Koch's certainly aren't invisible, they're the 9th richest people in the nation. No surprise that they oppose bigger taxes.

If you've bought Brawny paper towels, Dixie Cups, a Georgia-Pacific lumber product or used Stainmaster to clean your carpets you've done business with Koch Industries - regarded by some as the biggest debunkers of climate change data in the world. Why? Perhaps because Koch Industries is one of the biggest owners of oil pipelines in the country.

Back on December 9, 2009 the Think Progress Website Progress Report detailed how the Koch (pronounced like 'Coke') brothers have funneled millions (over $45 million to dozens of conservative groups since 1997) to oppose almost every agenda item from the Obama White House from the Stimulus Package to the health care bill.

Don't get me wrong, Charles and David Koch can spend the proceeds from their wealth any way they want. But it strikes me as odd that the same media that shows video clips from Tea Party events with 'outraged Americans' carrying signs depicting the President as a Nazi or a spreader of Socialism - never even mention Charles and David Koch, the guys who foot the bill to send 40 busloads of people to Tea Party events.

The Koch brothers are rich even by American standards. Their staggering wealth finances a wide range of politically conservative organizations and think tanks; including Americans for Progress (which might as well be called Tea Party Central)and The Heritage Foundation.

From "Obama isn't really an American Citizen", to "Obama is a Muslim" and the Glen Beckian "Obama is a racist", the squeakier wheels in the right-wing media movement have presented a strange tapestry of fabricated nonsense for their angry minions to flaunt - but what if it's all just a bunch of BS generated by a couple of hardcore right-wing conservative guys who own one of the largest private companies in America?

Is that First Amendment expression or media manipulation?

Let's see if Katie Couric or Brian Williams have the journalistic balls to introduce the heartland of America to the Koch brothers and the actual scope of their one-sided agenda. Now THAT would be a real Eye on America.

More About the Kochtopus!

Billionaire Philanthropist Tom Steyer Becomes GOP Target for His Determination to Battle Climate Change

Tom Steyer & wife "Kat" Taylor - (Photo SFgate.com)

Remember back in October of 2013 during the height of the government shutdown (that was intentionally caused by Republicans who blocked a continuing funding resolution) when Congresswoman Michele Bachmann appeared in front of the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC with other GOP Congressmen and defiantly announced their determination to keep the memorial open for visiting WWII vets?

This of course was in spite of the fact that Bachmann was one of the people who caused the memorial to be shut in the first place.

As the founder of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus and part of the fringe extremist wing of the GOP that engineered the partial government shutdown (forcing national parks across the nation to close because there was no money to pay members of the national park staff) Bachmann was simultaneously the cause of the closed memorial - and was also against it being closed.

To me it both epitomized the audacious stupidity of the Tea Party and also served as a vivid reminder of the depths of their hypocrisy. 

Yesterday Senate minority leader Republican Mitch McConnell may well have outdone Bachmann with his tirade on the Senate floor against San Francisco philanthropist Tom Steyer because of the liberal-leaning former hedge fund manager's pledge to spend $100 million of his own money to target mostly Republican candidates who deny climate change during the upcoming 2014 elections.

As reported by Evan Halper on NationalMemo.com yesterday afternoon, the stone-faced McConnell had the audacity to compare Steyer of being no different than the Koch brothers.

McConnell's comments came in the wake of Senate majority leader Harry Reid's recent denunciations of the right wing billionaire brothers spending millions on false and misleading attack ads against the Affordable Care Act to target Democratic senators in an effort to return the senate to GOP control.

The accusations by McConnell are laughable considering the Koch brothers have literally spent HUNDREDS of millions of dollars of their money to bankroll the Tea Party, sponsor inaccurate media campaigns attacking the president and other Democrats on everything from health care to Benghazi as well as legislative efforts to suppress the votes of the elderly, minorities, students and immigrants.

The Koch brothers are also major donors to the climate change denial movement, but not because they don't believe in science; Koch Industries and their myriad of subsidiary companies are well known as some of the most notorious polluters in the nation. According to Greenpeace, since 1997 Charles and David Koch have contributed over $67 million to the climate change denial movement in the name of corportate profits over sound environmental laws.

While Steyer, who amassed a $1.5 billion fortune as a headge fund manager before retiring recently to focus exclusively on addressing global climate change, was a major donor to President Obama's presidential campaign and also committed at least $11 million of his own money to help Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe become the 72nd governor of that critical battleground state - by all accounts he's a principled man with a grounded perspective who is guided by a sense of ethics.

If your don't know anything about Tom Steyer and his wife "Kat" Taylor, just take a couple minutes to read through this insightful profile of this liberal-leaning philanthropist power couple written by Julian Guthrie on SFgate.com. Really interesting people.

Steyer, an Ivy-League grad who's father was a socially conscious and successful New York city lawyer and who's mother was a teacher who taught in Harlem schools), drives an old Honda hybrid. He's made it his mission in life to address climate change and has pledged to spend the bulk of his fortune on issues related to social justice and inequality in America.

In California he spent $30 million of his own money to help a state-wide campaign to eliminate a coroporate tax loophole that brings in a billion dollars a year into the state's coffers and helped reduce it's massive deficit.

His Ivy-League educated wife (the couple met a Stanford University) is the head of One Pacific Coast Bank, a Federally certified Community Development Financial Institution the couple founded in Oakland, CA to address the lack of banking and lending services in poor neighborhoods. She's also an active advocate for a fair justice system as well. 

This couple is for real, Americans fortunate enough to have benefitted from privileged upbringings and top-tier educations who used their knowledge and connections to prosper financially, and yet still recognize the importance of giving back to those less fortunate than themselves for the long-term well being of the nation.

They're philanthropists interested creating a better society who recognize that the nation prospers when everyone propspers. Mitch McConnell can take the floor of the Senante and gripe about them all he wants to; but the Koch brothers will never understand Tom Steyer's kind of philanthrophy; the Koch brother's narrow vision  of America is a "corporate-ocracy" which they pay for and profit from.

I for one, am glad there are advocates like TomSteyer and Kat Taylor willing to channel their time, energy and resources into a broder vision for America. It will be needed in the 2014 elections.
 

Coal Miner's Slaughter?

Listening to the chorus of Republican Congressional leaders outlining their legislative priorities for the new year last week was like witnessing the unrolling of the Koch brother's Christmas wish list.

If you read Tim Dickinson's exhaustive and scathing expose on Koch Industries and the alarming political agenda of Charles and David Koch in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, you know that list is long and scary.

Repealing the Affordable Health Care Act, curbing the enforcement authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and creating more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans rank pretty high on the to-do list of newly elected (or newly re-elected) members of the GOP - many of whom took campaign contributions from the afore-mentioned brothers Koch.

Some of them also ran on the Tea Party ticket; the infamous Koch-funded front which masquerades as a political party. 

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that the post-election GOP rhetoric is genuine, and Republicans really do want to work with the President and other Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation that will benefit the American people; why not act on coal mine safety?

Republicans are all but salivating over an upcoming Congressional vote on the Keystone Pipeline and the opportunity to make the US even more energy independent by relying on natural resources found in the land and waters of North America.

Lord knows Republican candidates ran enough political TV ads this past election cycle financed by the coal industry from groups like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

Many of us take it for granted that the lights come on when we walk in and flip the switch on.

But we also assume an industry that bill's itself as "America's Power" takes responsibility to both ensure the safety of it's workforce and comply with the federal regulations designed to protect those safety standards.    

According to an in-depth series of reports released last week that were jointly-produced by NPR and Mine Safety and Health News, that's not always the case.

The report details how some of the nation's largest coal producers routinely violate federal mine safety regulations, ignore recommendations to address flagrant violations that put workers at risk, then are allowed to simply keep on operating; even when they owe hefty fines and penalties.

Ex-Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship

The stunning report coincided with the news that former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship (pictured left) was indicted in federal court on four charges last week; including numerous and flagrant violations of US mine safety standards at the Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia where 29 miners lost their lives in an explosion back in 2010.

Blankenship resigned as CEO of Massey Energy in December of 2010 just three weeks after an article in Rolling Stone written by Jeff Goodell profiled the notorious coal executive. 

He was widely reviled as seen in this ABC News segment and interview that aired back in April, 2014, in which he tried to deflect blame for the Upper Big Branch explosion on the miners who died, rather than his own well-documented orders to his own mine managers to warn workers about upcoming inspections so that safety violations like the one that killed those 29 miners could be covered up.

But the Don Blankenships of this world can only operate when federal regulations are not enforced.

With control of both houses of Congress, Republican lawmakers could actually do something about the lax enforcement of coal mining regulations if they really wanted to.

They have the power to call hearings, subpoena witnesses and draft legislation that Democrats could support and the President could sign.

But it's not likely Charles and David Koch would like that very much.

Regulating the fossil fuel industry to keep workers safe is something they've spent millions lobbying against for years, because pesky regulations that might have kept the 29 miners in the Upper Big Branch mine safe get in the way of profit margins.

And as Tim Dickinson's recent article in Rolling Stone makes clear, the Kochs worship profit above human lives, the environment, the law and even the integrity Charles Koch is so fond of saying lies at the heart of the industrial behemoth he and his brother have created.

So even though House Speaker John Boehner is from Ohio and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky (both coal producing states) chances are slim that they will deviate from the agenda set by the Koch brothers and their privately-financed legislative factory the American Legislative Exchange Council.   

Republicans could do something about mine safety in the next two years, but they won't. Their policy wonks would find some reason to label such talk "pro-union" or "anti-business"; or "anti-freedom".

In the meantime people like Jack Blankenship (no relation to Don) will pay the price.

Injured miner Jack Blankenship [Photo courtesy - NPR.org]

According to the NPR investigation, Jack (pictured left) was working a mile underground in the Aracoma Alma coal mine in Logan County, West Virginia when a 300-pound slab of rock fell from the ceiling, struck him in the back and pinned him to the ground and left him permanently disabled and in constant pain.

The Aracoma Alma mine had been cited for 120 violations for falling rock over the previous two years before Jack's accident; Aracoma was owned by none other than Massey Energy.


According to the Rolling Stone expose on Koch Industries, Danielle Smalley was seventeen when she and her teenage friend Jason Stone smelled gas in her family's mobile home 50 miles from Dallas, Texas near a town called Lively.

Danielle Smalley, victim of Koch Industries

Danielle (pictured left) told her dad, then hopped into his 1964 Chevy pickup truck with Jason to go tell the authorities about the aroma of gas. 

When the truck stalled in the driveway near a creek bed that was filled with the vapor from liquid butane that had spilled from a ruptured, badly corroded pipeline owned by the Koch Pipeline Company, Danielle turned the key in the ignition and ignited a spark and the truck went up in a ball of flame killing her and her friend Jason.

That was August 24, 1996 - the day before she was supposed to go away to college.

She's not the only victim of Koch Industries relentless drive for profit either, there are many others.

She won't be the last either. Somewhere, in some small town or city there's a section of pipeline, or a valve, or damaged roof support in a mine somewhere - accidents waiting to kill innocent people.

Accidents that could have been prevented if companies like Massey Energy or Koch Industries simply complied with the law instead of pretending that they are somehow above it.

Sadly, their obsession with financial profit will blind them to the need to comply with the law.

If they don't agree with the law, they've pretty much already bought the Republican party; and with a GOP majority controlling both houses, they'll simply have ALEC draft up a new law to be presented on the floor of the House or Senate.

One that does away with pesky things like the sanctity of human life, respect for nature and the environment and a sense of moral responsibility.

Gov Scott Walker Vilifies Labor - AG Schneiderman Stands Up For Papa John's Workers

Sally Field rocks as Norma Rae

After listening to highlights of Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker's speech before an enthralled conservative crowd at the Iowa Freedom Summit a week before last back on January 24th, (where he prattled on self-righteously about his "heroic" efforts to attack labor) I seriously wanted to watch the 1979 movie 'Norma Rae' (pictured left).

Actress Sally Field's brilliant portrayal of a blue collar mother from a sleepy southern town who risks everything to help a visiting veteran labor organizer unionize the local mill where she works, struck me as a good counter-punch to Scott Walker's strutting around the stage in Iowa characterizing his attacks on organized labor as some sort of holy crusade.   

'Norma Rae' won 2 Oscars for director Martin Ritt (including a best actress Oscar for Field), but more importantly, it effectively showed the importance of organized labor in an American landscape that has seen it's manufacturing heyday evaporate as jobs slowly slip away to Mexico, China and other nations with less stringent labor practices and cheaper wages.

With the help of a flood of Koch Brothers money, Walker caused an uproar back in 2011 in Wisconsin when he pushed the conservative state legislature to pass a bill that undercut the states labor movement by stripping public sector unions of their right to collectively bargain. 

Walker became a Tea Party darling by pushing the false narrative that unions that included teachers, police, fire fighters and other government employees were somehow responsible for the economic meltdown of 2008 fueled by the big banks getting fat off sub-prime lending and the mortgage crisis it spawned.

Conservative folks out in Iowa were eating that shit up when Walker spoke there a couple weeks ago, vilifying unions with his weepy accounts of the hundreds of union members protesting outside his house and the death threats he claimed to have received.

He may have fought off the recall vote and won re-election, but frankly he's too much of a one-trick policy pony to be taken seriously as a top-tier presidential contender for 2016.

Gov Scott Walker imploding on foreign policy questions.

Walker's post-Iowa bubble was quickly popped when he appeared on ABC's 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos' to talk foreign policy with guest host Martha Raddatz (pictured left) last Sunday.

Granted it wasn't quite as bad as Sarah Palin freezing up when Katie Couric asked the feisty but woefully ill-informed 'Hockey Mom' to name the newspapers she read, but it was pretty bad.

During the foreign policy Q&A, he appeared completely unprepared to discuss the threat of ISIS in a meaningful way that demonstrated a basic grasp of the larger, more complex geopolitical issues shaping the US response in Syria and Iraq.

Instead of sound analysis that revealed an understanding of 21st century foreign policy, Walker tried to lean on the kind of substance-free Fox News-ish soundbites that ring hollow in the real world - and ABC's Martha Raddatz ate his lunch for him on live television.

(Ten bucks says Jeb Bush jumped up off the couch and did a little dance after Walker's on-camera implosion.)

But seriously, no amount of Koch brothers money could have saved him from looking as light in the loafers on foreign policy as he did on ABC. Next!

But the positive news for labor is that there are still advocates standing up on behalf of workers.

People like New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who just obtained a court judgment of almost $800,000 for hundreds of  employees of six Papa John's Pizza restaurants in New York City.

According to the Website of the NY Attorney General's office,  Kings County Supreme Court Justice Johnny Lee Baynes found Emstar Pizza, Inc. and Emmanuelle Onuagaluchi, the owner and operator of the six Papa John's in question, liable for intentionally and systematically underpaying hundreds of employees by underreporting their hours, not paying overtime and charging them sketchy fees for "uniform maintenance".

Schneiderman's court victory not only holds Emstar Pizza and Onuaguluchi responsible for paying back wages and interest going back six years, the court judgment also bars the owners from selling and liquidating the restaurants to duck out of their financial responsibility to pay the back wages.

If the owners try to chicken-shit their way out and sell the six Papa John's, the funds from the sale would automatically go into an Escrow account controlled by the Attorney General's office which they can use to pay the workers.

Schneiderman has used the power of his office to go to bat for workers successfully before, just last summer, in June, "... the Attorney General obtained $10,000 in restitution for an employee unlawfully discharged after reporting a gas leak at a McDonald’s franchise located in Lyons, in upstate New York."

According to the New York AG's Website, he won some big victories in 2013 too:

"In March 2013, the Attorney General secured a settlement with six Domino’s Pizza franchises, which collectively owned 23 restaurants throughout the state, for unpaid minimum wages, overtime, and vehicle expense reimbursements for delivery drivers."

"In March 2013, the Attorney General secured a settlement of almost $500,000 for mostly minimum-wage employees of New York City-based McDonald’s franchises operated by the Cisneros Group and its owner Richard Cisneros."

Last fall he sued another franchise owner of Papa Johns, that case is still pending in New York County Supreme Court.

Chalk one up for the working man.

Dare I say that Eric Schneiderman is starting to look appealing as a potential progressive presidential candidate for 2020 or 2024?  I'm sure he's got his eye on NY Governor Andrew Cuomo's seat.

Schneiderman will certainly be in line for labor's vote if he decides to jump in the ring; and unlike Elliot Spitzer, (or the much creepier 'Carlos Danger') manages to keep his Willy in his trousers. 

The Johnstown Flood & 'Company Town': Economic Inequality & The Environment

Miami skyline darkens as Hurricane Irma approaches

Late last night I spoke with my good friend Jimmy who lives down in Florida within earshot of Orlando.

He's a first generation Irish-American who grew up in the Bronx, and he and I used to bartend together at an Irish bar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan called McAleer's.

We speak fairly regularly, but after watching CNN coverage of Hurricane Irma bearing down on Florida last night, I decided to check in.

"Listen Mickey, I'm stayin' put." he defiantly declared in his New York accent tinged with a hint of an Irish brogue.

Jimmy, a genuinely eclectic character, rarely calls friends by their first names, anyone he's close with gets assigned a nickname; mine is "Mickey". Don't ask me why, I've never asked.

He now lives about 90 miles south of Gainsville about a 45-minute drive to the Orlando airport, so he's at least an hour from the east coast of Florida.

When Irma began tracking towards the west coast of Florida headed towards Tampa, Jimmy decided he was just going to ride it out at home rather than pack his car up and head north as millions of other Florida residents (including Rush Limbaugh) have done.

He told me he has plenty of food, water, vodka and tequila, plus he lives in a relatively newly constructed townhouse complex; so he's taking his chances.

Jimmy is fortunate enough that he could have afforded to evacuate if he'd chosen to, but as a number of news reports this week have detailed, like many poor residents of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, there are millions of people in Florida who simply couldn't afford to evacuate.

Something that presents a troubling problem for the future, especially given that warming ocean temperatures and the failure of advanced, industrialized nations to significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year are going to lead to even more coastal flooding and longer hurricane seasons.

A house impaled by a tree after the Johnstown Flood

The prospect that people with less access to resources, transportation, credit and savings are not going to have the option to evacuate areas prone to flood or storm damage exacerbated by fossil fuel and petrochemical companies drive for profit, is truly disturbing.

That said I want to take a look at two different American communities, Johnstown, PA and Crossett, AK.

Earlier this morning I was reading a really interesting article on the devastating Johnstown Flood by Peter Smith published in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette back in 2014.

Those unfamiliar with this horrific disaster might understandably make the mistake of thinking of it as a "natural disaster".

But as Smith points out in his article, the event sheds light on how economic inequality can have a direct impact on the severity of weather-related disasters.

On May 31, 1889 a reservoir known as South Fork Lake (or Lake Conemaugh) holding almost 15 million cubic meters of water crashed through a poorly-constructed and criminally-neglected earthen dam in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.

The lake was the centerpiece of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, a private retreat for the wealthy residents of Pittsburgh, many of whom (including Carnegies and Fricks) had made their fortunes in steel manufacturing, railroads, coal mining and banking.

As Peter Smith notes, the 1% of Pittsburgh used the exclusive club as a getaway from the noise, heat and pollution (a by-product of their fortunes) of the city, and in an effort to make the lake more conducive to pleasure-seeking activities, they made changes to the dam that held the 16 million gallons of water at bay.

For example, in order to improve the fishing, the owners of the club had screens installed over the entrances of the spillways that allowed water to naturally flow from the dam.

Screens which eventually became clogged with debris causing water pressure to build.

To make it easier to construct a pathway for horse-drawn carriages to pass over the dam, the club had the top of the dam reduced in height and widened to make it more even with roads on the side of the dam as seen in the illustration to the left.  

As detailed in an article about the Johnstown Flood on Wikipedia, when the owners purchased the lake from the Pennsylvania Railroad, they also failed to replace a system of discharge pipes and valves that were originally part of the dam that allowed water pressure to be relieved when needed - pipes and valves that some enterprising moron later removed and sold off for scrap money.

After 24 hours of nonstop rain, around 3pm on May 31,1889 the dam on South Fork Lake finally gave way, sending 16 million gallons of water cascading 14 miles down the Little Conemaugh River as it gathered momentum and collected tons of trees, rocks, houses, railroad cars, rail lines, telegraph poles, farm animals, fences, miles of barbwire, wagons and other debris.

This deadly nightmarish mass, traveling at 40-miles per hour and at least 60 feet high, leveled several small towns before slamming into the town of Johnstown 57 minutes after the dam broke.

The resulting devastation killed 2,208 people (including 396 children), unknown numbers of animals, and leveled the town of Johnstown - 777 victims were never identified - and some trapped people and animals died when a fire later broke out in the debris.

Part of the tons of debris clogging the Little Conemaugh
River after the Johnstown Flood

The event shocked the nation and the world, 18 nations including Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Australia and Turkey sent aid.

It was the first large-scale relief effort by the Red Cross, whose founder, Clara Barton stayed there for 5 months along with the thousands of people who came from across the nation to assist.

The failure of the dam was a direct result of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club's alterations to the dam and failure to maintain it.


But sadly, in a reflection of the economic inequality which is so prevalent today, even though the actions of the club caused the devastation, two high-priced lawyers (who were also members of the club) successfully blocked efforts to hold the club liable - and a court reached the conclusion that the dam break was an act of God.

None of the victims were able to sue the members for damages, and though club members did donate thousands of dollars to the relief effort, they were never held legally responsible - and they'd made sure to keep their personal assets safely walled off from any liabilities the club might face.

The aftermath of the Johnstown Flood sparked a change in liability laws around the country and brought increased attention on the economic disparity of the Victorian age - not just here in America but around the world as well.

But unfortunately the deeper economic inequity at the root of the disaster is still impacting the lives of poor and working class people.

On Friday's edition of the Leonard Lopate Show, Natlie Kottke-Masocco and Erica Sardarian, who wrote, produced and directed the new documentary Company Town, were interviewed about their work to bring attention to the town of Crossett, Arkansas.

Activist Pastor David Bouie in front of his home
in Crossett, Arkansas

The focus of their film is the impact that a paper plant operated by Georgia-Pacific is having on the residents of the town - many of whom make their living by working at the plant.

Georgia-Pacific is owned by Charles and David Koch, whose company Koch Industries is on record as one of the most prolific polluters in modern American history.

The Koch brothers are ardent libertarians who spend hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to back conservative political candidates.

But not just any political candidate, those who will aggressively attack state and federal environmental laws as infringements on personal freedom to make it easier for Koch Industries to make more profit from the web of oil, natural gas, pipeline and other energy-related companies they own.

The Koch brothers didn't build the paper plant in Crossett - but they own it  now.

One of the subjects of Company Town is Pastor David Bouie, a long-time environmental activist, he worked in the plant for 10 years and he's pictured above standing in front of his home on Penn Road in Crossett - of the 15 homes in the area, 11 have had someone die of cancer and in the film he walks the block identifying each one by name.

Another subject in the film, Hazel Parker, also worked in the plant - her mother, father and sister all died of cancer.

9-year-old Simone Smith is interviewed in the film as well, she was diagnosed with cancer and her ovary had to be surgically removed after a mass was discovered in her stomach.

The documentary cites not only the pollution from the Georgia-Pacific plant that's clogged a nearby river as well as the soil and air, but the alarmingly high cancer rates suffered by residents of the town whose livelihoods depend on the plant.

Georgia-Pacific plant in Crossett

The plant dumps 45 million gallons of waste water every day into the Ouachita River - waste which includes a number of harmful chemicals including hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde.

The film is in a limited release in New York, but I'm hoping it's going to be made available on Netflix so it can reach a wider audience - someone needs to stick EPA head Scott Pruitt in a room and watch this film, but he's probably already been in a room with lobbyists from Georgia-Pacific or Koch Industries.

Ben Kenigsberg wrote a review of Company Town in the New York Times last Thursday, and while the pollution in Crossett has been the subject of media coverage in the past, hopefully the release of the documentary will generate more public attention and political pressure on Koch Industries to do something about the pollution that's causing cancer .

Not in a nightmarish flood like in Johnstown back in 1889, but slowly and steadily as Koch Industries continues to make profit while average Americans of modest means suffer from the same plant that keeps food on their tables and a steady paycheck coming.

If there's a more egregious example of the devastating effects of economic inequity, environmental racism, political apathy, loss of innocent life and the spoiling of natural resources in the name of profit, I'm not sure what it is.

Anyway I'll check in with my friend Jimmy shortly to make sure he's okay as Hurricane Irma approaches, he's lucky enough to be able to leave in the event of a disaster, whether it be man-made or natural.

Most of the people of Crossett, Arkansas and Johnstown, Pennsylvania back in 1889 weren't, and are not, nearly so fortunate.

The Tea Party Conceals its True Nature While Frank Rich Exposes the Koch Brothers

While right-wing radio host and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck exhorted the thousands of the Tea Party faithful gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to reflect on God and pay tribute to the service men and women who've sacrificed for this nation, many people including myself were wondering where the real Tea Party was.

Frank Rich of the New York Times had an answer ready in the form of a must-read blistering critique of the Tea Party's three main billionaire backers; Rupert Murdoch and the highly controversial and mysterious Charles and David Koch.

Men whose extremist ideology stands in complete opposition to Dr. King's vision of racial equality, social justice and government responsibility for workers, the impoverished and those relegated to the margins of this society.

The anniversary and location of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech struck many in this nation as a peculiar place for a rally for a political movement financed in large part by the Koch brother's wealth.

To others, the Tea Party's presence on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and Becks self-righteous attempt to lay claim to a vision of America as a nation of faith was simply an insult and an affront to the ideals of the civil rights movement.

Veteran political reporter Taylor Marsh attended the rally and reported the crowd was not a diverse mix of different segments of America as Tea Party defenders try to present it; despite the appearance of Dr. King's anti-abortion advocate niece. No offense to Dr. King's relative but she's never been relevant to the national political dialog and she isn't now; just because she showed up on stage doesn't mean the Tea Party platform is somehow magically linked to the legacy of Dr. King.

In the end the sanitized public version of the Tea Party on display on Saturday for mainstream media will be a distant memory as the November elections heat up and the reality of Beck's lunatic right-wing ramblings reverts back to the same narrow-minded rhetoric we've become all too accustomed to.

Will history remember Beck's rally more than 40 years from now? Probably not. Cheap political stunts like that rarely stand the test of time. Dr. King's defining vision will forever symbolize America's hope to fulfill it's potential.

One Knee Equals the 1st Amendment

Coach Orlando Gooden kneeling during the playing
of the national anthem with his 8-year-old players

The image (pictured left), somewhat blurry and taken from a distance with a cell phone camera, seemed innocent enough.

A football coach kneeling on a field with a group of young players - a slice of Americana that is the stuff of Norman Rockwell paintings.

But in a reflection of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, these third graders were kneeling during the playing of the national anthem before their game last Sunday.

Under normal circumstances such a thing might have escaped the notice of the media spotlight.

But last week when the story broke, Donald Trump was enmeshed in yet another disastrous week defined by the chaos sewn by his own fragile ego, narcissism, ignorance of world affairs, lack of political experience and unprincipled reactionary bluster.

His belligerent and often incoherent 42-minute speech in front world leaders gathered at the United Nations last Tuesday marked a new low-point for American diplomacy and global leadership.

He drew audible gasps from gathered attendees when he threatened to "totally destroy North Korea", and in defiance of the advice of his own senior advisers, derisively referred to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as "rocket man" before awkwardly trying to define his isolationist "America First" foreign policy by rambling on about individual nation's right to "sovereignty"  - even as he belittled other nations for their choice to pursue nuclear weapons programs or a socialist form of government.

In the aftermath, various outraged diplomats from other nations dismissed Trump as "unhinged", a "dotard" (senile person) and a "Goliath" among other choice names - so clearly the criticism was making The Donald feel defensive.

Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner

A defensiveness compounded by news reports last week that special counsel Bob Mueller is not only investigating Trump wanna-be consigliere Jared Kushner's financial dealings with Russia, the controversial son-in-law's role in putting together the murky campaign internet operation that targeted Trump supporters (and may have provided data to Russian agencies) is also a target of the probe.


Instead of trying to clarify, moderate or walk back his comments at the UN, Trump, evidently electrified by the media attention, decided to dial it up even further by doing what he always seems to do - he tried to change the media narrative.

When things aren't quite going Trump's way (as they usually aren't), his default MO is to launch a Twitter attack on something, or someone that his shrinking base of conservative supporters can obsess over and rally around.

Like the way he keeps ranting about Hillary's emails ten months after the election despite newly released documents provided to Newsweek via a Freedom of Information Act request showing that at least six top current and former Trump advisers (including Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus and Jared Kushner) all used personal email accounts to conduct official White House business.

Last week Trump's juvenile pissing contest with Kim Jong-un only seemed to earn him more criticism from mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike and increase the risk of a military confrontation - so he turned his focus to the NFL.

Now it's common knowledge that Trump watches a lot of TV, and despite his office granting him access to classified information from the CIA, FBI, NSA, the Pentagon and other government sources, remarkably he still relies on the conservative bias filtered through Fox News as his primary source of information on the world.

So there's little question that he was watching Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning the day after his unhinged UN speech last week when the target of their Fox-ian outrage was a group of African-American 3rd graders and their football coach.

Members of the Cahokia Quarterback Club in 2016

Many Americans were absorbing the news that after eight months, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had finally released detailed information on 3,000 online ads paid for by a Russian agency that skewered Hillary Clinton, promoted bogus fake news stories about her and were decidedly pro-Trump.

But where were the chirpy hosts of Fox & Friends directing their focus?


On a group of young American kids expressing their 1st Amendment rights on one of the most important human rights and justice issues in modern American history.

Now if you take a few minutes to listen to the tone of the indignant moral outrage of Fox News "contributor" Rachel Campos-Duffy, one might think that the small group of 3rd graders had burned an American flag and then pissed on it.

But the members of Cahokia Quarterback Club (8-years old and younger) from Cahokia, Illinois began their own little protest after asking their head coach Orlando Gooden, a former college football player at the University of Missouri who graduated from Cahokia High School, questions about the widespread protests in St. Louis after Circuit Court Judge Timothy Wilson found former St. Louis PD officer Jason Stockley not guilty for the 2011 shooting death of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith.

The kids were aware of who Stockley was, which in itself is a sad statement of America in the 21st century.

As Gooden told St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI, (watch the automatic video volume if you click that link, it's loud) he asked the kids if they understood what the protests were about and one of them answered, "Because black people are being killed and nobody's going to jail."

Coach Orlando Gooden and Latia Cole-Gooden 

The coach decided to speak with them about other high profile killings of African-Americans at the hands of police that have taken place across the country, and why former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem before NFL games last year as a form of silent, non-violent protest.

The kids asked if they could do it as well, and with the unanimous support of the kid's parents, Gooden told them could kneel during the national anthem at Little Devil's Field in Belleville.

When news of their actions went viral, that's when Fox & Friends seized on it as an example of the pending collapse of society - and brought Rachel Campos-Duffy on to vent her outrage.

I found it interesting how quick Fox News was to sort of hold her up as the "outraged conservative mother", defending American values and her children by vilifying a group of 8-year-old kids trying to understand why members of law enforcement are never held legally responsible for shooting and killing African-American boys and men.

As if she was somehow victimized by a group of 8-year-old boys kneeling on a grass football field while the national anthem played.

During her appearance on Fox & Friends she called their peaceful non-violent protest "shameless."

The Arizona-born Campos-Duffy first gained notoriety as a member of MTV's The Real World, where her outspoken conservative views and advocacy of the Republican Party at times caused friction with other housemates on the show.

These days she's a busy WASPish Latina mother who works as the national spokesperson for the Koch brothers-funded LIBRE Initiative, an organization which seeks to promote "free market policies within the Latino community" (whatever THAT means).

And she's married to her former Real World cast-mate Sean Duffy.

Rachel Campos-Duffy and her loopy Republican
Congressman husband Sean Duffy 

A budding right-wing nut-job Republican Congressman who represents Wisconsin's 7th District and by all accounts his doing his fellow Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan proud.

As Jonathan Allen reported in Roll Call back in February, Duffy drew criticism after a CNN interview in which he "applauded 'the good things that came from' a white supremacist murdering nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, SC in 2015." 


He also voted for a bill that would allow college ROTC programs to fly the Confederate flag and tried to blame liberals for the fact that Jared Loughner, a right-wing wack job prone to conservative anti-government hysteria and kooky right-wing conspiracy theories, shot Democratic Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in the head.

During a town hall meeting in 2011 after Republican Tea Party poster boy Scott Walker was swept into office on a wave of anti-Obama hatred and proceeded to propose draconian cuts to the Wisconsin state budget, when a construction worker complained that his wife's salary would be slashed, Duffy complained about he and his wife and six kids having to survive on his Congressional salary of $174,000 a year.

So it's no accident that Rachel Campos-Duffy would be called on to offer social commentary on the 8-year-old members of the Cahokia Quarterback Club deciding to kneel during the national anthem.

Fox-Ready: Links to the Koch brothers? Check!

It's ironic that she gained her fame on a TV reality show called "The Real World", like her husband she's totally detached from the harsh realities faced by average Americans, and thrives off the energy of viewing everything through a distorted lens of "conservative values".

Campos-Duffy is tailor made for Fox because she's used to living in a distorted bubble - the same kind of parallel reality that Fox News pumps into Donald Trump's head every day.

In a recent issue of The Hollywood Reporter, writer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar offered an interesting take on the distorted reality that Fox News propagates by immersing himself in watching it for three days straight as an experiment - he wrote:

"Fox gives Trump misinformation that makes him think his world is real: that he won the popular vote, that people don't think he's a racist, misogynist xenophobe. It's been reported that twice a day Trump is given a folder of only good news about himself, which some in the White House refer to as 'the propaganda document'. When those folders aren't enough, he can tune in to Fox."

As the unified rejection of Trump's recent criticism of the NFL and its players showed over the weekend, he's as out of touch as Fox News on the issue of men and boys making the decision to kneel as a form of silent, peaceful protest against injustice in America.

Leave it to Fox to call 8-year-olds "shameless" for exercising their 1st Amendment rights and Trump calling hundreds of NFL players "sons of bitches" for doing the same thing.

As many observers have noted, the simply doesn't grasp the basic fundamentals of the democracy he lives in - unfortunately that's not covered in his daily 'propaganda document'.

Moral Mondays, The Third Reconstruction & Act 192

North Carolina social activist Rev. Dr. William Barber

If politics is your thing, last night was your kind of night with big Tuesday primaries taking place in Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina; not so much for Marco Rubio.

A lot more than just delegates were at stake.

Are you the type who appreciates an excellent no-nonsense overview of the political landscape (and challenges) in both Missouri and North Carolina from a progressive point of view?

Then I'd highly recommend you take some time to listen to the two insightful interviews Brian Lehrer did back-to-back Tuesday morning with St. Louis Public Radio political reporter Jo Mannies and William Barber (pictured above), president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP.

In the interview on The Brian Lehrer Show, Barber offered insight into how the divisive rhetoric (which President Obama called "vulgar" earlier today) that has become the hallmark of Donald Trump's campaign rallies, are rooted in the same brand of racist populism trumpeted by George Wallace and other popular southern segregationists in the 20th century.

He argues that the toxic rhetoric which incites Trump supporters to physically assault protesters, is the same dangerous kind of inflammatory language that motivated four KKK terrorists to detonate 15 sticks of dynamite under the front steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama killing four little girls on Sunday September 15, 1963.

NC Republican Senator Thom Tillis

Since 2013, Barber has been at the heart of North Carolina's Moral Mondays protest movement opposing the unprecedented takeover of the state by right-wing Republican extremists led by Governor Pat McCrory and current NC Republican Senator Thom Tillis (pictured left).

Before narrowly defeating Democrat Kay Hagan to win a hotly-contested Senate seat, Tillis was a key ally of Governor McCrory while he served as the Speaker of North Carolina state legislature at a time when 54 of the 170 members were members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (including Tillis himself) at a time when Republican voter suppression in the Tar Heel state was making national headlines.

Tillis is a textbook Koch brothers flunky. With the help of his Koch-funded ALEC puppeteers in North Carolina, he led the state legislatures efforts to (among other things) roll back voting rights, attack unions, make access to abortion more difficult and eliminate unemployment benefits.

His former crony Governor McCrory is up for re-election this year and you can be sure he'll be facing organized protests from Moral Mondays members around the state.

It's the efforts of people like Tillis and McCrory who've (in part) inspired Rev. Barber to emerge as a powerful voice in the grassroots movement for social justice in North Carolina.

2014 Moral Mondays protest in Raleigh, NC

Which he chronicles in his recently-released book "The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics and the Rise of  New Justice Movement". 

In it, Barber argues that the wave of right-wing extremism typified by voter suppression and astonishing government power grabs through gerrymandering by conservative state legislators, has sparked a growing counter-wave of progressive social activism in America which he calls "The Third Reconstruction".

And his message, like the movement itself, is growing nationwide.

Since the Moral Mondays movement was launched in 2013, it has since spread to other states including New York, Georgia, Ohio, New Mexico, South Carolina and Illinois.

Donald Trump's victory in the North Carolina and Florida primaries last night is a sobering reminder of what's at stake in the 2016 presidential elections - and for our nation as a whole.

In the same way the election of Republican-majority legislatures in North Carolina and Kansas have proved disastrous to the social fabric of those states, an article posted on Trace.org yesterday by Olivia Li offers a disturbing snapshot of what's at stake for national and state elections with regards to issues like gun control.

Act 192 sponsor Republican Mark Keller

As she reported, the Pennsylvania state legislature passed Act 192 back in 2014 which allows individual gun owners and any large organization like the NRA that they belong to, to jointly sue any township or small municipality that tries to pass gun control legislation to control gun violence.

Not long after it was passed, the NRA sued Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and other municipalities in Pennsylvania over restrictions that kept people from carrying concealed weapons in cars or on their person without a license, requiring people to report stolen weapons or bans on sales of certain kinds of ammunition.

Doesn't matter that the NRA doesn't live in the town in question.

Act 192 allows them to tap into the NRA's massive war chest to actually prevent local elected leaders from passing gun control legislation to keep their local communities safe.

If small municipalities that challenge the NRA lose their court fight, a bizarre provision in the law requires them to cover massive attorney's fees, court costs and expert witness costs that the NRA incurs in it's effort to sue these towns and cities for writing their own gun safety laws.

Make sense? Of course it doesn't, not in a civilized society anyway.

Act 192 only makes sense in the ideological mindset.

As Trace.org reported, to avoid potentially-crippling costs of being sued by the NRA, more than 20 Pennsylvania towns and cities began repealing their own gun safety ordinances; including a small suburb outside Pittsburgh known as Wilikinsburg.

Four of the victims of the mass shooting in Wilkinsburg

Last Wednesday March 9th, just hours after the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court began to hear arguments on the merits of Act 192, two unknown gunmen wielding a .40 caliber handgun and an assault rifle, opened fire at a backyard family cookout at a home in Wilkinsburg, shooting and killing five people, including a pregnant woman, and wounding 3 more.

According to the New York Times, police say the shooting was planned; all of the victims were shot in the head; they were all related. The gunmen fled from the scene and escaped.

Only in the mindset of state Republican lawmakers beholden to an entity like the NRA does Act 192 make sense.


It's interesting, Republicans constantly gripe about the horrors of Democrats using 'Big Government' to intrude in the lives of individuals and interfere with people's right to govern themselves.

Yet Pennsylvania Republican legislators pass a law designed to block local elected leaders from making decisions about laws for firearms safety in their own communities?

Obviously Republicans are fine with 'Big Government' when it comes to guns, abortion and fracking.

"Situational Republican outrage?"

Just imagine the kinds of laws a Republican-controlled House and Senate would pass with the cooperation of a Republican president.

Act 192 is just one example of what was at stake in Tuesday's primaries; a law that may have contributed to five innocent people (six if you count the unborn child of the pregnant victim) being shot at a backyard cookout.

Is it a stretch to say that people's lives are at stake with the upcoming fall elections this year? I don't think it is.

Nor is it a stretch to say the time for a Third Reconstruction is now.

'Anchor Babies' & Walls: Toxic GOP Debate Clouds Real Issues

Did you read Daniel Politi's Slate.com article about members of the crowd at Donald Trump's rally in Mobile, Alabama repeatedly yelling out "White power!" during his appearance on August 21st?

Other reporters in attendance at the Friday night event from other media outlets, including one from DailyKos, also heard the phrase yelled out multiple times during Trump's speech.


For the conservative-leaning readers who read this blog, audio of that phrase being yelled out was clearly caught on tape and posted on Youtube, click here and give it a listen if you suspect some kind of progressive-leftist media trickery. 

Many people on both sides of the political fence in this country have been wondering when the novelty of Donald Trump's toxic blend of reality TV showmanship, racist immigrant bashing and rambling substance-free speech is finally going to wear out - fortunately there are signs that the curtain is being pulled back to reveal just what the little man behind the control panel pulling the levers is really all about.     

How Trump's immigration policy would hurt the U.S. economy

Like the fact the fact that Trump's ludicrous proposal to round up and deport every illegal immigrant in the U.S. would come with an astronomical price tag and actually cost the economy $1.2 trillion in tax revenue and consumer spending.

George Stephanopoulos made media headlines today when he exposed the vacant reactionary rhetoric behind Trump's delusional anti-immigration policies during a live interview on ABC's "This Week" earlier this morning.

When repeatedly pressed for specifics, Trump couldn't explain how the estimated $400 to $600 billion needed to construct a wall thousands of miles across the southern border of the U.S. and arresting, processing and deporting millions of immigrants and their families would be paid for by American tax payers.

Trump's vague assurances that his magical "deal making" abilities will somehow miraculously solve any problems are starting to come off like some old carny huckster trying to peddle a miracle cure-all potion in a bottle.

It may earn him cheers from the conservative caucus voters in sparsely populated red states like Iowa in the short-run, but when held up to the scrutiny of facts and truth; it's exposed for what it is - total B.S. intended to distract voters from the real Republican agenda designed by the secretive conservative billionaire rainmakers like the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

That agenda ain't new either.

Another GOP legislator brought to you by ALEC

Remember when former Florida Republican state legislator Rachel Burgin (pictured left) introduced a resolution back in fall of 2011 calling on the federal government to reduce corporate taxes but forgot to delete the ALEC mission statement at the top of the document she copied word for word from the ALEC Website?

As Alex Seitz-Wald reported on ThinkProgress.org in 2012: 
 "As the government transparency group Common Cause reports, “Burgin quickly withdrew the bill hoping that no one had noticed and then re-introduced it 24-hours later, with a new bill number (HM 717), but now without the problematic paragraph.” Apparently no one noticed until this week. While it’s no secret by now that conservative lawmakers in state capitals everywhere have used ALEC’s legislation to tear down environmental and labor regulations, curb voting rights, and coordinate a business-friendly agenda nationwide, it’s rare to see it on display so clearly."

Rachel must've skipped ALEC's "Substituting ALEC's Model Legislation For Your Own 101"
class.

In more recent days, the leading GOP candidates are further fracturing their divided party and alienating the Latino voter base they need to win the White House in 2016 by spending their time arguing about the right to use the inherently racist term "Anchor Baby" to describe the children of immigrants born in the U.S. as they trip over each other trying to "out-Trump" one another.

Bobby Jindal's mother was three months pregnant with him when his parents came to this country from India, so he's got no business calling anyone an 'Anchor Baby'.

Don't get me wrong, it's important for both mainstream and more independent media to call people like Trump out for exactly who they are, but my sense is that Trump has already been given huge amounts of free national media exposure when it's already common knowledge that his campaign, political platform and his candidacy are nothing more than a self-serving platform intended to increase his own brand.

Civilians searching rubble after Saudi air strikes in the Yemen capital of Sanaa

Sadly, with so much of our mainstream American media focus given over to the meaningless extremist conservative rantings and concocted policy debates of the leading Republican presidential candidates, it's unfortunate that far more important and substantive humanitarian issues are being pushed to the proverbial back burner.

Like the growing humanitarian crisis going on in Yemen right now.

The same Republican candidates who seized on intentionally-edited "sting" videos of Planned Parenthood employees discussing the costs of fetal tissue samples to pontificate on the sanctity of unborn fetuses (the same candidates calling for ACTUAL babies of immigrants to be deported...) seem remarkably silent on how they might address the children who actually are being killed as a result of a combination of months of relentless air strikes by the Saudi air force, and the disease, infection and hunger caused by Saudi blockades of Yemeni coastal ports that are preventing much-needed fuel, medical supplies and food from reaching the Yemeni people.

If you haven't already, I highly recommend you take some time to read Matthieu Aikin's gripping piece in Rolling Stone entitled, 'Yemen's Hidden War'.  

Aikin hired smugglers to get into Yemen where he spoke with the Shiite Houthi rebels who, back in March, seized control of this country of 27 million people located just below Saudi Arabia on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.

He also toured cities and villages across the war-torn landscape of Yemen with locals and representatives from Doctors Without Borders; virtually the only humanitarian aid group left on the ground in Yemen to deal with the estimated 1.25 million civilians displaced as a result of the escalating war.

Over 3,700 Yemenis have been killed since this civil conflict with regional implications began; including for example, 19 civilians who were sitting in their vehicles in line to get desperately needed gasoline at a gas station in the city of Sadaa when a Saudi plane bombed the station, incinerating the people in their vehicles.

Results of civilian air strikes in village of Sabr [Photo - Reuters]

Or the village of Sabr located about 30 minutes outside Sadaa where a Saudi air strike on June 3rd destroyed eight houses and killed 51 civilians; 36 of them children - as Aikin reported, there were no actual Houthi rebels in the village.

To put those 3,700 deaths in perspective an estimated 2,996 people (including 19 hijackers) were killed in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

 Just think about the U.S. response to those deaths from 911.

After years of American involvement in the costly ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan it's understandable that U.S. citizens have grown weary of American involvement in the seemingly endless conflict gripping the middle east.

But as Aikin's Rolling Stone article illustrates, the complexities of the civil war crisis in Yemen are staggering; and also a direct result of the destabilization of power that took place in the mid-east region when the 2nd Bush administration decided to invade Iraq.

Surely if the mainstream American media was devoting even a fraction of the attention being given to a divisive self-serving charlatan like Donald Trump to the crisis in Yemen, it might help to push for wider demands to an end to Saudi air strikes on civilian targets, UN intervention to prevent a humanitarian crisis and the channeling of more charitable aid from Americans.

Americans who would be moved to give if they were made more aware of what's actually happening in what Aikin calls the "Hidden War".

For the time being, mainstream American media seems more interested in the endless cycle of toxic soundbites from a field of Republican presidential candidates who don't seem to be talking about the substantive difficult-to-solve issues affecting most Americans.

Typified by Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal cutting off state Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood clinics even though those clinics in Louisiana don't actually provide any abortion services to women.

An essentially meaningless gesture justified by a video that was recorded under false pretensions and intentionally edited to misrepresent what Planned Parenthood actually does that will simply make it harder for impoverished women in Louisiana to access basic health services like cancer screenings.

Or, to quote Shakespeare, "Sound and fury, signifying nothing."