Climate change has undersized our world’s engineered infrastructure, and increased modern flood safety has created complacency in a flood world far different from the safe one we recently vacated.
Caption: Cow Creek and what was Texas State Highway 1431, just northwest ofAustin, 70 miles northeast of Kerrville, 24 hours after the Kerrville tragedy in a completely separate rain event, after 13.3 inches of rain fell in the mountainous Hill Country of Central Texas, in three hours, with 17 fatalities and 5 still missing. Image: Bruce Melton
By Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog / July 31, 2025
Repeatedly unprecedented weather events are not “acts of God,” in the context used to describe the Kerrville flood tragedy on July 4. They are not a “new normal,” because we are still warming rapidly and every little bit of warming creates a lot more extremeness because of the basics of physics and energy where a little more heat does not create a little more energy, it nonlinearly creates a lot more energy, that is then translated into nonlinearly more extreme weather. This process is ongoing, so there is nothing “normal” about weather today as it keeps on getting a lot more extreme with further warming.
Even if we were to magically halt all warming this instant and stabilize our climate at today’s temperature, the extremes would continue to automatically increase. This is because in this new “magically stabilized” climate we have only been warmer than the weather created in our old climate for five to 10 years. Therefor it is likely that only the most frequent events today in our currently warmed climate, are the 2-, 5- and maybe the 10-year storm. As time passes, wewill automatically have to endure rarer and much more extreme events like the 25-, 50-, and 100-year storms.
We have warmed our climate beyond its natural variation. This means the temperature today is warmer than the evolutionary boundaries of our Earth systems. These systems are our forests, ocean currents, ice sheets, permafrost, etc. These evolutionary boundary rules are the same for almost any system: once crossed, stress creates degradation that if not stopped by removing the thing that caused the degradation to begin (warming effects) the results are the loss of many or all of the species and mechanisms in the system so they can be replaced by a new system with new species and mechanisms that are tolerant of the new conditions.
Some systems, like our hydrologic system that is typically known as the hydrologic cycle, are a little different and vastly more important. Our hydrologic system is the rain machine that creates our food and gives us water — the basics of life. Our hydrologic system is also vitally important in creating clouds. Different clouds cool by shading, or they warm like a blanket.
Changes in the types of clouds disrupt the balance of cloud cooling by reflecting sunlight harmlessly back into space, and warming by allowing sunlight to strike the ground, oceans of plants that changes that sunlight into heat where it can be trapped by the greenhouse effect.
A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture – nonlinearly more according to the laws of heat. Atmospheric moisture or water vapor, is the biggest greenhouse gas, responsible for two to three times the warming of carbon dioxide depending on the response of clouds. Water vapor however is not a greenhouse gas that we can control because it is directly related to evaporation of water from oceans, soils, and vegetation based on the temperature. The interplay of moisture in clouds is vital to our climate. A warmer climate creates fewer clouds that allows more sunlight to be absorbed by Earth systems creating more warming that then enters a feedback loop that allows even more moisture capacity in the atmosphere.
Each degree C (about 1.7 degrees F) warming allows the atmosphere to carry about seven percent more moisture. This alone allows weather systems to create seven percent more precipitation, but it doesn’t stop there. Dynamic effects (increase convection or rising water vapor in clouds) further increase rainfall. Hurricane Harvey for example, produced 32 percent more rainfall than an identical storm in the absence of global warming.
Warming amplifies the effects of the hydrologic system with significantly increased rainfall intensity (inches per hour of rain) and more extreme and longer-lived drought. Our climate’s temperature is warmer than any time in the last 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age, or really, since before the beginning of the last ice age pulse 100,000 years ago. Rainfall extremes therefore, are greater than any time our engineers have been designing stormwaterinfrastructure: since Roman times; since the Chen Dynasty.
Caption: A Cypress, maybe 1,000 years old, as big as a giant sequoia, lodged against a transmission tower in a large bend of the Guadalupe River, just downstream from Hunt. There is a section of deck railing leaning against the transmission tower on top of the root ball. This area is an overflow channel that cuts across the bend during major floods. The river channel is 600 feet away, behind the transmission tower, where the long line of green cypress are located.
I have lived now for 80 years in the only country that has used an atomic bomb against another people. It is not something I am proud of. It was a major catastrophe that extended a policy based on the idea that the United States was so special that it had the right, if not the duty, to control (rule) North America. That idea is rooted in a belief termed “manifest destiny.”
The belief in Manifest Destiny supposedly ended with the conclusion of the Mexican War of 1848, which solidified our boundaries to what became the lower 48 states. That belief has now expanded to include most of the world. Historians sometimes call its current incarnation the “New Manifest Destiny.”
We began our nearly 250 years as a nation obliterating the native inhabitants of this semi-continent and found war a good tool to maintain our hegemony over as much of mankind as possible. What was not possible was to control China and the USSR (which was somewhat reduced after the official end of the Cold War).
Of course, I realize that it was Japan that attacked Pearl Harbor in a foolish attempt to overcome U.S. economic sanctions that prevented it from securing the oil it needed to pursue its own foreign policy. Here we see the new U.S. manifest destiny working its way around the globe to control Japan’s own beliefs in its “right” to control others.
One side of my family has been in this country since my ninth great grandfather immigrated here from England in 1670 as an indentured servant. Various degrees of grandfathers and relatives supported the revolution against King George from their land holdings in Virginia, and fought on both sides in the Civil War. Some owned a few slaves along the way, and one branch spun off several Methodist ministers in Arkansas in later generations. I tell this only to assure my patriotic readers that I come from a long history of red, white, and blue Americans (a word I try to use sparingly because there are a lot of people who are “Americans” who do not live in the 50 states). To add to my family’s patriotic story, my spouse is related to Francis Scott Key, the slave-owning author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Of course, we all have skeletons in our closets.
My antipathy to war, beginning early in my life, was brought into clear focus when the United States role in controlling Vietnam became an obsession of our leaders, starting with Eisenhower. It was a conflict that a later president, who did so much good, could not see a way out of without appearing to appease communists, though I always saw Ho Chi Minh as more of a nationalist than a communist. Even presidents can be blinded by their own propaganda.
I have talked with soldiers and sailors who were fighting for the U.S. in the Pacific Theater during World War II; some of them were close friends. All of them held the view promoted by the government and most media in 1945 and thereafter that using atomic bombs was necessary to prevent the loss of 46,000 American lives (a worst-case estimate made by military authorities) if the U.S. invaded Japan to end the war. This remains the view of most Americans.
But historians know that this narrative is false. Records released by the government over the past four decades reveal facts that belie the official version of events leading up to these atomic bombings on August 6 and 9, 1945.
The late Howard Zinn explained most of this 30 years ago. But many people have never learned anything beyond the propaganda widely disseminated by the government and the media during and after the war in the Pacific. Zinn argues that the atomic bombings were acts of terror. The most widely accepted description of terrorism is “the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose.” This is a fair and accurate description of the use of the atomic bombs known as Little Boy and Fat Man detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.
It was claimed that the U.S. wanted to convince the Japanese to surrender (even though our leaders knew months before the bombings of their willingness to surrender), and we know now that the government wanted to keep the Soviet Union out of the Pacific Theater (which it was days away from doing) to diminish its influence and demonstrate the superior weaponry of the U.S. After all, what good is a weapon if other people don’t know how well it works to kill people?
To be sure, in World War II, the U.S. fought against fascism — international aggression — while failing to acknowledge the aggression previously carried out by the U.S., England, and France with their “long history of imperial domination in Asia, in Africa, the Middle East, [and] Latin America,” as Zinn described it.
The self-determination that our government claimed to support at the end of World War II did not end the colonization of Indochina by the French, of Indonesia and South Africa by the Dutch, of Malaysia and elsewhere by the British, and of the Philippines by the U.S.
In the 1950s, the U.S. gave extraordinary aid to the French, who were trying to maintain their dominance over the people of Indochina and secure for themselves and the U.S. tin, rubber, and oil needed by our industries. The Defense Department’s own official history of the Vietnam War revealed that in 1942 President Roosevelt gave assurances to the French that our government agreed that French sovereignty would be reestablished over its colonial conquest as soon as possible.
By the time the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American people had been conditioned by war propaganda to accept almost any atrocity. And in June 1945, right after the US defeated Japanese fighters at Okinawa, the Japanese Supreme War Council authorized its Foreign Minister to contact the Soviet Union, America’s ally at the time, with the intention of terminating the war by September.
On July 13, Japanese Ambassador Sato wired Foreign Minister Togo that the Emperor of Japan wanted a swift termination of the war, a message intercepted by the U.S. government. The secret diaries kept by President Truman, released in 1978, verify this message. The bombs were dropped just days before the Soviets were planning to enter the Pacific Theater against Japan, portending a final death knell for the Japanese. But the U.S. rushed to use their new weapon before the Soviets could claim any credit for ending the war in the Pacific theater.
From 800 pages of secret documents released in 1994, the historian and economist Gar Alperowitz reported that President Truman had learned of the Japanese peace initiatives at least three months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. A German diplomat notified Berlin in May 1945 that large sections of the Japanese armed forces were willing to capitulate. This information was passed up the U.S. chain of command by U.S. intelligence analysts.
A U.S. invasion of Japan was never going to be necessary, so there was no need to drop the atomic bombs to preserve American lives in an invasion. Our most revered general, Dwight Eisenhower, explained his feelings about the proposed atomic bombing when the plan was revealed to him by Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who headed up the “Interim Committee” assigned the task of deciding on the targets for the bombing:
During the recitation of the relevant facts, I had been very conscious of feelings of depression and so I voiced to him [Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.
In a similar vein, Admiral William D. Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained his views:
The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.
While President Truman announced that the bomb was dropped on a military base, the facts reveal that Truman was less than truthful. While there were 43,000 Japanese military personnel in Hiroshima, there were 250,000 civilians. The bomb killed all who were in what Zinn called “its circle of death,” both military and civilian, including many U.S. prisoners of war held there by the Japanese, as revealed by war documents.
It is irrational to blame Japanese civilians for the attack on Pearl Harbor (a frequent justification given for the use of the atomic bombs) any more than it is to blame German refugees slaughtered in Dresden for the holocaust. All Americans cannot be blamed for the horrors committed against the Vietnamese, just as all Muslims cannot be blamed for the terrorism of a few who subscribe to that religion. The blame belongs with those who make the decisions to engage in such terror.
When we join together to create a government, we cannot know how badly that government might behave in the future. America’s founders explicitly opposed creating a government that would send its military around the world to force its will on a substantial portion of that world. But before we can do anything about the inexcusable behavior of our government, we must recognize war propaganda for what it is — information or ideas methodically and deliberately spread to promote the desire for war or the acquiescence to war.
The government, with the cooperation and collaboration of the media, used propaganda to justify the use of atomic bombs 80 years ago. We can work against such manipulation by educating ourselves, by speaking out, by standing against manipulation, by demanding honesty from our elected and appointed officials, as well as corporations, and by openly and directly challenging the deceit of all of them.
History suggests that we have not been very successful in this endeavor to date. Maybe the future will be different, but there is little about the world today that convinces me this will be so. Some days, I feel that human evolution has run its course and it is time for the molecules of life to begin again.
The following is an expanded version of a commentary delivered over WAMC-FM on June 27, 2025 by Michael Meeropol and revised by the author for The Rag Blog. Meeropol will join Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio to discuss these issues Friday, July 4, 2025, 2-3 p.m. on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and it will be streamed on KOOP.org.
In my opinion, the war in Iran is an attempt by all three governments to divert their peoples’ attention from domestic issues. The Mullahs who rule Iran are hated by the vast majority of the population — they hold on to power with murderous repressive violence. Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel clings to power to keep himself out of jail. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is losing popularity over his domestic policies — the tax and spending bill working through the Senate is very unpopular, the wholesale round-ups of law-abiding immigrants (some of whom actually have green cards, or student visas or pending asylum hearings) continues to lose support.
Here are some details and links to stories about that particularly egregious set of behaviors by our government:
Washington, D.C. — The Supreme Court ruling yesterday offered a green light to the Trump administration’s efforts to deport immigrants to third countries — including war-torn areas — and without due process constraints or basic accountability. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent, “The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard.”
The dangerous overreach by President Trump and Stephen Miller does not stop there. The terrifying reality of their disdain for the core pillars of our democracy is playing out in communities across America, as masked ICE agents lacking identification are — often violently — targeting, detaining and deporting students, workers, community members and even U.S. citizens.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Masked men with guns in unmarked cars. No identification. No warrant. Tearing our neighbors, co-workers and friends off the streets. No due process. Now, they will not only be kidnapped from our streets, but could be deported to a dangerous third country with impunity and without due process.
“This is Trump and Steven Miller’s increasingly vigilante America. They are demonstrating utter contempt for due process and the rule of law. Americans are recoiling as they experience militarized ICE raids and unidentified agents in masks and tactical gear tackle and ensnare long settled residents with families, jobs, lives and stakes in America. What is playing out before our eyes is at odds with democratic norms and basic American values and interests.”
Below find recent coverage on the continued impact of Trump’s anti-immigration policies:
Los Angeles Times, “‘Who are these people?’ Masked immigration agents sow fear in L.A., vex local police,” including: “They show up without uniforms. They show up completely masked. They refuse to give ID,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said during a news briefing after the Dodger Stadium incident. “Who are these people? And frankly, the vests that they have on look like they ordered them from Amazon. Are they bounty hunters? Are they vigilantes? If they’re federal officials, why is it that they do not identify themselves?”
These stories are all going on while the military actions against Iran are dominating the headlines.
On another important and related issue — the Courts have been trying to rein in some of the extreme actions of the Justice Department as it violates the rights of immigrants — even some legal residents. A whistle blower has just come forward revealing that within Trump’s own Justice Department efforts are under way to create the momentum towards refusing to follow Court orders. This was the basis of a very intense examination of Emile Bove at his confirmation hearing. (Trump has nominated him to a lifetime appointment to an appeals court.)
Each regime has reason to divert the attention of the population from significant domestic issues.
The fact that innocent civilians have already died as part of this smokescreen effort means nothing to the decision makers in all three countries. Instead, they hope to build on the legitimate nationalist sentiment in defense of one’s own country to divert public opinion. It definitely remains to be seen whether the quick bombing strike against Iran will garner public support for Trump within the U.S. (It is likely it will if there are no long-term repercussions. After all, the Bush II war against Iraq was popular at first. It was only after four years of insurgency that it became unpopular.)
One of the domestic American political issues being obscured by the violence in Iran is the fact that the appeal from the second E. Jean Carroll case was recently argued and that Ms. Carroll has just published her memoir, Not my Type.
[As a reminder to readers, E. Jean Carroll claimed in an article that back in 1995 (or 1996 – the date remains uncertain) Donald Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf-Goodman department store. Trump denied the story — called her a liar. She sued him for defamation and later under a NY State Law the Adult Survivors Act which created a one-year window for survivors of sexual assault to file civil suits (even after the statute of limitations had expired) against their alleged attackers she sued him for the actual assault. Two NY State juries found for Ms. Carroll — agreed that she had been sexually assaulted (but not raped), that she had been harmed by the assault, and that Trump’s denials had defamed her. She was awarded first $5 million in damages and then in a second trial $83 million because of Trump’s continued defamation. The first $5 million judgement has already been affirmed by the Court of Appeals. The appeal from the $83 million was just argued on June 24.]
Two remarkable advocates for peace and justice in Austin, Texas, have passed on. In 2014, I posted to The Rag Blog in 2014 that featured Bernice Hecker and her work with the Interfaith Community for Palestinian Rights. For over a decade, at Bernice’s invitation, I participated in a women’s discussion group at her home. Jere Locke directed the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition in the 80s, a coalition well known to those of us active in Latin American solidarity. In recent years, Jere focused on climate change and climate justice. Both of these individuals were leaders known for their passion, their ability to reach out to younger generations, and their fierce love of community.
In this post, I am sharing their stories, taken from events that celebrated their lives. Rest in Power, Bernice and Jere!
Bernice (Batya) Hecker
November 13, 1935 – June 6, 2025
Bernice Hecker passed away on June 6, 2025, in Austin, Texas, at the age of 89. She was born Bernice Varjick on November 13, 1935, in New York City.
A lifelong learner and intellectual, Bernice earned a B.S. in Physics (CUNY), followed by an M.A. in Mathematics (CUNY), and another in Linguistics (UT-Austin). At the age of 71, she completed her Ph.D. in Linguistics in 2007.
From 1960 to 1962, Bernice lived on Kibbutz Urim in Israel. After returning to New York City, she came in contact with people having a different perspective and began to understand the Palestinian situation. In Austin, she was a founding member of Interfaith Community for Palestinian Rights, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition. She was a pioneer in the second wave feminist movement and worked against the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. She also loved music, especially singing and playing her drum.
Professionally, Bernice worked for many years as a computer programmer, later becoming a programmer analyst/systems analyst for the Texas Comptroller’s Office. She also dedicated time to teaching English as a Second Language through Manos de Cristo. She was a member of Mensa.
She was preceded in death by her sister, Binki Segal; her parents, Bessie and Steve Varjick, by her hands, Howard Hecker (Tzvi), and Ran Moran.
She will be greatly missed by her son, Orrin Hecker; Binki’s husband, Frankie Segal; Orrin’s step-mother, Barbara Larson, her nephew, Shai Segal, and her nieces, Sharona Beck, Yifat Smordin, and Ophira Shwartzfield, as well as many friends.
Jere Locke: A Life Well Lived
Jere Locke was born on August 20, 1944, to Katherine and John Locke at Ft. Still, Oklahoma, and died peacefully at home in Austin, Texas, on May 22, 2025, surrounded by his loving family. Jere’s life was one of purpose and meaning devoted to working for peace and justice
A graduate of St. Thomas High School in Houston, Jere continued his education at the University of Notre Dame, graduating in 1966 from the University of Texas at Austin. Jere subsequently earned a master’s degree in family counseling from Antioch University in Seattle, Washington.
In 1967, Jere joined the Peace Corps and was posted to Kenya where he was known for speaking great Swahili, loving to talk and eat, and enjoying track workouts with the excellent Nandi runners. This experience was foundational for his life of service. Throughout his life, he worked on many peace and justice issues.
Jere served as Director of the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition in the 1980s. He also co-led the Austin-based Central American Peace Initiative’s efforts to cut off U.S. military aid to El Salvador and the Nicaragua Contras to promote peace. With others he convinced the City of Austin to end its investments in apartheid South Africa. After the first Gulf War in the 1990s, Jere worked to lift sanctions that were crippling Iraq and making it hard for children who had suffered radiation poisoning from bombings to get healthcare. While co-sponsoring a forum on childcare in Austin, Jere met his lifelong partner, Gale.
In 2002, Jere founded and directed Texas Harambe (Swahili for “Let’s all pull together”). In addition to funding a school in Vietnam for children with special needs due to Agent Orange, Texas Harambe helped tortured Burmese Democracy Workers obtain trauma counseling. Harambe also assisted Thai environmentalists to protect the Mekong River.
After attending the 2007 UN Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia, Jere dedicated the remaining years of his life to raising awareness about humanity’s urgent need to respond to the climate crisis. Under Jere’s leadership, Texas Harambe ran a Climate Emergency Campaign advocating large-scale climate legislation. Desiring to secure a future for his children and grandchildren, in 2009 Jere joined Alyssa Burgin in founding the Texas Drought Project. In the second decade of the 2000s, Jere, Alyssa, and Joshua Wallis conducted Drought Project campaigns seeking to give Texans an understanding of the impact of changing weather and climate patterns.
Jere will be greatly missed by his lifelong partner, Gale, his sons, Tristan and Sundaram (Suny); daughter-in-law, Jessica; granddaughters, Isadora (Izzy) and Emilia (Emmie); siblings Stephen, Martha, Mary, and Sarah; sister-in-law, Carolyn; and stepsiblings, Margaret and Max.
Democratic Chairman Ken Martin holds a gavel while chairing a 2017 business meeting of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party State Central Committee at Zimmerman High School in Zimmerman, Minnesota, United States. Photo by Jonathunder, Wikimedia Commons.
Democratic party leaders just met for the first time in months. When will they take real action?
This article was originally published at The Guardian and was cross-posted to The Rag Blog.
[Norman Solomon will discuss this article and more on Rag Radio, Friday, June 13, 2025, from 2-3 p.m. on KOOP 91.7-FM and streamed on KOOP.org.]
Countless Americans want the party leadership to stand up for democracy. Instead, the executive committee remains in a bubble.
People with the power to change the direction of the Democratic party – the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – met last Friday for the first time in five months.
They took no action.
The party’s bylaws make the executive committee “responsible for the conduct of the affairs of the Democratic party” between the meetings of the full committee, which isn’t scheduled to gather until late August. But taking responsibility wasn’t on the agenda. Instead, committee members and staff kept praising each other and committee leaders. Many talked about improving the party’s infrastructure and vowed to defeat Republicans. Deliberation, proposals, and debate were completely absent. So was a sense of urgency.
After so many months without a meeting, you might think that the executive committee would have a lot to talk about. But it was scheduled to meet for only three hours, which turned out to be more than adequate for what anyone had to say. The committee adjourned after an hour and a half.
If obscurity was a goal for the national meeting, held in Little Rock, Arkansas, it was a success. The DNC’s website didn’t mention the meeting. Media coverage was close to nonexistent.
The committee leadership remains largely within a bubble insulated from the anger and disgust – toward the party – that is widespread among countless Democrats and other Americans. They want the Democratic party to really put up a fight, while its leaders mainly talk about putting up a fight. The Trump regime is setting basic structures of democracy on fire, while Democratic leaders don’t seem to be doing much more than wielding squirt guns.
A week ago, the new chair, Ken Martin, received a petition calling for an emergency meeting of the full 448-member committee. The petition, co-sponsored by Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction (where I’m national director), includes more than 1,500 individual comments. They’re often filled with anguish and rage.
The California representative Ro Khanna has joined in the call for an emergency committee meeting. “I’ve supported it, I’ve spoken directly to our chair, Ken Martin, about it,” Khanna said last week. “Look, what’s going on is chilling… They’re banning all international students from coming to Harvard. I mean, think about that – all foreign students banned. They could do this in other universities. They have fired, or let go of, seven of the 18 directors at the NIH, totally dismantling future medical research in our country. They have dismantled the FDA, firing people who approve new drugs. They are systematically firing people at the FAA… They’re openly talking about defying United States Supreme Court orders, [JD] Vance has said just defy the orders. They’re calling universities ‘the enemy.’ This is very chilling.”
Khanna then zeroed in on a crucial point that party leaders have so far refused to acknowledge, much less heed: “It’s not enough for us to have individual responses. I’m out there doing my town halls in red districts, Bernie [Sanders] is inspiring the country with his oligarchy tour, but they’re all individual efforts. We need concerted effort, we need a battle plan. And that’s what an emergency DNC meeting would do – it would acknowledge the stakes, and it would say ‘here is our plan’ – to make sure that they’re not degrading and chipping away at every institution of American democracy.”
Refusal to call an emergency meeting is a marker of deeper problems, with Democratic party leadership remaining in a political rut – spouting mildly liberal rhetoric while serving the interests of big donors, high-paid consultants, and entrenched power brokers. Along the way, such business as usual is a gift that keeps on giving power to the pseudo-populist messages of Maga Republican politicians, who don’t have to go up against genuine progressive populism at election time. No wonder the Democratic party has lost most of the working-class vote.
With no Democrat in the White House, the DNC chair is powerful. To his credit, Martin talks articulately about the need to “democratize this party.” Four months into the job previously held by Jaime Harrison, who was Joe Biden’s obedient appointee, Martin is clearly an improvement. How much of an improvement is unclear.
After the DNC’s executive committee adjourned, Martin provided a glimmer of hope for ending the chokehold that mega-funders, notably Aipac, have exerted on recent primary campaigns. He was interviewed by my colleague Sam Rosenthal, covering the event for Progressive Hub and apparently the only journalist based outside of Arkansas to make the trek to Little Rock. In response to a question about whether he would “like to see less influence from dark money, removing the influence especially in Democratic party primaries,” Martin said: “Yes. In fact, I’ll be bringing forward a resolution on that, and I will be pushing hard for our party to come up with solutions on this so that we actually have our candidates and campaigns realize that we have to live our values; we can’t just say we want dark money out of politics and then have candidates and their campaigns accepting all types of support from these shadow groups. We actually need to reverse course.”
That reply might indicate that Martin is now willing to move away from the position that he took while running for DNC chair in January, when he said: “There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats who share our values and we will take their money, but we’re not taking money from those bad billionaires.”
With June under way, the Democratic party is no closer to operating with urgency to vigorously oppose the daily Trump attacks on basic rights, the rule of law, and the economic interests of most Americans. The party’s terrible approval ratings in polls – with disdain for its congressional leaders – make the need for drastic changes in the party all too clear.
But when the DNC and allied party organizations do outreach urging people to “get involved,” routinely the only involvement urged or offered is to give money. It’s a formulaic approach that reveals just how little the national party is really seeking participatory democracy.
Millions of usual (and all-too-often former) Democratic voters see party leaders as asleep at the switch, while the Trump regime is hard at work enriching the already rich and demolishing structures of democracy. As usual, if genuine change for the better is going to come, it won’t be handed down from on high. People at the grassroots will have to fight for it.
[Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.]
(Michael Meeropol and Houston-based historian John Moretta will discuss this commentary and related material on Rag Radio, KOOP-FM in Austin, Friday, June 6, 2025, from 2-3 p.m. It will also be streamed on KOOP.org.)
The following is an expanded version of a commentary delivered over WAMC-FM by Michael Meeropol, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Western New England University on May 30, 2025.
Recently I opened the printed version of The Atlantic and discovered a very interesting article by David Frum entitled, “That 70s Feeling: Trump’s tariffs could cause stagflation for the first time in decades. It may go on for a long, long time.” (The Atlantic, June 2025: 11-14)
In the 1970s, I was in my first decade of teaching college level economics. I had been trained in the tradition of John Maynard Keynes. Not only did every economics major read his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, but we also studied the major developments that had created the field of Macroeconomics in the years since that book was published. The “story” we learned from Keynes and his followers, which by the time I was an undergraduate in 1960, had come to dominate the first-year textbooks, was that situations like the Great Depression occurred because of a deficiency in aggregate demand. Aggregate demand was the sum of consumer spending, business investment spending, government spending and net exports. (I made this analysis the center piece of a commentary just a few weeks ago when I explored the role of trade deficits in the economy.)
The economics that dominated before Keynes had argued that the interruptions in economic growth that occurred from time to time (they were called depressions in the 19th century — after World War II they began to be referred to as recessions) were self-correcting. Both the experience of the 1930s and Keynes’ analysis showed that that was not the case — that the economy could be trapped in an extended period of deficiency of aggregate demand such as occurred for the entire decade of the 1930s.
The experience of World War II also showed that just as there could be a deficiency in aggregate demand, there could also be an excess. If the economy were to grow very rapidly — say, the government ramped up spending in anticipation of a war (such as happened in 1941) and if exports surged (as happened during 1940 while World War II was raging in Europe) and if people went back to work after almost a decade of high unemployment as happened in 1940, then the increase in exports, government spending and new investment spending would put everyone back to work — and their spending on consumer items would reinforce the trend. However, once everyone was back at work, if the spending continued to increase but there were no more resources to satisfy the rising demand, then inflation would occur — which is why there needed to be an extensive system of price controls and rationing during World War II.
In other words – the economy could have either too little spending (high unemployment) or too much spending (inflation). That was the theory we learned and taught during the 1960s.
(On Friday, May 30, 2-3 p.m., Rag Radio is rebroadcasting our June 8, 2012 interview with the late Ronnie Dugger. It is broadcast on KPFT 90.1-FM, Austin, and streamed on KOOP.org. The interview can be heard anytime on the Internet Archive.)
On May 27, 2025, Robert D. McFadden wrote in the New York Times:
“Ronnie Dugger, the crusading editor of a small but influential Texas journal who challenged presidents, corporations and America’s privileged classes to face their responsibility for racism, poverty and the perils of nuclear war, died on Tuesday at an assisted living facility in Austin, Texas. He was 95.
“His daughter, Celia Dugger, the health and science editor of The New York Times, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
“Inspired by Thomas Paine’s treatises on independence and human rights, Mr. Dugger was the founding editor, the publisher and an owner of The Texas Observer, a widely respected publication, based in Austin, that with few resources and a tiny staff took on powerful interests, exposed injustices with investigative reports and offered an urbane mix of political dissent, narrative storytelling and cultural criticism.”
On June 8, 2012, we interviewed Ronnie Dugger on Rag Radio. Below is an article as it appeared on June 15, 2012, and after that the full transcript of the interview that was published in the book Making Waves: The Rag Radio Interviews by Thorne Dreyer (Briscoe Center for American History, UT Press (2022)
Rag Radio: Crusading journalist Ronnie Dugger, founding editor of The Texas Observer
By Thorne Webb Dreyer | The Rag Blog | June 15, 2012
Legendary Texas journalist Ronnie Dugger, the founding editor of The Texas Observer, was our guest on Rag Radio, Friday, June 8, 2012, on KOOP-FM, Austin’s cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station; Rag Radio is also streamed live to a worldwide Internet audience.
The New York Times provided the autopsy report on the budget bill that passed by one vote.
The tax and spending bill passed by House Republicans early Thursday includes hundreds of provisions and would add an estimated $3.3 trillion to the national debt by extending and expanding large tax cuts, partially offset by cuts to Medicaid, food benefits and other programs. Below is a table that lists the 10-year cost or savings for nearly every provision, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.
The table that accompanied the article reveals the magnitude of costs associated with the extended tax cuts. They dwarf the other costs. Health care, food assistance, student loans, and the climate took the major hits.
The title of this article is not solely meant to highlight the level of knowledge of this current administration, but to draw attention to the strongly conservative Wall Street Journal article,“The Dumbest Trade War in History (Paywall).” And The Hill’s Review.This dismantling of common sense, logical, safe, equitable, and economically beneficial governance by these corporate raiders is of course, cray cray.
The Paris Agreement
First-off on inauguration day, the Death Eaters chucked the United State’s international climate policy participation like they had just stepped on dog feces. In this executive order, the lies fly like the flies on the stepped-on poo. It’s title, “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements,” belies the selfish and irresponsible actions supported by these hoodlums in their deceit about what America is, what our position is in the world, and what our people believe about our international actions.
The first paragraph of the order states a truth, “Over decades, with the help of sensible policies that do not encumber private sector activity, the United States has simultaneously grown its economy, raised worker wages, increased energy production, reduced air and water pollution, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The United States’ successful track record of advancing both economic and environmental objectives should be a model for other countries.”
The U.S. has done these things because we are a leader, and these actions promote a better environment that limits risk and damages so that our economy and society can prosper. Our beneficial regulations are the simple reason the United States is the global leader in almost everything. Spreading this philosophy is not only beneficial to those it is spread to, but it directly benefits the U.S. when others think deeply truth and safety and what they mean to the advancement of society. This global “truth” benefits not only those implementing rules for environmental and societal safety, but it benefits the rest of us too because those other countries prosper, and when everyone prospers, there is a natural economic and social feedback that creates greater prosperity afar.
Notes From the Underground: 77 Articles That Bring the Past to Life, the second collection of Thorne Dreyer’s lifework, includes essays, musings, and interviews, collectively cementing his standing as a foremost figure in the history of American journalism and dissent.
Simply put, his latest contribution is a terrific, vitally important offering, indeed, an instant classic. Significantly, as this volume — coming on the heels of his well-received Making Waves: The Rag Radio Interviews (2022) — movingly displays, its author-editor-compiler has remained at the cutting edge of both alternative journalism, the counterculture, and American radicalism for six decades. Large portions of his history, the Movement of which he was such an integral part, and many of its finest qualities, suffuse this panorama of commitment, activism, triumphs, and tribulations.
Smartly segmented into temporal and thematic sections, the book draws from Dreyer’s reminiscences, the people’s uprisings of the Long 1960s and the extended backlash that resulted, cultural happenings particularly meaningful to Dreyer, interviews conducted during the Movement’s heyday and aftermath, poignant memories of friends, and a tale of a stint at the Harris County Jail. Interspersed throughout are photographs of activists, taken both earlier and later, as well as drawings by some of the era’s finest illustrators.
Even the title of Dreyer’s book sparkles, with the reader able to reflect on the underground press and days gone by or through a conjuring up of Dostoevsky’s novella, a favorite from my late, great undergrad days.
As Dreyer notes in his brief introduction, “Notes From the Underground is an effort of love,” the byproduct of painstaking archival work, in the widest sense, on his part. It naturally includes several selections from the two legendary underground newspapers he helped to found: The Rag and Space City! The first, of course, appeared in Austin, Texas; the second, in Houston, where Dreyer was raised. But also cropping up are other seminal writings from Liberation News Service, that alternative press syndicate he helped shepherd, and various publications.
Hankerchief Head Humphrey. Austin poster.
The initial section of Notes from the Underground, “Years of Protest and Upheaval (or Taking to the Streets),” opens with “All-Woman Sit-In at SS Office,” which appeared in one of the very first issues of The Rag during the fall of 1966. It displays Dreyer’s characteristic dry wit laced with sharp mini-biographies of villains and heroes — Alice Embree fittingly was there — as well as glimpses into the fledging anti-draft and feminist movements. Next up is a scathing look at Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s visit to the University of Texas, “Dean of War: Where’s Rusk at?” and the repression accompanying it. Dreyer goes on to explore the student movement during “the Season of the Witch” as U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War continued to escalate. He examines the assault in Houston by Marines on antiwar demonstrators — among them SNCC’s Lee Otis Johnson — to the delight of John Birch Society members, some of whom were soldiers or policemen. Dreyer himself was among those assaulted by off-duty Marines.
Jane Fonda speaks at Ft. Hood. Behind her is Space City!‘s Victoria Smith. Photo by Thorne Dreyer.
Maintaining his dissection of the Movement, Dreyer next presents “Nightriders and the New Politics.” There can be found “The Battle for People’s Park,” which played out in Berkeley, California, the further maltreatment of Lee Otis Johnson, and the “Government Campaign Against the Black Panther Party.” But also situated in this section are stories involving the G.I movement at Fort Hood, where Jane Fonda spoke, transcripts of a lengthy interview with the actress-activist, and a visit by radical attorney William Kunstler. Also present is an account of the Ku Klux Klan’s assault on Space City! and “Houston’s Civil War,” involving right-wing terrorism there.
On a lighter note, albeit not altogether riddled in levity, “Lyndon’s Bar-B-Q” recounts spirited demonstrators decrying the recently completed “Tower of Lyndon—the LBJ Library.” Like Space City! Houston’s Pacifica radio, another article recalls, had to contend with terrorism, in that case a pair of bombings. This section nears a close with Jerry Rubin’s explaining his support for the McGovern campaign in 1972, the strange reality that 1968 street demonstrators in Chicago were in Miami four years later as delegates at the DNC; considering Richard Nixon “a very dangerous man,” Dreyer himself admits, “I’m supporting George McGovern” despite recognizing, “He’s no Messiah” and writing, “I never could go for the Kennedys).” Dreyer includes a later selection, “The Spies of Texas: Newfound Files Detail How UT-Austin Police Tracked the Lives of Sixties Dissidents,” from the Texas Observer, and an earlier review of Laurence Leamer’s fine book on the underground press.
Largely leaping ahead, section three, “Echos of the Resistance,” begins with a critical look at the unstinting backing by Texas Senator John “Corn Dog” Cornyn for the horrific Iraq War, then bounds to a music-flavored protest in Austin against that conflagration. The next story involves a resurgent, supposedly “kinder gentler” Klan, which leads back to a fuller telling of the KKK’s assault on Space City! Then, Dreyer discusses former Austinite turned Black Liberation Army supporter Marilyn Buck, her award-winning poetry, her “wonderful vision” of “justice and human rights and women’s equality, and her release from lengthy incarceration shortly followed by her death from uterine sarcoma. He highlights Vicki Welch Ayo’s Boys from Houston and the “unlikely” unfolding of the city, or at least portions of it, such as Montrose, as a “Sixties hotbed.”
Tom Hayden, center, in Austin with Jim Retherford, left, and Dreyer. Photo by Alice Embree.
This eclectic section also singles out the unhappy demolition of an historic Austin house, before turning to an interview with former SDS leader Tom Hayden as the fiftieth anniversary of his famed Port Huron Statement occurred. Perhaps appropriately, next up is a report of Austin’s participation in the massive protests that followed Donald Trump’s first inauguration. Included too are a review of Dorothy Dickie’s documentary, Under the Ground: The Story of Liberation News Service, and an account of its receipt of the National Educational Telecommunications Award. “Echos of the Resistance” nears a close with an essay, first published in the Houston Chronicle, on the Klan’s attack on Space City! Dreyer reproduces his stirring introduction to Making Waves, providing more of his personal story. That is followed by “Whatever Happened to the New Generation?” which cropped up in Texas Monthly during the mid-70s, the article refuting the notion of young activists having discarded their radical ideals.
Section four, “Special Reporting,” has five intriguing essays, starting with a look at a Teen-Age Fair turning into “Pop Expo” in Houston. “Montrose Lives!” delves into “the Strangest Neighborhood East of the Pecos,” where bohemians, gays, artists, and activists flourished. That selection, co-authored with Al Reinert, first appeared in Texas Monthly in April 1973. Dreyer pairs it with “The Mad Mix: Montrose, the Heart of Houston,” written thirty-seven years later, when a “zoning-phobic mentality” was ushering in “townhouses-from-Hell.” “God Goes to the Astrodome,” another early Texas Monthly feature, presents Guru Maharaj Ji and his Divine Light Mission holding court at the baseball stadium. Somehow, “Pitfalls of a Landfill: Oh, Garbage!” aptly follows, with its dissection of Houston’s solid waste conundrum.
Klansman Mike Lowe attempted to infiltrate the Space City! staff. Photo by Cam Duncan.
Hardly surprisingly, the next section, “Progressive Voices,” is especially strong, as Dreyer largely culls from the legion of interviews he has conducted in his role as first, an underground newspaper editor, and then host of Rag Radio. Reviews of Z, the Costa-Gavras epic, and a Cecil Pickett production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, conjuring the sensibility “It can happen here,” are included. Interviewees range widely, in keeping with Dreyer’s disparate interests. They include folk singer Judy Collins, musician-author-comedian Kinky Friedman, activists Carl Davidson, Robin Rather, Judy Gumbo Albert, Nancy Kurshan, Todd Gitlin, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and David Meggeysey. Among the other guests making an appearance here are former Texas Agriculture Commissioner-populist Jim Hightower, crusading sportswriter Dave Zirin, political economist Gar Alperovitz, broadcaster Dan Rather, musicians Bill Kirchen and David Amram, “free-form radio legend Bob Fass,” actress Cindy Pickett, and an in-depth interview with Senator Bernie Sanders right before he announced his run for president.
Kinky Friedman is interviewed twice in the book.
Section six, “Remembrances,” allows Dreyer to reflect on past experiences and departed friends in elegant fashion. Stoney Burns was the too frequently harassed editor of the underground newspaper, Dallas Notes, which “decried war, intolerance and hypocrisy with a playful aggression and a cutting edge.” Dr. Stephen R. Keister, philosopher-reformer-universal health care proponent, contributed to The Rag Blog, worrying his nation was “descending into quasi-feudalism and subservience of the many to the few.”
Jack A. Smith, a writer and editor for The Guardian and an early advocate of radical pacifism, was, according to Dreyer, “one of the most important figures in progressive journalism in the 20th century.” The descriptions of Burns, Keister, and Smith fit Dreyer, too. Texas film and theater critic-actor-director-producer-writer Gary Chason assisted both underground newspapers and Hollywood blockbusters. Houston activist Daniel Jay Schacht, who ironically helped to legitimize guerrilla theater, served as a photographer for The Rag and co-wrote a column for Space City! Maggie Dreyer, Thorne’s mother, was a leading Houston abstract expressionist “painter, muralist, mosaic artist, educator, gallery owner, and political activist,” whose gallery was shot up by the Klan.
“And a Parting Shot” relates time spent at the Harris County Jail.
Reading or rereading, in many instances, the pieces in Dreyer’s latest tome leads the historian in me to recall other scribes who have graced the realm of journalism in the United States, often questioning, probing, challenging seeming verities and standard analyses. This is more relevant than ever, perhaps, given the inanities coursing through American governmental and corporate instrumentalities, whether in Washington, D.C., Austin, or too many other stations across the country.
All of these compel me to pair Dreyer with other iconoclastic members of the Fourth Estate, including Upton Sinclair, John Reed, Dwight Macdonald, and Izzy Stone. All suffered, at various points, ridicule, abuse, ignominy, including firings, blacklists, or imprisonments. Dreyer, too, has paid a price at various moments as did too many of his contemporaries, whether engaged in journalism or not, although that, of course, is true of all generations. Some who remained committed to the cause, to fighting the good fight in their own fashion, got left behind, became irreparably damaged, or lost their way. Others managed to come back, carrying bittersweet memories, as can be seen in Notes from the Underground.
[An occasional interviewee on Rag Radioand contributor to The Rag Blog, Robert C. “Bob” Cottrell is the author of several books on radicalism. These include biographies on the maverick journalist I.F. Stone and ACLU founder Roger Nash Baldwin, an examination of the counterculture, a look at 1968, and other works on both American and global radicalism. His All-American Rebels: The American Left from the Wobblies to Today recently appeared in paperback. Cottrell is readying to teach an OLLI class, “American Radicalism,” and presently crafting his sixth baseball book.]
This caricature of Donald Trump was adapted by DonkeyHotey from a Creative Commons-licensed photo from Michael Vadon’s Flickr photostream.
By Michael Meeropol / The Rag Blog / April 3, 2025
The following is an expanded version of a commentary delivered over WAMC-FM (Northeast Public Radio) on March 7, 2025 by Michael Meeropol, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. It has been adapted for The Rag Blog by the author.
Listen to Thorne Dreyer’s Rag Radio interview with Michael Meeropol, Friday, April 4, 2025, on KOOP, 91.7 FM in Austin or stream it at KOOP.org. Post-broadcast, listen to the podcast of this show anytime, here.
My question for today is — “How does a Republican Congressman sell a cut in Medicaid as NO CUTS TO MEDICAID?” Answer — by hiding it in a big number without specification.
In a first and very revealing vote, every Republican but one in the House, (including eleven who are the most vulnerable to a Democratic challenge in 2026), voted to move a budget “blueprint” forward.
This is a first step in the process of crafting a budget. It provides broad numbers on spending and taxing. The next phase is to fill them in with what is called a Budget Reconciliation Bill. (This importance of reconciliation is that it is not subject to Senate filibuster and therefore could pass the Senate with only Republican votes.).
It is true that in the blueprint that just passed, there is nothing specific that promises cuts to Medicaid. That is because there is nothing specific that promises cuts to ANYTHING. So, members of Congress especially those who are vulnerable like my Congressman Mike Lawler (NY – 17) are out there making it clear they are “protecting Medicaid”. But they are lying of course.
Here is how US News and World Report described the sleight of hand
“ …. the blueprint’s single biggest line item calls for the Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion or more in cuts over a decade – a reduction virtually impossible without making significant cuts to Medicaid.”
The budget blueprint also seems to be promising cuts to the SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps) program: “It also calls for the Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion in savings through 2034 – again, nearly unthinkable without targeting SNAP.”
This is where I get very frustrated with reporters. There have been countless examples of Republicans — I’ll use my Congressman Mike Lawler of the NY 17 th district as an example — saying with straight faces “there is nothing in this bill that mentions Medicaid.” Why don’t the reporters ask people like Lawler — WHERE ELSE in the part of the budget controlled by the Energy and Commerce Committee will you find $880 billion in cuts? Where else in the part of the budget controlled by the Agriculture Committee can they find the proscribed cuts than in SNAP?
Interestingly, Trump has shut the door to cuts to the more popular Medicare and Social Security programs — and this despite the “real” President Elon Musk repeating the old canard the Social Security is a “ponzi scheme.” [It’s not! Even though it was published in 1999, I think the best book to answer right-wing attacks on Social Security is Social Security, the Phony Crisis by Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot.]
[In 1985, Ethiopia experienced the first of several famines. In 1985, it was a massive drought. 1985 was also the height of a farm crisis in the United States. Small farmers in Texas were being forced off their land due to slumping prices for commodity crops.
LiveAid was a huge worldwide fundraiser for Ethiopia. It was enormously successful. Jim Hightower, Commissioner of Agriculture in Texas, and Susan De Marco watched the show. They saw a way to solve two problems at the same time. Project Tejas was born.]
PHIT interviewed Mariann Wizard-Vasquez, Austin activist, organizer, and journalist, now retired and living in Belize, about the Texas Department of Agriculture’s hugely successful Project Tejas that sent Texas surplus grain and powdered milk directly to Ethiopian families.
Mariann spelled out Hightower’s thought process. “We’ve got all this surplus food right here in Texas. We should be feeding those children. We can send Texas grain and Texas milk direct from a Texas port to Africa.”
