Noel Casler

Noel Casler has seen Trump and his "family" up close. He's begun writing for Substack.

'It's The Burning Planet, Stupid'

NOEL CASLER

July 29, 2023 in Substack

A lot of the political and cultural discourse this summer feels akin to arguing about what radio station to listen to while the car you are riding in careens off of a cliff.

This isn’t to say the world lurching towards authoritarianism, or at least previously stalwart democracies taking a shot at it isn’t important, or a dire threat, or shouldn’t be front and center of any given news cycle. 

It certainly should be - but in the U.S., the circus Trump creates has become such a cash cow that the horse race aspect of his legal cases has become most of what MSM is choosing to focus on. 

Mainstream media is dominated by hour after hour of paid pundits, many hardly more than online influencers, for their expertise in his legal predicament. 

We’re all on ‘indictment watch’ 24/7 and listening to talking heads opine on his fate - while ignoring the climate catastrophe that is consuming much of our planet.

Believe me, nobody wants to see Trump go down hard for his myriad crimes more than me. 

He has attacked friends of mine in his decades as a sexual predator (long before he was POTUS) and his odious family was a virtual resentment factory when I observed them up close working on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’. 

A more abhorrent group of people you would be hard pressed to meet, including the Kushner branch of the Trump crime family. 

When all is said and done, Jared & Vanky may be the ones to walk away with most of the spoils after Donald’s house of cards finally burns to the ground.

Much of the media coverage is skewed towards covering the ongoing saga because of their parent companies and producers.  

Television news is a business after all and a very big one.  

They are beholden to the bottom line and the energy companies that buy the ad time that pays their bills. 

It’s alarming though, because if ever there was an issue that required breathless coverage and perhaps radical action, it is climate change and what is happening to our world this summer. 

Oil & gas companies and the Republican party spent decades trying to pump the brakes on the study of what burning fossil fuels is doing to our planet.  

Much like tobacco companies before them, they have hidden from the general public and media scrutiny how lethal their product was to consumers because they were making so much money from it. 

With that money came outsized influence in the boardrooms and political arenas where they purchased politician after politician willing to do their bidding and protect their interests.  

This happens on both sides of the aisle (see my piece ‘Burn In The USA’ on Joe Manchin). 

The Mediterranean and the waters off of the Florida Keys both hit records for water temperatures with some parts of the Keys clicking in at a scalding 100° Fahrenheit.

The shrimp are damn near boiling themselves in Margaritaville this summer: ’Some people claim there’s a hoax to blame, but I know, it’s my own damn fault.’ 

For a nation built on tough guy iconography and can-do self-reliance, it is well past time to ‘cowboy up’.   

Instead we allow ourselves to become distracted by cameltoe cowboys spewing white supremacist anthems to keep a culturally deprived demographic anemic in thought and action. 

They raise their red solo cups to crowds of mostly oblivious partiers as they preach the rural simple life that no longer exists in this land, before repairing back the the Four Seasons and their Frette sheets. 

Like some Grand Wizard in a thousand thread count cotton robe. 

Of course, social media plays an enormous role in what topics trend throughout the daily news cycle, which is precisely why Elon Musk took over twitter and became such an enervating troll to progressive media. 

Musk’s follower count on Twitter is almost equal to half the population of the United States.

That’s a lot of people - but the problem is they are mostly bots and nearly half of his total following was added after he purchased the social media platform late last year. 

Before his takeover, Twitter was the world’s largest platform for sharing environmental and progressive news and a very effective means of communication for NGOs battling climate change. 

It was also quite effective for Democratic and liberal-leaning influencer accounts which have all been throttled, our follower counts diminished.

Within hours of his takeover, I could no longer share links to the Noel Casler Podcast without a warning going up saying it was from a ‘suspicious site’. 

In the two plus previous years I never had warnings attached. 

Substack of course has been blocked from twitter; sharing this article will require a screenshot instead of a quote tweet (which made it easier for readers to find and share newsletters).    

Did Elon just tell his minions to move all the bots over to his account when he took over to increase his following?  It jumped from 79 million in late Oct 2022 to almost 150 million now. 

Why would there be such value in increasing you follower count even if they were bots? 

Let’s put the obvious ego involved in this aside (which I won’t completely discount since he’s obviously a malignant narcissist), I am more interested in the practical and logistical results of such a move. 

It stands to reason that any sort of authentic and transparent business person would desire an honest accounting of the size of their audience. 

Unless their intent was to manipulate the algorithm of what twitter’s users are exposed to: this was clearly the plan behind Elon Musk’s acquisition from the beginning.

He wanted to destroy what had become the world’s town square for progressive causes.   

The dangers of promoting far-right accounts - and those that not only post climate change disinformation and anti-vaccine rhetoric - can be seen all around his this summer and not just in RFK Jr.’s ridiculous spoiler campaign and his new role as the darling of Fox News. 

It can be seen in the wildfires and floods and boiling seas and scalding streets. 

Words matter, so does the truth.

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29 months

It's been 29 months since the Jan 6 insurrection tried to overthrow the United States government and hand the presidency to Trump. Here is an update on all the terrorists from the DOJ.

29 Months Since the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol

Tuesday, June 6, 2023, marks 29 months since the attack on the U.S. Capitol that disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the process of affirming the presidential election results. The government continues to investigate losses that resulted from the breach of the Capitol, including damage to the Capitol building and grounds, both inside and outside the building. As of October 14, 2022, the approximate losses suffered as a result of the siege at the Capitol totaled $2,881,360.20. That amount reflects, among other things, damage to the Capitol building and grounds and certain costs borne by the U.S. Capitol Police.

Under the continued leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the attack continues to move forward at an unprecedented speed and scale. The Department of Justice’s resolve to hold accountable those who committed crimes on January 6, 2021, has not, and will not, wane.

Based on the public court documents, below is a snapshot of the investigation as of the close of business Monday, June 6, 2023. Complete versions of most of the public court documents used to compile these statistics are available on the Capitol Breach Investigation Resource Page at https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases.

Arrests made: More than 1,043 defendants have been charged in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia. (This includes those charged in both District and Superior Court).

Criminal charges:

• Approximately 347 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 109 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.
  • Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted Jan. 6 at the Capitol, including about 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and about 60 from the Metropolitan Police Department. 
• Approximately 11 individuals have been arrested on a series of charges that relate to assaulting a member of the media, or destroying their equipment, on Jan. 6.
• Approximately 909 defendants have been charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds. Of those, 103 defendants have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.
• Approximately 61 defendants have been charged with destruction of government property, and approximately 49 defendants have been charged with theft of government property.
• More than 310 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so.
• Approximately 55 defendants have been charged with conspiracy, either: (a) conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding, (b) conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement during a civil disorder, (c) conspiracy to injure an officer, or (d) some combination of the three. 

 

Pleas:

• Approximately 587 individuals have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, many of whom faced or will face incarceration at sentencing.
  • Approximately 155 have pleaded guilty to felonies. Another 432 have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors.
  • A total of 64 of those who have pleaded guilty to felonies have pleaded to federal charges of assaulting law enforcement officers. Approximately 34 additional defendants have pleaded guilty to feloniously obstructing, impeding, or interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder. Of these 97 defendants, 60 have now been sentenced to prison terms of up to 90 months.
  • Four of those who have pleaded guilty to felonies have pleaded guilty to the federal charge of seditious conspiracy.

Trials:

• 85 individuals have been found guilty at contested trials, including 3 who were found guilty in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Another 16 individuals have been convicted following an agreed-upon set of facts. 33 of these 101 defendants were found guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers and/or obstructing officers during a civil disorder, which are felony offenses, including one who has been sentenced to more than 14 years in prison.

Sentencings:

• Approximately 524 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on Jan. 6. Approximately 310 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration. Approximately 118 defendants have been sentenced to a period of home detention, including approximately 18 who also were sentenced to a period of incarceration.

Public Assistance:

• Citizens from around the country have provided invaluable assistance in identifying individuals in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. The FBI continues to seek the public’s help in identifying approximately than 269 individuals believed to have committed violent acts on Capitol grounds.
• Additionally, the FBI currently has 14 videos of suspects wanted for violent assaults on federal officers and (ONE) video of (TWO) suspects wanted for assaults on members of the media on January 6th and is seeking the public’s help to identify them.
  • Some of the violent offenders about whom the FBI is seeking public tips to identify or locate include Evan Neumann, Jonathan Daniel Pollock, AFOs #91, #292, #371, #96, and #383. AFO #91 uses what appears to be a stick to strike multiple officers numerous times while in the doorway of the Lower West Terrace, commonly referred to as the tunnel. AFOs #292, #371, and #383 are all shown on video charging at and assaulting officers, and they appear to grab and attempt to take possession of the officers’ batons.
•  For images and video of the attackers, please visit https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/capitol-violence. Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

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The Awful 88th

The Texas Observer has written a re-cap of the 88th Session of the Texas State Legislature.  The Texas Lege meets only every OTHER year, and then, for only 5 months at a time.  Maybe it's a good thing, because it limits the time they can write horrible bills. 

The Texas Observer

The Awful 88th

Losers included taxpayers, teachers, trans youths, and anyone who uses electricity.

by Texas Observer Staff

June 6, 2023

As writers scanning the political horizon noted a faint glimmer of hope that, perhaps this time, lawmakers would locate their statesman-like qualities and, at long last, spend the spring giving relief to taxpayers, the environment, electricity-users, public schools, teachers, and other long-neglected government workers.

Well, it was only ever a faint hope. Instead, the Lege lived down to its reputation, and, for the most part, spent this session in, as Observer Senior Writer Justin Miller imagined it then, a race to the bottom that took us to depths “previously unknown and unimaginable.” Think of it as the Awful 88th.

Republicans, riding a wave of authoritarian successes, wasted most of the session on an assortment of cruel social policy proposals aimed at making points with their far-right supporters and, as feared, failed to address truly important things like the electric grid, gun control, and school funding. They didn’t even accomplish their own top priority, which was property tax cuts. It wasn’t all bad, but parts were very, very bad, especially for LGBTQIA+ Texans. And now there’s a special session for added thrills. Here are a handful of highlights and a lot of lows.

GOOD LUCK ON THAT GRID

The failure that may come home to roost the fastest has to do with the state’s sagging electric grid. On May 3—about a month before his resignation—Public Utility Commissioner Peter Lake warned that Texas’ demand for electricity this summer will exceed the amount that can be generated from natural gas plants.

“The Texas grid faces a new reality,” Lake said. “Data shows for the first time that the peak demand for electricity this summer will exceed the amount we can generate from on-demand, dispatchable power, so we will be relying on renewables to keep the lights on.”

Despite what’s been at stake since 246 people died and 4.5 million homes and businesses lost power during Winter Storm Uri two years ago, Texas lawmakers blew another chance to fix the grid. Instead, the Republican majority spent the last five months attempting to undermine the renewable energy industry and enrich oil and gas companies at the expense of taxpayers and consumers.

Last year renewable energy saved Texans $11 billion. But lawmakers proposed about a dozen bills to hamstring renewable energy production in Texas, now the nation’s largest producer of wind and solar energy. One bill would have required renewable energy developers to obtain a state permit, an environmental impact statement from the Parks and Wildlife Department, and hold multiple community hearings—regulatory hurdles that don’t apply to natural gas and coal plants. Another bill would have raised the costs for renewable energy producers to sell their electricity in the state’s marketplace.

That meant the bulk of the legislative session was spent with a broad coalition of players—environmentalists, manufacturers, energy generators, and even oil and gas advocates—playing defense: stopping the legislature’s attempts to kill renewable energy and minimizing handouts to the oil and gas industry at consumers’ expense. One bill would have offered zero-interest loans in taxpayer money to help maintain natural gas power plants. Another, Senate Bill 7, would have saddled taxpayers with a $6 billion check for a new energy finance tool, called the Performance Credit Mechanism, which rewards gas and coal plants for simply existing, without mandating they generate more power. As passed, the bill was capped at a still-painful $1 billion. The Legislature also passed a bill that offers $5 to $10 billion in taxpayer money for low-interest loans for new gas plants.

Thus, Texans face another hot summer and winter without any real resolution of the potentially deadly power grid problem. Citizens and businesses still largely rely on gas and coal supplies, vulnerable to extreme weather. Energy costs will continue to increase. And with the growing number of people moving into the state, energy demands will continue to outpace supply. Perhaps the Legislature would have done just as well offering a free paper fan to residents.—Josephine Lee

GOOD AND BAD NEWS ON GOOD GOVERNMENT

For the past decade, tens of thousands of state government employees across Texas toiled away without a pay raise while taking on ever-heavier workloads. The state’s largest and most-critical agencies, from child protective services to health and human services to the state prison system, were plagued by institutional crises and policy failures driven by political agendas and chronic underfunding. Turnover rates among government workers ticked up.

Then came the pandemic, which exacerbated everything. In almost every agency, employees left their jobs at near-record rates. Heading into the 2023 session with a massive budget surplus, state legislators were under immense pressure to do something to stop the bleeding.

And on that front, the Lege did take a significant—albeit long overdue—step in the direction of good government. The House and Senate struck a budget deal that includes a 5 percent bump in annual pay—at least $5,000—for government workers in each of the next two years, a total investment of nearly $2 billion. The state’s retired teachers also secured a long-awaited cost-of-living adjustment to their pension checks—something they’ve gone without for nearly 20 years—along with a bonus “13th check” for this year, totaling $5 billion.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Unlike their teacher counterparts, the nearly 125,000 state employee retirees got nada in the way of increased pension benefits. Meanwhile, the Legislature failed to make good on promises for more education funding and salary increases for public school teachers, those matters having been taken hostage to the broader ideological feud over school vouchers.

On a high note, lawmakers invested $1 billion into a historic, Teddy Roosevelt-esque plan to expand the state parks system, which has been strained by overcrowding in recent years. In the coming years, the vast lands of Texas will become just a smidge more public.—Justin Miller

MOSTLY TONE-DEAF TO GUNFIRE AND TRAGEDY

For more than 12 months now, the families of those lost in last year’s Uvalde school shooting have pushed one principal policy demand: that lawmakers raise the age to purchase an assault-style rifle from 18 to 21, the same age generally required to buy handguns, cigarettes, and alcohol.

These families have advocated for their cause relentlessly, making the three-hour drive from their hometown to Austin on a seemingly constant basis during the five-month regular legislative session. Texas lawmakers did not entirely ignore their pleas: In response to the Uvalde tragedy, the Lege passed measures closing a firearm background check loophole,fixing a flaw in public information law that can shield records related to mass shootings (pending a mysterious, last-minute lack of a John Hancock from the lieutenant governor), and requiring silent panic alerts in classrooms.

To the dismay of some Democrats and gun control advocates, lawmakers also passed legislation requiring an armed officer on every school campus—increasing, rather than diminishing, the presence of guns in schools.

However, compared to recent sessions past, the GOP-dominated Legislature was relatively gun-shy about loosening gun laws. “We’ve noticed that the Legislature is a little more hesitant to pass pro-gun legislation right now,” Wesley Virdell, state director for Gun Owners of America, told the Texas Tribune.

Any reluctance to quadruple-down on Second Amendment absolutism must be credited to the Uvalde families’ activism—though another factor may be that Texas Republicans in prior years had already passed the bulk of any pro-gun extremist’s wishlist.

Before the session began, state Senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, told the Observer that he would use every legislative trick he could to force a gun control discussion in the beet-red Texas Senate. He stayed true to his word, and in return he was effectively shut out of lawmaking altogether.

In a last-minute surprise, House legislation to raise the assault-rifle purchase age did pass out of committee on a bipartisan vote. But House leadership almost immediately let the measure die at the next procedural step, preventing a floor vote—during which the whole body would have finally had to stake out a public position on a policy that is popular statewide but controversial in the insular world of GOP primaries.

On the very evening that the regular legislative session ended, Governor Greg Abbott initiated a follow-up special session focused on property taxes and border security—not gun control. Last year, Abbott ignored calls emanating from Uvalde for an early special session addressing their tragedy.

In response to the new special session announcement, Brett Cross, uncle and guardian to 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who was killed in the shooting last year, tweeted on May 30: “It goes without saying that [Abbott] has shown he doesn’t care about children dying. There will be another mass shooting. Children will die. And Abbott will show everyone again that he doesn’t care as long as it’s not him or his.”—Gus Bova

WORRYING ABOUT SEXY BOOKS -- BUT NOT MONEY FOR TEACHERS OR SCHOOLS

Abbott’s big dreams for school vouchers flopped during the regular legislative session, but Republican lawmakers did manage to kill a bill that would have allocated more than $4 billion to raise teacher pay and increase school funding in the process. All this after he set up a teacher vacancy task force in 2022 to get to the bottom of why teachers were leaving Texas schools en masse. The few small victories during the session—like more allowances for students who miss testing days due to religious reasons and the banning of some discriminatory dress codes—were overshadowed by the complete lack of additional funding for public education.

School vouchers weren’t the only controversial topic on the docket. Lawmakers started the session with dozens of proposed bills aimed at limiting what ideas students are exposed to, but the one that found footing was House Bill 900. The bill requires vendors to create rating systems to flag “sexually explicit” material in books—which critics say is a dog-whistle for LGBTQ+ themes.

The new law that requires each campus to have at least one armed security guard, even though hundreds of armed officers failed to prevent a gunman from killing 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, drew plenty of criticism.

“We firmly believe that school safety and preventing violence in schools is of the utmost importance,” wrote advocacy group Texas Appleseed in response to the bill. “However, decades of research and experience have shown that increased police presence in schools does not prevent school violence or shootings or stop them when they occur.”

Critics also want to know where districts are expected to get the funding for the personnel.—Michelle Pitcher

PUNCHING BAGS FOR REPUBLICANS

Although Republicans floated dozens of anti-LGBTQ+ bills during the regular session, just a handful of them made it to the governor’s desk. Still, each one whittles away at the rights of queer folks in Texas in different and distinctly harmful ways. These include: banning medically-necessary gender-affirming care for transgender young people, banning transgender athletes from participating in sports at public colleges and universities, a broadly written bill targeting “sexually explicit” performances (meant to criminalize drag performers), and a bill to ban or restrict public library books that Republicans deem to be “sexually explicit” or “educationally unsuitable.”

The most immediately harmful bill of the bunch looks to be Senate Bill 14, which prohibits evidence-based, frequently life-saving care for transgender young people under 18, including treatments like hormones and puberty-blockers, a reversible treatment to slow the onset of adolescence. Doctors caught providing these forms of healthcare to trans kids would be stripped of their medical licenses, even though essentially all of the same treatments can legally be used on cisgender individuals (and most controversially, intersex people) under other circumstances. For example, some cis kids who enter puberty too early may be prescribed the same blockers now banned for trans kids.

A coalition of groups including Lambda Legal, the Transgender Law Center, and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas have pledged to sue to block the bill’s enforcement on the grounds that it creates an illegal double standard. Thanks to Abbott’s signature on Monday, the new law goes into effect September 1, and it’s already becoming harder to access trans healthcare in the state as doctors and clinics move or close.


“In the last two weeks, we have probably gotten somewhere between 40 and 50 phone calls from panicked parents,” a leading New Mexico pediatric physician told the Observer. “What I’m hearing from families is that appointments that they had already scheduled are now gone,” said Dr. Michele Hutchison, chief of pediatric endocrinology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. That leaves families scrambling to secure care in neighboring states to avoid disastrous interruptions in treatment.

Senate Bill 12, the so-called “drag ban” bill, underwent significant changes in its journey through the two chambers. Explicit references to drag performers were removed but the bill’s scope was broadened to ban so-called “sexually explicit” performances anywhere minors are present. A last-minute addition targets the usage of certain prosthetic body parts, such as the silicone breasts or artificial phalluses sometimes worn by drag performers—and by some transgender people, too.

“There is no good version of this bill,” said Ash Hall, a policy and advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Texas who focuses on queer rights. “Because it’s not limited to business premises anymore, a major concern I have is how this is going to play out in Pride parades,” they said.

However, Hall suggested Abbott might veto the bill because, as written, it could even affect performances by groups like the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Of course, if this one is vetoed, the next step could be passage of a new version of the bill in special session. Already, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has called for a special session bill to ban drag queen story hours at public libraries.

Despite the record-breaking attacks on LGBTQ+ rights this year, Hall said they find hope in the queer community, which came out by the thousands to oppose the bills.

“They want us all to go back in the closet and be miserable or shut up, but we won’t,” Hall said. “Trans people have always been here and always will be. They can’t legislate us away.”—Kit O’Connell

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GOP crooks

Yes, it's no longer just a conspiracy theory: Nixon sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 and Reagan sabotaged the release of the American hostages in Iran in 1980. Both used underhanded, most-likely illegal tactics to win the White House. And there is nothing we can do about it?