Persisting

On this episode, we’re going to say … see ya? Keep on keeping on? Peace out?  We are taking our progressive activism in some new directions and that means that we’ll be putting the podcast on hiatus for a while.  But before we share our personal progressive next steps, let's have one last round of good news. 

In this episode, we talk about this simple idea: We Can Have Nice Things.  The corporate lobbyists and politicians owned by corporate lobbyists – cough Manchin, cough Sinema – want us to think we live in a world of scarcity. What does that mean? Well, in a world of scarcity, if you have a tiny little crumb, that means I don’t have that tiny little crumb, and there’s only one crumb so we have to fight over it. But that’s really the wrong way to look at it. The fact is, if everyone in the country – the richest country in the world, by the way – if everyone just paid their fair share in taxes, we could rebuild the middle class, dramatically reduce poverty, and close the racial wealth gap, not to mention the racial health gap and the racial housing gap.

Last week we talked about the Texas abortion ban, and how it is, among other things, sure to drive up maternal mortality rates, disproportionately affecting women of color in the state. This week, we talk about what the Democrats in Congress are doing to ensure women’s access to the full range of reproductive health services, including abortion and birth control, specifically what they are doing to address the crisis-level maternal mortality rates among Black women and other women of color.

We know that what is happening in Texas is outrageous, literally deadly serious, and infuriating. Today we bring you up to speed on the Texas abortion ban -- what it does, and what you can do to fight back. BUT we also remind our listeners that NOT every state is like Texas, and some states--for example Illinois, New York, and the District of Columbia--have enacted the Reproductive Health Act making abortion not only safe but also more accessible and affordable.

The recent transfer of power from the former Afghan government has caused immense uncertainty across Afghanistan. And as the Kabul airport remains the epicenter of global attention in Afghanistan, we must not forget the urgent needs of Afghan women and girls. Women's rights have a very uncertain future in Afghanistan and the dangers facing them can’t be separated from the legacy of US policy in the region. 

The numbers don't lie. By the first week of August, 15% of all new Covid infections were in children. 96,000 children have been infected with the Delta variant and it's causing record hospitalizations for children. Not surprisingly, most of the children getting sick live in states with low adult vaccination rates. What can we do knowing our children can't be vaccinated yet? First of all, we have to recognize that we are not having a policy debate about vaccines. We are having an identity struggle with those who want white Christian patriarchal families to be at the top of the social pecking order. 

On this episode, we riff on a few topics that have been on our mind: The ideological death of Milton Friedman, the policing of women's bodies happening at the Olympics and, of course, good news. 

On this episode, Terry & Alexa talk about something that just happened that is good policy, good economics, and good politics: the American Rescue Plan’s Child Tax credit. Last week, 39 million American parents began receiving a monthly child allowance and it's the biggest helping hand to American families in more than 85 years. They also share good news, kudo of the week, and - a new segment - one more thing. 

Recently a “heat dome” settled over the Pacific Northwest, sending temperatures to 113 degrees in the last week of June. The heat dome killed at least 116 people in Oregon and another 78 in Washington State. 

Why are we seeing these climate disasters? It’s because since the 1800s we have been burning fossil fuels for energy -- and it is killing our planet.  The tragedy is that we have known for a very long time, decades, what to do about it: transition our economy from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. And what is stopping us?  The oil and gas industry -- more specifically, men in leadership positions in the oil and gas industry -- preferred to kill the plant and condemn millions of people to suffer from drought, floods, catastrophic storms and catastrophic heat rather than give up their companies’ profits and their own fat salaries and bonuses tied to company profits.