It snows in New Jersey, ALL THE DAMN TIME! so #WTF went on this Thursday with snow removal? L@rk brings her infrastructure expertise to the show, with valid critiques about cul-de-sacs and broken bridges causing access problems.

Will it? It seems anyone with a window could tell that the snow was not stopping. Does Governor Murphy need a better view? Did all our Mayors just sit back while disaster unfolded? What took so long to get people out of work and home safe? Well, money gotta be made I guess. Capitalism at work.

Watch the video on YoutTube:

We know it is important, and that the state’s political elite and business interests gather for what could only be the public good. Of course the political elite don’t always agree, or even like each other for that matter. Pat and Brian highlight the tension and review an NJ.com article about the conferences political dynamics.

In this episode of Wine, Women, and Revolution, Heather interviews professor and climate scientist, Guy McPherson. Guy is an emeritus professor at University of Arizona and teaches in the School of Natural Resources. He joins Heather to talk about catastrophic climate change, capitalism, and near-term extinction.

Professor McPherson specializes in ecology and environmental biology.  He has been a professor for over 20 years and taught at Texas A&M and University of California as well as University of Arizona. Guy also worked for The Nature Conservancy in their home office in Virginia. His qualifications are exemplary, so when someone like this begins telling us we have only a few years left on the planet his words need to be heard.

10 years ago, Professor McPherson talked about how abrupt climate change could lead to human extinction by 2100, which is still a number some scientists focus on. Upon further reflection he moved his date up to 2050. Finally, he arrived at his current prediction that homo sapiens could go extinct as early as 2026. The exact date may be hard to determine precisely, but we are in the midst of a mass extinction. Although actual extinctions are still relatively rare, population decline is in full swing across billions of populations. Species are dying out because of habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and the impacts of human population.

There are certain environmental cycles which continue to trigger themselves over and over. These are known as positive feedback loop. Guy has been tracking these loops we have triggered on his blog at GuyMcPherson.com.  Mr McPherson has come to the conclusions that civilization is a heat engine that is constantly pumping out more and more heat, but due to global dimming we aren’t actually seeing the full effects of the damage we are doing. If we turned off that dimming, we could heat the planet up to 1 C within a few short weeks. Civilization, and especially the disaster capitalism of the United States is not working well for anyone or thing.

Carbon in the atmosphere has a very long half-life.  If we stooped all carbon use today it would still be years before we saw the effects. In addition, there is a delay or lag between the emission of and the heating from carbon released. We would continue heating for years before we saw the long-term results. In addition to all that full results of our actions are hidden from us. As we release carbon, we also release aerosols. Some of these stop heat in the atmosphere before it can get to earth. Those aerosols will fall out of the atmosphere within weeks and led to a dramatic surge in temperature. Guy believes there is no way that the habit needed for humans to live can continue through that. Everything needed for human survival will quickly cease to exist.

Guy believes it is too late to save ourselves, but what we can do with our time left is to ease human suffering. There is no specific place to move to ride out the coming devastation. Early on in his assessment, he had suggested moving as far south as possible and even convinced apple CEO Steve Wozniak to move to Tasmania. His opinion on that has changed due to his thoughts that there will be cascading nuclear meltdowns. *In writing this piece I reached out to a retired nuclear safety officer with questions about the possibility of these meltdowns. The answer I received was “Not exactly”. Chernobyl type meltdowns are extremely unlikely. Even if staff had to evacuate in a short time period, they could flood the reactors with boron and make it non-reactive. What could happen is the spent rods in the cooling pools coul

In this episode of Wine, Women, and Revolution, Heather is joined by Jeremy Einbinder to talk about the ableism inherent in capitalism.  Jeremy is one of the people that Heather thinks of as having the best political stances in this great nation of New Jersey. Jeremy has a Facebook and YouTube channel called “Democratize The Media” and also is a blogger and writer for the New Jersey Council on Developmental Disabilities where he writes on issues of ableism.

This project started out of Jeremy watching the media coverage of Bernie Sanders, and seeing CNN edit Bernie’s criticisms out of the broadcast. He was already commenting about it on social media and decided to use that platform as part of a class he was taking. It grew from there and now Jeremy has a following on both platforms where he talks about class, capitalism, ableism, and how it all mixes together.

Mr. Einbinder is physically disabled, and he thinks that played a big part in developing his politics. While many people’s barriers are hidden, his are openly visible. He is directly impacted by the property rights of business owners taking precedence of his rights of accessing those properties.  A business can avoid hiring him if he discloses his disability because they don’t want to take the steps to accommodate him. He sees how under capitalism your value is based on how easily you can produce marketable labor. If you don’t fit into a narrow box, then you are less valuable under capitalism. It doesn’t matter how skilled you might be, if those skills aren’t easily sold then they don’t matter.

You are forced to spend your energy on survival, if your passion lies outside the marketable realm. You never get a chance to develop those passions to their full potential. Are we losing out on the next DaVinci or Mozart because they are forced to work at Wawa to survive? We applaud the property owners as “job creators” when really all they do is own things. The real job creators are the workers.

The economy is just a mechanism. It is not built on doing what is right. This particular mechanism is built on the backs of slaves and stolen land. It is built on the backs of 3rd world peasants. It is built on the backs of those in this country who are forced to sell their labor to exist. One manifestation of this is us having more peopleless homes than homeless people. Keeping people homeless is a choice we make.

Poverty and Wealth are generational under capitalism. Money makes money. Poverty begets poverty. People struggle to assimilate into this paradigm but most ultimately fail. Or more aptly, the system fails them. Not everyone can” win”.  Jeremy questions what “winning” even means. If you have more money than you need and do nothing to benefit society, why is that winning? If you pass wealth down family lines and never give back, you win at capitalism but fail at humanity.

Streets in suburbs are designed for driving not walking. This provides a major barrier to those who for whatever reason can not drive. Individual home ownership forces us to rely on mortgages. Those mortgages can be exploited to segregate and redline certain buyers. Racism and segregation are built the suburbs. Lack of communal space can be very isolating for those who can’t walk or drive long distances. Jeremy uses himself and his wheelchair as an example. It could take him 15 minutes to get to a train station to get public transportation which isn’t always designed with him in mind anyway.

To make the world equally accessible to all takes labor and money. It costs a l

Tom left America to stay out of the war in Vietnam. His view of America from afar has shaped him up until today. From South America and around the world Tom Neilson’s music delivers a sobering view of our country along with smooth vocals and beautiful guitar work. Listen in to some samples of Tom’s work and then a discussion with Brian and the artist about the story behind each piece.

Tom Neilson will be starting in New Jersey and headed out to share his art with you. Are you interested in hosting a show?  Email [email protected] for more information. 

Charlie Kratovil is running for mayor of New Brunswick, home to about 56,000  residents and Rutgers University. He has a chance at winning too.

As a Journalist who helped found New Brunswick Today Charlie has been involved with community issues for years. He has seen those relationships grow into a base of support in that community rivaling that of his well established opponent. The current mayor has had to run a campaign for the first time in years and he is staging events for a $15 and hour minimum wage after Charlie. Charlie also discusses the fallout from flyers with false information left with residents associating him with racist figures.

Despite these obstacles Charlie has faith the the New Brunswick community will not be fooled by cheap and morally reprehensible tactics. He has faith in his community.

You can still help this independent campaign for an important job! Charlie has asked anyone that can lend him some help to go to charlie4change.com and chip in any time that you can.