Reality Room: Uncovering the News Corporate Media Covers Up
Nebraska Governor reverses decision to starve kids, thousands of flight attendants picket at 30 airports, NYPD following Ceasefire Now protesters, Georgia criminalizing possession of non-smart phones?
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1) ‘Lead or Lose’: 21 Arrested Blockading Biden Campaign HQ Over Climate, Gaza—Common Dreams reports on nearly 100 protesters with the climate group Sunrise Movement demonstrating outside Biden campaign headquarters in Delaware over his failure to declare a climate emergency and his continued support for Israel’s slaughter of nearly 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Twenty-one protesters were arrested.
Protesters held signs reading, “Fund Climate, Not Genocide.” One protester who was arrested shouted, “my home is under attack, wildfires, storms, drought, hurricanes; the climate crisis is here and Biden has the power to do something about it…I’m putting my life on the line, my body on the line.”
Teddy Ogborn, an activist with Climate Defiance, praised the “absolutely needed” action. “It couldn't have been at a better time,” he told Status Coup. “Biden just paused new LNG approvals, and while that's certainly an important step, Biden's goal here isn't to stop climate change – it's to try to calm down the young people who are furious at him during an election year. We need to show him that doesn't work – there are a million and one things more he could do if ending climate change and preserving human life was really his goal, and Sunrise is so right for keeping up the heat on this President.”
MY TAKE: All the respect in the world to these protesters, but these climate protests are having little effect on Biden, Democrats, or the GOP—or the donors/corporations that own them all. As I’ve been saying for years, protests without an economic component—i.e. economic boycotts—are limited in effect. Raising awareness is great; if done right, you might even get fleeting media attention. But the bosses of the United Corporations of America will let you protest (and if you get a little too rowdy, they’ll deploy their private army, the police, to crack skulls). But one thing that scares them is tens of thousands protesting with their boots on the ground and their wallets. I really hope organizers and activists start shifting their strategies to include economic boycotts to their arsenal—against Amazon, Walmart, big box retailers, corporate banking, etc. As part of this, there would need to be a large pot of mutual aid to go toward effected workers. Of course, this is all easier said than done—but does anyone think year after year…marching around the same streets, chanting the same shit…is getting us anywhere?
2) Flight Attendants Picket at 30 Airports Worldwide to Demand Better Contracts—On February 13th, flight attendants held pickets in 30 cities in the U.S., U.K., and Guam to demand better pay and working condition. In the U.S., unionized flight attendants representing over 100,000 workers picketed.
“We fight for our role to be respected; we fight for our value as humans to be restored; and we fight for the job dedicated to the safety and comfort of the flying public,” a press release from the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) said. “Flight Attendants save lives!”
WATCH my interview with Julie Hedrick, the National President of APFA, on this major action.
MY TAKE: Hedrick and APFA, along with the Flight Attendants Union and its president Sara Nelson, are some of the most underrated—and un-covered by the media—unions helping to organize the current labor resurgence. Nelson and the flight attendants union were major allies for the historic 2022 Amazon Labor Union victory in Staten Island as well as the historic UAW strike victory in 2023. Nelson and the flight attendants’ organizing also forced Congress to keep airline workers on the payroll, along with their healthcare, when COVID shut down the airline industry (they were also successful in temporarily banning stock buybacks for big airlines while also capping executive compensation). Of course, a labor champion like Nelson will never get the media coverage that keyboard warriors like AOC get, but make no mistake…if the labor movement is going to continue to claw back power from the greedy, soulless capitalists who’ve crushed the proletariat, union flight attendants, and their union leaders, will be on the frontlines along with the UAW, Communications Workers of America (CWA), and many others.
3) Nebraska Governor reverses course on accepting millions in federal money to help feed starving kids—the AP reports on Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen reversing his decision to reject $18 million dollars in federal funding to feed hungry children. In December, Pillen rejected the funding, rationalizing that he didn’t “believe in welfare.” The program Pillen rejected came as a result of federal funding at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic; as part of it, pre-loaded EBT cards were provided to low-income families and families with children eligible for reduced-price school lunches and/or Medicaid.
Apparently, the Governor had a change of heart after meeting with hungry high school students. “They talked about being hungry, and they talked about the summer USDA program and, depending upon access, when they’d get a sack of food,” Pillen said. “And from my seat, what I saw there, we have to do better in Nebraska.”
14 states, including South Carolina, Mississippi, and Florida, are still rejecting these federal funds.
MY TAKE: Go figure, when corrupt, extremist politicians actually leave their Ivory Tower and meet with the starving masses, occasionally their heart gets resuscitated. I don’t know much about Governor Pillen, but a quick Google search shows he’s your dime-a-dozen, anti-LGBTQ bible-thumper who loves showering the rich and corporations with tax cuts. With that said, credit where credit is due; it’s a pretty low bar for a governor to take free money from the federal government to prevent your state’s kids from starving (sadly, in today’s extremist Republican Party, its one many governor’s fall below). But Pillen did the right thing here. But let’s be clear: none of these GOP governors actually believe in “personal responsibility” or “lift yourself up by the bootstraps.” Neither do conservative Democrats. Most thrive off of accepting legal bribes from donors—and most got to where they are by the wealthy lifting them up by their bootstraps.
4) Jeff Bezos will save over $600 million in taxes by moving to Miami—CNBC reports that Jeff Bezos move to Miami—a move to escape Washington State’s new seven percent capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of over $250,000—will end up saving him at least $610 million dollars in taxes. According to CNBC, the Amazon founder plans on selling 50 million shares of Amazon before January 31st, 2025 (by selling the shares in Florida, he’ll save the $610 million).
From CNBC:
Starting in 1998 Bezos sold billions of dollars worth of Amazon shares almost every year for more than two decades to fund his philanthropy, his space company Blue Origin, and more recently his $500 million mega yacht and a growing collection of mansions purchased with his fiancé Lauren Sanchez. In 2022, when the tax took effect, Bezos stopped selling. He didn’t sell any Amazon stock in 2022 or 2023, gifting only $200 million of shares at the end of last year.
After his move to Miami, Bezos made up for lost time. Last week, a filing with the SEC revealed that Bezos launched a pre-scheduled stock-selling plan to unload 50 million shares before Jan. 31, 2025. At today’s price, that would total more than $8.7 billion.
Florida has no state income tax or a tax on capital gains. So on the $2 billion sale last week, he saved $140 million that he would have paid to Washington state. On the entire sale of 50 million shares over the next year, he will save at least $610 million. And that’s assuming Amazon shares remain flat. If they continue to rise, the value of his shares — and his tax savings — will be even higher.
MY TAKE: After Washington State and Seattle prostituted themselves to Amazon, and Bezos—showering the company with an unconscionable $824 million in subsidies and tax breaks—Bezos answered “jokes on you sucker!” Of course, for a man who has nauseatingly enriched himself by exploiting, mistreating, and endangering millions of working class people, Bezos’ selfish and greedy behavior isn’t surprising. What should be surprising, and infuriating, is that our federal, state, and local government has become so corrupted that is has sold the levers of power to the likes of Bezos with virtually no strings attached. How in the world can a state give nearly a billion dollars in tax breaks to a company without conditions placed on this endless waterfall of corporate welfare? Perhaps an even more important question: how has our government created no laws prohibiting the wealthiest among us, like Bezos, from being able to escape paying ANY taxes on his endless capital gains? Hate to sound like a broken record, but this is why I call it the United Corporations of America. Absolutely disgusting.
5) ‘Torture center’: Community condemns Fort Peck jail after in-custody death—The Missoulian reports on widespread outrage in Fort Peck Montana after 25-year-old Anthony “TJ” Friskey died in custody after spending just a few days in custody at the Fort Peck Tribes Adult Correctional Facility.
The cause of death isn’t yet known. After Friskey’s death, the jail’s warden, Richard Cantrell, resigned. Wes Headdress, a former police officer, observed mistreatment of inmates when he was in the jail for three days in January. He told The Missourian he saw a detainee pepper-sprayed by guards for cursing at them from his cell. He also saw an officer tasing an inmate…who yelled for water.
“I was a cop for five years,” Headdress said. “When I was an officer, you had to let people be, let them cool down. You’re not supposed to take things personally. It felt like to me, and to others, that the guards were taking things personally.”
Before going inside the jail, Headdress heard about its poor conditions. “I had wanted to side with the jailers,” he said. “I didn’t think it was true, but it really actually is that bad…This is really going on.”
MY TAKE: Does anyone believe this is some isolated incident unique to a jail located on a Native Reservation? Due to the heinous and inhumane stories I’ve been told my people with relatives or friends in prison, I’ve always wanted to dig further into the mistreatment of prisoners (a las, I’ve just never had the bandwidth on top of everything else I cover). But, similar to newsletter item #3 and police officers around the country, jail and prison guards have a similar overdose of testosterone that leads to major power and God-complexes. Of course, there’s very little oversight, or punishment, for prison or jail guards and their violent treatment of inmates. After all, this is America baby; we don’t even punish politicians who allow our school children to get executed—much less those locked up. I will certainly monitor this to find out what led to Friskey’s death and if anything will be done about it.
6) Chemicals used in plastic food packaging linked to 10% of preterm births in 2018—Grist reports that phthalates, a chemical commonly found in plastics like food packaging, shopping bags, and shower curtains, caused around 10 percent of pre-term births in the U.S. in 2018, according to an NYU study.
These chemicals can also be found in scented cleaning and beauty products to help fragrances smell longer. “There are dozens of different kinds of these chemicals, and when ingested, they can interfere with hormones that regulate the reproductive system,” Grist reports.
MY TAKE: Any of you ever play Mario Kart back in the day? If not, the game features car races between Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Princess, and other characters as shells, banana peels, and many other physical objects fling their way, causing them to crash and spin if they get hit. Essentially, this is what we’re dealing with when it comes to food and water in this country. Whether it’s lead and bacteria in our water, or micro-plastics in our food packaging, water, and other items—Americans are being attacked by cancerous chemicals and heavy metals with nary a mention or warning by politicians or the media. I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this is a criminally under-covered issue that will eventually come back to haunt us all.
7) Member of NYPD’s anti-terrorism unit following Ceasefire Now protesters—Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine tweeted out photos of NYPD officers in the anti-terrorism unit following students on the subway as they headed to a protest against Israel’s continued slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
“They got on at the 116th stop,” the @ColumbiaSJP account tweeted. “More cops got on at each stop & stared at students wearing keffiyehs. When students transferred stations, the cops followed.”
The police trailing protesters comes weeks after several student protesters were sprayed with chemicals at a January 19th campus protest. In that incident, 18 students reported a chemical smell while 10 reported experiencing burning eyes, headaches, and nausea (three sought medical attention).
MY TAKE: Just the latest gross example of the immoral $5.44 billion dollar NYC police budget. What exactly are these cops tracking—the grave threat of protesters using keffiyeh scarves as a weapon? This is NYC taxpayers paying for police to intimidate and surveil peaceful…taxpayers. Status Coup and Jon Farina have covered over 20 pro-Palestinian Ceasefire Now protests in NYC and D.C.; the overwhelming majority of violence has come from aggressive police tackling and arresting peaceful protesters. Of course, this is not some new development (ask Black Lives Matter, immigration activists, and indigenous protesters about their experiences with police over the last decade). But there is something uniquely dystopian—and messed up—about the police following protesters who are simply exercising their first amendment rights to demand and end to illegal war crimes against innocent Palestinians.
8) Advocates, past drug offenders call for end to lifetime ban on receiving food stamp benefits—Nebraska Examiner reports on a campaign to end the state prohibition on past drug offenders from receiving food stamps.
“SNAP would be such a great stepping stone to help me get the stability I need to keep my kids happy and to move forward in my career,” said Kayla Tobey, a working mother with two kids who is not eligible for food stamps due to a conviction for possessing a controlled substance 18 years ago.
From Nebraska Examiner:
At a press conference, Tommy Newcombe of Norfolk joined Tobey in speaking of the “stigma and internalized shame” of the lifetime ban that hampered his road to sobriety.
“When you’re told you can’t access SNAP, it makes it all the easier to stop seeking help overall,” he said.
Jasmine Harris of RISE, which helps inmates transition back to society, said there is no public safety or crime-deterrent value from the lifetime ban.
“Instead, enforcement of the ban only compounds hunger and poverty that contribute to enormous barriers to successful transition to the community,” she said.
MY TAKE: Putting aside the fact that most of these people should have never been convicted and put in jail for possession of things like marijuana, it boggles the mind why these types of “offenders” would be blocked from getting food stamps. As ex-convicts, it is often a struggle to land a good-paying job and transition back into one’s life. As a result, many ex-convicts struggle to put food on the table, pay off debt, and cover expenses. Programs like SNAP serve as crucial lifelines to help folks land back on their feet and reestablish themselves as productive members of society. I’m not holding my breath that a conservative state like Nebraska will err on the side of humanity and sense, but this unwarranted ban should be reversed.
9) 25 Orgs Tell GA Prosecutors: Anti-surveillance tools should not be evidence of criminal intent—Georgia Recorder reports on an open letter, signed by 25 groups, to Georgia’s Attorney General Christopher Carr opposing the Cop City-induced criminalization of non-smartphones, or “basic phones.”
From Georgia Recorder:
Last month, Deputy Attorney General John Fowler argued in state court that mere possession of a basic cellphone indicates criminal intent to commit conspiracy under Georgia’s racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations statute, better known as RICO.
His accusation was directed at 19-year-old Ayla King, one of 61 people indicted last summer on RICO charges linked to protests in the South River Forest where the $109 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, nicknamed “Cop City” by its opponents, is slated to be built. The RICO charges against King and the 60 other RICO defendants have been widely criticized as a political prosecution running contrary to the First Amendment. King is the first of these defendants to stand trial.
During the Jan. 8 hearing in Fulton County Superior Court, Fowler argued that a cellphone in King’s possession on the day of their arrest, which he characterized as a “burner phone,” should be admissible as evidence of wrongdoing, even though it contained no data. He went even further to suggest that not possessing a cellphone at all also indicates criminal intent. Judge Kimberly Adams agreed to admit evidence of King’s cellphone.
MY TAKE: I seriously thought this was some type of headline from The Onion. What’s next, criminalizing protesters for dyeing their hair a threatening color? The fascists in Georgia are making up the law as they go along. The goal is to squash the years-long protest movement against Cop City—and peaceful dissent in general). I personally find it refreshing that many young people are shifting back to basic phones without all the bells, whistles, and apps. It is preposterous that a phone can be considered “suspicious”—and submitted as evidence of a crime—because it has no other function than…making and receiving phone calls. The fascist police and legal assault on peaceful protesters at Cop City—highlighted by charging dozens of non-violent protesters with domestic terrorism—is one of the most egregious examples of the corporate media’s dereliction of duty. It’s hard to take all the media hysteria—about our supposedly sacred democracy hanging by a thread—when places like Georgia are making a mockery of the law in order to ram through an unnecessary militarized police commando center.
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Jordan
I dig the Reality Room Jordan. I really appreciate the dedication that you and your team put in to Status Coup as well. I sleep better at night knowing that actual journalism exists! I am recovering from an injury but when I’m employed again you have my word I will subscribe. Cheers!