AUDIO:

TOPICS:  REGISTER TO VOTE; Houston officials say state made the call on water boil notice; ‘This message can save lives’: State agencies increase enforcement, encourage driver safety during Thanksgiving; Texas Transportation Commission approves toll rate price increase for Grand Parkway, Hwy. 249; ERCOT report: Texas power grid will hold up this winter (in most conditions); New York [City] will involuntarily hospitalize more mentally ill people; Jewish Allies Call Trump’s Dinner With Antisemites a Breaking Point; NATO Supports Eventual Ukraine Membership as US Pledges Millions to Fix Power Grid; More.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

1. Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
2. Podcast on your phone’s Podcast App
3. Visiting Archive.KPFT.ORG

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter InformationTEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   1. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
      1. Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
      2. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      3. Liberty County Elections (Liberty County, TX)
      4. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      5. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      6. Waller County (TX) Elections
      7. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      8. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
      9. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
      10. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
          1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
          2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
          3. Current utility bill
          4. Bank statement
          5. Government check
          6. Paycheck
          7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
          8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
             1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
             2. Sick or disabled;
             3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
             4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
             5. Make sure you are registered:
             6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
             7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
             8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
             9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023 AFTER JANUARY 1, 2023.
   
   1. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
3. Houston officials say state made the call on water boil notice; For more than 24 hours, nearly everyone in the nation’s fourth-most-populous city had been asked to boil water after a power outage at a water treatment plant Sunday. by Sneha Dey and Brandon Formby | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 29, 2022 Updated: 10 hours ago
   1. … Houston officials weren’t convinced that a brief power outage at a water treatment plant created the kind of risk that warranted a day-and-a-half-long boil-water notice but were overruled by state regulators, city officials said Tuesday. …
   2. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality ultimately required the boil-water notice for the nation’s fourth-largest city, after the state and city went back and forth for around four hours on Sunday afternoon. The decision was ultimately announced shortly after 6:40 p.m.
   3. The boil-water notice was ultimately lifted Tuesday morning.
   4. Asked in a livestreamed interview with Texas Tribune Editor-in-Chief Sewell Chan on Tuesday whether the city felt pressure from the state to issue a boil water notice, Mayor Sylvester Turner said that the city consulted with TCEQ and provided data, but that “in the end, the state will call it.” …
   5. And while Gov. Greg Abbott said on Sunday afternoon that the state would do all it could to expedite the testing of the water samples, city officials said the TCEQ did not respond as quickly as it could have.
   6. In an email, a TCEQ spokesperson said the boil-water notice was mandated by state administrative code, which applies to all water systems in the state. …
   7. Power went out at Houston’s East Water Purification Plant after two transformers — the main one and the backup — went offline at about 10:30 a.m. Sunday due to a ground fault, prompting water pressure levels to drop below required minimums. The outage was caused by the city’s equipment, according to CenterPoint Energy, which delivers power to the city of Houston. …
   8. Low water pressure can hurt water quality and can be a threat to public health. A reduction or loss of pressure in a water distribution system can result in backflow, when water flows in the wrong direction, allowing contaminants to enter drinking water. Turner noted Tuesday that in the past, the city has issued boil water notices when pressure was down for a matter of hours — such as during the 2021 winter storm or after a major pipe rupture. In this case, 14 sensors showed low water pressure for less than two minutes and two more showed low pressure for less than 30 minutes. …
   9. Houston officials have been criticized because hours passed between the outage and the city’s decision to issue a boil-water notice. …
   10. … Turner said the city waited to issue the advisory until it was certain that the step was necessary. Announcing the power outage without context, he said, would have confused people.
   11. MIKE: We don’t normally discuss well-covered news stories, but I thought we might help clarify a couple of details on this one.
   12. MIKE: When I first heard that there had been a power failure that caused a boil water alert, I thought I’d have another reason to make fun of ERCOT, but it turns out not to have been their fault. Two transformers blew out at the water processing plant. That meant that even the backup diesel generators were of no help.
   13. MIKE: The result was a significant drop in water pressure, but there was still water service available. So why the boil water alert?
   14. MIKE: Water mains are not perfect. There are always leaks. A certain minimum water pressure is required so that water leaks OUT of the system, and not IN. If pressure is too low, ground contamination in the form of bacteria and chemicals can leak in and contaminate the system. This is why an “abundance of caution” required the boil-water notice.
   15. MIKE: In this case, there was disagreement between the city and the state, but the state got to make the decision.
   16. MIKE: Which decision would you have preferred? Who would you have held responsible if the wrong decision had been made the other way?
   17. MIKE: As Mayor Turner said in an interview, “… the question is, in that particular case with these particular circumstances, do you want a boil water notice or not?”
   18. ANDREW: Well, obviously everybody involved is going to recall events their own way, so Mayor Turner may be leaving details out that might affect how one views the situation. But if what he says is true, I wouldn’t blame the city for much here. Maybe they could have prevented the transformers blowing. But it sounds like the notice was delayed because TCEQ didn’t act as fast as they could have. I think the Commission needs to look at its processes and figure out where the delay came from.
   19. REFERENCE: ‘The water was safe from day one’ | One-on-one interview with Mayor Turner on boil water notice; Mayor Turner said the way the public was alerted to the boil water notice is under review. Author: Jason Miles | KHOU.COM | Published: 6:27 PM CST November 29, 2022, Updated: 6:48 PM CST November 29, 2022
4. ‘This message can save lives’: State agencies increase enforcement, encourage driver safety during Thanksgiving; By Hannah Norton | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 11:39 AM Nov 22, 2022 CST, Updated 11:38 AM Nov 22, 2022 CST
   1. … With more drivers on the road for holiday travel, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation said drivers should also expect to see more motorists and emergency vehicles on the side of the road.
   2. State law requires drivers to change lanes or slow down to 20 miles per hour below the speed limit when passing a first responder stopped on the road, according to a TDLR news release. First responders include tow trucks, fire trucks, police cars, ambulances and TxDOT vehicles. …
   3. MIKE: This is a pre-Thanksgiving story, but still appropriate. It also touches on an important point of State law that applies all year-round.
   4. MIKE: It also raised a question for me for which I don’t have an obvious answer. I was once stopped by DPS near College Station after passing a DPS car at a traffic stop on Hwy 6, a road with a 60-70 mph speed limit. I had moved over a lane and slowed slightly (being extra alert), but the trooper told me that wasn’t enough. He told me I was supposed to move over AND slow down. He let me off with a verbal warning. Which is right? I don’t know, so I suggest doing both.
   5. MIKE: While we’re on the topic of traffic law and safety, I want to remind listeners that state law in Texas and almost everywhere requires that slower traffic should keep right so as not to obstruct traffic flow. As I used to often say, it’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.
   6. MIKE: And one more thing. For folks out there who drive at high speed and change lanes into tight spaces between moving cars, your success is not due to you being a great driver. Its all those folks you don’t see who are hitting their brakes.
5. Texas Transportation Commission approves toll rate price increase for Grand Parkway, Hwy. 249; By Lizzy Spangler | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | Nov 21, 2022, 12:25 PM CST , Updated 12:25 PM Nov 21, 2022 CST
   2. The Texas Transportation Commission unanimously approved a 2.2% toll rate increase for portions of the Grand Parkway and Hwy. 249 at its 16 meeting.
   3. “These percentages are based on the traffic and revenue studies used for each of the systems,” said Benjamin Asher—the director of the project finance, debt and strategic contracts division—at the Nov. 16 meeting.
   4. In September, the commission paused toll rate increases to review its toll rate escalation policy and rate adjustment options, Community Impact previously reported. …
   5. [In the previous Community Impact story, it was noted that] toll rates for the tolled portion of 249—the Tomball Tollway—and the Grand Parkway were set to increase by 9.76%, according to documents from the meeting’s agenda. Last year, the toll rate prices increased for both toll roads by 6%.
   6. Pausing the toll rate increases will give the commission time to review its toll rate escalation policy and rate adjustment options, Johnson said at the meeting. …
   7. MIKE: As I’ve said many times over the years, I consider toll roads to be elitist, and they discriminate against the poor. But increasing road tolls and increasing the number of roads that have tolls makes perfect sense in the Flat Tax State of Texas.
   8. MIKE: Flat taxes are called “regressive taxes”, because they favor the well-off and hit the poor the hardest. Examples of flat taxes are sales taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, road tolls, use fees, permit fees, water taxes, etc. There are rationales for all of these, but some should be progressive based on ability to pay while others might thus be reduced.
   9. MIKE: And don’t even get me started on Tax-Free Weekends. (Oops! Too late.) I see them as a scam. Do we really know what retailers may or may not have done to adjust their pricing to balance a little more profit in lieu of sales tax? Couldn’t the State just cut sales taxes maybe a quarter of a percent all year-round?
   10. MIKE: Be that as it may, I should note appreciation to the Texas Transportation Commission for deciding to change the rate increase formula so that the increase is much smaller.
   11. ANDREW: Toll roads are essentially the model for the conservative/capitalist impulse to privatize all public services. Can’t afford to drive on this road? Don’t use it. That works okay enough when there are other free roads to use, but the problem with privatizing everything is that eventually nothing is free, and if you’re out of money, you’re out of luck. It’s why privatization should be fought almost every time it’s suggested– otherwise the world will become one big toll road with no other choices.
6. ERCOT report: Texas power grid will hold up this winter (in most conditions); Under most weather conditions, there will be enough supply to meet the demand this winter. But there is one “low-probability” scenario where the grid falls short. Author: Jeremy Rogalski | KHOU.COM | Published: 6:29 PM CST November 29, 2022, Updated: 10:00 PM CST November 29, 2022
   1. The winter forecast from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas finds that under most weather conditions, there will be enough supply to meet the demand this winter.
   2. But there is one scenario where the grid falls short.
   3. ERCOT’s Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy, or SARA report, forecasts a peak demand of 67,398 megawatts — an increase of about 5,000 MW from last year’s winter outlook. …
   4. [T]he SARA report anticipates [power staying on] under normal and even most extreme winter weather conditions. But one “extreme capacity risk scenario” with high demand, extreme unplanned power generator outages and low wind energy output would leave the state’s power grid more than 9,000 MW in the red. …
   5. [Daniel Cohan] is an associate professor for the Rice University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
   6. Cohan said that given the improvements made over the past year, [any] outages would not be as severe or as long as the historic Texas winter storm of February 2021.
   7. “But perhaps a third to half as many blackouts as we had before,” Cohan said. …
   8. When asked if Texans should expect any public alerts and appeals to conserve energy, Lake did not rule them out.
   9. [Public Utility Commission of Texas Chairman Peter Lake said, ] “We’ll continue to use every tool available to keep the lights on,” Lake said.
   10. MIKE: There are two things I noted from this story. ERCOT mentions wind power possibly falling short in a worst case scenario, but says nothing about building more infrastructure to carry Texas-generated wind power to the rest of Texas. There’s currently a shortage of carrying capacity and wind turbines are often turned off for that reason alone.
   11. MIKE: Also, ERCOT mentions nothing about the possibility of connecting to the North American grid, and reasons why Texas doesn’t do that. From what I surmise, it’s all about what you might call “Secession Preparedness.” AKA, “Keep your damned Federal hands off our power businesses.”
   12. MIKE: I’ve also linked to a reference article from Community Impact that’s more comprehensive, but doesn’t reference the part I just read.
   13. ANDREW: I clicked through and skimmed the actual report, and it seems more about number-crunching than proposing solutions– more “this is what we expect to happen based on these sets of data”, rather than “and here’s how we’ll deal with that”. So I think going into how we could better transmit wind power around the state or an analysis of connecting the Texas Interconnection (which is what our grid is formally called, by the way) up to other grids in North America is a bit beyond the scope here. But those are good questions, and while I hope ERCOT has considered or is considering them in its service plan for this winter, I’m not holding my breath.
   14. ANDREW: One interesting thing I noticed in this report is a beefy paragraph at the end talking about how they’ve had to account for cryptocurrency mining facilities in their data. That really just further sours my opinion of cryptofinance in general. As a sector, it’s sucking up so much power that it’s factoring into our electrical grids’ readiness, and in return all we’re getting is a bunch of new ways to scam people. I know a lot of people think Bitcoin is dying. I hope they’re right, and it takes all the other cryptocrap with it.”
   15. Mike: Good catch by skimming the actual report. Maybe the first load-shedding should always hit crypto miners. I wonder if the fees and taxes they pay fully compensates for the load they put on the state grid?
   16. MIKE: Also, Andrew, am I right in sensing that your views on crypto currency have evolved?
   17. Q. REFERENCE: Energy officials say Texas’ power grid will withstand increased demand this winter; By Hannah Norton | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 7:09 PM Nov 29, 2022 CST; Updated 7:09 PM Nov 29, 2022 CST
7. New York [City] will involuntarily hospitalize more mentally ill people; Mayor Eric Adams says the city can hold individuals whose inability to care for themselves places them in danger. By Sally Goldenberg | POLITICO.COM | 11/29/2022 03:37 PM EST
   1. More seriously mentally ill New Yorkers will be transported to area hospitals for psychiatric evaluations without their consent under a directive Mayor Eric Adams issued Tuesday.
   2. Emergency workers are already empowered to hold dangerously violent individuals. But the directive expands the interpretation of that policy to include more people whose inability to care for themselves places them in more subtle forms of danger.
   3. The mayor and his aides did not precisely define those “basic needs” or say how city workers would determine whether they were being met. Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom said the determinations would be made “case by case.”
   4. Police officers, firefighters and Department of Health workers will be able to hold such individuals after the city workers undergo imminent training sessions — a plan that civil rights activists immediately took issue with.
   5. The announcement … is intended to tackle one of the Democratic mayor’s most persistent and complicated problems — which touches on public safety, human rights and the city’s appearance. But its success hinges on potentially costly solutions the city has not yet arrived at: A lack of mental health resources and affordable housing for those with severe financial needs.
   6. During a press conference following his speech, Adams admitted the city needs more state-funded psychiatric beds as this initiative takes hold. In fact, the city has just 50 empty beds provided by Gov. Kathy Hochul at its disposal, he said.
   7. [The mayor said during his 19-minute address, ]“We see them every day and our city workers are familiar with their stories: The man standing all day on the street across from the building he was evicted from 25 years ago, waiting to be let in. The shadow boxer on the street corner in Midtown, mumbling to himself as he jabs at an invisible adversary,” Adams added. “These New Yorkers and hundreds of others like them are in urgent need of treatment, yet often refuse it when offered.”
   8. While his message was clear, supporting details were vague. …
   9. Adams said state law already allows the city to intervene when mental illness prevents New Yorkers from meeting basic needs, but “a common misunderstanding persists that we cannot provide involuntary assistance” unless a person presents immediate harm. … He’s asking the state to clarify the basic needs standard that was set in a 1980s court case.
   10. The New York Civil Liberties Union accused Adams in a statement of “playing fast and loose with the legal rights of New Yorkers” without “the resources necessary to address the mental health crises that affect our communities.”
   11. “The federal and state constitutions impose strict limits on the government’s ability to detain people experiencing mental illness — limits that the Mayor’s proposed expansion is likely to violate,” the organization’s executive director, Donna Lieberman, added in the statement. “The mayor’s attempt to police away homelessness and sweep individuals out of sight is a page from the failed Giuliani playbook. With no real plan for housing, services, or support, the administration is choosing handcuffs and coercion.” …
   12. MIKE: If you go deeper into the article, you can read the varying opinions on the Mayor’s proposed policy.
   13. MIKE: I will tell you authoritatively as an expatriate New Yorker that the Mayor’s metaphor of a man shadowboxing in the street while mumbling to himself incoherently is not just a metaphor. I’ve seen people like that. I was once almost assaulted by one on the subway. That man was eventually led away in handcuffs after trying to grab an interceding transit policeman’s gun.
   14. MIKE: It’s the many people like that that cause New Yorkers to have a reputation for unfriendliness. They don’t want to attract the attention of someone who might be dangerously mentally ill by talking or making eye contact with strangers.
   15. MIKE: Involuntarily institutionalizing someone is hard, and it’s supposed to be. It should be. So where is the boundary? We’ve talked about homelessness on this show many times, but there is no one cause for homelessness. It can be job loss by someone on the financial edge, or any financial disaster including medical bills or even divorce. It can be addiction to drugs or alcohol. It can be mental illness, which itself has many subcategories which vary in severity and treatability.
   16. MIKE: I’m lucky to not be in charge of making these decisions, but the buck always stops somewhere. Mayor Adams’s announced policy is uncomfortable and imperfect. What would you do?
   17. ANDREW: Every time I see discussions about involuntary hospitalization or institutionalization, I think about Ghostbusters II. There’s a scene where the Ghostbusters are trying to warn the Mayor (of New York, coincidentally) about a bunch of dangerous slime in the city’s underground that’s feeding off of negative emotional energy (which of course is plentiful in New York). This is inconvenient for the Mayor, so he won’t listen, and to help avoid a scandal at re-election time, the Mayor’s assistant has the Ghostbusters involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital where they’re treated like they’re crazy. And of course that’s how they’re treated, because what they’re saying sounds patently ridiculous! It doesn’t matter that it’s all true.
   18. ANDREW: It’s that sense of urgency and powerlessness I always feel watching that scene, knowing that the heroes are being prevented from saving the day by people who just want them out of sight and out of mind, that was really the first time I felt empathy for people who are just trying to live their lives in the best way they can, but are confined by people who just don’t want to think about them. In other words, the involuntarily institutionalized. That’s why I’m willing to listen to the people who have been in these institutions and their programs, and believe them when they say “I wasn’t treated fairly, I wasn’t treated humanely, and I had absolutely no power to do anything about it and it was terrifying”. That’s why I’m sympathetic to the people who say we need to rethink how mental health works in our society, where the treatment is deemed successful if the problem (or the person with the problem) goes away, not if the person is happy, or stays happy.
   19. ANDREW: **Incidentally, the Mayor eventually realizes what his assistant has done, fires the assistant, and gets the Ghostbusters out of that institution. Somehow, I don’t think that happens too often in real life.
8. Jewish Allies Call Trump’s Dinner With Antisemites a Breaking Point; Supporters who looked past the former president’s admirers in bigoted corners of the far right, and his own use of antisemitic tropes, now are drawing a line. “He legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters,” says /one. “And this scares me.” By Jonathan Weisman | NYTIMES.COM | Nov. 28, 2022
   1. For much of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, Jewish Republicans rationalized away the bigoted fringe of Mr. Trump’s coalition, arguing that the unsavory supporters in his midst and the antisemitic tropes he deployed paled in comparison with the staunchly pro-Israel policies of his administration.
   2. But last week, Trump dined at his Palm Beach palace, Mar-a-Lago, with the performer Kanye West, who had already been denounced for making antisemitic statements, and with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and Holocaust denier, granting the antisemitic fringe a place of honor at his table. Now, even some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters say they can no longer ignore the abetting of bigotry by the nominal leader of the Republican Party.
   3. “I am a child of survivors. I have become very frightened for my people,” Morton Klein, head of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, said on Monday, referring to his parents’ survival of the Holocaust. “Donald Trump is not an antisemite. He loves Israel. He loves Jews. But he mainstreams, he legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters. And this scares me.” …
   4. Trump tried during his presidency to keep the racists and antisemites who supported him at an arm’s distance without banishing them altogether. Many Jews accepted the sleight of hand because his policies delivered gift after gift to the right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu: moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, relentlessly pressuring the Palestinians, recognizing the annexation of the Golan Heights, scuttling the nuclear accord with Iran, pursuing peace accords between Israel and the Gulf States, and above all, dropping any pressure to dismantle Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. …
   5. [The Orthodox Union, which represents the branch of Judaism that has been most supportive of Mr. Trump …] not only called on Mr. Trump to condemn his dinner guests and cut all ties with them, but also asked “responsible leaders — especially those in the Republican Party — to speak up, as former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has, and be counted among those who explicitly reject antisemitism.” …
   6. Many Republicans have said nothing, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who aspires to become the House speaker next year, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s strongest rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. …
   7. For his part, Mr. Trump shows no sign of contrition. His spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, told a right-wing broadcaster on Monday that Mr. Trump was “probably the most pro-Israel president we’ve ever had,” then added: “President Trump is not going to shy away from meeting with Kanye West.”
   8. MIKE: From the little bit I have seen, Nick Fuentes is not just a Holocaust denier. He’s a holocaust danger. He wants our next election to be our last election, with Trump (or someone, given the man’s age) settled as a dictator for life. I find it amazing that it took something like dining with Nick Fuentes to get them to consider breaking ties with Trump. It reminds me that Hitler was thought by the ruling conservatives in Germany that he would be a pliable tool for implementing their preferred policies, up until Hitler had many of them assassinated.
   9. ANDREW: The Republicans proving once again that they’re no one’s allies but their own. They only protect others if they can benefit from it, and will play anyone against anyone else if they can maximize their benefit. That’s the real cause of the divide in US politics– the Republicans’ refusal to value other people. It’s time the Democrats realized that and stopped trying to compromise with them.
   10. MIKE: Rightwing Jews who supported Trump until now made me think about this in broader terms. Racism or hate generally should be publicly shamed. If you can’t change people’s minds, you can at least work on their public behavior. Up until the year 2000, I had begun saying that public racism had become as socially acceptable as spitting on the sidewalk. People did it, but it was frowned upon. It was right around the year 2000 that I began to notice the change. It came from Rightwing radio first. As I recall, it was Rush Limbaugh most vocally and others of his ilk who pushed back against what they called “political correctness”. What they were really protesting was being shamed out of public hate speech.
   11. ANDREW: I agree that overt racism– where someone is open and proud to be racist, shouting slurs or casually implying that some people are inferior or untrustworthy because of the color of their skin– should be shamed, openly and publicly, and media that encourages overt racism should be avoided by consumers, if not regulated to stop inciting hatred. Embarrassment, social pressure, and material consequences like deplatforming are about the only nonviolent things that can work on an overt racist.
   12. ANDREW: But it’s important to realize that racism is not just overt abuse. It’s subtle and often unconscious things, like refusing to believe someone’s account of their own experiences because you think they’re “too biased” (meaning they’re affected by racism). Or on the flip side, treating people who are affected by racism as experts and expecting them to answer every one of your questions on race, no matter how personal. Or expecting everyone to act according to white standards, whether of hair and dress in the workplace, or of volume in public spaces like parks or public transit– and especially getting police involved when those white standards aren’t followed.
   13. ANDREW: These are things that people may do without malice, but are still harmful to Black and brown people. In those instances, I think it falls to us friends and family members who aren’t affected by racism to have a quiet talk with the people doing these things and let them know: you can be racist without trying, and while that alone doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person, what does is knowing about it and choosing to continue. And it falls to us just as much to be receptive of those quiet talks when we do harm we didn’t mean to do.
9. NATO Supports Eventual Ukraine Membership as US Pledges Millions to Fix Power Grid; By Edward Wong and Steven Erlanger | NYTIMES.COM | Published Nov. 29, 2022, Updated Nov. 30, 2022, 2:58 a.m. ET
   1. [While meeting in BUCHAREST, Romania,] Officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Tuesday stressed their commitment to eventually allowing Ukraine to become a member of the military alliance. But they spent the first day of a two-day summit focused on a more immediate concern: helping the nation rebuild an electrical grid crippled by relentless Russian airstrikes.
   2. Over the past eight months, the United States and its allies have poured in billions in aid to help Ukraine fend off the Russian invasion, largely in the form of weaponry. Now, with millions of Ukrainians facing the prospect of a winter without heat, discussion is focusing as much on transformers, circuit breakers and surge arresters as on tanks, artillery and air-defense systems.
   3. On Tuesday, American officials pledged to give Ukraine $53 million to repair the electrical grid, and sought to rally other allies to make similar offers.
   4. The aid commitment came as diplomats from more than 30 nations gathered in Bucharest … where the NATO secretary-general made clear that the alliance might one day expand to include Ukraine — a stance opposed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. …
   5. Western officials say the Ukrainian reconstruction campaign needs to be considered a second front in the war. …
   6. In Ukraine, as the temperatures drop, millions have been living without power and water. …
   7. The $53 million announced on Tuesday is to be used to buy a range of equipment, including distribution transformers and circuit breakers, the State Department said. The U.S. government plans to buy the equipment and transfer it to Ukraine, focusing first on what can be shipped there fastest, a senior agency official said. The Biden administration has already identified $30 million of equipment that can be sent, including from Department of Energy stocks, the official said. …
   8. The department said the $53 million the United States pledged is in addition to $55 million in emergency energy sector support for generators and other equipment it already promised to Ukraine. …
   9. NATO countries have so far provided some $40 billion in weaponry to Ukraine, roughly the size of France’s annual defense budget. But Ukraine has been tearing through stockpiles, setting off a scramble to supply the country with what it needs while also replenishing NATO members’ own arsenals. Many Western-made howitzers are breaking because of heavy use by Ukrainian troops.
   10. Officials also discussed how to better protect the NATO member nations that are closest to Ukraine, including Poland and Romania, from any potential spillover from the conflict. The topic took on a renewed sense of urgency this month when a missile that NATO leaders said appeared to have been fired by Ukraine’s air defense systems killed two civilians in southeastern Poland.
   11. It was at a NATO summit also in Bucharest, in 2008, that President George W. Bush forced through a controversial promise that Ukraine and Georgia would join the alliance some day, though when was not clear. Germany and France objected, arguing that the promise was an unnecessary provocation to Russia.
   12. Four months later, Mr. Putin ordered Russian troops to invade Georgia, and some analysts have argued that Mr. Putin has been trying ever since to make sure that NATO’s vows to expand to former Soviet states prove hollow. …
   13. Ukraine, however, will almost certainly not be joining the alliance anytime soon … Admitting a country requires unanimous consent from all NATO members, and the alliance — predicated on the doctrine of mutual defense — is highly unlikely to admit a country already at war. …

==========================================================

Remember!  When you donate to KPFT, your dollars pay for:

• Transmitter and equipment costs
• Programs like Thinkwing Radio, Politics Done Right, and other locally-generated political talk shows
• KPFT’s online streaming
• Maintaining a wide variety of music programs

Each time you turn on the radio, you can hear your dollars at work!

Make your contribution to this station right now. Just call 713 526 5738. That’s 713-526-5738. Or give online at KPFT.org!