POLLUTION PERMISSION!

By Ruth A. Sheets

This is a note I sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to their intention to drop the pollution regulations on coal-burning power plants.  The impetus for this response was from “Moms Clean Air Force” (www.momscleanairforce.org ).

Dear EPA Director;

What is going on with you at EPA?  Why are we the people having to beg, I mean BEG you to do your job to protect our children and the rest of our population?  Where is your humanity?  As a teacher and human being concerned with children’s health, I’m writing to  strongly oppose EPA’s efforts to roll back the recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. Now, let's see, why would you even think of doing that?  Are you thinking it won't impact your family since you are rich, so who cares; it won’t get us!  Is there no moral code of value among Trump's appointees to our critical agencies?  Where did you leave your moral compass and why won't you go and pick it back up and use it?  Are you scared of Trump?

If you were truly a scientist worthy of the office you hold, you would know that no amount of mercury exposure is safe for a child’s brain, NONE! We must keep mercury and other dangerous pollutants from spewing out of coal-fired power plants and ending up in our air, water, soil, and food.  In fact, we need no coal-powered plants, despite what coal miners supposedly want, according to Donald Trump (but that’s probably not true).  We will all suffer for your ignorance and unwillingness to do the right thing!  Why would you choose to do that to yourselves and the rest of us too?

Over the last decade, mercury protections have had significant public health benefits.  You would know that if you cared one wit! Last year, the EPA under President Biden strengthened these safeguards even further to address gaps that were allowing coal plants to continue to emit dangerous quantities of hazardous air pollution, which has been illegal for some time, but, ah well, if the polluters were not caught, no problem, right?  Now you want to just let them go back and pollute to their heart's content.  Who does that, what kind of person would put kids at risk that way?  If you looked, you would see that the recently strengthened regulation improvements offer serious benefits:

- 70% reduction in the emissions limit for mercury from existing lignite-fired plants,

- the strengthening of protections from non-mercury toxics such as lead, arsenic, and chromium, 

- the reduction in emissions from other health-harming air pollutants, including fine particle pollution, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon dioxide

- the requirement that coal plants continually monitor their emissions.  

(from the Mom’s Clean Air Force report)

These safeguards are critical for everyone, but particularly for the communities most impacted by pollution from coal plants, and I wonder who those vulnerable people are.  Oh yes, mostly Black and Indigenous people and other poor folks of all races who generally get no voice with rich folks like you all who just can't manage to care. Those communities  for example, rely on fishing as a primary food source, for cultural identity, and for local economics, and that fish is often contaminated with those pollutants.  This contamination impacts many vulnerable people, particularly children.

So, as you can see, regulating power plant pollution of all kinds  is critical for infants and children, whose developing brains can be permanently impacted by mercury exposure, leading to developmental delays, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and birth defects.  Are you OK with that?  Is that what you are hoping will happen so there will be an impacted class of workers you and your rich buddies can exploit? That is EVIL!  Are you?

So, I say to you, do not roll back the recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.  Instead, expand the regulations to include other toxic waste that none of us should be breathing, eating, or drinking.  That is the right thing to do in case you didn't know.  There are real scientists out here who can help you understand this pollution danger, but I bet you will not consult them or do anything to stop this backsliding on pollution because money and executive threats are more important than the health of your fellow Americans and the climate crisis that stalks all of us.  Terribly sad!  R.Sheets

WHITE MALE HISTORY SUPREMACY! NOT HERE!

 By Ruth A. Sheets

June 19, 2025

 

The organization “Free Speech for People” asked folks to sign a petition to reps and senators about the attempts of Trump and his cronies to erase famous people (not white men) from our history, our libraries, schools, monuments, and museums.  This was my contribution.  I think it pretty much sums up my feeling about scared white men trying to erase the history of everyone else.

 

OK, scared white people, isn't it about time you all grow up!  I am specifically addressing the MAGAs because white folks with confidence and courage don't need the history of non-white people, women, LGBTQ+ persons, and immigrants' histories erased because we know how important diversity is to this nation.  White folks in power who know they don't deserve to be there are the ones who have decided only their history, you know, white males, “the only actors in American history who have done anything that counts. 

 

Well, they are wrong and they need to grow up and start acting like adults for a change.  No one wants their/your jobs, nor your animals to eat, nor your homes.  People want a fair deal in America, the right to vote if they are a citizen over age 18 as the Constitution requires, and not to live in fear of the thugs of ICE and others that scared white people choose to sick on us.

 

So, I’m writing to my senators as a concerned constituent. I’ve learned that over the past few months, the Trump administration has been trying to scrub the records of Black, Native, and queer American heroes. People like Jackie Robinson, Harriet Tubman, Marsha P. Johnson, and the Navajo code talkers, all of them as brave as or braver than the white folks acting at those times in history.  Why are white men so scared of everyone?  They whine about DEI and those “non-whites who are being honored too much as though no one  else’s history matters.  Cowardice seems to be the correct explanation.  Well, grow up and see that a whole lot of great people of all backgrounds  contributed to this nation's development as well as some real jerks, (often white men) ones who have committed insurrection to protect slavery, killed Native people just because they thought it made them look manly or something, folks who lied about the need for wars that a whole lot of people were killed in, many of them not white men (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and in the past, Cuba, Mexico, and the Philippines to name a few.  

As one who believes that we should know our country’s full history this deeply troubles me because it is clearly another Republican lie of the many thousands we have been fed in the past say, half-century or so.

 

White Americans must understand, we are not going silent into that stupidity.  We will do everything we can to keep our history alive as so many in the past have done here and abroad to pass down our cultures and history.  Trump's ridiculous crusade will not last because too many families have more than white males in them, including J.D. Vance's, and despite what whiny toddler-men want, they are playing a losing game and should drop it and try to learn about the breadth of our history and our continuing attempt to "form a more-perfect union."

 

I would ask that white men commit to teaching and sharing our country’s full history by standing up for it and not allowing the Trump Administration to continue erasing our history, but if one is a MAGA, I know that is a foolish request, so I will just say, “I hope you white MAGAs will grow up soon and come to appreciate our real history, not just what you pretend is yours, and in your actions, claim should be ours too.”

 

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND

 By Ruth A. Sheets

I have wondered most of my life where and how one acquires the hatred that permits things like slavery; concentration, internment, and death camps; beating up people trying to cross a bridge to march for rights those with the clubs and weapons refuse to permit them; Destroying whole villages because one can (It’s war you know); killing protesters; kneeling on the neck of a man on the ground for more than 9 minutes and no one intervening; stopping food from getting to people in desperate need, even killing people as they move to collect the needed supplies; separating children from their parents with no record of who those children’s parents are; throwing to the ground and handcuffing a US senator for properly asking a question of a public official; attempting to erase the history of everyone but those currently in charge. 

The excuses for the bad behavior, the various levels of atrocity have come down to us over time including such favorites as:  they aren’t really human and don’t feel pain the way WE do; they don't deserve any better  because they are cheats, takers  (today's Republicans in Congress); they killed Christ (a Christian cry through the ages which is false because it was Rome, according to Christian scriptures); they are a threat so we need to keep them out or where we can see what they are doing (this one is frequent from Japanese internment during WWII to Gaza, to torture prisons to police surveillance and more); they don't belong in a nice neighborhood like ours, it will bring property value down. 

Yes, we have seen it all our lives.  The excuses keep on coming and somehow we buy them.  There are folks whose job it is to  come up with acceptable excuses as to why the deed was necessary or couldn’t be helped or one bad apple or an accident or something.  The goal seems to be to normalize or make the act acceptable or to control those, you know, the ones not like us or who would change our way of life.  I am guessing those who believe those excuses need a way to understand what is going on and to think they are not responsible for the cruelties, the evil that is perpetrated against folks they know are human beings, often in their name.

I see 4 emotions that move human beings into committing atrocities:  anger, resentment, fear, and hatred.  There are others like greed, feelings of superiority, indifference, and contempt, all enhanced and encouraged by the four emotions, hatred being the most potent, generally necessary for most of the cruelty.  

We need to find ways of stopping the hate before it festers into something deadly and destructive.  People do a lot of hating.  It is a kind of wall that keeps us from even trying to understand people and situations different from our own, a kind of comfort food.  It can let us “know” who is out to get us or who deserves to be a target of our hate.  The folks who push the hatred have their own reasons/needs:  taking over their land, keeping communities free of their kind, keeping people poor so wealth can accumulate for the already-too-rich, fear that they may be as good as I am even though they are different from me, competition.  There are an untold number of reasons emotions can lead to hatred, stoked by others or home-grown within ourselves.

Is there a way to reach through the screens often deliberately set up between us and them?  I think so, but it is going to have to be done at many levels at the same time. 

• Our media need to present all kinds of people working successfully together at simple as well as complex tasks.
• - History classes and courses need to show the atrocities as well as those who stood against them at the times they were occurring.  There have always been protesters, just often their acts were covered up.  In recent years, many books have been written to describe the work of the many resistance groups in Europe during the Nazi regime through the Holocaust.  Americans protested the removals of Indigenous people here, but their acts of courage were dismissed because they didn’t fit the mission.
• - People opposed slavery even from the early years.  Those protesters, abolitionists were often imprisoned, killed, and villainized by the slavery industry, with government assistance.
• Americans have protested every war and the war machine that promotes war while the supporters of the wars were claiming it is necessary in all instances.  Some of the conflicts/wars did help to protect this nation and our allies, but others protected private interests of industry and other entities.
• - People have stood with immigrants throughout our history, noting their massive contributions to every aspect of our lives, trying to stop the lies “stealing American jobs” (only the immigrants of color, of course).

We have seen the pain, destruction and death lies have caused over time around the world:  Ruanda, Nazism, government-sanctioned torture, police brutality, made-up excuses for war as in Iraq, are only a few of the horrors generated by people who should have known better, but drummed up the anger, fear of the other, resentment, leading to hatred that are responsible for millions of deaths just in the past few decades, and hundreds of millions in the 20th century.  

It is difficult to set hatred toward others aside when the presidents of the United States and other nations are pumping out hatred for their own purposes and people are picking it up and running with it like a football, hoping to make a touchdown.  We the People here and elsewhere could stop a lot of this by considering what the accusations against others really are and who is making and benefiting from them.

• We can examine our religion/faith to see if the hatreds being spewed match our faith – if one is Christian, hatred is not a Christlike act no matter how one colors that hatred.
• - Stop watching, scrolling, listening to hatred being pumped out by folks who clearly have a resentment toward others.
• - Think before speaking something that accuses others of crimes it is not likely they could or would have committed (running a pedophile ring in the basement of a Pizza shop).
• - Stop hating people you don’t understand:  LGBTQ persons, women who make family decisions different from your own, people who don’t share your color or ethnicity or gender, as a start.

Dropping the instant knee-jerk hate response can be a whole lot healthier for us all then clutching hate and the other negative emotions to one’s breast as though they are sacred and godsent; they’re not.  We can do this if we have the desire to shut down our willingness to buy into the hate feast that is constantly being dished out to us by despicable people in power as well as ordinary people who forgot that hatred is like a cancer that can metastasize and eventually kill or destroy.  We can do this if we do it in solidarity with others, each doing our part!

A GATHERING OF EVIL

By Ruth A. Sheets

My birthday has rolled around again.  This year my age is a square times a cube, one of the few ages that can happen without using the #1.

Recently, as I note my age and the coming years, I have been contemplating evil and what it does to people.  I have read a lot of books and articles about the Holocaust, a horrific manifestation of evil, wondering if there were points at which it could have been stopped.  The people in Germany in the early 1930s were suffering under a depression as was most of the world.  Someone came along and told them he could solve their problems, make Germany great again, and they bought it sight unseen.  The man took over the government, surrounded himself with people who would do his bidding, men who got off on doing harm to others, particularly those they were jealous of (or that is how it seems).  The new leader identified people the Germans could blame for all their suffering:  the political opposition, Communists, and worst of all, Jews.  The people rallied and jumped on board with the hatred, at least enough of them did that they didn’t mind concentration camps being set up to imprison those awful people.  If some of them were killed, well, they must have deserved it.  If their neighbors they had thought they liked disappeared, “ah well, they must have run away or done something to anger the new leader.”

Why were the people so willing to hop abord the train powered by anger, fear, resentment, and hatred?  That’s a question that has haunted me since I first learned about the Holocaust in 8^th grade when I read Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.  The people in hiding with her were rather annoying at times, but worthy of being dragged away and killed?  I learned only Anne’s father survived.  It has made me wonder what kind of nation Germany would have been had Hitler stuck to remaking just his own country and not been defeated.  What would have happened when/if the Jewish people had all been killed or kicked out?  What about the disabled persons killed in nursing homes, hospitals, and mental institutions?  What would have happened when the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma people, and homosexuals were extinguished?  Could that crew of sadists have stopped there?  Who would have been next?  Was invading Germany’s neighbors critical to the evil enterprise?

There are a lot of folks now comparing what is going on in this nation to Nazi Germany, and with good reason.  Evil has raised its head here and has been welcomed by Americans who are not doing well, or rather are not doing well in relation to the people they envy.  They listen to hatred being spewed over their radios, TVs, and internet and are angry that they are missing the wealth, the American dream that is supposed to be theirs.   They vote for candidates who promise them some kind of magical relief from their “suffering” but have never shown evidence of willingness to work to make that magic happen.  Those candidates have a cadre of folks to blame for the suffering of their constituents (not those elected officials, of course) and make sure those groups are vilified at every turn.  People of color in general are at the top of the list because, they always have been on that list in this nation.  They add women who are too uppity and LGBTQ+ persons for “living in sin” or whatever else they come up with.  Women who choose abortion are now called murderers and states are trying to put laws on their books to charge them.  Recently, immigrants take the place at the front of the line, well not the white ones, of course.  They are called gang members, criminals, immoral, and whatever the guys in power decide will rouse their “supporters” to OK immigrants being deported without due process, a right since Magna Carta (1215 AD).” 

A rich white businessman came along who had no moral compass, no concern for anyone but himself beyond wanting vengeance on anyone who didn’t agree with him, got in his way, or didn’t see him as a genius.  A group of really rich white men saw Trump as an opportunity to take over this nation for their own benefit and began influencing the media, even buying media platforms to groom the “suffering masses” into believing this man would fix things for them and “make America great again.”  Of course, his intention was to make himself “great” so he could enrich himself as much as possible from his time in power.  He collected around himself a host of mostly white men and some female surrogates who would go along with the project to wreck this nation so the superrich white men could rule, eventually taking over the world because they are just so brilliant (in their own minds), but in reality, addicted to money and power.  They’re also racist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic, antisemitic, xenophobic when it suits their purposes.

Hitler wanted power and comfort and the ability to hurt anyone he didn’t like.  Trump wants money and the servitude of everyone else.  His handlers want to use him, their orange fool to do as much harm to the American people and nation as possible.  We know what happened in 1930s Germany when evil took over.  The question now for us is, Will we allow the evil that is brewing in this nation to destroy us or will We the People stop it?  I hope it’s the latter. 

My birthday candle wish would be that the enthralled MAGA folks would wake up and decide they want more in their lives than anger, resentment, fear, and hatred and don’t want a king, a dictator, a tyrant as president of this country, ever.  I hope the MAGAs or near-MAGAs won’t want rich white folks who have been elected to nothing acting as puppeteers directing a man who will do their bidding at everyone else’s expense, until they can take over.  I hope we as Americans will act together to stop evil that has already infected state legislatures, our Congress, and some courts, before it grows in volume and scope and people feel the pain more than they already do.

WHO IS QUALIFIED?  ANYONE?

By Ruth A. Sheets

A member of Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack thread asked on May 20^th if anyone in Trump’s cabinet were qualified.  I had to take a crack at an answer.  This was my response. 

As you and most of us know, the answer to cabinet members being qualified is none are qualified, which is why they were shoved through our Senate with little to no honest thought.  Trump may have recommended a couple of them, but the Project 2025ers came up with the slate.  I am sure Kristi Noem was considered when the 2025ers heard she had killed her dog and thrown her into a quarry, proud of it enough to write about it.  That is the temperament for Homeland Security, of course. 

Then, RFK,Jr.'s brain worm made him the perfect nominee for HHS because, well, he knew he had a brain somewhere and it had a dead worm in it and . . .   And, there's Hegseth, he could do crappy interviews for Fox whose only standards involve their "hosts" being ignorant, basically incompetent and somewhat attractive so they could repeat lies and do gaslighting without questioning it, the perfect set of skills to head our Department of Defense!  The rest of the team is just like that, each in their own way pathetic and unqualified but somehow, worthy of Republican support. 

Even some Democrats went along with the BS, all of them voting for Marco Rubio with no evidence that he could really fairly represent this nation abroad (he is a white wannabee who despises anyone not white and will buy into the BS of any country that will give him and Baby Donnie some kind of money, promise, or something which Rubio should know is illegal according to our Constitution.  Oh yes, I forgot to mention that Rubio and the rest of the cabinet don't care about our ?Constitution either.  Amazing! 

So, I responded the best I could in a short readable paragraph, but it does not really begin to address the challenges we will be facing, possibly indefinitely.  Republicans have saddled us with an incredibly incompetent crew and a House of Representatives and Senate that will do Donald Trump’s bidding and that of folks like Musk, Vought, Theil, and the rest of the superrich because they are being threatened with something really powerful or promised something unbelievable for their efforts, no matter how illegal or improper.  

When questioned about any of their positions or what is happening in their department, they do one or more of 3 things.  These were offered by a member of Prof. Robert Reich’s thread on May 22^{nd and also presented by Jay Kuo in his column}.  They are the Three C method of avoiding answering truthfully, “gaslighting.”

#1...Cluelessness: "I don't know... I wasn't aware of that...I only just heard about this... I don't have the numbers, etc. and so on and so forth. They do this ALL THE TIME and it's infuriating, also usually a lie.

#2...Chaos: the deliberately created chaos within their departments cause those people they are supposed to be helping or serving to get frustrated with the mistakes wait times, etc. the end result is people just end up giving up and accepting the absence of real help and then the Republicans can claim that the department should be eradicated since it isn't doing what it is supposed to.  This is an old fall-back trick for the Republicans in power who want to see the government destroyed.

#3...Contempt: This is a tactic of answering with arrogance or twisting the answer and using it to attack the questioner. Again a frequent tactic of Republicans, it was particularly evident in Rubio's arrogant answer to Senator Van Hollen, "If you regret your confirmation of me, I must be doing my job..." said with contemptuous twist, arrogant and rude, but certainly just what Trump expects of his minions."  The members of the committees, Democrats alone if Republicans won’t participate must at the very least, continue to ask good relevant questions, When the questioned person talks over the questioner, that persons should say, “Mr. (Ms.) Chair Person, stop my time here until he/she is finished bamboozling us, then I will resume my time at this point.”  If the chair won’t agree, then the questioner must stand up and tell the questioned person to shut up and just answer the question yes or no unless asked for  clarification. 

We all need to review our Constitution and start calling out the current insanity for what it is, an insurrection by the rich and powerful with Trump as the figurehead for a bunch of scared greedy privileged white boys and their female surrogates with the task of wrecking our democracy, our government so they will just HAVE to take over.  We must find every way possible to stop them.  They are trampling our rights, denying the services we are entitled to, and throwing their money into elections they have no right to influence, despite what Johnny Roberts and his Supreme Court cons said about 15 years ago, their decision made out of their own greed and desire to do harm to the American people, well, at least the middle and working classes.  We don’t have to take it and should not!  We must stay involved!

Mother’s Day 2025

Mother’s Day 2025

By Ruth A. Sheets

Today, Mother’s Day, Joyce Vance, lawyer, commentator, mother wrote about her mother and grandmother who were independent activist women at a time when that was not only not appreciated but discouraged.  The following is my response to her Substack piece, also, a tribute to my own mother.

Joyce, your mother and grandmother were of that group of women who were standing against the insanity of male domination when few women had the ability to say anything. Their courage and that of the other women who chose to act has made it possible for so many spectacular women to now be in the leadership of the people who are keeping our world going: researchers, teachers, mothers, medical workers, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, athletes, clergy, lawyers, judges, legislators, activists, scientists, often holding more than one of those roles, who care about our world and are determined to make it a better place for everyone.

I honor all women today and will push us to do even more to serve our world: raise up all children, call out men and women who abuse positions of authority, and keep right on standing and fighting for what is right for all, not just for the few men and fewer women who live by or because of vengeance, anger, resentments, and hatreds, the way of death and destruction.  

My own mother was a remarkable woman who was extremely talented at many things.  I believe she saw herself as a less than excellent mother even though she enabled her 5 children to excel at nearly everything we tried.  She was definitely not a helicopter mom or anything close to it, (and probably could have kept better track of some of us).  I honestly don’t know how she managed five independent, mouthy children/teens. 

Some of my best memories of my mom include her playing the organ after dinner while we, the whole family sang and harmonized.  I also remember Mom singing in our church choir next to me and realizing what a good singer she was, an alto always on the right notes and harmonizing with my soprano line.  I also remember her coming to Nashville while I was in college, to be with me after I had eye surgery and that she went to classes with my roommate and loved it.  She was in the group of women who were relegated to the roles of secretary, teacher, or nurse, the latter two only if one could afford college; she couldn’t.  She was a skilled knitter, crocheter, embroiderer, and general craftswoman.  We often wore the clothes she made for us.

Here's to our mothers, women who do their best then learn to do better, women who have given birth to us and set us on a path toward adulthood.  Those paths are not always positive, caring, joyful, but it is our choice whether we will walk good paths or take routs that are harmful to ourselves or others. 

I thank my mother for sharing her talent with the world:  her competence, her music, her trust that my sisters and I could make it, and we have.  Happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers and other women in our lives who have helped shape who we are and will choose to become.

COMMENTS ON SOME CURRENT HAPPENINGS

By Ruth A. Sheets

In response to several comments on threads I follow on Substack, I wrote the following and thought I would share:

It is becoming more clear over time that Donald Trump is not a person of intellectual prowess.  He is totally self-absorbed something he has perfected over time.  He cares little for what happens to this nation as long as he is comfortable, can do whatever he wants without challenge, will never be held accountable for anything harmful he does, and given credit for anything positive other people have done.  He has turned out to be a whiny toddler who has adult weapons.  That is a dangerous combination. 

Now he has dementia, so it seems, his billionaire and billionaire wannabee handlers know they have to keep Trump corralled and satisfied with their heavy attentions, ego-tending, and information presented to Trump in a way he can understand.  The Steves are among the more appalling, pushing immigrant removal, for example.  There are plenty of others, hypocritically, some of them actual immigrants or children of immigrants who have been coddled because they have money, but want immigrants, even citizens removed (I guess they are the exceptions who will be allowed to stay)! 

Our media's cowardice in so many instances is beyond disgraceful.  So many of those media are operated by rich white men who have been privileged all their lives to the point they have no clue they are privileged, seeing themselves as brilliant, stronger, more clever than anyone else and their posts and content supporting or dismissing Trump’s anti-democratic actions as acceptable.  However, it is probably more likely that inheritance and luck are more critical factors as well as people's foolish belief in the superiority of rich folks that account for their prominence and positions.  They run their platforms for the benefit of themselves and their fellow oligarchs. 

The Bezos, Musk, Theil, Fox, Heritage Foundation wealthy, and others are smart enough to know that Trump and most Republicans in office can be easily manipulated and bent to their will with enough cash.  It looks like Trump is their mascot at this point, the guy who has to be covered without his realizing it.  The purpose, so the work of the destruction and take-over can continue. 

We need our state governments to rise up.  They could start arresting anyone who tries to kidnap immigrants or anyone else without due process or anyone running around grabbing people while wearing masks, hoods, or other identity-concealing clothing.  They can stop anyone trying to take over the federal buildings in their states, or try to sell the properties.  We all need to remember those buildings do not belong to Trump and his cronies; they belong to We the People.    

What we all should know is that we have to keep protesting, keep challenging, keep pointing out what is being done that is illegal, even pushing our courts to stand with us and our Constitution rather than with a man who is making pronouncements written by others whose motives are not for the benefit of the American people or anyone but themselves.