Time to focus on where Republicans are winning with the American Voters. I’ve made a decision that it’s time to ease up on the criminal activities of Joe and Hunter Biden. Don’t get me wrong. There’s crimes that have been committed, but we must look at the big picture.
Republicans are winning on the Border, The Economy, Education, COVID, and Green Energy. The Biden administration is screwing up in all of those areas. They want us to just focus on Hunter so their other misdeeds will go unnoticed.
So unless it’s earth shattering and a main News issue of the day, this writer will ease up on the Hunter and Joe Biden money laundering.
“The city of Chicago is reimagining the role government can play in our lives by exploring a public option for grocery stores via a municipally owned grocery store and market,” said Pawar, senior adviser at Economic Security Project. “Not dissimilar from the way a library or the postal service operates, a public option offers economic choice and power to communities.”
To write this in plain english:
The city of Chicago is re-imagining the role government can play in our lives by exploring a command economy for Chicago via government owned stores and markets. A public option takes away economic and personal choice and eliminates the buying power of the people.
For an example of how well this works.
This is Soviet (communist) grocery store from the 1980s.
Just in case you missed it, California is blaming their failures on big oil. So, they’re going to court. Yes, they claim big oil caused Climate change. What happened to mankind being the culprit?
The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group also named in the lawsuit, said climate policy should be debated in Congress, not the courtroom.
“This ongoing, coordinated campaign to wage meritless, politicized lawsuits against a foundational American industry and its workers is nothing more than a distraction from important national conversations and an enormous waste of California taxpayer resources,” institute senior vice president Ryan Meyers said in a statement.
If big oil caused this, why not sue for damages? But the state wants the establishment of a fund to offset future costs from extreme weather events and climate mitigation efforts. In other words, it rains, or snows, big oil pays.
Did the Union automakers rush to make the EV cars? I honestly think that the union automakers miscalculated when they decided to spend billions on EV vehicles. I think they looked at Tesla and thought everyone wanted an electric car. They don’t.
EV cars are a Nitch market. Not mainstream. Plus, the expense to buy one is out of reach for many poor and lower income folks. When this strike is settled, they will be even more expensive.
CLAIRTON, Pennsylvania —The first steel plant located here along the Monongahela River just over 20 miles south of Pittsburgh was built in 1901. By 1903, the borough of Clairton formed around the industry, and by 1904, U.S. Steel acquired the plant from St. Clair Steel, and the industrial base of America began its reign here in Western Pennsylvania.
U.S. Steel had been founded in 1901 by Andrew Carnegie, Charles Schwab, Elbert Gary, and J.P. Morgan, and when it launched that year, it was the largest business enterprise of its time, and by the end of its first year, the company supplied nearly 70% of all of the steel produced in the country.
Headquartered in Pittsburgh, where Carnegie made his mark in the industry after the Civil War, Clairton and dozens of other small river towns, such as Braddock, Pennsylvania, grew and expanded and became thriving cities thanks to U.S. Steel, with dozens of churches, business districts, schools, and fraternal clubs all popping up to serve the workers who settled around the plants.
Shift change at the Clairton Works steel plant along the Monongahela River.
(Salena Zito)
The industry boomed for the next 40 years, throughout World War II, and in the growth years after the war, when the GIs came home and moved out of the cities and into the cutest little bedroom communities in the suburbs. Those communities’ roads and bridges were built by the men and women in the steel industry they often worked in.
Despite the slow decline steel was experiencing in the early 1960s, U.S. Steel broke ground for its own building in the city of Pittsburgh — originally designed to be the tallest building in the country, eclipsing both the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building.Its outer structure, which looks like a rusty nail, was immediately iconic, and the “US STEEL” moniker on the top floor served as a proud advertisement for the steel industry, which had its center in Pittsburgh.
It continues to be the tallest building in Appalachia — except that the name on the top now reads UPMC, which earned its name at the top of the building in March 2008 when it made the U.S. Steel Tower its corporate headquarters. The name change exemplified the decline of the industry that began on Black Monday in 1977, when the Campbell Works in Youngstown, Ohio, suddenly shut its doors.
By 1983, Pittsburgh’s unemployment rate hit a whopping 18.2% as rounds of layoffs among thousands of steelworkers became a reality and as domestic steel production (crippled by automation, trade, union strife, inattention to emerging technology, and poor corporate leadership) collapsed, along with all of the industries that supported it.
Those combined circumstances created a deadly domino effect that intensified as U.S. Steel entered joint ventures with foreign partners and non-steel corporations in order to continue a profitable bottom line.
Sixty years ago, U.S. Steel peaked in employment (340,000) and output (35.8 million tons of steel). In 2022, it employed 15,000 (3,000 in the Pittsburgh area) and shipped 11 million tons of steel.
Yet despite all of the job losses, along with the closed barber shops, machine shops, churches, and schools, causing the death of boroughs such as Clairton and Braddock, if you think U.S. Steel, you think Pittsburgh. Our football team was (and still is) called the Steelers, and we are known as the Steel City.
That imagery may once again be about to change as U.S. Steel contemplates a sale, which would be a jolt to this region. The company is taking proposals from multiple bidders, including Ohio steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs as well as a rumored bid from a steelmaker based in Europe.
PITTSBURGH — A construction worker stands on the steel tower in 1967.
(Carnegie Library)
The United Steelworkers Union supports a deal with Cleveland-Cliffs, which extended an offer of shares and cash worth $7.3 billion to buy U.S. Steel Corp. in July and promised to honor the steelworkers union contract, which expires in 2026.
The Cleveland-Cliffs CEO told the steelworkers last month in a letter to them, “I have your backs.”
The inevitability of the end of U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh has always been a rumor, but workers here two years ago knew the reality was near when a planned $1.5 billion renovation of the region’s blast furnaces evaporated under political pressure related to climate change.
So where did that 1.5 billion investment money and jobs go? In modern mini steel mills in Arkansas.
Everything has an expiration date. U.S. Steel has had a good, albeit bumpy, 122-year run here in this region. It lifted up the working class so much that their children went to college on their wages, humble hunting camps were built, and so were new schools and churches. Machine shops, beauty salons, diners, hotels, hardware stores, dress shops, and communities thrived, all thanks to the hard work and innovation that came from the men and women who worked in the mills here.
The mills may go on, but it is likely they won’t be under the U.S. Steel banner — and while they haven’t been locally owned for over 100 years, U.S. Steel was Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh was U.S. Steel long after the glory days had passed. So much so, indeed, that generations of young people who have never walked into a mill continue to identify with the idea that when you did walk into that mill, you were part of something that was bigger than yourself: You were part of the building of America.
The US Secretary of Energy went on a road trip to promote electric vehicles.
Jennifer Granholm and her team ran into a predictable snag: a lack of EV chargers.
The obstacle even caused the police to get involved at one point in the trip, NPR reported.
When the US Secretary of Energy and her team embarked on a road trip to promote electric vehicles, they ran into a predictable yet frustrating obstacle: a lack of electric vehicle chargers.
The scarcity of chargers was such an issue for Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her team that the police got involved at one point, NPR reported.
The caravan of electric vehicles heading from Charlotte to Memphis over the course of four days hit a snag in Grovestown, Georgia. The group was planning a quick charge when they realized there wouldn’t be enough electric vehicle chargers to go around since one was broken and the others were in use, NPR reported.
So, an employee from the Department of Energy tried to save one of the spots using a gas-powered car.
It was a sweltering day and the move didn’t go over well with a family that was also waiting for a charging spot. The situation escalated to the point that the family, driving with a baby in their car, called the police, who didn’t have the authority to act because blocking an EV charging spot with a gas-power car isn’t illegal in Georgia, NPR reported.
While Granholm and her team worked to smooth things over, ultimately ceding a spot to the family and relegating some of their own vehicles to slower charging ports, the incident drew attention to the desperate need for improved EV infrastructure.
“It’s just par for the course,” a bystander driving an electric BMW told NPR. “They’ll get it together at some point.”
Research physicist John F. Clauser poses for a photo at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif., on Oct. 4, 2022. John F. Clauser jointly won a Nobel Prize in physics with two other scientists, Alain Aspect of France, and Anton Zeilinger of Austria, for their work on quantum information science. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Image
By Jan Jekielek and Mimi Nguyen Ly 9/9/2023
Nobel Prize laureate John Clauser has recently been in the spotlight for challenging prevailing climate models, which he says have ignored a key variable.
Mr. Clauser, who recently became a recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to quantum mechanics, holds degrees from Caltech and Columbia University. He served in roles at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, he was honored with a portion of the Wolf Prize in Physics.
Recently, Mr. Clauser joined another Nobel laureate and over 1,600 professionals in signing the World Climate Declaration (WCD) organized by Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL). This declaration asserts that there is no “climate emergency,” that climate change science is not conclusive, and that the earth’s history over thousands of years shows a consistently changing climate.
The WCD highlights the limitations of current climate models, stating they overemphasize the impact of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2). “In addition, [climate models] ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial,” the WCD reads, in part.
The declaration further notes that both natural and human activities contribute to climate change, and the actual warming observed is less than as predicted by the climate models, revealing our incomplete understanding of climate change.
In an interview with The Epoch Times’s “American Thought Leaders,” Mr. Clauser voiced his reservations about current climate research quality and contends that U.S. climate policies are misguided.
Clouds
Prominent climate reports, such as those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society, emphasize the role of CO2 but miss the mark on the critical role of clouds in the climate system, according to Mr. Clauser.
The only thing “boiling” are the fweelings of these so-called “experts” and the leftist billionaires paying them. see link above.
His curiosity about clouds began as a sailboat racer. He recalled, “I raced across the Pacific Ocean at least a dozen times. I had set up the boat with solar panels to charge the batteries. … I had an ammeter on the power output from the solar panels, and I noticed every time we sailed under a cloud, the output from the solar panels dropped by 50 percent to half of its value that it was, and then we came out from behind the cloud and boom, their power went back up. And I thought, ‘I wonder why it’s just about a factor of two.'”
“This is how I became very curious as to how clouds work. When the climate issues came along, I very quickly realized that cloud cover has a profound effect on the earth’s heat input that the clouds are reflecting a massive amount of light back out into space.
“And so I read all of the various IPCC reports, National Academy reports on this,” he continued. “As a physicist, I’d worked at some excellent institutions— Caltech, Columbia, Cal Berkeley—where very careful science needed to be done. And reading these reports, I was appalled at how sloppy the work was. And in particular, it was very obvious, even in the earliest reports, and all carried on through to the present, that clouds were not at all understood. … It’s just simply bad science.”
Mr. Clauser highlighted insights from former President Barack Obama’s science adviser, Steve Koonin. In Mr. Koonin’s book, “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters,” the author noted the inconsistency of the IPCC’s 40 computer models, emphasizing their inability to explain the past century’s climate and suggesting that th
‘The Missing Piece’
Mr. Clauser said he believes he has identified a significant oversight in prevailing climate models.
“I believe I have the missing piece of the puzzle that has been left out in virtually all of these computer programs,” he stated. “And that is the effect of clouds.”
While many theories of anthropogenic climate change focus primarily on the impact of human-produced CO2, Mr. Clauser argues that these models overlook the significance of cloud dynamics.
He referenced the 2003 National Academy report, which, he said, “totally admitted” its lack of understanding about clouds, and made “a whole series of mistaken statements regarding the effects of clouds.”
Drawing attention to Al Gore’s film, “The Inconvenient Truth,” Mr. Clauser noted, “[Mr. Gore] insists on talking about a cloud-free earth … That’s a totally artificial Earth.” According to Mr. Clauser, this cloudless portrayal of the earth reflects the approach taken by many in the climate science community.
“That’s a totally artificial Earth. It is a totally artificial case for using a model, and this is pretty much what the IPCC and others use—a cloud free earth.”
Mr. Clauser pointed out that satellite images consistently show wide variances in cloud cover, which can span anywhere from five to 95 percent of the Earth’s surface.
“The cloud cover fraction fluctuates quite dramatically on daily weekly timescales. We call this weather. You can’t have weather without having clouds,” he said.
Effect of Clouds Compared to CO2
Clouds play a paramount role in regulating the Earth’s temperature, serving as a “cloud-sunlight-reflectivity thermostat” that “controls the climate, controls the temperature of the earth, and stabilizes it very powerfully and very dramatically,” asserts Mr. Clauser.
With two-thirds of the Earth being oceanic, the ocean becomes instrumental in cloud formation, he said.
Minimal clouds result in heightened sunlight exposure to the ocean, triggering increased evaporation and subsequent cloud formation, resulting in more clouds. On the contrary, abundant clouds reduce this sunlight, thus curbing evaporation rates and cloud formation, resulting in fewer clouds, Mr. Clauser explains.
This balance acts like a natural thermostat for the earth’s temperature, he said.
Mr. Clauser contends that this “thermostat” mechanism has a vastly greater influence on Earth’s temperature than the effect of CO2 or methane. He presented to The Epoch Times preliminary calculations that suggest that the impact of this cloud-reflectivity mechanism might overshadow CO2’s influence by more than 100 or even 200 times.
All clouds, irrespective of their altitude or type, appear bright white when viewed from the direction of the sun, according to Mr. Clauser. They typically reflect almost 90 percent of incoming sunlight, he said. The reflectivity fraction is referred to as albedo.The albedo has been inaccurately kept constant in various climate models, Mr. Clauser argues.
He finds it baffling how these significant variations, ranging from five to 95 percent cloud cover, have been overlooked.
Mr. Clauser further underscores that clouds are integral to weather dynamics, and yet, current climate models, whose authors “admit upfront that their models cannot predict weather,” have been wielded to foretell drastic climatic shifts, including “climate crisis apocalypse.”
The term “climate” refers to long-term, typically 30 years or more, weather condition averages. While reliable weather forecasts are limited to about a week with standard weather prediction models, which take into account the role of clouds, Mr. Clauser points out a contradiction noted in Mr. Koonin’s book: just a 5 percent rise in cloud cover can largely counterbalance the temperature effect of doubling atmospheric CO2. Despite such nuances, according to Mr. Clauser, the IPCC’s models persistently assume constant albedo, and ignore the vast cloud cover variations.
‘Very Dishonest Disinformation’
Mr. Clauser observed that the drive to address human-induced climate change is increasingly shaping political agendas and influencing the strategic direction of entire nations.
“The whole world is doing all of this. A lot of the pressure is actually coming from Europe, all of these various world conferences” he said, speculating much of this push might have its roots in Mr. Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” which he feels has incorporated inaccurate science.
Mr. Gore’s film claims that humanity is triggering a dire climate crisis that necessitates global action. But Mr. Clauser contends: “‘Climate change’ is actually very dishonest disinformation that has been presented by various politicians.”
He pinpoints a 2013 Physics Today article (pdf) by Jane Lubchenco and Thomas Karl as pivotal in shaping the narrative, especially during the period when “global warming” was being rebranded as “climate change.”
“The reason that was given was ‘well, because it’s really more than just warming,'” he said. The article champions a “U.S. Climate Extremes Index,” claiming that anthropogenic climate change led to a significant increase in extreme weather events over the past three decades, ending in 2012.
The index leaves out the frequency of EF3+ tornadoes
The index is supposedly backed by a century’s worth of data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) and is said to combine various metrics including floods, hurricanes, and droughts.
Curiously, Mr. Clauser noted, the index leaves out the frequency of EF3+ tornadoes—perhaps because, as highlighted by Mr. Koonin in his book, those were on a noticeable decline. “This, in my opinion, is a rather egregious breach of honesty by the U.S. government by NOAA,” Mr. Clauser said.
He used data from the article and plotted it chronologically and also in reverse. From this, Mr. Clauser observed that the two plots were virtually indistinguishable, challenging the assertion of an obvious rise in the index.
“Are you really willing to bet trillions of dollars that you know which [plot] is right? … Is it really increasing? It is clearly not,” he said.
“Not only, as I understand it, are these extreme weather events not increasing, but our ability to mitigate them has increased. So they’re just not as much of an issue,” Mr. Clauser said, adding later, “This worry about CO2, the worry about methane, the worry about global warming, is all a total fabrication by shocked journalists and or dishonest politicians.”
On the contrary, Mr. Clauser agrees with the CO2 Coalition, which argues that CO2 is a beneficial gas.
“Historically, for example, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the CO2 levels were 10 times bigger than what we are experiencing right now,” he said. “Dinosaurs couldn’t have survived on this earth with this low CO2 level [today], because you don’t grow trees fast enough and foliage fast enough to feed them.”
“Promoting CO2 as being actually a beneficial gas, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with [that],” he said. “And in particular, as I have just mentioned earlier, it is not at all significant in controlling the earth’s climate.”
A total waste of money, time, and effort.
Mr. Clauser criticized U.S. government efforts to reduce CO2 and methane as a colossal misuse of resources better allocated for humanitarian endeavors. Such initiatives, he argues, “should be stopped immediately.”
“[It’s] a total waste of money and time and effort. It is strangling industry,” he said.
But Mr. Clauser is not holding his breath.
“My suspicion is what I am saying here will be totally ignored because people don’t like being told that they’ve made big mistakes of this magnitude,” he said.
Last week Noam Dworman of Comedy Cellar USA, on his Live at the Table podcast, interviewed Washington Post columnist Philip Bump. It was a debate, with Bump invited because he’s “most associated with pouring cold water on the Hunter Biden story,” as Noam put it.
The show went viral as Bump, semi-reprising the performance of Russiagate champion and Guardian reporter Luke Harding walking on an interview with Aaron Mate, left abruptly after conceding Hunter’s line, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary” was evidence. To be fair the show had run long, but Bump insisted earlier that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing on Joe Biden’s part, so it wasn’t a timely exit — not that I’m unfamiliar with interviews that go sideways.
I know Noam and my name got dragged into this somewhat absurdly (Bump said I had “an agenda,” as Noam brought up tapes between Petro Poroshenko and Joe Biden I’d referenced), but didn’t want to say anything. Then a subsequent show also went sideways, for much the same reason. More on that in a moment. Back to Bump v. Dworman:
Many exchanges in the podcast stand out, not in a good way. Bump repeatedly tells Noam his problem is that he’s not accepting his, Bump’s, versions of things. At about the 56-minute mark, Bump chides Noam for bringing up things that have been “debunked.” When Noam asks, “What’s been debunked?” Bump says, “I’ve written about this!” He adds, “It’s been debunked in the sense that I’ve already addressed this, and presented the counter-arguments to it.”
At about 1:05 in the video above, Noam brings up “the issue of the press. The press actually bothers me more than Joe Biden…” To which Bump interjects [emphasis mine]: “But you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and telling you you’re wrong about these things and you don’t listen.” About five minutes later Noam again brings up media, and Bump says, “But again, you’re attacking the press, because you refuse to listen to what we’re saying.”
Nearly an hour into the show Bump began complaining he’d been set up, and I know what he was thinking, having of course also been in the position of being invited to an interview with someone who perhaps wants to make an ass of you. I actually don’t think that’s Noam’s game, but even if it were, the answer isn’t to keep repeating, “How can we talk when you keep insisting I get down from this high horse I’m on?”
Bump acts like he and his paper haven’t gotten all sorts of thingswrong in recent years, implicitly rejecting the notion that people like Noam have reason to question anything “already addressed” by papers like the Post. If you need an explanation for declining ratingsand circulation of mainstream press outlets, this vibe is it.
The other episode involved professor and frequent media commentator Dan Drezner, who laughs hysterically and at great length the instant it registers that Noam plans on countering a claim that Trump was a bad president. It’s at about the 52-minute mark:
Drezner is doing what Bump did, albeit with more humor: gagging in disbelief when a mainstream piety sent up the flagpole isn’t instantly saluted.
I think a lot of people in the world I once inhabited, in center-left media and academia, don’t realize they’ve slipped into a deeply unattractive habit of substituting checklists of unquestioned assumptions for thought. In the blue bubble Trump’s limitless evil is an idea with such awesome gravitational pull that it makes nuanced discussion about almost anything impossible. It’s why no one in media could suggest even the possibility he hadn’t colluded with Russia. He’s become an anti-God, of a faith that requires constant worship. When do we get to go back to being atheists?
Democrats beware: These Black voters are fed up, and looking for a political home
DUQUESNE — Nine years ago Leo Beatty was in his early 30s and working for U.S. Steel when president Barack Obama came to the Mon Valley plant. The visit was a post-State of the Union opportunity to sign an executive order authorizing “myRA,” a new retirement savings option for people who lacked an employer-administered account.
Mr. Beatty, then a registered Democrat who voted for Mr. Obama twice, said it was a thrill: “I really liked him then so it was exciting,” even though his presidency wasn’t always what he had expected. “I still like him. I am just not sure how much he did for the middle class Black community, or middle class white community either for that matter.”
Today Mr. Beatty is no longer a Democrat, nor after thirteen years on the job does he work for U.S. Steel. And that “myRA” program was shuttered only three years later.
Mr. Beatty voted for Joe Biden in 2020, but that has become even more of a disappointment.
“Biden dropped the ball for me on inflation, so no I don’t think he’s doing a good job — not just because I don’t think he has the cognitive ability to do it effectively, but because he knows no one like us. And by that I mean middle-class America,” said Mr. Beatty, who is now a registered Independent.
When asked to expand about his problems with Mr. Biden’s presidency he said, “Well, how much time you got?”
Mr. Beatty said it is insulting for Mr. Biden and the Democrats to keep saying how great the economy is. “Maybe for his friends. It is about the rich getting richer and putting us working class people against each other instead of looking at the real problem. The real problem is the rich people against poor people. It’s more classism than racism,” he said.
Mr. Beatty, who has earned multiple degrees and certificates in the trades, criminal justice and leadership, said the media tries to divide people on the basis of skin color.
“But we have a lot more in common than we have different. All of us want to be safe. All of us want our kids safe. All of us want to live a decent life. That’s all we want.”
Mr. Beatty is one of six middle-class Black voters, including his wife Crystal, who sat with me for hours last Sunday discussing the state of politics. What was most interesting is their shared belief that neither party is listening to them, with the Democrats taking the brunt of their criticism for promising change that never comes and taking them for granted, while Republicans struggle — sometimes comically — to give them a reason to support the party.
Missing middle class
My interviewees are optimistic about their lives and their communities, but very disappointed in this administration. In their eyes, Mr. Biden and the Democrats have failed their children and grandchildren by overreaching on cultural issues and underperforming on the basics of governance. Specifically, they are very frustrated over how inflation and crime remain serious problems in their daily lives.
Donna Lee of Wall retired from theAllegheny County Health Department. She says her biggest concerns are what children are being taught in school and out-of-control-crime. Tap or slick for larger image.
Donna Lee said she doesn’t consider herself a member of either party. “But I do my civic duty and vote in every election,” the retired Allegheny County Health Department employee said.
Ms. Lee said locally she mostly votes Democrat, but won’t discuss her 2020 vote. “I’ll pass on that question,” she says smiling. The grandmother said she is frustrated with the Biden administration for challenging the removal of sexually explicit books in schools — so much so that she sent the president a letter about the affect these curricula are having on children.
“Oh he wrote me back alright, about immigration,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air.
Chester Harper of Duquesne, afacilities manager at a university in Oakland, says he is a registeredDemocrat but considers himselfindependent. Tap or slick for larger image.
Dressed in a dark navy suit, Chester Harper cuts a dapper figure all the way down to his leather briefcase. A lifelong Democrat and facilities manager at Carnegie Mellon University, Mr. Harper grew up in McKeesport and now calls Duquesne home. He says he voted for Mr. Biden — then makes a face and shakes his head when asked to give his assessment.
“He is not looking out for the needs of the common man. He has this agenda that is out of sorts with the average voter. He says all the time he knows middle class voters and he has their back — but no, he doesn’t, because he hasn’t been out there. He’s not in our world and [he hasn’t] listened to us,” Mr. Harper said.
Out of touch
Crystal Beatty, Leo’s wife, said she is a registered Democrat, but that doesn’t determine her votes. “Truly I’m more of an Independent because I want to vote for the person who’s most like me — and not necessarily the color of my skin, but the values I believe in,” she said.
Ms. Beatty cringes at the reminder of Mr. Biden telling a Black radio host in 2020 that Black voters torn between voting for him and President Trump “ain’t Black.” “Let me put it this way, so I am not rude, the person who most represents my values wouldn’t even consider thinking that, let alone saying it out loud,” she said.
As for local Democrats U.S. Rep. Summer Lee and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, she is unimpressed with them as well. “Have you seen Braddock, it’s like you have proof of what you’re not doing and how much you care,” she said of Mr. Fetterman, who lives there, and Ms. Lee, who represented it in the state house.
Winifred Washington, a registered Democrat, said she is disappointed in Joe Biden. She believes if he came to her neighborhood he wouldn’t understand the problems it is facing. Tap or slick for larger image.
Winifred Washington said localism is something Democratic politicians have forgotten to focus on. “Take something as simple as Duquesne High School. That school was the center of the community and children attending school in their hometown are a visual reminder that our future will be better,” she said.
In 2007 the state Department of Education split Duquesne’s high school students between West Mifflin and East Allegheny high schools. It was a move that fractured the community and took away a storied football program that drew people together.
“It is not that I expect that Joe Biden would understand or deal with that kind of displacement and the impact it would have. His problem is he doesn’t know how to relate to anyone who has had that happen to their community,” she explained.
“Democrats used to be all about this kind of situation — they used to fight for it— now they have turned to fight for things I often don’t understand.”
She voted for Mr. Biden. Is she happy about it? “No,” she said. “Its just sad, he’s too old and he is out of touch.”
Ardell Martin of Duquesne says the Democratic Party has taken Blackvoters for granted for too long and no longer represents middle class Black people; she is unhappy with Joe Biden and has no interest in Donald Trump.(Salena Zito)
Pathetic president
Ardell Martin, who spent most of her career working for community newspapers, said she even looking at Mr. Biden makes her so uncomfortable. “I think he’s pathetic. In a way, I feel bad for him. I really do. I think he’s lost.”
Her problem with him is the problem she has with all politicians, “You may say I’m cynical, but I don’t think they care. They don’t care about anybody. A lot of them are in it for the pension plan that they’re going to get after their terms are up. Some of them, it’s an ego thing.”
Still she says she dutifully votes, “I honor my obligations. I wish that they would remember that they’re working for us people I think they have lost empathy for.”
North Side native Salena Zito is a national political reporter for The Washington Examiner, a New York Post columnist and co-author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics”
