21 September 20
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20 September 20
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Reader Supported News
Garrison Keillor | A Late Dispatch From the New York Correspondent
Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Blog
Keillor writes: "A chilly night in New York, fall in the air, geese winging along a flyway over West 91st, a lively crowd watching a playground basketball game. Unusual in these pandemic days, to hear a cheering crowd."
READ MORE
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. (photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Second Republican Breaks Ranks With Trump on Supreme Court Appointment
Susan Heavey and Andrew Chung, Reuters
Excerpt: "Hours before Trump's rival in November, former Vice President Joe Biden, was due to address the plan, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she did not support the move, becoming the second of the 53 Republicans in the 100-seat chamber to object publicly following the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday."
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Howard Zinn. (photo: Francisco Seco/AP)
Trump Calls Howard Zinn's Work "Propaganda." Hear the Legendary Historian in His Own Words.
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "This week President Trump described the work of the legendary historian Howard Zinn, who died in 2010, as 'propaganda' meant to 'make students ashamed of their own history.' But Zinn believed the opposite, that teaching the unvarnished truth about history was the best way to combat propaganda and unexamined received wisdom."
MY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with the words of the late historian Howard Zinn. On Thursday, President Trump lashed out at educators who teach about the U.S. history of slavery and racism, announcing a so-called patriotic education plan to combat what he called “toxic propaganda” in schools. Trump called the teaching of critical race theory a “form of child abuse,” lashed out at the 1619 Project, the Pulitzer Prize-winning series by The New York Times which reexamines the legacy of slavery. Trump also directly criticized Howard Zinn during his speech at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we’re turning back now to 2009, Howard Zinn appearing on Democracy Now! less than a year before he died. He just published A Young People’s History of the United States. I asked him to respond to a question he had frequently been asked about his work: Is it right to be so critical of the government’s policies, of the traditional heroes of the country?
HOWARD ZINN: It’s true that people have asked that question again and again. You know, should we tell kids that Columbus, whom they have been told was a great hero, that Columbus mutilated Indians and kidnapped them and killed them in pursuit of gold? Should we tell people that Theodore Roosevelt, who is held up as one of our great presidents, was really a warmonger who loved military exploits and who congratulated an American general who committed a massacre in the Philippines? Should we tell young people that?
And I think the answer is: We should be honest with young people; we should not deceive them. We should be honest about the history of our country. And we should be not only taking down the traditional heroes like Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt, but we should be giving young people an alternate set of heroes.
Instead of Theodore Roosevelt, tell them about Mark Twain. Mark Twain — well, Mark Twain, everybody learns about as the author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but when we go to school, we don’t learn about Mark Twain as the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League. We aren’t told that Mark Twain denounced Theodore Roosevelt for approving this massacre in the Philippines. No.
We want to give young people ideal figures like Helen Keller. And I remember learning about Helen Keller. Everybody learns about Helen Keller, you know, a disabled person who overcame her handicaps and became famous. But people don’t learn in school and young people don’t learn in school what we want them to learn when we do books like A Young People’s History of the United States, that Helen Keller was a socialist. She was a labor organizer. She refused to cross a picket line that was picketing a theater showing a play about her.
And so, there are these alternate heroes in American history. There’s Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses. There are the heroes of the civil rights movement. There are a lot of people who are obscure, who are not known. We have it in this Young People’s History. We have a young hero who was sitting on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to leave the front of the bus. And that was before Rosa Parks. I mean, Rosa Parks is justifiably famous for refusing to leave her seat, and she got arrested, and that was the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and really the beginning of a great movement in the South. But this 15-year-old girl did it first. And so, we have a lot of — we are trying to bring a lot of these obscure people back into the forefront of our attention and inspire young people to say, “This is the way to live.”
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Howard Zinn appearing on Democracy Now! in 2009. Howard Zinn was attacked by President Trump on Thursday. The Zinn Education Project criticized Trump’s call for “patriotic education.” The project tweeted, “So what explains the rebellions in 1676, 1680, 1786, 1831, 1859, & more by Native Americans, enslaved Africans, coal miners, & more? #HowardZinn wasn’t alive then,” unquote.
ADDED:
People chant during a protest at the scene of a police shooting on Laurel Street and Union Street in Lancaster city on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2020. A man was shot by police earlier in the day after a reported domestic dispute, police said. (photo: Andy Blackburn/LNP/LancasterOnline/AP)
$1 Million Bail Cut for Some Held After Protests of Police Shooting
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Judges dramatically reduced bail amounts as high as $1 million Thursday that had been set this week for several people accused of crimes during unrest in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that included protests and vandalism to public buildings."
Bail for nine of 13 defendants was lowered, in several cases so they will not have to put up any money to be released, LNP reported.
Bail for two defendants was reduced from $1 million to $50,000 unsecured, clearing the way for their release pending trial, the news organization reported.
In other cases, defendants will still need to post bail of $25,000-$100,000, which means they may have to come up with a portion of it in cash to pay the bail bondsman.
The charges stem from unrest over the shooting by police of Ricardo Munoz, a Lancaster man who was wielding a knife after his sister sought to have him committed for mental health treatment.
Police body camera video that was made public shows the 27-year-old Munoz brandishing the knife before the officer shot and killed him. Munoz had been awaiting trial on allegations he stabbed four people last year.
The charging documents filed by police over the demonstrators' actions described them all as instigators, which defendants' family members and supporters have in some cases hotly denied.
The protests Sunday night and early Monday were followed by rioting that caused damage to Lancaster’s police headquarters and other downtown buildings. An arson fire blocked a downtown intersection.
Police car. (photo: Shutterstock)
4 Louisiana Police Officers Charged in the Death of 44-Year-Old Black Man Who Suffered From Mental Health Issues
Zack Linly, The Root
Linly writes: "On April 5, 44-year-old Tommie McGlothen died while in police custody in Shreveport, La. In June, The Root reported that McGlothen’s family was originally told by police that he died of a heart attack, but cell phone video footage released that month showed something different."
Here’s what we reported in June:
The police were responding after McGlothen allegedly got into a fight with someone in the neighborhood. In April, Shreveport police told McGlothen’s family that he suffered a heart attack, but when the family went to view his body, they discovered he had a broken nose, broken jaw and the entire right side of his face was swollen.
Understandably, the family wants answers as to why Shreveport police didn’t publicly acknowledge McGlothen’s death and why they misled the family about the circumstances surrounding it.
“I just wanted to know what happened,” Tommy McGlothen III, McGlothen’s son, told KSLA. It took 54 days for the Shreveport Police Department to send an investigative report to District Attorney James Stewart. Even then, Stewart said the file was “missing reports, statements, downloads and other vital information essential to conduct a thorough and complete review.”
The video footage aired exclusively on KSLA 12 showed a white male officer hit McGlthen in the back as a Black female officer tried to hold him down.
From KSLA:
The video that KSLA Investigates recorded with a small camera off a cellphone gets shaky next showing the female officer rolling over and getting up, when the male cop kicks McGlothen.
At this point it’s difficult to see on the wobbly video but when officers try rolling the 44-year-old man over to handcuff him, McGlothen appears to stiffen up.
That’s when the male cop, now standing over McGlothen, punches him four times.
McGlothen is then heard screaming out as witnesses say police began tasing him behind a parked car.
Stacey spoke with four people witnessing the incident, each seeing McGlothen walking up and down the street minutes earlier saying he looked “thrown off in his head and not acting mentally right.”
The witnesses say cops got called after McGlothen got into a fight and beat up by another man living on Eileen Lane.
According to the Associated Press, the four officers charged in McGlothen’s death are Treona McCarter, Brian Ross, D’Marea Johnson and James LeClare. Prosecutors with the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office announced Friday that they were indicted by a grand jury following an investigation. The D.A. also said in a statement that McGlothen had mental health issues and that he “had three encounters with police within a short time span on the day he died,” AP reports. The statement said there was evidence that police used excessive force and that they failed to call for medical help.
According to The Shreveport Times, McGlothen’s family and their attorney James Carter held a press conference Friday thanking the Caddo Parish Grand Jury for indicting the four officers.
“We are very, very grateful today to have you all come out to hear our response to the indictment that came down today,” Carter said. “We want to thank District Attorney James Stewart as well as his staff for committing to the impartial administration of justice in this matter.”
“We are very grateful and thankful to them for committing to impartial administration of justice in the indictment of the four officers involved in the untimely death of Tommie McGlothen Jr.,” he continued. “I am so thankful to the citizens of this city as well as the McGlothen family. We see this as one small, but significant step in the ongoing pursuit of justice relative to Mr. Tommie McGlothen Jr.”
Carter said he will also put together a petition for damages against the City of Shreveport and the Shreveport Police Department on behalf of McGlothen’s family.
Supporters wait for President Donald Trump to speak at a rally at Xtreme Manufacturing, Sept. 13, 2020, in Henderson, Nevada. (photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)
Trump to His Female Supporters: I Hope Your Husbands OKed You Attending My Rallies
Yelena Dzhanova, Business Insider
Dzhanova writes: "At a campaign rally Saturday night, President Donald Trump asked a group of women supporters if their husbands were 'ok' with them being present at the event in Fayetteville, North Carolina."
Trump, promising to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, spotted a group of women and addressed them directly, asking for an estimate of how many of his rallies they’d attended.
When they responded with the figure, Trump asked what their husbands thought.
“Anyway, I hope your husbands are ok with it,” Trump told the women supporters. “Are they ok? They’re ok. You have good husbands.”
The remarks came amid mounting tension between Democrats and Republicans over the timeline to replace Ginsburg, who died Friday from pancreatic cancer. Trump and other lawmakers have said they are in favour of appointing another justice to the Supreme Court before the November 3 presidential election.
Trump has vowed the nominee would be a woman.
“It will be a woman. A very talented, very brilliant woman, who I haven’t chosen yet, but we have numerous women on the list,” Trump said Saturday night.
His rumoured shortlist includes Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who currently sits on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Judge Barbara Lagoa of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Trump also said at the rally that he will choose a nominee to replace Ginsburg as early as next week.
As Business Insider’s John Dorman reported, Democrats cannot block a Supreme Court nomination with their 47-member caucus and would need to peel off wavering Republicans to stop McConnell and Trump.
In an Insider poll conducted after Ginsburg’s death, 58% of respondents said the next justice should be appointed after the presidential election. Only 28% of respondents said the decision should be made as soon as possible before the 2020 election. The remaining 14% of respondents were unsure.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Fossil fuel emissions. (photo: DWalker44/Getty Images)
Charleston Aims to Force Fossil Fuel Companies to Pay $2 Billion to Combat Climate Crisis
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
Milman writes: "Charleston, the architectural jewel of the US south, has survived the ravages of revolutionary wars, an earthquake and even a siege waged by the notorious pirate Blackbeard. But the city now needs saving from its largest existential threat yet - the climate crisis."
South Carolina city sues large oil firms, claiming they concealed knowledge that their product would cause damage to coastal cities around the world
Flooding has, in recent years, become a regular menace to streets lined with colonial and Georgian buildings. Protecting the historic core of South Carolina’s largest city from being consumed by the rising seas now comes with such a hefty price tag – around $2b – that Charleston is pinning its hopes on a bold gambit to force fossil fuel companies to foot the bill.
Charleston recently became the first city in the US south to sue large oil firms for damages, claiming they concealed knowledge that their product would heat up the planet and cause the sort of inundation that now bedevils many coastal cities around the world.
A trove of internal documents show oil companies knew from at least the 1960s that burning oil and other fossil fuels would cause the global temperature to rise, triggering heatwaves and causing the seas to rise due to rapidly melting glaciers. Charleston’s lawsuit claims that by obscuring these findings and funding a campaign of misinformation, the oil companies are liable for damage caused due to deception.
“It’s tragic, just imagine what we could’ve done to avoid all this if they didn’t deceive everyone,” said John Tecklenburg, Charleston’s mayor, who said the world hasn’t seen such flooding “since Noah built the Ark”.
Flooding was a rare occurrence when Tecklenburg, who is 65, was growing up in Charleston but it now blights the city. Each of his five years as mayor has seen a major flood, with Hurricane Matthew, in 2016, and Hurricane Irma, in 2017, causing vast volumes of water to pour over the Battery, a historic seawall and tourist drawcard.
“Our city and harbor became one,” he said. “It’s now an annual occurrence. People’s homes have been damaged, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance claims. It’s a major threat to our city.”
Even regular high tides now drench downtown Charleston, which is perched on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water. Half a century ago, water flowed onto the streets around four days a year. By 2019, this had increased to around 89 days a year on average. Within 30 years, Charleston faces its downtown streets being underwater every other day of the year.
Several people have had their homes inundated multiple times, others have fled the city while some with the means to do so have made the costly decision to elevate their stately abodes beyond the reach of the floodwater, 16ft or more above the mean sea level.
“You’ve got these multimillion dollar homes that are historic, so what can you do?” said Buz Morris, an architect who has overseen the raising of seven homes in the last few years. “On a rainy day here you can a foot or two of water in the street. We are helping protect the historic fabric of Charleston.”
The majority of residents can’t afford such expensive fixes, however, so the city is looking to make a huge investment to fend off the encroaching Atlantic ocean. A new seawall, fortifying the aging Battery, and a new network of drainage tunnels will, Charleston hopes, buy it some time. “This is a treasure of a city, a gem of American history and elegance,” said Tecklenburg. “I’m not going to be the mayor that raises the white flag of surrender and evacuates.”
The Charleston lawsuit – which targets a clutch of oil companies including Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron – is the latest in a flurry of court actions aimed at forcing fossil fuel giants to meet the mounting costs of the climate crisis they helped stoke. Since 2017, nearly two dozen cities, counties and states, including San Francisco, New York and Massachusetts, have attempted to recover billions of dollars from the industry.
Over the past week this number has swelled further, with Hoboken in New Jersey, the state of Delaware and Charleston entering the fray. “We are seeking accountability from some of the world’s most powerful businesses to pay for the mess they’ve made,” said Kathy Jennings, Delaware’s attorney general.
These efforts have yet to garner a significant breakthrough, with a number of cases dismissed by judges, as the oil companies have argued the moves are a frivolous waste of time. “There is no merit to the claims,” said a Chevron spokesman in response to the Charleston lawsuit. “They are not a serious solution to a serious problem. There is no evidence Chevron misled the public about climate change. Those claims are false.”
Climate activists have retained hope, however, that the courts will start to swing behind the cases and have been further buoyed by promises made by Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for US president, that his administration would pursue fossil fuel companies for climate damages.
The best sign the legal strategy is working is that “these cases are proceeding through the court system”, according to Ama Francis, a fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.
“The public is ready to hold this corrupt industry accountable for causing and lying about climate change, and officials across the country are stepping up to take action,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity.
“As climate change floods cities like Charleston, Big Oil is now knee-deep in lawsuits seeking justice for decades of the industry’s lying about their central role in causing the problem.”
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