14 November 20
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13 November 20
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This Is the Culture of Impunity That Grows Within Too Much of Law Enforcement
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "This needs to change. If that makes 'swing district' congresscritters uncomfortable, then that's the way it goes."
e begin in Kentucky, where the police department in Louisville is having a really bad year, and it's about to get even worse. From the Louisville Courier-Journal:
The Courier Journal last year requested all records regarding sexual abuse of minors by two officers in the Explorer Scout program for youths interested in law enforcement careers. Police officials and the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office said they couldn't comply, insisting all the records had been turned over to the FBI for its investigation. But that wasn't true, according to records The Courier Journal recently obtained in the appeal of its open records case. In fact, the department still had at least 738,000 records, which the city allowed to be deleted. "I have practiced open records law since the law was enacted 45 years ago, and I have never seen anything so brazen," said Jon Fleischaker, an attorney for The Courier Journal. "I think it an outrage."
The charges themselves are ghastly. In one way or another, they appear to involve all of the city's law enforcement apparatus and a healthy portion of city government. And it's clear that the police department and city hall had the same initial reaction that every institution, from Penn State to the Roman Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts, had. They looked for a way to bury the evidence.
Metro Council President David James said Wednesday that "it’s very disturbing to me that either the county attorney’s office or the police department was so dead-set on making sure those records never reached the public.” James, D-6th District, said he intended to talk to other council members "about holding people accountable who need to be held accountable." In a tweet, Councilman Anthony Piagentini, R-19th, said: "There aren’t the appropriate words to describe how indefensible this is. The administration oversaw the sexual exploitation of minors and then deleted evidence."
Almost 800,000 pieces of evidence? Somebody's going to jail behind this. And it's another example of the culture of impunity that grows within too much of law enforcement. Policing in this country needs to change, top to bottom, and if that makes "swing district" congresscritters uncomfortable, then that's the way it goes.
We move along to Utah, where the pandemic is spiking, as it is everywhere, and where we once again find our fellow citizens holding out against the jackboots of public health. From the St. George News:
“I think it’s really about the bigger picture, which comes down to, first of all, it’s Veterans Day,” Brendan Dalley, a participant in the march, told St. George News. “And I think that we need to show respect for our veterans for what they’ve done and that leads into this part of it, which is understanding our freedoms and having the choice to live freely.”... The march came after [Utah Governor Gary] Herbert’s public address Sunday, in which he issued a state of emergency that required masks in public statewide, prohibited social gatherings with people outside of household groups for the next two weeks, and postponed all nonplayoff school sporting events and other after-school activities.
This, however, seems a little nuts.
Businesses who fail to comply with the order could face penalties, including fines and the loss of their business license, according to Utah’s coronavirus website. But it is up to local authorities to decide whether to enforce the mandates in their areas. In Washington County, the Southwest Utah Public Health Department has the authority to enforce such measures, but spokesman David Heaton previously told St. George News they don’t have enough people to do it and don’t want to be viewed as law enforcement. However, Heaton said there have been people locally who contracted the coronavirus and went into public with the goal of spreading it, and the health department has collaborated with police to arrest those people and will continue to do so. “That’s a different story, and that’s a direct threat, and we’ve had that happen,” Heaton said previously. “When that’s happened, we have worked with law enforcement.”
Is this a thing now? People deliberately spreading the 'Rona because FREEDOM! or something? Apparently, the Department of Justice thought so, at least theoretically. Are a huge number of our fellow citizens absolutely unconscionable morons? Experts are divided.
We move on to Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis seems determined to cast the deciding "yes" vote in the survey mentioned above. In addition to hiring some third-rate sports blogger from Ohio to do "data analysis" on the pandemic in Florida, DeSantis is also taking some action against people who say mean things to him on the street, as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel explains.
DeSantis — flanked by police officers, Senate President-Designate Wilton Simpson and House Speaker-Designate Chris Sprowls — proposed that most crimes committed by protesters be elevated from misdemeanors to felonies. Obstructing traffic during an unpermitted protest would be a felony. The law would remove liability for drivers who strike protestors during a march. It would become a felony to participate in a protest where property is damaged, public monuments toppled or people harassed at “public accommodations” such as restaurants. Anyone who threw an object at law enforcement officers would be subject to a minimum six-month jail term. People arrested during protests would be denied bail before their initial court hearings. They would have to successfully argue they were no danger to the community before being released. Those who organized or funded “violent” protests would be treated like members of organized crime syndicates.
Almost none of this authoritarian swill is constitutional. (The no-bail provision belongs in North Korea.) And immunizing drivers who run down protestors in the street?
And that's not all. DeSantis also proposed adjusting the state's Stand Your Ground law, the one that allowed George Zimmerman to kill Trayvon Martin and get away with it, to a point where they might as well rename it Kyle's Law, after freedom fighter Kyle Rittenhouse, The Kenosha Kid. From the Miami Herald:
The proposal would expand the list of “forcible felonies” under Florida’s self-defense law to justify the use of force against people who engage in criminal mischief that results in the “interruption or impairment” of a business, and looting, which the draft defines as a burglary within 500 feet of a “violent or disorderly assembly.”...“It’s clear that the Trump beauty pageant is still going on with governors and senators, who all want to be the next Trump. And the governor is clearly a very good contestant,” said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, a former federal prosecutor and Democratic state legislator who was a critic of the Stand Your Ground law, when it first passed in 2005.
There's serious competition for the title of The Next Trump, and DeSantis is only one of the favorites. That's what worries me.
And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Natural Gas Dowser Friedman of the Plains brings us the saga of yet another charter school outfit that's only in it for The Kids. From the Tulsa World:
In all, $125.2 million of the $458 million allocated to Epic Charter Schools, the operator of two public schools, for educating students the past six years was found to have ended up in the coffers of Epic Youth Services, a for-profit charter school management company that reportedly has made millionaires of school co-founders Ben Harris and David Chaney. The report raises questions that are now up to the Oklahoma attorney general to respond to about the legality of transferring hundreds of thousands of Oklahoma tax dollars to Epic’s California charter school, commingling funds for Epic’s two separate Oklahoma schools and chronically misreporting administrative costs.
The Oklahoma legislature, which never has been mistaken for the People's Liberation Army, is furiously demanding that the state's Department of Education be audited, and Governor Kevin Stitt has had no choice but to join the legislature in this demand.
State auditors found within the Education Department an accounting system preoccupied with school district compliance — with little to no verification of the information the districts report or accountability for falsehoods or other failings. Byrd’s report prompted the Oklahoma State Board of Education to demand back $11.2 million in taxpayer funding from the school after the audit found chronically excessive administrative overhead costs and inaccurate cost accounting.
The charter industry is a license to loot the public treasury unless strictly regulated. In fact, theoretically, if a kid with a brick in Florida behaved toward a liquor store the way that the charter sharpies behaved toward the Oklahoma taxpayers, Ron DeSantis would let you shoot him.
This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.
A woman shows her support for President Donald Trump on Monday, Nov. 9, 2020, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. (photo: Jake Danna Stevens/The Times Tribune)
Trump Got Dumped by the Law Firm Working His Pennsylvania Election Case
Chloe Angyal, VICE
Angyal writes: "The law firm representing the Trump campaign in its fight to overturn the results of the election in Pennsylvania, which was won by President-elect Joe Biden, has dropped him as a client, according to a federal filing."
Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, a law firm based in Columbus, Ohio, filed a federal lawsuit Monday on behalf of the Trump campaign alleging voting irregularities in Pennsylvania. But on Thursday, the firm withdrew from representing Trump in the case.
“Plaintiffs and Porter Wright have reached a mutual agreement that plaintiffs will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws,” the filing said. “Plaintiffs are in the process of retaining and causing other counsel to enter an appearance herein.”
Linda Kerns, a Philadelphia-based conservative attorney working for the Trump campaign, will continue representing Trump, the filing said.
Porter Wright leaving the case is the latest blow to the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the election via the courts. The campaign has filed at least eight lawsuits in five different states since Election Day. The lawsuit filed earlier this week claimed that by allowing voters to cast ballots by mail, Pennsylvania, “in a rush to count mail ballots and ensure Democrat Joe Biden is elected… created an illegal two-tiered voting system for the 2020 General Election, devaluing in-person votes.”
Separately, a lawsuit filed Thursday in Wisconsin by three voters sought to stop the certification of votes in the state’s three most heavily Democratic counties—Milwaukee, Dane (Madison), and Menominee, a tiny county home to the Menominee tribe—and nowhere else.
Lawyers at Porter Wright have voiced their opposition to the firm representing the campaign, as have attorneys at Jones Day, another law firm aiding in a litany of legal actions meant to challenge the election results, according to a New York Times report earlier this week. At least one lawyer quit Porter Wright, which has collected at least $727,000 in legal fees from the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee so far this year, the Times reported.
Until Thursday, however, Porter Wright maintained it would continue to represent the campaign.
“Porter Wright has a long history of representing candidates, political parties, interest groups and individuals at the local, state and federal levels on both sides of the aisle, and as a law firm will continue to do so,” managing partner Robert Tannous told the Times earlier this week.
President-elect Joe Biden speaks Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020, at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Delaware. (photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Young Progressives Who Backed Biden Plan to Press Him for Action
Juana Summers, NPR
Summers writes: "When Joe Biden addressed the nation for the first time as president-elect, he said that his victory was supported by 'the broadest and most diverse coalition in history.'"
Now, Biden is facing high expectations from one big and especially diverse segment of that coalition — young voters who appear to have turned out for him in record numbers, particularly young progressives who now say they want to see him deliver on their priorities.
"At the end of the day, youth turnout was through the roof, and we're probably looking at, when all the ballots are tallied, the highest youth vote turnout ever," said Ben Wessel, the executive director of NextGen America, a progressive group aimed at turning out young voters, many of whom have been engaged in major social movements around gun laws, climate change and race and justice.
"I think the role of these activist movements getting young people off the streets and into the polling place, it can't be ignored," Wessel added. "Young people are coming into the fray and realizing that they have a responsibility to fix some of the problems in our country."
According to an analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, somewhere between 50% and 52% of eligible voters under the age of 30 cast a ballot in this year's election. That analysis is based on votes counted by Nov. 9, and researchers say that number may rise. At the same point in 2016, CIRCLE estimated youth voter turnout at between 42% and 44%.
Young voters overall, according to CIRCLE's analysis, preferred Biden over Trump by a 25-point margin (61% to 36%), and young people of color were especially key to Biden's victory. While white voters under the age of 30 backed Biden by a slim margin, young people of color overwhelmingly supported Biden's campaign and were decisive in several electoral battlegrounds.
"President-elect Biden does have a mandate with young people. Most young people who voted voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris," said Maxwell Frost, the national organizing director of the student-led group March For Our Lives. "So we expect him to use that bully pulpit and use his presidency... to educate millions of people on our issues and set an agenda that will set the foundation for change."
There is a sense of urgency among young progressives, mixed with hope that the incoming administration will be more receptive to their issues. They've pointed to instances in which Biden has shifted left on issues like forgiving student debt and climate, as well as the joint policy task forces that Biden announced with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at the conclusion of the Democratic primary campaign.
Varshini Prakash, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led activist group that supports the Green New Deal, was a member of the climate focused task force. While she credits Biden with bringing young people and progressives to the table, she also said that "we can't make the same mistake that the climate movement made with Barack Obama in 2008."
"We have got to be out on the offensive on day one," she said, implying that was not the case 12 years ago.
To that end, Sunrise along with Justice Democrats, the group founded after 2016 that helped elect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are already publicly exerting pressure on the incoming administration to appoint progressives to top government jobs.
The groups are calling on Biden to appoint progressive leaders like Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to key cabinet posts. The groups also want the incoming administration to create a "White House Office of Climate Mobilization" to coordinate action across the federal government.
Managing expectations
The public pressure campaign on the incoming administration and push for accountability comes as these young progressives are reckoning their hopes for a Senate majority, an outcome dependent on winning two Senate runoff elections in Georgia in January.
It's not yet clear how far Senate Republicans would be willing to go to derail Biden Cabinet picks viewed by members of the GOP as too far left. The landscape for passing sweeping legislation will be equally challenging. But Prakash said that even if Republicans retain control of the Senate, Biden must still be accountable to the groups that helped deliver him the White House.
"We've also got to be clear with Joe Biden that even if he doesn't have the Senate, that is not an excuse to not do everything in his power to address the climate crisis," she said.
Others acknowledged that the ambitious policy goals, appointments and judicial nominations many progressives had been hoping for, had there been sweeping victories for Democrats up and down the ballot, may well be out of reach.
"Managing expectations doesn't change what we fight for, it doesn't change who we are," said Frost, the national organizing director of March For Our Lives. "It just means we understand the landscape, and we understand that we might not get everything we want. But it doesn't mean that we don't fight for it."
Wessel, the executive director of NextGen America, warned that if the Biden administration does not pursue progressive priorities, there's a risk that a generation of young people who have been spurred to civic action may become disengaged.
"While we know the Biden administration can do a lot with the power of the pen on Day 1, and a lot of it is about restoring some of the Obama-era policies, if that's the end of the pushing, you're going to demotivate young people for a decade," he said. "So Day 1, great, bring back all the Obama stuff. Day 2? Time to be bold."
Then-Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden talks with a protester objecting to his stance on deportations in Greenwood, South Carolina, on Thursday, November 21, 2019. (photo: Meg Kinnard/AP)
Biden Plans Sweeping Reversal of Trump's Immigration Agenda, From Deportations to Asylum Policy
Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News
Montoya-Galvez writes: "The incoming Democratic administration is expected to quickly start dismantling President Trump's immigration agenda."
READ MORE
Enrique Tarrio of the 'Proud Boys,' Delta Park, Portland, Oregon, 26 September 2020. (photo: Getty)
Proud Boys Converging on DC for 'Million MAGA March' Protesting Election
Josh Marcus, The Independent
Marcus writes: "The Proud Boys, a violent far-right group which Donald Trump told to 'stand by' during a September presidential debate, are expected to rally in Washington DC, on Saturday."
They’re part of a constellation of groups and demonstrations heading to the capitol to protest the election result in a “Million MAGA March.”
“People want to show up and have their voice heard,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox on Thursday, when asked about the event. “I mean this president — look, he got more votes than any Republican nominee, or for president I should say, in the history of our country and indeed he got more Republican votes as any nominee in the history of our party back in 2016.”
The president did not win the presidential election, and in all likelihood lost the popular vote by millions, but he and his allies have continued to claim without evidence Democrats cheated the results in statements and a series of flagging lawsuits around the country.
The concurrent demonstrations in the capitol, including the Million MAGA March as well as various “Stop the Steal” events, are a physical manifestation of the outrage that’s spread in conservative circles online, and are expected to attract a broad cross-section of Trump-supporting factions, including radical anti-government vigilante groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, followers of conspiracy-peddling outlet Infowars, alt-right activists, neo-Nazis, as well other supporters of the president.
Many of the groups reportedly haven’t filed for or been accepted for events permits, and some of their organisers have been de-platformed from Facebook, Eventbrite and Mailchimp for spreading misinformation and other violations of those networks’ policies.
Washington mayor Muriel Bowser said she’s aware of groups like Proud Boys planning to attend, and is monitoring the situation.
"We continue to follow those activities and be prepared for those activities,” Ms Bowser told The Hill. “And we will be there to support peaceful exercise of First Amendment demonstrations,” she added.
The planned demonstrations have inspired a series of counter-events, including events called “F*** MAGA” from local anti-fascist and anarchist groups, who have brawled in the past with groups like the Proud Boys in cities like Portland.
It’s the latest in a series of clashing demonstrations, as president-elect Biden goes about setting up a new administration while the president and his supporters continue to protest the result.
A woman protests against the Constitutional Court ruling on tightening the abortion law at Krakow's Main Square. (photo: Omar Marques/Getty)
Poland: This Is About More Than Abortion Rights
Tithi Bhattacharya, Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla and Tessy Schlosser, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Poland's protests can be a rallying cry for a new feminist internationalism that demands and wins public services for care, social housing, universal health care, and wage justice."
READ MORE
Nemonte Nenquimo, Waorani leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon. (photo: Jerónimo Zúñiga/Amazon Frontlines)
Indigenous Leaders Count on Biden to Help Save Amazon Forest From 'Brink of Collapse'
Anastasia Moloney and Fabio Teixeira, Thomson Reuters Foundation
Excerpt: "For decades, indigenous leader Nemonte Nenquimo has been battling to keep her Amazon rainforest home in Ecuador safe from exploitation by oil companies - now she hopes U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will become an ally in that fight."
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has promised to act on global warming, raising expectations that conserving the Amazon forest will be a high priority for his government
Her message from the Waorani people she represents to Biden in Washington D.C. is: respect our forests and culture.
"As indigenous peoples, the Amazon is our home and we will always protect it," said Nenquimo, 35, president of the Waorani Pastaza Organization. "But for the rest of the world, the Amazon is treated as a place for looting."
"We expect the new president of the United States to understand this reality, and we hope that he will understand that the Amazon is being driven to the brink of collapse," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by email.
Biden's election as the next U.S. leader, replacing climate-change sceptic Donald Trump, has raised expectations that conserving the Amazon forest, seen as a vital buffer against global warming, will get greater attention and priority in Washington.
"Hopefully Biden will have the courage to take a stand for the Earth and not side with the big industries," said Nenquimo.
Biden, a Democrat, intends to play a bigger role in setting the agenda for climate policy on the international stage.
He has promised one of his first acts will be to rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change, which the United States left last week, and to push for an early summit with leaders to promote more ambitious cuts to planet-heating emissions.
POLICY CHANGE?
Scientists say that combatting rising deforestation rates in the Amazon rainforest - a major store of planet-warming carbon that stretches across nine South American countries - is crucial in the fight against climate change.
In Brazil, home to the biggest share of the world's largest tropical rainforest, environmental campaigners say Trump has emboldened right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's combative stance on climate change.
Both leaders have downplayed climate threats and publicly said they doubt the science.
But the U.S. election outcome means Bolsonaro, a Trump supporter, has lost a "powerful ally", according to Leila Salazar-Lopez, executive director of Amazon Watch, an indigenous rights group.
"As explicitly signalled during the presidential debates, President-elect Biden has promised to prioritise global climate action and the protection of the Amazon rainforest, which is critical in restoring climate stability," Salazar-Lopez said.
"By following through with concrete policy commitments... his administration could play a pivotal leadership role in convening global support for Amazon protection," she added.
In Brazil, green groups working on the Amazon said a Biden presidency would pressure Bolsonaro's government to shift policy, even if major changes are not likely in the short term.
Bolsonaro has called for development in the Amazon region, which he says is needed to lift Brazilians out of poverty.
But this has led to expansion of soy cultivation and cattle-ranching, pushing the agricultural frontier deeper into the forest, environmentalists say.
Brazil's carbon emissions increased by 9.6% in 2019 mainly due to higher Amazon deforestation during the first year of Bolsonaro's administration, a scientific study found this month.
"(Brazil's) government vision for the Amazon won't find a place in the international debate anymore," said Adriana Ramos from Instituto Socioambiental, a Brazilian nonprofit.
For indigenous groups, a Biden presidency could herald a boost in funding for nature-friendly development in the Amazon.
"We got very emotional about his election, because we knew how important it was for indigenous people," said Ivaneide Bandeira of the Association for Ethno-Environmental Defense Kaninde, based in the Brazilian Amazon.
"There will be change in the country... and new resources for sustainable development and to fight deforestation," said Bandeira, whose group supports indigenous people.
During an election campaign debate, Biden proposed creating a $20-billion global fund to stop deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, threatening "significant economic consequences" if forest destruction continued.
On Tuesday, Bolsonaro, who has not congratulated Biden on his win, took a defiant stance on foreign interference over the Amazon, referencing Biden's comment about "economic consequences" if Brazil does not rein in deforestation.
"How do we face something like this? Diplomacy isn't enough," Bolsonaro said in a televised speech. "When saliva runs out, there must be gunpowder."
REGIONAL LEADERSHIP
Biden has also promised to meet U.S. commitments under the Paris Agreement to provide a share of the $100 billion a year in climate finance rich nations said they would raise to help poorer countries grow cleanly and adapt to climate change.
But his success in delivering on his climate plans will depend in part on whether he has backing from the U.S. Congress.
A failed Democratic drive to gain control of the U.S. Senate could dampen prospects for aggressive legislation to help combat global warming and deforestation.
Mitch Anderson, head of campaign group Amazon Frontlines, said whether Biden takes meaningful steps on rainforest protection will also depend "on his willingness to truly grasp the ecological emergency facing the Amazon rainforest".
And irrespective of U.S. policy, the decisive factor in conserving the Amazon will be whether the region's governments stick to their commitments to do so, climate experts said.
Seven Amazon nations, including Brazil, held a summit last year in Colombia where they signed up to a regional action plan known as the Leticia Pact.
It pledged to better protect the Amazon against forest fires, monitor rising deforestation and increase the role of indigenous communities in sustainable development.
"Conserving the Amazon is first and foremost a responsibility for the countries in the region, and... there are some important signs of leadership through the Leticia Pact," said Helen Mountford, vice president for climate and economics at the Washington-based World Resources Institute.
Nenquimo, meanwhile, said she would continue her fight to preserve the Amazon forest, drawing inspiration from U.S. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
"She is a black woman, and we, indigenous women, share the experience of fighting contempt and violence against our peoples," Nenquimo said.
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