21 December 20
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21 December 20
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Robert Reich | Trickle-Down Economics Doesn't Work but Build-Up Does - Is Biden Listening?
Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Reich writes: "How should the huge financial costs of the pandemic be paid for, as well as the other deferred needs of society after this annus horribilis?"
A new study confirms tax cuts for the rich do not benefit the rest. Recovery from the pandemic is a chance to change course
Politicians rarely want to raise taxes on the rich. Joe Biden promised to do so but a closely divided Congress is already balking.
That’s because they’ve bought into one of the most dangerous of all economic ideas: that economic growth requires the rich to become even richer. Rubbish.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once dubbed it the “horse and sparrow” theory: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”
We know it as trickle-down economics.
In a new study, David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London lay waste to the theory. They reviewed data over the last half-century in advanced economies and found that tax cuts for the rich widened inequality without having any significant effect on jobs or growth. Nothing trickled down.
Meanwhile, the rich have become far richer. Since the start of the pandemic, just 651 American billionaires have gained $1tn of wealth. With this windfall they could send a $3,000 check to every person in America and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. Don’t hold your breath.
Stock markets have been hitting record highs. More initial public stock offerings have been launched this year than in over two decades. A wave of hi-tech IPOs has delivered gushers of money to Silicon Valley investors, founders and employees.
Oh, and tax rates are historically low.
Yet at the same time, more than 20 million Americans are jobless, 8 million have fallen into poverty, 19 million are at risk of eviction and 26 million are going hungry. Mainstream economists are already talking about a “K-shaped” recovery – the better-off reaping most gains while the bottom half continue to slide.
You don’t need a doctorate in ethical philosophy to think that now might be a good time to tax and redistribute some of the top’s riches to the hard-hit below. The UK is already considering an emergency tax on wealth.
The president-elect has rejected a wealth tax, but maybe he should be even more ambitious and seek to change economic thinking altogether.
The practical alternative to trickle-down economics might be called build-up economics. Not only should the rich pay for today’s devastating crisis but they should also invest in the public’s long-term wellbeing. The rich themselves would benefit from doing so, as would everyone else.
At one time, America’s major political parties were on the way to embodying these two theories. Speaking to the Democratic national convention in 1896, populist William Jennings Bryan noted: “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”
Build-up economics reached its zenith in the decades after the second world war, when the richest Americans paid a marginal income tax rate of between 70% and 90%. That revenue helped fund massive investment in infrastructure, education, health and basic research – creating the largest and most productive middle class the world had ever seen.
But starting in the 1980s, America retreated from public investment. The result is crumbling infrastructure, inadequate schools, wildly dysfunctional healthcare and public health systems and a shrinking core of basic research. Productivity has plummeted.
Yet we know public investment pays off. Studies show an average return on infrastructure investment of $1.92 for every public dollar invested, and a return on early childhood education of between 10% and 16% – with 80% of the benefits going to the general public.
The Covid vaccine reveals the importance of investments in public health, and the pandemic shows how everyone’s health affects everyone else’s. Yet 37 million Americans still have no health insurance. A study in the Lancet estimates Medicare for All would prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths each year, while saving money.
If we don’t launch something as bold as a Green New Deal, we’ll spend trillions coping with ever more damaging hurricanes, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels.
The returns from these and other public investments are huge. The costs of not making them are astronomical.
Trickle-down economics is a cruel hoax, while the benefits of build-up economics are real. At this juncture, between a global pandemic and the promise of a post-pandemic world, and between the administrations of Trump and Biden, we would be well-served by changing the economic paradigm from trickle down to build up.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
ALSO SEE: The Stimulus Deal:
What's in It for You
Lawmakers Reach Deal on Nearly $900 Billion Virus Relief Package
Jeff Stein and Mike DeBonis, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Senate leadership announced a bipartisan deal on an approximately $900 billion economic relief package late Sunday afternoon that would deliver emergency aid to a faltering economy and a nation besieged by surging coronavirus cases."
After months of contentious negotiations and seemingly intractable partisan gridlock, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the Senate floor to say that a deal had been finalized and could be quickly approved.
The emerging stimulus package was expected to direct hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to jobless Americans, ailing businesses and other critical economic needs that have grown as the pandemic ravages the country and batters the economy.
“More help is on the way. Moments ago, in consultation with our committees, the four leaders of the Senate and House finalized an agreement. It would be another major rescue package for the American people,” McConnell said. “As our citizens continue battling this coronavirus pandemic this holiday season, they will not be fighting alone.”
Schumer then took to the floor, calling the aid package insufficient but heralding it as a critical measure to “give the new president a boost, a head start, as he prepared to right our ailing economy.”
The House and Senate on Sunday night approved a one-day extension of government funding to allow the final bill text on the relief package to be written. President Trump signed the stopgap measure, preventing a government shutdown.
The legislation includes stimulus checks for millions of Americans of up to $600 per person. The size of that benefit would be reduced for people who earned more than $75,000 in 2019 and disappear altogether for those who earned more than $99,000. The stimulus checks would provide $600 per adult and child, meaning a family of four would receive $2,400 up to a certain income.
Congress would also extend federal unemployment benefits of up to $300 per week, which could start as early as Dec. 27.
The income criteria for the stimulus checks is expected to reflect that of the first round of relief payments sent by the Treasury Department earlier this year.
Adult dependents are not expected to qualify for the stimulus payments, people familiar with the negotiations said, despite a push from congressional Democrats. The deal would include stimulus payments for families in which one of the parents is not a citizen, but not for undocumented immigrants themselves.
The deal to extend federal jobless benefits for millions of unemployed Americans at a level of $300 per week would cover up to 11 weeks of unemployment through March 14, aides familiar with the negotiations said. An unemployment benefits program for contract and gig workers, which is also set to expire at the end of the year, would be extended over the same period for those workers as well.
A compromise proposal reached earlier this month by Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), among other centrist lawmakers, would have provided 16 weeks in unemployment benefits instead of the 11 weeks under the current agreement. It was unclear why congressional leadership trimmed the duration of unemployment benefits in their latest agreement relative to the bipartisan lawmakers’ plan.
If Congress doesn’t act, 12 million Americans could lose unemployment aid after Christmas
Negotiators also agreed to extend the deadline for states and cities to use unspent money approved for them by the Cares Act, two people familiar with internal deliberations said. States and cities have until the end of the year to spend billions of dollars before it expires and has to be returned to the federal government. The deal would extend that deadline for a full year.
Republicans have successfully opposed Democrats in their demands for hundreds of billions of new spending for state and local aid. Many local governments are experiencing steep declines in tax revenue and have been warning of layoffs. Extending the deadline for using leftover local government funding from the Cares Act allows Democratic lawmakers to say they still provided some relief to ailing municipalities. The agreement also leaves out a liability shield to protect businesses from virus-related lawsuits, which McConnell had previously demanded as a precondition for a deal.
The agreement will also extend for one month a moratorium on evictions that is set to expire at the end of the year, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The moratorium will be extended through January, at which point Democrats believe the incoming Biden administration can extend it again if necessary. The legislation will also provide approximately $25 billion in emergency assistance to renters, the people said, although it remained unclear how that money would be disbursed.
The single-biggest expenditure in the legislation is about $325 billion in business relief, including about $275 billion for another round of Paycheck Protection Program funding. The legislation also includes $45 billion for transportation needs such as state transportation departments and Amtrak, $82 billion for schools, $20 billion for vaccine distribution, and $13 billion for a major expansion in food stamps.
There were some unexpected expenditures in the agreement, including $1.4 billion in new funding for Trump’s border wall with Mexico and new border security technology, said House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).
An unexpected tax break in the deal was for corporate meal expenses lobbied for by the White House and strongly denounced by congressional Democrats, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Trump has for months talked about securing the deduction — derisively referred to as the “three-martini lunch” by critics — as a way to revive the restaurant industry badly battered by the pandemic. Critics say the measure, spearheaded by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will do little to help ailing restaurants but will reduce firms’ tax obligations.
Lawmakers had also appeared to resolve a nettlesome dispute over whether businesses that received PPP loans, and had them forgiven, will be allowed to deduct the costs covered by those loans on their federal tax returns. Those costs would be deductible under a final agreement so long as a PPP recipient can show a loss in revenue in 2020 compared to prior years, according to a lawmaker briefed on the deal.
It may take some more time for congressional staff members to draft those agreements into legislative text and prepare the massive bill for votes in the House and Senate. Lawmakers had also not yet released text of the agreement between senior Democrats and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) over the central bank, which was a sticking point Saturday.
Toomey initially demanded that a stimulus package prohibit the expiring lending programs, or anything “similar” to them, from being re-created in the future. He ultimately agreed to Schumer’s compromise, which steered away from barring programs “similar” to the ones that expire this year and instead applies more narrowly to the exact same programs.
The spending bill also includes a measure protecting patients from “surprise” medical bills. These bills — which can be as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars — can result when a patient through no fault of their own gets care from a doctor or hospital outside their health plan’s network, often surrounding emergency care.
Under the provision, doctors and hospitals may no longer charge patients the extra out-of-network costs not covered by their insurance plan. Instead, a third-party arbiter would decide the payment for these bills.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (photo: Getty Images)
AOC Calls Amazon Jobs a 'Scam' Because More Than 4,000 of Its Employees Are on Food Stamps
Kevin Shalvey, Business Insider
Shalvey writes: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday said Amazon's jobs are a 'scam' because they're not creating financial security for workers."
"A 'job' that leaves you homeless & on food stamps isn't a job. It's a scam," she said on Twitter.
Ocasio-Cortez referenced a Bloomberg News report detailing how many Amazon warehouse workers struggle to pay bills, with as many as 4,000 on food stamps.
The report said Amazon has turned logistics work from a professional career option to "entry-level" work for many. As Amazon's workforce has soared during the pandemic, safety conditions in its warehouses have failed to keep pace, according to the report.
"This is why 'Amazon jobs' aren't it & we should instead focus our public investments + incentives on small businesses, public infrastructure, & worker cooperatives that actually support dignified life," said Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter.
In an emailed statement, Amazon said the reporting referenced by Ocasio-Cortez's comments was "false," adding that "it violates over 50 years of economic thought, and suspends the law of supply and demand."
Said a spokesperson: "Hiring more, by paying less, simply does not work. Many of our employees join Amazon from other jobs in retail which tend to be predominantly part-time, reduced benefit jobs with it substantially less than our $15 minimum wage. These employees see a big increase in pay per hour, total take home pay, and overall benefits versus their previous jobs. What surprises us is that we are the focus of a story like this when some of the country's largest employers, including the largest retailer, have yet to join us in raising the minimum wage to $15."
Amazon said its facilities create jobs, sometimes breathing new life into cities - many of which lost their economic stability as manufacturing jobs moved elsewhere. Wages generally rise in communities where it opens warehouses, it said. And it invested $90 billion in infrastructure and compensation in 2019.
The daily lives of the workforce in Amazon's warehouses has long been a point of interest on Capitol Hill. Earlier this month, a group of lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for greater transparency into injuries in warehouses.
"We are now at the beginning of another dangerous season for Amazon warehouse workers, and the company's responses to repeated Congressional inquiries have only escalated our concern about Amazon's unwillingness to value worker safety above corporate profit," the group said in a joint statement.
The US National Labor Relations Board this week said it had found merit in the claims that Gerald Bryson, who worked at Amazon's Staten Island fulfillment center, was fired in retaliation for protesting health and safety policies in the warehouse.
Ocasio-Cortez has taken aim at Amazon repeatedly, often calling into question the amount of corporate tax it pays. Taxes from corporations could help pay for schools, hospitals, and other public infrastructure, she has often said.
In 2019, she called into question why Amazon paid zero in federal income taxes on more than $11 billion in profit.
"Why should corporations that contribute nothing to the pot be in a position to take billions from the public?" she said at the time on Twitter.
President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2019, in Washington, D.C. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty)
Tom Engelhardt | What If, After 9/11, George W. Bush Had Thrown Parties? And What If, After the Pandemic Arrived, Donald J. Trump Had Launched a Global War on Covid-19?
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Engelhardt writes: "We live in a land of vast crimes against others and increasingly against ourselves."
I've been overwhelmed by the generosity of TomDispatch readers in response to the appeal letter I sent out as 2020 neared its distinctly inglorious conclusion and yet, in these last days before I shut the site down for my usual year-ending two weeks, when it comes to contributions, life here always means needing more. As ever, should you decide to help TD make it through another bizarre year, just go to our donation page and do your damnedest, knowing that I'll be forever thankful. Tom
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
What If, After 9/11, George W. Bush Had Thrown Parties?
And What If, After the Pandemic Arrived, Donald J. Trump Had Launched a Global War on Covid-19?
is the season to be folly
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Don(ald) we now our gay apparel,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!...
It's party time in the nation's capital and the Christmas spirit reigns supreme, even if the Texas Republican Party does want to secede from the Union. I mean, who doesn't?
And hey, don't you want to attend a party? After all, it'll be at the White House, masks purely optional, social distancing not particularly necessary. Too bad you already missed the Congressional Ball (redubbed the "Covid Ball") that The Donald and Melania so graciously hosted. Still, if you make it to one of the others, be sure to check out Melania's decorations, not to speak of her just-unveiled new White House tennis pavilion of which she should be proud, despite all the criticism. After all, unlike you-know-who, she used the moment to welcome non-Trumpian presidents to come! ("It is my hope that this private space will function as both a place of leisure and gathering for future first families.”)
Meanwhile, even though more than 50 people in his circle have already been infected with Covid-19, her husband has been hosting up to 24 parties and celebrations of every sort at the White House this month. In other words, top-notch super-spreader Christmas fun until more or less the end of time. (If you're well over 65, like I am, it may quite literally be your last chance to have a blast.) And whatever you do, when you're freely wandering the White House, don't miss that tribute to essential workers in the Red Room!
If, however, you're of a slightly more serious frame of mind, how about cocktails and hors d'oeuvres at Mike Pompeo's State Department? Hurry it up because one thing is guaranteed: it's not going to be anywhere near as much fun in the Biden years. (I mean, so been-there, done-that, right?) And don't worry, since the State Department building has been deep-cleaned repeatedly due to reported Covid-19 infections there and pay no attention to the fact that State Department personnel are being urged to work from home. I guarantee you that it'll be a blast -- and I don't mean a bombing-Iran sort of blast either, though for all any of us knows, that might be in the works, too! After all, you could already have run into a bevy of foreign ambassadors and up to 900 guests (actually, fewer than 70 appeared) in rooms on the eighth floor of that building (but socially distanced, I swear) at gatherings that were supposed to go on until Christmas.
Whoa, rein in that sleigh, Santa! Sorry to disappoint, but Mike canceled his final superspreader party and went into quarantine last week after -- big shock! -- coming into contact with someone who had the coronavirus while hosting those "diplomats and dignitaries" at close quarters!
Deck the halls with boughs of folly indeed!
A Historical Switcheroo
And 2020! What a year to celebrate, right? The very year when Donald Trump won his second term as president in a landslide -- or am I confused? Did I mean lost the presidency in a landslide of pandemic deaths? Still, if in this "holiday" season, and in the true spirit of Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo, I were to be offered the chance to remake the history of this century, here's the switcheroo I might choose to pull.
Let's start with this simple fact: on December 9th, more people died in a single day from Covid-19 (3,124) than died on September 11, 2001, in the ruins of the Twin Towers and part of the Pentagon (2,977). Or cumulatively speaking, think of it this way: more Americans have died in less than a year from the coronavirus than the 301,000 civilians that Brown University's Costs of War Project estimates have died in America's forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen since 2001.
Donald Trump's response to the pandemic has, of course, been to give awful advice, hold super-spreader rallies galore, and most recently host those ongoing, largely unmasked festivities at the White House; he has, that is, responded to the arrival of Covid-19 on our shores by committing murder big time. (Estimates are that, by February 2021, 450,000 Americans could be dead from the pandemic even as vaccines to prevent it begin to arrive. By the time this country is more or less safe -- if it ever truly is -- that number might be 600,000 (or almost in the range of the American toll in the "Spanish Flu" of 1918).
Now, to step back just a few years, consider the response of President George W. Bush to that one day of horrific death caused by 19 mostly Saudi hijackers aboard four commercial jets. In response to those 9/11 attacks, he launched what quickly became known as the Global War on Terror, promptly invaded Afghanistan, and a year and a half later did the same thing in Iraq. (That was, of course, something he and his top officials had begun thinking about -- quite literally, in the case of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- in the rubble of the Pentagon, even though that country's ruler, Saddam Hussein, had nothing whatsoever to do either with al-Qaeda or those terror attacks.) Of course, 19 years later, despite a president who swore he would end this country's "forever wars," the war on terror is still ongoing without a lasting victory or true success in sight.
Now, as this mad Trumpian Christmas of ours approaches with increasing parts of the country in lockdown and Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths eternally rising into record-breaking territory, here's my fantasy proposition, my imagined historical switcheroo: What if, in response to 9/11, George W. Bush had, irresponsibly enough, simply thrown parties at the White House in high Trumpian-style; and what if, in response to the coronavirus crisis, Donald Trump had, responsibly enough, launched a global war on Covid-19 in true Bushian fashion? How differently history might have turned out.
The Blazing Fool Before Us
Instead, of course, Bush did launch those disastrous invasions and Trump did launch his own personal war on truth when it came to the pandemic (and so much else). The result, in both cases: crimes and deaths galore. Though it's seldom thought of that way, both of those twenty-first-century presidents of "ours" were, in a rather literal sense, mass murderers. In addition, thanks to the two of them and the cast of characters that accompanied them, we now live in a world of remarkable lies and self-delusion, whether we're talking about the U.S. military or our health and well-being.
After all, if you don't think this country is delusional when it comes to what still passes for "national security" consider this: just the other day, the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who can evidently agree on so little else, passed a record veto-proof defense bill giving the Pentagon a staggering $740 billion dollars for the next fiscal year. (Talk about inequality in this country with so many Americans at the edge of eviction or even hunger and Congress doing next to nothing for them!) In fact, together they actually agreed to offer more money than the Pentagon even asked for when it came to purchasing new arms, including extra Lockheed Martin F-35 jet fighters, already the most expensive and possibly least effective warplanes in history. Meanwhile, across the planet, the weaponry into which all that "national security" money has been poured is still killing people, including startling numbers of civilians, in never-ending unsuccessful wars that have turned millions of people in distant countries into displaced persons and refugees.
Considering such funding to be for "national security" isn't just a joke, but a lie of the first order. It has, as a start, produced both global and national insecurity (while aiding the rise of what's now called right-wing populism). Those disastrous but disastrously well-funded wars launched by George W. Bush proved to be, above all else, acts of mass murder abroad, even as they also led to the deaths, injuries, or PTSD misery of significant numbers of Americans. Think of them, in fact, as, in the most literal sense imaginable, war crimes.
Of course, those acts of mass murder all took place in distant lands far from most American eyes, even as, in an ever more unequal society, they deprived so many here of needed assistance. In part, Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential campaign was a product of that mass murder abroad. And now, without ever actually ending those wars as he promised so vociferously, he's become a mass murderer at home in his own striking fashion. In this pandemic year, think of him, whether in relation to Covid-19 itself or the election that took place in its midst, as launching a kind of war on terror on both Americans and our political system.
In the process, he's helped create a world of staggering folly that should be eternally unmasked. (Whoops! Well, you know what I mean.) The America he's played such a part in producing has created a kind of mental chaos that's hard to take in. One nurse in unmasked South Dakota caught its sad spirit in this series of tweets:
"I have a night off from the hospital. As I’m on my couch with my dog I can’t help but think of the Covid patients the last few days. The ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real. The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is going to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that 'stuff' because they don’t have Covid because it’s not real... These people really think this isn’t going to happen to them. And then they stop yelling at you when they get intubated. It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again."
She's right. No credits roll and yet the president and his men, as well as Republican governors like South Dakota's Kristi Noem who refuse to mandate masks are, in an obvious sense, aiding and abetting murders. Take, for instance, the president's lawyer, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani who traveled the country unmasked, ignoring social distancing guidelines wherever he went, to beat the post-election drums for Donald Trump. He then fell ill with Covid-19, was hospitalized, got special medications that most Americans could never receive thanks to his pal, and called into his own radio show from his hospital room to essentially denounce masking and social distancing and assure his listeners that Covid-19 was "curable." (Tell that to the more than 300,000 Americans who have already died from it.)
Now, don't such acts, multiplied many times over, qualify as part of what might be considered a homegrown war of (not on) terror in a world not of holly but folly this Christmas season? And I haven't even mentioned the crimes this president and his administration have committed against the environment or President Trump's criminal urge to torch the planet itself in a fashion that, given what we already know about climate change, will potentially result in so much more death, destruction, and displacement.
We live in a land of vast crimes against others and increasingly against ourselves. We also await a new president whose greatest ad line is simply that he is not Donald J. Trump (thank god!), though in all honesty that "new" has to be taken under advisement. Let's hope for the best, especially when it comes to climate change, but Joe Biden will, after all, be 78 years old -- by far the oldest president in our history -- on entering the Oval Office. He's the been-there, done-that man of our moment and, Obama appointee by Obama appointee, he seems largely intent on recreating a familiar past that helped create the very future we're now mired in.
As we await him in a country on edge, armed, angry, and in a conspiratorial frame of mind, as we face a Mitch McConnell Republican Party that would rather take down the future than negotiate much of anything, Donald Trump, the murderer, continues to prove himself the ultimate, possibly all-time, sore loser, even as he parties away at the White House. He gives a pandemic version of Christmas true meaning.
See the blazing fool before us,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs TomDispatch and is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
A police officer sprays a protester with pepper spray during a demonstration over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in Minneapolis Police custody, in Boston, Massachusetts on May 31, 2020. (photo: Joesph Prezioso/Getty Images)
Bodycam Videos Show Boston Police Violently Attacking Floyd Protesters
Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "Newly published body camera footage captured by Boston police shows how officers were aggressive toward protesters as they seemingly took joy in pushing, hitting, and pepper-spraying demonstrators."
ewly published body camera footage captured by Boston police shows how officers were aggressive toward protesters as they seemingly took joy in pushing, hitting, and pepper-spraying demonstrators. One officer was even caught on camera appearing to brag about how he had hit protesters with his car. The footage, provided to the The Appeal shows how officers repeatedly responded violently to protesters who were demonstrating against police brutality and racial injustice on May 31 in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.
The videos, which were provided to the online news outlet by Carl Williams, a lawyer representing some of the protesters who were arrested, show officers who pushed nonviolent protesters to the ground apparently without provocation. At one point an officer hit a woman to the ground who had her hands up. Other videos show how the officers pepper-sprayed protesters indiscriminately with little, if any warning. “It’s this mob mentality,” Williams told The Appeal. “And I use ‘mob’ as a sort of a double entendre—mob like the mafia and mob like a group of a pack of wild people roaming the streets looking to attack people.”
Throughout the videos, officers seem to be taking pleasure in violently attacking protesters. In one clip, a sergeant approaches an officer who is wearing a bodycam. “Dude, dude, dude, I fuckin’ drove down Tremont—there was an unmarked state police cruiser they were all gathered around,” the sergeant said with a laugh. “I’m fucking hitting people with the car, did you hear me, I was like, ‘get the fuck…” That’s when the officer wearing the camera pushes the sergeant’s head away and leaves, when he gets back he yells “it’s on,” referring to the bodycam. That’s when the sergeant quickly tried to talk his way out of what he just said. “I didn’t hit anybody, like, just driving, that’s all,” he said.
Some of the videos also seem to show officers enjoying pepper-spraying protesters. “Start spraying the fuckers,” an officer can be heard saying in a video. In another video one officer says. “I want to hit this asshole” as he gestured toward the crowd. “I want to hit this kid.”
The protests that took place on May 31 were largely peaceful until night fell. Police arrested 53 people and 18 bystanders were hospitalized while nine officers were treated for injuries that night.
Police Commissioner William Gross said he ordered an internal investigation after watching the videos. “I have placed a sergeant involved in this incident on administrative leave and I will take any additional action as necessary at the conclusion of the investigation,” Gross said. “I want to encourage people to bring these matters to our attention so that we can investigate them appropriately.” Mayor Marty Walsh said the footage “is difficult to watch, and begs answers to many questions” that he expects will be answered by the internal investigation. “We never want to see police officers using more force than necessary, even when tensions are high,” Walsh said. “These types of situations are also exactly why we are implementing body worn cameras for all police officers.”
A passenger walks at Fiumicino airport after the Italian government announced all flights to and from the UK will be suspended over fears of a new strain of the coronavirus in Rome, Italy, December 20, 2020. (photo: Remo Casilli/Reuters)
European Neighbors Shut Doors to Britain as New Coronavirus Strain Spreads
Angus MacSwan, Reuters
MacSwan writes: "Britain's European neighbors began closing their doors to travelers from the United Kingdom on Sunday amid alarm about a rapidly spreading strain of coronavirus that has caused cases to soar there."
France said it would bar all people coming from the United Kingdom for 48 hours from Sunday night, including freight carriers, whether by road, air, sea or rail.
Germany, Italy and the Netherlands ordered a suspension of flights from Britain, while Ireland said it would impose restrictions on flights and ferries from its neighbour.
Belgium said it would close its borders to flights and trains - including the popular Eurostar service - coming from the United Kingdom.
“The COVID variant recently discovered in London is worrying and will need to be investigated by our scientists,” Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza said.
“In the meantime we choose the path of maximum prudence.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Saturday that the new strain had led to spiralling infection numbers. His government tightened its COVID-19 restrictions for London and nearby areas, and also reversed plans to ease restrictions over the Christmas period.
The travel curbs also compound problems for the United Kingdom as it finally exits the European Union on Dec. 31 after a transition period this year. London and Brussels have so far failed to reach a post-Brext trade deal, raising the prospect of chaos in goods traffic.
The German government said all flights from the United Kingdom would be suspended from midnight.
“It (the virus mutation) has not yet been identified in Germany,” Health Minister Jens Spahn told public broadcaster ARD. “But of course we take the reports from Britain very seriously.”
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said the ban on incoming travel from Britain covers Eurostar services via the Channel Tunnel and will take effect for at least 24 hours from midnight on Sunday, broadcaster VRT said.
The Italian order blocked any flights departing from Britain and prohibited anyone who had transited through it in the last 14 days from entering Italy.
The Netherlands banned flights carrying passengers from the United Kingdom from Sunday and the restrictions will remain in place until Jan. 1, the Dutch government said.
Austria is also planning to ban flights from Britain, the APA news agency said, citing the health ministry. Sweden said it was preparing a decision to ban entry from the United Kingdom.
Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic also announced plans to bar flights from the United Kingdom.
LAST TICKETS
At London’s St. Pancras International station, the terminal for Eurostar, thousands of travellers tried to secure places on trains.
“We got the last two tickets for today,” said a Frenchman named Leny. “We each respectively had tickets for Monday and Tuesday. But given the situation and what is happening we didn’t want to take any risk. And we were the last to be able to do so.”
The new variant in Britain has added a twist to a battle against the virus that many countries in Europe are waging.
The number of coronavirus cases in Britain surged by 35,928 on Sunday, the highest daily rise since the start of the pandemic, and it recorded 326 deaths, taking the official toll to more than 67,000.
In addition to the measures announced for England, the United Kingdom’s other nations, who control their own anti-coronavirus policies, tightened restrictions. Scotland has imposed a ban on travel to the rest of the United Kingdom.
President-elect Joe Biden. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
'Folks, We're in Crisis': Joe Biden Introduces Environmental Advisers
Lois Beckett, Guardian UK
Beckett writes: "President-elect Joe Biden announced a racially diverse slate of environmental advisers on Saturday, to help his administration confront what he called 'the existential threat of our time, climate change.'"
President-elect announces racially diverse team to face ‘existential threat of our time’
Biden touted his selection of Deb Haaland as the first Native American secretary of the interior, which has wielded influence over the nation’s tribes for generations.
North Carolina official Michael Regan is slated to be the first African American man to run the Environmental Protection Agency. A state environmental head since 2017, he has made his name pursuing clean-ups of industrial toxins and helping low-income and minority communities significantly affected by pollution.
“Already there are more people of color in our cabinet than any cabinet ever,” Biden said. Six members of his proposed cabinet are African American.
His commitment to diverse picks including a record number of women, he said, “opens doors and includes the full range of talents that we have in this nation”.
“We literally have no time to waste,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, citing out-of-control wildfires that have devastated the western states, tropical storms that “pummelled” the south, and record floods and droughts that have ravaged the agricultural midwest.
“Folks, we’re in a crisis,” Biden said. “Just like we need a unified national response to Covid-19, we need a unified national response to climate change. We need to meet the moment with the urgency it demands, as we would during any national emergency.”
Haaland, who has struggled with homelessness and relied on food stamps at one point, said her life has not been easy. “This moment is profound when we consider the fact that a former secretary of the interior once proclaimed his goal, was to quote, ‘civilize or exterminate’ us,” Haaland said, referring to Alexander H H Stuart, who said that in 1851. “I’m a living testament to the failure of that horrific ideology.”
Biden’s approach is a shift from that of Donald Trump, whose presidency has been marked by efforts to boost oil and gas production while rolling back government measures intended to safeguard the environment. The Trump administration is seeking to start as many initiatives as possible before Biden takes power.
Biden, who has said he will seek US re-entry into the Paris climate deal, from which Trump withdrew, will therefore try to undo or block as much of Trump’s work as possible. There also will be an emphasis on looking out for low-income, working class and minority communities hit hardest by fossil fuel pollution and climate change.
Biden called his team “brilliant, qualified, tested and barrier-busting”.
The former two-term Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm is in line to be energy secretary. Biden’s nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality is Brenda Mallory. The CEQ oversees environmental reviews for virtually all major infrastructure projects and advises the president on major environmental issues. If confirmed, Mallory would be the first African American to hold the position since it was created more than 50 years ago.
Two members of the team do not require Senate confirmation. They are Gina McCarthy, as national climate adviser, and Ali Zaidi, her deputy. McCarthy was EPA administrator from 2013 to 2017, during Barack Obama’s second term.
Biden has promised to make tackling the climate crisis one of the pillars of his administration. But with a slim majority in the House of Representatives and control of the Senate undecided, he and his team may have to turn away from Congress and instead rely on rules from regulatory agencies to enact sweeping change.
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