POLITICO NIGHTLY: The Lost Corona Generation

 

BY RYAN HEATH AND RENUKA RAYASAM Presented by With help from Myah Ward TRUMP PROMISES ACTION — In a press conference tonight from his club in Bedminster, N.J., President Donald Trump said he would take executive action if negotiations with congressional Democrats did not yield results, possibly by the end of the week. "If Democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage, I will act under my authority as president to get Americans the relief they need," Trump said. YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS — If the American Dream is the ability to build a family in which the next generation is better off than one’s own, the wheels are now truly starting to come off, after being badly shaken by the 2008 financial crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has led to an economic swoon of historic proportions, leaving millions of Americans — particularly young adults — feeling like they are losing their ability to plan for the future. That’s not a new feeling for young people in many parts of the globe, but Covid-19 has spread the economic anxiety to a far broader swath of Generation Z. The International Labor Organization says 1-in-6 people between the ages of 18 and 29 have stopped working since the beginning of the pandemic. Those still working saw their hours fall by 23 percent. In the United States, youth unemployment shot up from 8 percent to 25 percent thanks to Covid-19 lockdowns. While official youth unemployment numbers actually fell in Italy, it appears to be because many simply gave up looking for work and dropped out of the labor market. Taken together, that’s leading to a generational split starker than any previous recession, according to Italian economist Tito Boeri. Long-term problems may run deepest in Africa: 1-in-3 Africans today are aged 15 to 34, and the median age is 19, compared to 38 in America. Economists agree that the newest members of the labor market tend to be hardest hit by recessions. Those lucky enough to keep or score jobs suffer, too: Salaries are cut just as competition for them spikes, setting an individual back a financial rung, with implications that can last for their whole career. While many around the world are supported by paycheck protection programs or study grants, that safety net is temporary, and there’s no wave of new jobs on the horizon. Most of the companies doing the best right now — large tech companies — don’t employ many people relative to their turnover. “The ‘corona class of 2020’ could face years of reduced pay and limited job prospects, long after the current economic storm has passed,” said Kathleen Henehan, of the Resolution Foundation, a London-based think tank that reports on living standards. Young people themselves agree with this gloomy outlook. University of Pennsylvania Professor Mark A. Brennan gave Nightly a preview of a new U.N.-backed global survey he co-authored of young people’s attitudes during the pandemic. Those between the ages of 23 and 35 describe “catastrophic” levels of concern for their future, a feeling that is consistent across geographic locations and genders. Brennan pinpoints the issue as the “intersection of disruptions to their education, family and financial well-being.” America’s education-industrial complex is unique. The college system will leave many with six-figure debts while teaching them on Zoom (and keeping them from experiences and networks that could make the debt worthwhile). Stacked with tenured staff (the average salary of a U.S.-based professor is $104,820), many colleges don’t know how to operate outside the high-fee, high cost-overhead model. It is students who are paying the price. European students face different challenges that may amount to the same lost generation. Instead of being overcharged, many European youth get underserved on quality, via mediocre teaching in mediocre facilities, with little in the way of customized digital support. Germany’s famously rigorous vocational training path is an exception rather than the rule. Young European workers in countries like Italy, Spain and Greece — who were largely shut out of permanent contracts with generous benefits before the pandemic — now face situations like Alessandro Margiotta, a young Italian, who told POLITICO he lost a six-month contract due to Covid-19 shut-downs, before turning to a one-week contract and then unemployment benefits. Such fragile employment makes home ownership a mirage for a generation of Europeans who lack parental assistance, which is at the heart of the long-term problems caused by Covid-19. Most young people in rich countries will now face a difficult path to accumulating wealth based on hard work, a problem already familiar to Black families and other disadvantaged groups in the U.S. Down the road, the political impact of a large class of disaffected youth could be profound — and unexpected. Just ask the countries rocked by the Arab Spring. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. I learned today that I am an “Xennial.” Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   A message from PhRMA: America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials. Because science is how we get back to normal. More.   FIRST IN NIGHTLY SHADOW SCHOOLS — A roller rink. The YMCA. Houses of worship. All are creating makeshift classrooms this fall as school campuses remain closed around the country because of the pandemic. For working parents, it brings much-needed relief after what’s been an exhausting four-plus months since the coronavirus pandemic began. But it also raises public health questions: If it’s not safe to open schools this fall, why would these so-called “learning hubs” be any different? California reporter Katy Murphy writes that the prolonged crisis has forced American communities into a late-summer frenzy to replace what schools normally provide, especially for children who don’t have a safe or quiet place to learn at home. While affluent parents are forming multi-family "pods" and hiring nannies and educators to teach their children at home, cities, nonprofits and businesses are racing to fill the void with programs that can look like parallel schools — without teachers. From California to North Carolina, YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs are creating all-day learning centers that make sure students stay on task during virtual classes with their actual schools while their parents are at work. In some cases, local governments are stepping in with subsidies and child care — New York City plans to provide 50,000 free daily slots for school kids whose campuses have staggered schedules. Members of the grounds crew maintain a green before the start of the second round of the 2020 PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco. | Getty Images   BECOME A CHINA WATCHER : Tensions between the U.S. and China continue to rise following the shuttering of China's consulate in Houston. Is it possible for the two countries to hit the "reset" button or is that just a pipe dream? Join the conversation and gain expert insight from informed and influential voices in government, business, law, tech and academia. China Watcher is as much of a platform as it is a newsletter. Subscribe today.     NIGHTLY INTERVIEW OLYMPIC DREAMS DEFERRED — In a normal year we would have spent this past week watching Simone Biles nail a new vault stunt or Katie Ledecky glide across a pool (without a glass of milk on her head). But the 2020 Olympics games, originally scheduled to end this Sunday in Tokyo, have become another pandemic casualty: They’re now set to take place in the summer of 2021. The postponement is also another setback for the U.S. Olympic Committee, which has been roiled by the conviction of Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor who sexually abused young athletes for over a decade. The investigation has even sparked congressional reform. Sarah Hirshland took over the USOC in 2018, while the organization was still coping with the fallout of the investigation. She’s the group’s first female permanent CEO. Nightly spoke with Hirshland this week about how the organization and aspiring Olympic athletes are coping with the delay and whether she thinks the Tokyo games will happen, at all. This conversation has been edited. You should have now been in Tokyo right now cheering on Team USA athletes — what are you doing instead? Last year we went into a pretty significant transformation for the organization. The postponement of the games has given us a little more space to accelerate that implementation in our governance reform work. We’re investing in our athlete services more deeply than we might have been able to if we were in Tokyo. We have invested quite a bit over the last six months to 12 months in building mental health expertise. Stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, eating disorders, those sorts of mental health challenges that, frankly, are just societal, can be exacerbated under the high stress environment of Olympic and Paralympic sport. The greatest challenge continues to be awareness of the resources and the stigma in saying it's OK to not be OK. How are athletes coping with the yearlong delay — and training in the age of Covid? Whether it's our coaches, our sports psychologists, the sports scientists — each of them are working in tandem to adapt the training cycle that ensures the athletes are at peak performance at exactly the right moment in time. That’s a pretty complicated and detailed process. For a time, many of our swimmers were unable to access pools so their training was on the ground, different types of strength and conditioning than what they might have been used to previously. For some, particularly those who have been training since they were very young, it may be the first time in 10 or 15 years that they haven't been in the water for a couple of months. Many of the combat sports are still very restricted in their ability to properly train in the environment because of the natural human interaction required. Do you think the games will actually happen in 2021? I am planning for them to happen, but we're also planning for them not to happen because that's the prudent response. It would be, first and foremost, a tragedy for the athletes who may never have their opportunity to compete. It would be financially devastating to our organization. That's a dark storm cloud that's looming and we're incredibly hopeful that it doesn't come to that. How are you rebuilding trust with athletes especially after the Larry Nassar trial? I have to admit I cried watching some of the athletes testify. What we heard was people were concerned about speaking up. They were concerned about retaliation. They were concerned about being listened to. We needed to create a culture where people can speak up both inside our own organization and within the athlete community. We'll see significantly greater athlete representation, not only in our board and our committees and governance structure, but also down through the national governing bodies. We're going to work to adjust our culture and to make sure that we are truly focused on athletes first. What has been the financial impact of the postponement? The vast majority of our revenue that we would have expected to come in this year as a result of the games is deferred into next year. We do expect that revenue to decline some from the corporate community and potentially the broadcast community. The vast majority of the reductions are both people and some expenses around our training centers. We went from having as many as 350 athletes a night, residing and training in the training centers down to, at one point, we had less than 20 athletes here in Colorado Springs. Do you expect pandemic to leave a lasting impact on Olympic sports? I say all the time each of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes started their sport journey at a pool or a rink or a soccer field or gym somewhere in a community. We need those facilities to be vibrant and strong. What none of us can lose sight of is each of these are also likely either municipally run or small businesses that are struggling to figure out how to survive. The key for all of us is to ensure that as we are recovering and or evolving as a society that sport doesn't get left behind. COVID-2020 DEJOY CRIES BS OVER USPS DISTRESS — The head of the United States Postal Service today denied claims he was sabotaging election mail on behalf of Trump, as large delivery delays spark fears of a voting crisis associated with an increase in mail-in ballots, Max Cohen writes. Members of Congress from both parties fiercely criticized Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a former business executive and major Trump donor, after he instituted changes that critics say have slowed down service during a crucial period. On Thursday, lawmakers urged DeJoy to switch course on policies that limited overtime pay for Postal Service workers and mandated that if distribution centers were backlogged, mail must be kept there until the following day. Voting rights advocates raised alarms about the changes, formalized in a July directive, which they view as an attempt to carry out the president’s longtime wish to reimagine the Postal Service . DeJoy pushed back against these claims during an open meeting of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors this morning. “While I certainly have a good relationship with the president of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions regarding the Postal Service at the direction of the president or anyone else in the administration is wholly off base,” DeJoy said.       ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asked you: What concerns you the most about the November election? Below are some of your lightly edited responses. “1. Poor turnout because of the pandemic. 2. Foreign and/or domestic interference. 3. Social media trolling. 4. Electoral college members going rogue.” — Roger Larrea, nurse, Colton, Calif. “I worry about a combination of an ‘October surprise’ too late to be debunked, and voter suppression and overwhelmed election boards — altogether resulting in a skewed vote count.” — Sally Gordon, retired, Rio Rancho, N.M. “My biggest concern countrywide is that people will be disenfranchised. I am not personally concerned here in Nevada, but I will wait to see how safe it is for me to vote in person. This is such a crucial year for us all.” — Joanne Quarz, retired, Las Vegas “I am most concerned that ballots will not get counted, especially mail-in ballots, because of the massive and irresponsible funding cuts to the postal service. I hope that people go to vote in person despite the risk and that in-person voting goes smoothly.” — RACHEL TUROW, ATTORNEY, WASHINGTON, D.C. “Voter suppression is my biggest concern. Second would be the limitation on mail-in ballots and foreign interference in our election, equally.” — Carol Jackson, financial advisor, Austin, Texas “I'm concerned that Election Day results may initially reflect in-person voting, while tabulation of mail-in votes will be slower. If the mail-in vote reverses the initial result, it may feed conspiracy theories about ‘rigging the election.’ States should be allowed to open and process votes as received. They shouldn't announce results until after the polls close, but there is no reason to wait to begin the counting.” — Michael Sloan, retired, Portland, Ore. “Lately, I've become really alarmed by the changes the new postmaster general is making to the USPS. There is clearly something going on that is negatively impacting people’s mail across the country already. The current delays have broad implications for mail-in voting.” — Deborah Mamuti, administrative assistant, Tuscaloosa, Ala. FROM THE EDUCATION DESK IN PERSON OK’D IN NEW YORK — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave the go-ahead today for schools to prepare to bring students back this fall for in-person instruction. “By our infection rates, every school district can open,“ Cuomo said in a conference call with reporters. "Every region in the state is below the threshold we established." Cuomo previously said schools would be allowed to reopen if a given region is in an approved stage of the state's reopening plan and the 14-day test positivity rate is 5 percent or lower, New York reporter Nick Niedzwiadek writes. Schools will be forced to shut again if that rate exceeds 9 percent over a 7-day average. Solving the meals issue — Feeding kids safely in any school reopening scenario is complicated. Regardless of the setup, advocates say sifting through which kids are low-income will be an added burden during a difficult time. Graphics reporter Taylor Miller Thomas explores where the largest number of students get reduced-cost or free lunches across the country. Taylor Miller Thomas | POLITICO NIGHTLY NUMBER 10.2 percent The unemployment rate in July, according to the Labor Department. That’s down from a peak of 14.7 percent in April, but still far above the 3.5 percent rate in February. PUNCHLINES WEEK IN REVIEW — Executive Producer of Video Brooke Minters fills in for Matt Wuerker in this week’s Punchlines Weekend Wrap, taking us through the latest in cartoons and satire on Trump’s viral interview, mail-in voting, TikTok and much more.   POLITICO'S "FUTURE PULSE" - THE COLLISION OF HEALTH CARE AND TECHNOLOGY : As the United States remains stuck in a screening crisis, a worldwide competition has been launched to find the top Covid-19 rapid testing solutions. The contest aims to find a system with a painless sample and quick turnaround for results. When will a breakthrough come? From Congress and the White House, to state legislatures and Silicon Valley, Future Pulse spotlights the politics, policies and technologies driving long-term change on the most personal issue for voters: Their health. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     PARTING WORDS CENTURY-OLD LESSONS — In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson’s Democrats were fighting to keep control of Congress in the midst of dual disasters: the first World War raging in Europe and one of the deadliest pandemics in history tearing across the home front, Nightly’s Myah Ward writes. The Spanish Flu surged in the spring, and the second wave hit that fall as Americans prepared to vote. Campaigns couldn’t hold rallies because of bans on public gatherings, forcing them to turn to political advertisements and campaign literature — both fairly new approaches to campaigning at the time. On Election Day, Nov. 5, turnout was down 10 percentage points compared with the previous midterm election, though this could be due in part to soldiers overseas failing to complete absentee ballots, said Alex Navarro, the assistant director for the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. “Poll workers were either sick, or they were concerned about being sick. Some places had polling places close, and they sort of collapsed the number of polling places because there weren't enough healthy voters in that precinct to actually turn out,” he said. Other places, like Spokane, Wash., placed guards to control overcrowding and set up outdoor voting tents. The effect of in-person voting on the virus’ spread across the country is unclear, as the pandemic was already tailing off, Navarro said. And because the armistice came just a week after the election, these celebrations could have also played a role. Other studies show how smaller communities were ravaged after the election, said Kristin Watkins, an expert in infectious disease who studied the 1918 pandemic in rural Nebraska. In Red Cloud, Neb., there had only been two deaths in the community of 1,700 before Nov. 5. The city council decided to reopen the community for political activities a week prior to the election. Once everyone voted, Red Cloud moved back into lockdown. “Within three days, there were 25 to 50 obituaries in the newspapers for the next few weeks,” Watkins said. The 1918 election was held as planned without any known cancellations or postponements across the U.S., Navarro said. But he said it can’t be the “perfect template” for November. “We have the means to prevent people from crowding at polling places,” Navarro said. “We can still have the election. We don't need to postpone it or any talk like that. But we can do it safely if we can get people, the majority of people, to vote absentee, mail-in.”   A message from PhRMA: America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials. And there’s no slowing down. America’s biopharmaceutical companies will continue working day and night until they beat coronavirus. Because science is how we get back to normal. See how biopharmaceutical companies are working together to get people what they need during this pandemic.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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RSN: FOCUS: Bill McKibben | Trump Tries to Make It Hard for Anyone Else to Behave Ethically, Either

 

 

07 August 20

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WE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT GREEDY - It’s interesting how this progressive news site is not receiving adequate funding from the people who come here and read its articles. Supposedly, we are the people who are not the greedy, self-centered ones who care more for their own interests than supporting the collective well-being. There’s some disconnect here. Maybe time for some self-examination, eh? - Wally, RSN Reader-Supporter

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FOCUS: Bill McKibben | Trump Tries to Make It Hard for Anyone Else to Behave Ethically, Either

Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "Given what you know of the Trump Administration, you may not be shocked to learn that - hidden away behind a wall of acronyms, and obscured in the recesses of the federal rule-making process - it is doing its best to stall the trend toward ethical investing."  

 The Department of Labor, in June, proposed changes to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) that would make it hard for pension funds to steer money toward so-called E.S.G. funds—those that put a priority on environmental, social, and governance factors, such as whether a company is switching to renewable energy or putting women on its board or treating its workers fairly.

A couple of caveats first: E.S.G. investing is no panacea. (A Blackrock E.S.G. fund, for instance, had ExxonMobil as its twentieth-largest holding at one point, which is roughly akin to the Vatican setting aside a corner of the Sistine Chapel for satanic rituals.) And, at this late date, the idea that “green capitalism” is going to single-handedly save the day seems absurd. Still, people have pensions, and they’re going to be invested somewhere. E.S.G. funds saw record growth in 2019, and that rise steepened as the pandemic hit. “The rebound in civil society has been impressive, with an increase in volunteering, social cohesion, community support and focus on public good vs. private freedoms,” JPMorgan said in a recent note to clients. “We see the Covid-19 crisis accelerating the trend to ESG investment.” Oh, and there’s another reason: a Financial Times analysis in June found that, in the past decade, you made more money investing responsibly.

Who wouldn’t like all this? Well, diehard libertarians clinging to the Milton Friedman theory that a corporation has no social responsibility beyond making money, and people who run unethical enterprises. This (often overlapping) set of players orbits in a loose constellation around the businessman in the Oval Office, who himself has never been accused of behaving ethically. Now Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Eugene Scalia (the son of the late Supreme Court Justice), has proposed the rule changes, which would force pension funds seeking to invest ethically to jump through any number of hoops proving that there’s no “pecuniary” difference with more cavalier holdings.

Happily, New York State—which is home to, among other things, a great many funds—has decided to fight back. Linda Lacewell, the state’s superintendent of financial services, wrote Scalia last week to say, “In our view, the rise of ESG investing in recent years is a welcome development that reflects both a more sophisticated approach to investment and risk analysis and one more in line with the challenges facing investors today.” As Ali Zaidi, who handles climate policy for Governor Andrew Cuomo, explained to me in an interview, the proposed rule is “essentially an effort to take information away from the market.” What’s really stunning, Zaidi added, is that it comes as “the economic feedback to this incredible challenge we face in the form of the COVID crisis has actually reminded us how important E.S.G. and climate-risk analysis really are. In financial regulatory parlance, we talk about stress testing. In some ways, the stress testing is happening right now, and showing that a lot of these industries sit on a house of sand, not a firm foundation.” That is to say, you better hope that you weren’t long on oil going into the pandemic, because you not only helped to wreck the planet—you also lost your shirt.

As Zaidi pointed out, like all else in our public life, the result of the Administration’s efforts rests on the outcome of the November elections. The Department of Labor’s rule changes will probably come late enough in the Trump term that, if he’s defeated, it will be relatively easy for Congress to overturn them. And Elizabeth Warren, who seems likely to wield some power on financial questions in a Biden Administration, has made it clear that she’ll have no patience for this kind of irresponsibility. As she wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal last month, “Mr. Scalia seems to think that burying our heads in the sand and pretending that there is no risk to manage is risk management itself. If Mr. Scalia truly wanted to protect retirees, he’d remove roadblocks to ESG investing, call on his colleagues to create strong ESG standards and support my Climate Risk Disclosure Act.” The bottom line, as she points out, is that “climate change threatens the stability of our economy.” Indeed, as a new study published last Thursday makes clear, by 2100, as much as twenty per cent of global G.D.P. could be threatened by coastal flooding, in a worst-case scenario. Add in desertification, heat waves, agricultural collapse—pretty soon, there isn’t much of an economy left to worry about.

The situation seems obvious by this point—but clearly not, at least in the Azkaban where American policy is currently formulated. Others, however, are catching on. Mark Fawcett, the chief investment officer for the National Employment Savings Trust, the United Kingdom’s largest public pension fund by number of members, announced last week that it will begin to divest its massive portfolio from fossil fuels. Why? “Just like coronavirus, climate change poses serious risks to both our savers and their investments,” Fawcett said. “It has the potential to cause catastrophic damage and completely disrupt our way of life. No one wants to save throughout their life to retire into a world devastated by climate change.”

Passing the Mic

According to the World Bank, fashion is responsible for ten per cent of the planet’s greenhouse-gas emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. Which is why it’s good that the fashion writer Shonagh Marshall has launched Denier, a Web site that features her conversations about the industry’s “relation to people, the planet, and profit.” (And also a pretty good pun.) The site’s early content includes a particularly fine colloquy with Liz Ricketts, of the Or Foundation, about what happens to the clothes that Americans give away to charities. I interviewed Marshall, who’s based in New York, last week; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Fashion, broadly defined, seems to be a large part of the climate equation. Is it possible to reimagine it as an industry? If so, is that reimagining under way, or is it mostly greenwashing so far?

It is possible to reimagine it, and I think the regenerative nature at the very core of the fashion industry makes it ripe for dreaming up new systems. There are a number of fashion designers that have built their businesses with concerns for the climate crisis at the center. They act as interesting case studies in that all the decisions they make have the well-being of people and the planet as a focus, even if this means forgoing profit. But there is a lot of greenwashing, and fast fashion and luxury design houses have done little to change all elements of their business. Often, they focus on one thing, such as carbon emissions, which is fantastic—however, as we know, this is just not enough! A brilliant resource to find out how well a fashion brand is doing across people, planet, and animals is Good on You. Fashion companies are rated from 1 (We Avoid) to 5 (Great), and it includes lengthy descriptions about why they are rated this way.

What needs to change in our relationship to clothes and the way we think about them?

The big elephants in the room are overproduction and overconsumption. Let’s start with overproduction. Luxury brands such as Dior, Chanel, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton have six collections a year: spring/summer ready-to-wear and haute couture, autumn/winter ready-to-wear and haute couture, and pre-spring and cruise collections. Buyers from across the world purchase these clothes to sell in their shops, in line with these “seasons.” Until the nineteen-seventies, fashion was a niche industry, but over the past fifty years it has become global, driving huge profits and a mainstream message that everyone could be “in fashion.” This has given rise to the fast-fashion industry, where it is common for retailers such as H&M and Zara to respond to trends set by the luxury brands within two weeks.

So whose fault is it?

Blame often falls on the consumer: for example, the sustainable-fashion movement ran a campaign urging individuals to vote with their dollar to save the planet. Although this can be soothing to the individual to make positive choices, what needs to happen is legislation and policy to regulate overproduction. I am also interested in the semiotics within the fashion industry, both written and visual, to help change attitudes. Maybe we stop talking about fashion, and instead privilege style—that is where I think it could become interesting creatively.

Climate School

We’ve discussed before the fact that oil companies are going bankrupt and leaving behind orphaned, leaking wells; according to a new report from the Sierra Club, the same mess of stranded liabilities is found in the coal industry, which is also trying to dump its pension obligations.

In recent years, many journalists have done a commendable job covering the climate crisis, but, in a sad reminder of how much time was wasted, a new study shows that from 1985 to 2014 “press releases opposing action to address climate change are about twice as likely to be cited in national newspapers as are press releases advocating for climate action.”

Like E.S.G. investing, carbon offsets are no panacea—but it is inspiring to see local startups, such as Carbon Neutral Indiana, figuring out how to communicate with homeowners and small businesses about their carbon footprint.

The logic of renewable energy is reaching even Houston, the world capital of hydrocarbons. A new report by Randall Morton, of the Progressive Forum, finds that the city, which has more engineers total than any other in America, could maneuver to stay wealthy in a solar-and-wind age—or it could become the next Detroit, with its core industry on the wane.

Scoreboard

The oil majors are posting record losses. As a result, ExxonMobil, as its C.E.O. said, “has identified significant potential for additional reductions” in expenditures, which it will announce at a later date. To the extent that additional reductions mean cutting back on the search for new oil, it’s a plus for the planet.

The Irish Supreme Court last week insisted that the country’s politicians come up with a more specific and aggressive plan to fulfill a law calling for zero emissions by 2050.

The number of migratory fish on the planet has plunged seventy-six per cent in the past fifty years, a new report finds. The drop is attributed to dams, overfishing, pollution—and climate change.

The planet’s five biggest publicly-owned oil companies are spending about two hundred million dollars annually to lobby against climate-change policies.

Public-opinion surveys are showing that large and growing margins of Americans want an end to fracking. Even in Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden has been hesitant about the political impact, bans on fracking win by large margins in the polls.

On Tuesday morning, BP announced plans to cut oil-and-gas production by 2030. There are plenty of caveats: they’re excluding their collaboration with Russia’s Rosneft, and they’re going to continue spending more money, for now, on oil-and-gas exploration than on renewables. But it’s definitely a step away from the vague plans for 2050 that some of the other oil majors have begun mumbling about. The analysts at Oil Change International said that “today BP is starting to heed activists’ calls to ‘keep it in the ground.’ ” On the ground in London, Carbon Tracker Initiative noted that the original reaction of markets was positive and wondered who would follow.

Warming Up

John Lewis’s funeral last week was a reminder that American politics doesn’t actually have to be an endless Munch scream—that there is much to admire and hope for in our history. I was particularly taken by Jennifer Holliday’s rendition of the great Thomas Dorsey gospel tune “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”—in part because both Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin sang the same song in the days after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Echoes of a different past, perhaps pointing to a different future.

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MICHIGAN RACISM: ‘I can say anything I want’: Michigan official defends using racist slur while refusing to wear a mask

REGISTER TO VOTE! GET ACTIVE! GET INVOLVED! RID LOCAL GOVERNMENT OF RACISTS! 

A local road commission meeting in northern Michigan on Monday started with one commissioner asking another why he wasn’t wearing a mask amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The unmasked official responded with a racist slur and an angry rant against the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Well, this whole thing is because of them n-----s in Detroit,” Tom Eckerle, who was elected to his position on the Leelanau County Road Commission in 2018, told his colleague at the start of the public meeting.

The commission chairman, Bob Joyce, immediately rebuked his colleague, but Eckerle, who is White, continued his diatribe.

“I can say anything I want,” Eckerle said at the meeting, which the public could listen to via a dial-in number, the Leelanau Enterprise first reported. “Black Lives Matter has everything to do with taking the country away from us.”

Eckerle’s remarks came the same week Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) declared racism a public health crisis because of the disparate impact the coronavirus pandemic has had in Black, Native American and Latino communities. Michigan has reported at least 94,656 cases and 6,506 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

“#COVID19 has highlighted what Black & Brown communities have always known — inequities caused by systemic racism can be deadly,” Whitmer said in a tweet on Wednesday. “We’re confronting this head on.”

The racist remark spurred widespread condemnation of Eckerle, who is a Republican, and calls to resign from party officials. Despite the backlash, Eckerle doubled down on his comments Thursday, defending his position and using the slur repeatedly in an interview with the local public radio station.

“I don’t regret calling it a n----r,” Eckerle told Interlochen Public Radio. “A n----r is a n----r is a n----r. That’s not a person whatsoever.”

About 93 percent of Leelanau County’s 21,761 residents are White, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Less than 1 percent of the people who live there are Black.

“It’s horrible,” Joyce told the Detroit News. “It’s absolutely horrific.”

He told the News that the other three road commissioners are pressing Eckerle to resign.

“We do not tolerate that,” he told the newspaper. “That’s not who we are.”

But Eckerle has not wavered. State Rep. Jack O’Malley (R), who represents Leelanau County, said he had a conversation with Eckerle and also asked the commissioner to step down.

“I reached out to this Commissioner and asked for his side of the story,” O’Malley said in a statement on Facebook. “He confirmed to me he did use the racist slur. After some discussion I asked Mr. Eckerle to resign. He refused.”

O’Malley said Eckerle is two years into a six-year term. To oust him before the next election, voters would have to petition to recall him or the county could request that the governor remove him, he said.

“This language and reasoning is ignorant and wrong,” O’Malley said, referring to Eckerle’s use of the racist slur. “We will see how this plays out, but in today’s emotional and highly charged climate to say what he said is ignorant and has no place, especially as an elected official. I did remind him he represents everyone in Leelanau County as I do … and his comments were and are beyond stupid.”

The Leelanau County administrator, Chet Janik, told Up North Live that if Eckerle was a county employee rather than an elected official, he would have faced “severe” disciplinary action for using the racist slur.

Daniel C. Scripps, who lives in Leelanau County and is the chairman of the Michigan Public Service Commission, said Eckerle should be recalled.

“At its core, racism is an attempt to dehumanize, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it laid so bare,” he said in a tweet. “But let’s be clear: Eckerle’s resignation/recall is the first step, not the last. All of us, including we who call Leelanau home, also need to do the hard work of coming to terms with, confronting, and overcoming the racism in our community.”

WASHINGTONPOST.COM

‘I can say anything I want’: Michigan official defends using racist slur while refusing to wear a mask

The racist remark spurred widespread condemnation a

washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/07/michigan-mask-racist-slur/?fbclid=IwAR2uOySkQ-0hUDEsh1jDZ7-Muo-Z28cAy99WBtUn5oASJ9-9gljLDrQ79nU