Wednesday, August 19, 2020
RSN: In Alaska, Trump Doubles Down on Environmental Vandalism
19 August 20
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Bill McKibben | In Alaska, Trump Doubles Down on Environmental Vandalism
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "Of all the jobs I've ever watched humans do, few have seemed more appealing to me than counting salmon at the head of the Ugashik River, in Alaska."
Every hour, the man charged with this duty would rouse himself from his cabin in that vast and sweeping wilderness, climb a ladder into what looked like a lifeguard’s chair, and then stare down at the stream—with a clicker in his hand, like an usher at a movie theatre. Each time he saw the flash of a fish passing upstream, he’d count it. Several times a day he’d send his count to headquarters and then climb back down—assuming, of course, that grizzlies had not appeared to do some fishing, in which case he would wait in his perch.
It is well known that the world’s fisheries are in hideous decline, a problem that will grow even worse as oceans continue to warm. But some Alaskan salmon are an exception to the rule—because of that guy in the chair with the clicker. His job is to make sure that enough salmon make it upstream to spawn. The biologists he reports to have worked out complex models of the state’s rivers; they know how many fish are required to keep the runs strong. After an initial early fishing season, when they’re convinced that plenty of fish have made it through, they’ll open—maybe only for a few hours—the fishing season downstream in Bristol Bay.
And when they do, it is chaos—dozens and dozens of high-powered boats milling around in a narrow strip of water, inching toward the front of an invisible boundary like runners crowding the starting line of a race. When the time comes, they drop their nets and surge forward; it’s possible to catch thousands of salmon in minutes. It’s old-fashioned cowboy capitalism, complete with trash-talking on the radio—but when the fishing window closes again, it all shuts down immediately. That’s partly because state troopers make sure of it, but mostly it’s because everyone understands the basic logic: salmon are the golden eggs of Bristol Bay, and if you don’t let enough fish back upstream, then you’ve killed the proverbial goose. It’s the resource equivalent of wearing a mask and staying six feet apart: biology sets the limits, and Alaskans have long obeyed them, with good results.
There are few enough success stories like this in the world. Which is why it’s even more aggravating than usual to watch the Trump Administration try to mess things up. Some years ago, a big mining corporation proposed building the Pebble Mine—to extract gold, copper, and other metals—on the headwaters of some of the streams that feed into Bristol Bay. The open pit mine would be more than a mile square, and a third of a mile deep (imagine that), surrounded by dams holding back the highly toxic products of the mining process. Not surprisingly, the Obama-era E.P.A. decided that this was a bad idea and blocked the development of the mine. Not surprisingly, President Trump met with Alaska’s Republican governor, who cheerfully announced that the President had assured him that he was “doing everything he can to work with us on our mining concerns.” Not surprisingly, the Trump E.P.A. chose not to block the project.
I say not surprisingly, because, of course, the Trump Administration has done everything in its power to gut the country’s environmental regulations—and with more success than it’s had in many other policy realms. On Monday, the Administration announced that it will start selling drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the country’s largest, by December, 2021. The move reverses more than a half-century of efforts to block drilling in the country’s largest remaining wilderness. Environmental groups will go to court to halt Trump’s move, which shows the likely irreversible damage that the Administration is inflicting.
But in the case of Pebble Mine, the outcome was probably overdetermined. It’s hard to imagine that the President would be much impressed by, say, the remarkable science showing that the decomposing bodies of salmon that have finished spawning fertilize the forests lining the streams. You can literally find nutrients from marine algae from the open ocean in the wood of these pine trees. Alaska’s salmon run ranks with the migration of the monarchs and the wandering of the caribou on the list of the world’s epoch events. Endangering it to get some “precious” metals requires a fundamental misunderstanding of the word. But it is clear what the President values: among the most famous pre-Presidency pictures of Trump are those from his hundred-million-dollar penthouse, invariably described as “decorated with 24k. gold.” Salmon, on the other hand, is the thing that your wife orders at a benefit dinner.
Still, there have been some interesting recent developments. The President’s unflinchingly loyal eldest son, Donald, Jr., earlier this month tweeted the opinion that, “as a sportsman who has spent plenty of time in the area,” the “headwaters of Bristol Bay and surrounding fishery are too unique and fragile to take any chances with.” It’s possible that Donald, Jr., is, in fact, looking forward to killing large animals in this vicinity—but it’s also possible that political reality is beginning to weigh on the Pebble Mine project. Despite strong support from corporate boosters like the Alaska Chamber of Commerce, many Alaskans oppose it. The Independent senatorial candidate Al Gross, who is running to take on the Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan—and who, as his campaign ads point out, has actually killed a grizzly in self-defense “after it snuck up on him”—is an outspoken opponent of the mine. He’s doing well enough that the Cook Political Report recently shifted the race from Solid to Likely Republican. Some have started to speculate that Sullivan may need to oppose the mine as well.
But it’s increasingly clear that the only way to actually block the project will be—as with so many issues—to elect Joe Biden in November. (Even that won’t prevent a last-minute vandalism spree, as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge announcement showed.) Earlier this month, Biden said in a statement that the headwater of this great fishery “is no place for a mine. The Obama-Biden Administration reached that conclusion when we ran a rigorous, science-based process in 2014, and it is still true today.” Indeed. Bristol Bay is a place for salmon—and for very careful people.
Joe Biden. (photo: Frank Franklin II/AP)
Democrats Officially Nominate Joe Biden for President
Toluse Olorunnipa, Chelsea Janes, Felicia Sonmez, Colby Itkowitz and John Wagner, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Joe Biden officially secured the Democratic nomination for president Tuesday, winning votes cast by party delegates scattered across bridges, beaches and statehouses in 57 states and territories in an online spectacle that marked the first virtual national party roll-call vote."
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Vladimir Putin in Tatarstan on 13 December. (photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/AP)
ALSO SEE: 8 Takeaways From the Senate Committee Report
on Russian Interference
Final Senate Intelligence Report on 2016 Election Russian Interference Released
Tim Mak, NPR
Mak writes: "Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort passed internal Trump campaign information to a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 election, a new bipartisan Senate report concludes."
READ MORE
Migrant looking over the Rio Grande river on International Bridge 1 Las Americas, a legal port of entry which connects Laredo, Texas in the US with Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. (photo: Marco Ugarte/AP photo)
The Pandemic Shows That Now Is the Time to End Immigration Detention
Susan M. Akram, Open Global Rights
Akram writes: "There is no legal or moral case to detain the vast majority of immigrant adults, let alone immigrant children. Ongoing immigration detention is an unreasonable risk not only to immigrants, but to the health of all of us."
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The McCloskeys. (photo: Twitter)
St. Louis Couple Who Pointed Guns at Black Lives Matter Protesters to Speak at RNC
Caitlin O'Kane, CBS News
O'Kane writes: "Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the couple who pointed their guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside of their St. Louis mansion in June, are set to speak at the Republican National Convention next week."
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People from the parque das tribos community mourn the loss of Chief Messias of the Kokama Tribe who died from COVID-19 in Manaus, Brazil on May 14, 2020. (photo: Michael Dantas/AFP/Getty Images)
Governments Worldwide Are Failing Indigenous Peoples During the Pandemic
Anya Zoledziowski, VICE
Excerpt: "Indigenous communities from the U.S. to Australia to Brazil have taken matters into their own hands-even closing their borders and implementing curfews-to protect themselves."
READ MORE
Spawning steelhead. (photo: Will Boucher)
Sweeping Win for Salmon and Steelhead on the Willamette River
WildEarth Guardians
Excerpt: "Today, Chief Judge Hernandez of the District of Oregon ruled in favor of Upper Willamette River wild spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead, finding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and National Marine Fisheries Service failed to take necessary steps to ensure the survival and recovery of these iconic fish in violation of the Endangered Species Act."
Court finds Army Corps’ dam operations harm salmon and violate the Endangered Species Act
oday, Chief Judge Hernandez of the District of Oregon ruled in favor of Upper Willamette River wild spring Chinook salmon and winter steelhead, finding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) failed to take necessary steps to ensure the survival and recovery of these iconic fish in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Northwest Environmental Defense Center, WildEarth Guardians, and Native Fish Society, represented by attorneys at Advocates for the West, filed suit in 2018 asking the court to compel the Corps to make immediate operational adjustments to four dams to save these important fish. The groups were alarmed by the rapidly dwindling numbers of salmon and steelhead and the ongoing delays in action by the Corps. The court today ruled in favor of the groups on all of their claims.
“The Corps has known for more than a decade what must be done to save these fish, but they have failed to act,” said Jonah Sandford, staff attorney for the Northwest Environmental Defense Center. “The Court confirmed that the Corps has simply failed to take necessary actions related to fish passage, flows, and water quality, and that these failures are causing further harm to these iconic Oregon species.”
Dams on four key tributaries of the Willamette River block between 40 to 90% of spawning habitat. The dams’ heights and large reservoirs make it nearly impossible for small fish to swim downstream and for adult fish to access critical spawning habitats upstream. Dam operations create unnatural flows, impact fish habitat, water quality and water temperature which increases mortality.
The Court ruled for the Plaintiffs on all three of their ESA claims, holding that the Corps: 1) failed to carry out “several of the most important [required] measures” related to fish passage and water quality, 2) is jeopardizing and unlawfully taking Upper Willamette Chinook salmon and steelhead, and 3) the agency’s significant delay in reinitiating consultation was “a substantial procedural violation of the ESA.”
Importantly, the Court found that “Plaintiffs have shown the Corps’ operation of the [Willamette Valley Project] without completing the [required] measures is causing the species’ decline.” Further, the Court found that “it is undisputed that significant measures were never carried out, some were delayed, some have not yet occurred, and some will not occur in time to meet future deadlines. Meanwhile, [Upper Willamette River] Chinook and steelhead populations continue to decline, although both species remain listed as ‘threatened’ after a 2016 NMFS status review.”
“Over a decade ago, the Corps agreed to complete numerous actions to recover wild Chinook salmon and steelhead but since then has dodged, skipped, and delayed at every turn and squandered precious time and resources,” said Marlies Wierenga, Pacific Northwest Conservation Manager, WildEarth Guardians. “The Court confirmed what was known all along – fish passage is vital to saving Oregonians’ culturally important wild fish and the pulse of a living river.”
“It’s time to get the Willamette River and its wild fish back on the road to recovery,” said Jennifer Fairbrother, Conservation Director for the Native Fish Society. “This ruling acknowledges the federal government’s obligation to revive abundant, wild fish. We look forward to the day when we have a Willamette River that supports healthy, self-sustaining, and harvestable populations of wild salmon and steelhead”
The Court ordered the parties to submit a briefing schedule within fourteen days to determine the appropriate remedy.
RSN: FOCUS: David Sirota and Andrew Perez | Democrats Seem All Too Willing to Surrender on Health Care Reform
19 August 20
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FOCUS: David Sirota and Andrew Perez | Democrats Seem All Too Willing to Surrender on Health Care Reform
David Sirota and Andrew Perez, Jacobin
Excerpt: "For-profit health companies are launching a new national ad campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon their plans to create a public health insurance plan - something many elected Democrats are very happy to be convinced of."
n the eve of a Democratic National Convention taking place as millions lose health care coverage, the health care industry is launching a new ad campaign pressing Democrats to back off from the party’s already compromised health care promises. That pressure seems to be having its intended effect on Capitol Hill, as congressional aides say the party will not push the initiative if Joe Biden wins the presidency. The signs of retreat come as health care industry profits are skyrocketing and the industry’s campaign cash has flooded into Democratic coffers.
The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF) — a front group created by health insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital lobbying groups to oppose “Medicare for All” — announced on Friday that it is launching a new national ad campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon their plans to create a public health insurance plan. The group said it will run ads during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) this week. PAHCF is led by a former Hillary Clinton aide and run out of the offices of a DC lobbying firm led by former top Democratic congressional aides.
A substantial “public option” plan — which polls show is wildly popular — was the centerpiece of recent policy negotiations between supporters of former vice president Joe Biden and progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who had been pushing for a more expansive Medicare for All program. A draft of the party platform, approved by DNC members late last month, includes a pledge to pass a public option, or a government-run health insurance plan that would compete with private insurers.
Within twenty-four hours of the launch of the industry’s new ads, however, anonymous Democratic congressional sources were telling the Hill that Democrats likely won’t bother with the public option fight next year if Biden wins the election. Instead, they said, the party will work to tweak its 2010 health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has done little to limit insurance or hospital costs and has failed to ensure universal coverage.
To justify the preemptive retreat, Democratic congressional aides told the newspaper that the party’s moderate crop of 2020 Senate challenger candidates could make it harder to pass a public option. That assertion comes even though every single one of those candidates is currently campaigning in support of a public option, according to a TMI review of campaign statements.
The situation echoes the Democratic promises and subsequent surrender on a public option that marked the debate over health care more than a decade ago — only this time around, the health care crisis is an even more acute emergency. While most developed countries have managed to contain COVID-19, the pandemic is spiraling out of control in the United States, and an estimated 27 million people have lost their employer-based health insurance plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
At the same time, the coronavirus crisis has been a boon for much of the corporate health care industry — particularly for insurance companies and drugmakers, but also for some investor-owned hospital companies. As PAHCF gears up to fight the public option, the interests that the group represents have been generating outsize profits and benefiting from massive federal assistance.
Democrats Promise Big Reforms
The idea of a public option isn’t new — progressives fought unsuccessfully for its inclusion in the ACA, but the Democratic-controlled Senate refused to pass it. Ten years later, the public option has become a middle-ground proposal favored by many moderate Democrats.
One of the more common arguments for supporting a public option over Medicare for All is that it would be easier to pass through Congress than a single-payer program that eliminates the need for private health insurance coverage.
The public option generally polls better than Medicare for All — people like being told they can buy into a plan or choose to keep their existing plan — though public polling has also found strong support for both ideas, especially as Americans grapple with the coronavirus crisis.
Of course, whether you keep your employer-based health insurance plan is less up to you than your boss or the overall state of the economy, as millions of Americans have experienced during a pandemic that’s caused global business shutdowns. Medicare for All would also likely cost the country far less in the long term.
During the 2020 Democratic primary, Biden repeatedly slammed Sanders’s Medicare for All proposal, while offering scant details about what a government health insurance plan would look like in his administration. Last month, the joint policy task force between the Biden and Sanders camps released a detailed framework for a public option plan that would actually represent a significant piece of reform, if enacted.
“The public option will provide at least one plan choice without deductibles, will be administered by the traditional Medicare program, not private companies, and will cover all primary care without any copayments and control costs for other treatments by negotiating prices with doctors and hospitals, just like Medicare does on behalf of older people,” the task force wrote.
The Biden-Sanders task force plan includes some key details about what a public option would look like that weren’t clear during the Democratic primary campaign. Biden’s website never said (and it still doesn’t say) whether his public option plan would have a deductible. It also wasn’t clear who would administer the plan — the task force document says Medicare. Anyone could sign up.
A draft of the DNC platform includes similar language about a public option. It says that Democrats will “make available on the marketplace a public option administered through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which includes a platinum-level choice, with low fees and no deductibles.” The DNC language would also make the public option available to all Americans, and “will cover all primary care without any co-payments and control costs for other treatments by negotiating prices with doctors and hospitals.”
“A More Modest Package of Fixes”
Despite optimism from progressives about Biden’s health care plan, the negotiations between the Biden and Sanders teams might not ultimately matter.
According to a new report in the Hill, Democratic congressional aides anticipate “the party would start next year with a more modest package of fixes to Obamacare that did not include a public option in an effort to get some early points on the board.”
The story reads like a trial balloon offering prefabricated talking points for the early weeks of a Biden administration when Democrats make huge concessions to industry in exchange for peanuts, while progressives watch in horror.
The Hill further reported: “A Senate Democratic aide . . . noted that if Democrats win back the Senate, it will be through red or purple states, and there will be plenty more moderate members in the caucus.”
Every single Democratic challenger running in a competitive Senate race this cycle has publicly campaigned on a public option — Mark Kelly in Arizona, Sara Gideon in Maine, Jaime Harrison in South Carolina, John Hickenlooper in Colorado, Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, Steve Bullock in Montana, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, and Barbara Bollier in Kansas. Even Amy McGrath, the Trump Democrat running in Kentucky, supports a public option.
There are some better potential explanations for why Democrats might give up on the public option already.
For one, Democratic lawmakers have received $86 million from donors in the health care industry since 2019, according to OpenSecrets. That’s an average of $310,000 per politician. The party’s Senate-focused super PAC and an affiliated dark money group have also received large donations from health care interests.
Perhaps the biggest factor at play is that the corporate health care industry can and likely will spend tens of millions of dollars to try to make the public option unpopular and demonize the Democratic Party by extension.
After all, in 2009 and 2010, the health insurance lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) secretly funneled $100 million into the US Chamber of Commerce to finance a marketing and astroturfed campaign against the Affordable Care Act. Democrats ultimately nixed the public option before passing the bill, and they ended up losing control of the House of Representatives in a landslide election anyway.
Thriving Health Care Industry Ready to Pounce
PAHCF — a dark money group led by AHIP and lobbying groups for pharmaceutical companies and hospitals — already spent $4.5 million on slamming Medicare for All in presidential primary states and at least as much to block a state-level public option in Colorado this year.
And that was before COVID, which has been an absolute windfall for much of the corporate health care industry.
Health insurance companies doubled their profits between April and June compared to last year, specifically because Americans are avoiding medical care and putting off surgeries.
The Trump administration has been throwing piles of cash at pharmaceutical and biotech companies — at least $8 billion so far — to produce stockpiles of potential COVID vaccines “before clinical trials have been completed,” according to the New York Times.
Hospitals have been hit hard by the pandemic, as emergency rooms have seen surges of patients with deadly respiratory issues. Doctors and workers have risked their lives to save others, often without adequate protective gear. Hundreds of health care workers have died. Many hospitals are struggling financially because people are avoiding medical care.
Some hospitals are doing better than others. In June, Reuters reported that two major investor-owned hospital chains, HCA Healthcare and Tenet Healthcare, had received billions of dollars in federal loans and grants since the start of the pandemic and “appear to be benefiting disproportionately from the initial government relief as some other hospitals struggle to stay afloat.” HCA and Tenet are both PAHCF members.
On Friday, PAHCF previewed its new advertising campaign against the public option.
One ad warns that “your taxes would pay for a public option.” This should evidently scare people who are already paying expensive monthly premiums to insurance companies that often find ways to avoid paying for their care.
Another ad says the public option could become “the third largest government program” behind Social Security and Medicare.
Echoes of the Public Option Retreat a Decade Ago
If the promises and subsequent retreat seem familiar, that’s because the situation echoes what happened a decade ago.
During the 2008 election, Barack Obama’s platform included a promise to create a public health care option — a promise he later pretended he never made.
Obama and Biden came into office with sky-high approval ratings and a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority — a perfect setting for the new Democratic administration to quickly pass a public option. However, soon after being elected, Obama and Biden’s White House began backing away from the public-option pledge — well before the party lost its sixty Senate votes.
“One of the earliest signs that the public option was a negotiable item for the administration came in July 2009, from Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff,” reported Health Affairs. “Emanuel floated the idea of a ‘trigger’ that would enable the public option only if the desired competition and cost control failed to materialize. During the congressional recess in August 2009, at the height of the town hall pushback against health reform, other administration voices began to downplay the importance of the public option.”
By the end of 2009, Senate Democrats dropped their support for a public option in response to opposition from Senator Joe Lieberman. A few months later, as the ACA was being finalized, Democratic senators refused to even use their power to force a recorded public vote on legislation to create a public option.
Fast forward ten years, and some Democratic congressional aides appear to be telegraphing the retreat process again — setting the stage for backing off a public option before the election has even occurred.
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