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22 February 21
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Dan Rather | Foresight: We Have No Choice but to Plan for Our New Reality
Dan Rather, Steady
Rather writes:
ave you ever felt you were living in the middle of a metaphor?
Last Monday, when the power went out at our place in Austin, Texas, my wife Jean and I headed to where we had stored our emergency preparedness kit. We had gotten it a long while back and had tucked it away for when we might need to use it. I can honestly say I hadn’t given it much thought in years because, thankfully, it wasn’t necessary. Until suddenly it was. To our consternation (and a few fatalistic chuckles), we unpacked the batteries and found them corroded. It turns out, we had forgotten to make sure we had what we needed to “be prepared.” And so, apparently, had Texas, albeit with much more tragic outcomes.
Being prepared is one of those things we expect from the government. Whether it’s military preparedness, inspecting our infrastructure, or having the tools ready to battle a deadly pandemic, these are the kinds of societal goods that are best suited to the public sector. Or at least that was the way we used to think of things. I have seen the change up close in Texas, back in Washington, and across much of the United States: politicians have gotten very good at planning for the literal and metaphorical “sunny day.” Not so much when it comes to the unexpected, even when the unexpected should have been expected.
On one level, It is a mindset that is perfectly understandable and seems a particularly strong human trait. It is hard to sacrifice for a danger that feels remote. Fight or flight? We got that instinct. Fixing that loose stair? That can wait. And for politicians, who measure their lives by election cycles, spending tax dollars or political capital on distant needs can feel counterproductive to their own narrow self-interest. You don’t usually see ribbon cuttings at warehouses, or signing ceremonies for contingency funds. But that’s the whole point. Our representatives should be public servants first and foremost. They should anticipate problems that will far outlast their term in office, or even their term on Earth.
This friction between the needs of the community and the needs of the politician will always exist. But in recent years something else has emerged that has been particularly toxic and deadly. The modern Republican Party, in particular, has bowed down to a mantra that government itself is the problem. Starve the beast. Privatize. Deregulate. Downsize the public sector. Remove oversight. And at the same time denigrate science, expertise, and anyone idealistic enough to want to work for a good greater than themselves. That, in their view, is for suckers.
As long as everything is going right, this approach can seem to be working. But anyone who has ever had to weed a garden or clean up their children's toys knows that the universe tends towards disorder. If you leave any machine unchecked for too long it will break. And that’s what happened this week in Texas. That’s what’s happening with the pandemic and our climate crisis. Indeed, these problems along with many other looming crises, have been predicted. Many times. You can look it up. Although I bet you don't have to. Because you know it as well.
In Texas, you can add another overlay to this mindset. We pride ourselves on a spirit of rugged individualism, the myth of the cowboy alone on the prairie driving the herd through a storm. Of course most of us aren’t cowboys, and anyone who has spent time around cowboys knows that even they lean on each other when times are hard.
But as this myth of self-reliance has spread from proud individuals to the local, state, and federal government, damage has occurred in its wake. Case in point: ERCOT. As the world has come to know, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas is responsible for maintaining approximately 90% of the Texas power grid (with the exception of El Paso and parts of the panhandle and East Texas). This differs from the rest of the continental United States, which receives power from two federally-controlled sources: the Western Interconnection (covering areas west of the Rocky Mountains) or the Eastern Interconnection (covering areas east of the Rocky Mountains).
Under the mantra of independence from federal regulation, the Lone Star state said they would go their own way and effectively seceded from the national grid. That autonomy and intentional isolation seemed on its surface to be sufficient, that is, until we needed help. As Winter Storm Uri brought record low temperatures, we were caught off guard and unprepared.
The demand for power spiked as people turned up the thermostats, which far outpaced the supply. Tools like gas-powered plants or wind turbines were not weatherized for the conditions (another foreseeable failure of long-term planning), and other solutions such as importing power from the Eastern or Western Interconnection were not possible due to the state’s isolated structure. Texas was left on its own for better or worse, and “better” had swiftly left town. This past week’s grim circumstances show how prioritizing “self-reliance” over being prepared for the collective good can literally be deadly.
When the lights did eventually go out and as the temperature dropped, something remarkable happened. Texans reached out to each other, saving lives while infused with the power of community. This should come as no surprise. Americans are empathetic, resilient, and resourceful people when needed. As we saw with Hurricane Harvey in 2017, neighbor rushed to help neighbor as floodwaters rose. This community spirit cut across racial, social, economic, and even citizenship lines. Friends, acquaintances, familiar passersby, total strangers —all realized that we were in this together. I felt it personally and read about it on the local news. But here’s the tragedy. How much pain could have been avoided if our leaders fostered our sense of community before disaster hit?
It cannot be denied that money, power, and privilege, are benefits at any point in life, and even more so during a crisis. But, if you can excuse the sentimentality, some of the best things in life are free and ties to the community are priceless. The comfort of knowing there is someone to check in on you, will bolster your strength and survival. That, in part, is why the state’s response to the storm and its aftermath is so dispiriting. Imagine the clamor of voices yearning to be heard, desperately seeking assistance, only to be told various versions of “there’s no help coming and don’t expect any.” That is a sobering response. That is an unacceptable response. Behind that kind of response are incompetent —perhaps criminally incompetent— and empathy-lacking politicians.
So what can we do to turn the tide? One obvious answer is organizing and voting. The people who have presided over a Texas that is incompetent, selfish, short-sighted, dismissive of facts, cozy with lobbyists, and divisive will be on ballots in the future. After the cries for help have faded, after the news cycle has moved on, they will be counting on us to forget their transgressions. Once we get warm again, once the lights come back on, once we return to “normal,” they will expect us to put this experience out of mind.
But here is where the spirit of community can endure. Will the citizens of Texas hold them accountable? Will we not forget? If we keep doing business as usual, then we can expect the same results —or worse— in the future. The world is only getting more uncertain. And that means we have no choice but to plan for our new reality.
So, do we remember this moment and promise never to forget? For those of you in Texas, do you now vow to help create a safer, more just, and equitable state? For those of you elsewhere, know that this lack of foresight is not unique to Texas, or even to one political party. Are you ready to demand of your leaders to not put off for tomorrow what must be done today? And if they fail to do so, hold them accountable? Will you engage with your friends, neighbors, and people outside of your social circles to effect this change? We can drastically reduce the chances of this ever happening again. It begins with a vow to never forget —and to be prepared.
A man walks near a row of refrigeration units used as makeshift morgues located behind Bellevue Hospital as the Empire State Building is seen during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, U.S., March 31, 2020. (photo: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
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A Day That Will Live in Infamy: US Nears 500,000th COVID-19 Death
Maria Caspani and Anurag Maan, Reuters
he United States on Monday closed in on the staggering milestone of 500,000 COVID-19 deaths just over a year to the day since the coronavirus pandemic claimed its first known U.S. victims in Santa Clara County, California.
The country had recorded more than 28 million COVID-19 cases and 499,510 lives lost as of Monday morning, according to a Reuters tally of public health data, although daily deaths and hospitalizations have fallen to the lowest level since before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
About 19% of total global coronavirus deaths have occurred in the United States, an outsized figure given that the nation accounts for just 4% of the world’s population.
“These numbers are stunning,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top infectious disease adviser to President Joe Biden told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” program. “If you look back historically, we’ve done worse than almost any other country and we’re a highly developed, rich country.”
The country’s poor performance reflects the lack of a unified, national response last year, when the administration of former President Donald Trump mostly left states to their own devices in tackling the greatest public heath crisis in a century, with the president often in conflict with his own health experts.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are set to commemorate the huge loss of life due to COVID-19 later on Monday during an event at the White House that will include a speech by the president, a moment of silence and a candle lighting ceremony.
The National Cathedral in Washington will also toll its bells 500 times on Monday evening to honor the lives lost to COVID-19 in a livestream event, according to a notice on its website.
Over the past 12 months, the virus has taken a full year off the average life expectancy in the United States, the biggest decline since World War Two.
Sweeping through the country at the beginning of last year, the U.S. epidemic had claimed its first 100,000 lives by May.
The death toll doubled by September as the virus ebbed and surged during the summer months.
Pandemic-weary Americans, like so many around the world, grappled with the mountain of loss brought by COVID-19 as health experts warned of yet another coronavirus resurgence during the upcoming fall and winter months.
Americans lost mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers, sisters and friends to the virus. For many, the grief was amplified by the inability to see loved ones in hospitals or nursing homes and by the physical distancing imposed by authorities to curb the virus spread.
By December, the death toll had reached 300,000 as the United States entered a deadly post holiday season that would claim 230,000 lives in the span of less than three months.
With numbers that made the appalling toll early in the pandemic pale by comparison, deaths recorded between December and February accounted for 46% of all U.S. COVID-19 fatalities, even as vaccines finally became available and a monumental effort to inoculate the American public got underway.
Despite the grim milestone, the virus appears to have loosened its grip as COVID-19 cases in United States fell for the sixth consecutive week. However, health experts have warned that coronavirus variants initially discovered in Britain, South Africa and Brazil could unleash another wave that threatens to reverse the recent positive trends.
Fauci cautioned against complacency and urged Americans to continue public health measures such as wearing masks, physical distancing and avoiding crowds while officials race to inoculate the population, particularly with these more contagious new variants circulating.
“We’ve got be really careful and not just say ‘OK we’re finished now, we’re through it,” he told ABC.
An emergency response vehicle drives through a San Marcos neighborhood on Monday as a massive winter storm swept through the state. (photo Jordan Vonderhaar/Texas Tribune)
This Is What Deregulation Looks Like: Some Texans Face $10K+ in Electric Bills, Others Still in Dark
Democracy Now!
hen millions of Texans lost power during extreme winter weather, some who were fortunate enough to keep the lights on now face astronomically high energy bills, with people being charged thousands of dollars for just a few days of energy use. The skyrocketing bills are a result of the state’s years-long push to deregulate its energy market, says Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “We are seeing in these deregulated environments unscrupulous companies preying on their assumption that households will not understand or read the fine print,” says Slocum. We also speak with Texas resident Akilah Scott-Amos, who saw her electricity bill jump to over $11,000 during the storm. “I have no problems with paying my fair share. But this is not fair,” says Scott-Amos.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
While millions of Texans lost power last week, some of those who were fortunate to keep their lights on are now facing a shocking surprise: astronomically high energy bills. Some have been charged up to $16,000 for just a few days of energy use. On Sunday, Governor Abbott ordered a moratorium on disconnecting power to customers who cannot pay these bills. The skyrocketing bills are a result of the state’s move to radically deregulate the energy grid. Some consumers purchase electricity plans with rates that fluctuate with the market.
We’re joined now by two guests. First, we go to Akilah Scott-Amos, who is a Texas resident who saw her electricity bill jump over $11,000 during the storm. Akilah, tell us what happened.
AKILAH SCOTT-AMOS: Hi. Thank you, guys, for having me.
So, I woke up on Sunday to various debits being taken out of my account in $100 increments, because that’s what I have it set at. And when I went on the Facebook page — I’m with Griddy energy, and they are very active on Facebook. So, when I went on there, they were telling everyone to switch providers immediately.
So, the first thing that I did, actually, was give them a call, because I didn’t understand why my bill was negative-$456. And they told me that the price of energy is going up and that I had two options. The first option, of course, was to switch. And the second option was to just turn my power off totally and go to a hotel.
Option one — of course, I did call. I called around to several energy companies. And they were either not taking new clients or the switch date couldn’t happen until the 22nd. So, I really had no choice there. I did sign up for the 22nd, but there was nothing else I could do. As far as actually turning the power off at our home and going to a hotel, that absolutely was not an option. Leaving our home unprotected, that just wasn’t going to work. We also have a very big dog. I have two children getting over a cold. We are still in a pandemic. So, leaving the house just wasn’t an option.
As the days went on, my bill got higher. The next day, it was $2,500. The next day, it was the same amount. We pulled back on our energy use. We don’t use that much anyway, to begin with. So, yeah, we weren’t using lights. Our heat is gas, but, of course, it uses electricity to blow. We had our electricity on 62 through the house. We used our gas fireplace. And, of course, we used the internet and to keep our phones and tablets charged. But other than that, we decreased our use significantly. But I saw a big jump in our kilowatt usage, which definitely isn’t accurate. And again, I got his with $2,500 a day. And so now my bill is a little over $11,000.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen. Tyson, could you tell us, this whole issue of deregulation, what’s happened in Texas and these sky-high bills, what’s your take on it?
TYSON SLOCUM: Yeah, it’s totally unacceptable. And while clearly some individual energy companies bear responsibility, ultimately it’s state officials and regulators who just did a terrible job allowing these types of predatory utility pricing plans to be even offered to residential households in the first place.
We have to remember that for the first hundred years of our electricity system, federal law states that electricity is affected with the public interest. And that’s what we call them public utilities. Naomi was doing a great job earlier talking about the significant public interest responsibilities that electricity provides. It literally is life-or-death.
And in Texas — and Texas isn’t alone here — we’ve had a huge, radical shift in the oversight of electricity markets away from regulatory protections to protect people and ensure reliability, and, instead, a reliance on market forces. And Texas is the clearest case of this, where instead of enforcing mandatory reliability standards for owners of power plants, Texas instead relies on huge price increases to incentivize power generators to deliver electricity even during perilous times like winter ice storms.
And so, what we saw was, as prices spiked to $9,000 a megawatt hour, which is just astronomical — a typical price could be around $20 a megawatt hour — there were thousands of Texans that signed up for retail rate programs that were directly tethered to the wholesale price. And during most times, when power prices are normal, many of these customers saw some bill savings. And that’s the way that the companies market it, these plans to households. But then, of course, when prices spiked, these companies simply passed on those extremely high prices on to their customers.
And so, the real question here is: What on Earth were regulators thinking in allowing households to sign up for these types of predatory plans? We’ve seen this with credit cards and with payday lenders and with home mortgages. Energy is the same type of thing, where we are seeing, in these deregulated environments, unscrupulous companies preying on their assumption that households will not understand or read the fine print. And it’s unreasonable to expect people to understand what’s going to be happening with wholesale prices. Sophisticated Wall Street energy traders wouldn’t even sign up their own families for this type of plan, because they understand the risk. So, I think, first and foremost, as we move forward to try to understand how all this happened, the first thing that Texas needs to do is to ban these types of predatory practices, so that households are not exposed to these high prices.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I —
TYSON SLOCUM: I think the second thing we need to do — yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Tyson, if I can, I just want to bring Akilah Scott-Amos into the conversation again. Akilah, what did you know about the ways that these prices could go up, and this whole system of them taking money out of your accounts, not at the end of the month, but apparently on a rolling basis?
AKILAH SCOTT-AMOS: Right. You know, I understood how a wholesale scenario works, and I understand that it works well in a stable market. And the market here has been stable, because, you know, they’re in charge. And so, they should definitely have some type of stop trigger, stop loss trigger, in there, the same way that they do with anything else, so that — for short time, so that we don’t get hit on the short end of the stick. It’s just not right. They failed. They failed.
AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible] Does this mean you won’t have to pay, or they’re just putting off your payment? They won’t cut off your electricity or your energy?
AKILAH SCOTT-AMOS: Right now it means that, yeah, I don’t have to pay right now. They’re not going to cut me off. But we will see how long that goes. I know Governor Abbott is talking with ERCOT in order to arrange something. But, I mean, I don’t have any problems with paying. I have no problems with paying my fair share. But this is not fair.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Akilah Scott-Amos, we want to thank you for being with us. We would have said you were one of the lucky Texans who didn’t lose electricity, but instead your electricity bill jumped almost $5,000 overnight. And, Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, thanks so much for being with us.
When we come back, we look at what happened in Texas’s prisons and jails. Stay with us.
Mike Lindell. (photo: VICE)
Mike Lindell Just Got Sued for $1.3 Billion Over Election Conspiracies
Paul Blest, VICE
Blest writes: "A spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems said last month that Mike Lindell was 'begging to be sued, and at some point, we may well oblige him.' This week, they did just that."
READ MORE
Policing in America. (photo: Christina Animashaun/Vox)
Now Is the Time to Revolutionize Policing
Sean Collins, Vox
Collins writes: "The BREATHE Act is a bold plan to address police violence - and it's made for this moment."
onica Simpson grew up with a front-row seat to police harassment in North Carolina.
“It was in this rural town, where the cops were brutal and felt like they ran the entire town,” Simpson said. “The cops were constantly harassing young Black men and boys in our community.”
One day, as she sat on her porch with her cousin and sister, she watched police accost a group of men who often met at a community gathering spot nearby. It quickly escalated, and all of a sudden, both the men and the officers were running toward Simpson’s house, a police dog in tow.
“We were trapped on my front porch, you know, by this police dog, and by these police officers. And my cousins [were] trying to fight for their own lives, and also protect us.”
A white officer then pulled out a tube and pointed it at her. Simpson said she wasn’t sure what it was at first, but as soon as the chemicals hit her face, she realized it was pepper spray. “And so here we are on our front porch, which is where we’re supposed to be safe in our home, and we weren’t, you know. We were violated.”
Simpson was 11 years old at the time.
What Simpson experienced is all too common for Black children in America. In late January, a 9-year-old in Rochester, New York, was in the midst of what her mother has described as a mental health crisis when police handcuffed her and put her in a police car.
In body camera footage, the girl can be seen crying, begging for her father. “You said you were going to pepper-spray me! No! Please! Stop!” she says to the officers.
But the police don’t stop. “Just spray her at this point,” an officer says.
“When I saw the story of the 9-year-old little girl, I just immediately ... I felt it all over again,” Simpson, who is now the executive director of the reproductive justice organization SisterSong, said. “It’s a feeling that you just don’t forget, the pain and the smell and the feeling of that. My heart was pained that another young Black girl, like myself, like I was back in the day, is still having to deal with police brutality in this way.”
These incidents happen so frequently that violence against another Black girl — a 16-year-old in Florida — went viral just days before the Rochester body cam video did.
Police killings remain all too common as well. They spurred last summer’s worldwide racial justice protests, but in the months since, hundreds have lost their lives at the hands of police. In January alone, 70 people were killed by police, according to the Washington Post, a number that February appears on track to match. And Black people continue to be killed at a disproportionate rate: Of the police victims for whom race is known, at least 14 of those killed in January were Black — or at least 20 percent, although Black Americans make up only 13 percent of the population. According to Mapping Police Violence, police killed 233 Black Americans in 2020, slightly down from the 277 Black Americans killed in 2019.
The violence police inflict on Black Americans goes beyond those directly affected like Simpson. There is the emotional trauma of seeing one’s relative beaten or cuffed arbitrarily, the grief that comes with losing a loved one to a prison cell. And there is also the psychological terror created by seeing police brutality — it hangs over Black Americans, aware that police could turn on them or their loved ones at any time.
“I think that’s the thing that keeps me up at night,” Simpson said. “Worrying about my nephews, or the young girls in my family or in my community, coming in contact with a police officer that doesn’t see them as human, that doesn’t see them as a person, as a young person, as a child.”
No one should feel this fear. Change is necessary.
While there has been some change at the local level — in Denver, Colorado, health care professionals have begun responding to mental health emergencies as part of a pilot program — new policy must be set at the federal level. Doing this would mean one policing standard, and the same limits on brutality, for all Americans.
There are a number of proposals that might achieve this aim. One that would bring particularly sweeping change is the BREATHE Act, a plan written by activists at the Movement for Black Lives and backed by progressive Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Its central premise is that policing can only be fixed by addressing a range of systemic problems, and posits that state and local governments can be incentivized to contend with these issues through financial aid.
“BREATHE is a bill that invests,” Essie Justice Group founder and executive director Gina Clayton-Johnson, who led the creation of the BREATHE Act, told me. “It’s about making sure that states and local places have what they need in order to provide for the safety of their communities. And we divest from the very things that have been harming and stand as an impediment to safety.”
Those divestment include defunding large swaths of the federal law enforcement apparatus, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Measures such as these have been rejected by Republicans and Democrats alike as too radical. But a problem as deep-rooted and damaging as policing requires a radical solution — one that does not just reform police departments but rethinks them.
As Simpson told me, “Whenever there are people out here wearing these uniforms that don’t see Black people in this country as the human beings that we are, or Black children as the children that they are, that’s a hard thing to reform.”
Policing has been a problem for centuries. Reforming it has been difficult.
Policing and terror have historically gone hand in hand for Black Americans.
A progenitor of the modern US police, slave patrols, was used to ensure Black Americans could not escape the cruel conditions or social and economic exploitation of slavery. After emancipation, targeted laws led to sentences in forced work gangs. Later, a nationwide campaign of lynchings and general racial terror went largely unchecked — and was sometimes participated in — by police officers. More recently, demands to end police brutality, the disproportionate detainment of Americans of color, and police killings have gone unheard.
That this situation has gone unremedied has not been for a lack of trying. Abolitionists argued against slave patrols, and activists like W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Angela Davis called for prison reforms, for ending work gangs and stopping lynching. Protesters throughout the 20th century demanded an end to police killings, and police brutality more broadly. But the response was often muted. Prison labor remains a problem; lynching still is not a federal crime. Sweeping federal action has been, to put it lightly, elusive.
As the Congressional Research Service points out, “the U.S. Constitution established a federal government of limited powers. A general police power is not among them.”
The federal government can set some standards for state and local departments to abide by, and already has broad powers to protect citizens from misconduct. For instance, the Congressional Research Service points out that it’s “a federal crime to willfully deprive a person of his or her constitutional rights while acting under color of law,” and that the Justice Department can investigate repeated abuses of “rights ... secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
But the Justice Department has not always used its investigative ability; recently, its will to do so has waxed and waned depending on the occupant of the White House. Barack Obama’s administration was bullish about investigation and DOJ oversight, launching 25 inquiries, while Donald Trump’s team was dismissive of it, beginning just one. President Joe Biden has indicated plans to reverse Trump-era policy, again encouraging the Justice Department to look into patterns of abuse.
But the power for true broad change sits in Congress. That body has the ability to expand the DOJ’s oversight role, and to levy new requirements on state and local law enforcement. Given its control of spending, Congress can also attempt to influence behavior through financial incentives — and it’s this power the BREATHE Act turns upon to advance state and local police reform.
A proposal for reform through divestment in federal agencies — and reinvestment in communities
“Very little policy that I’ve read, very few pieces of legislation, has actually inspired me, because most legislation kind of limits itself to just pragmatism,” Melina Abdullah, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, told me. “What we have with the BREATHE Act is really a visionary piece of legislation that says now is the time to reimagine public safety.”
The premise of the BREATHE Act is that a breadth of solutions is needed to stop police terror — ranging from economic investment to new programs focused on serving those affected by police misconduct — and that these initiatives must be paid for by defunding a number of federal law enforcement initiatives. To encourage state and local reform, the act lays out a range of grants and financial incentives.
“The BREATHE Act is approaching not the tip of the iceberg, but the iceberg itself,” Clayton-Johnson told me. “It’s looking at what is it that has allowed for us to live in a society in which these horrific events can take place on such a regular basis, where there’s such a high level of state violence that is happening.”
The proposal takes a broad approach, with sections addressing the racial wealth gap, inequities in education, immigration policy, and affordable housing, among other issues. With respect to policing, the act proposes defunding — and in some cases, abolishing — some federal law enforcement agencies.
For instance, the proposal would end federal initiatives known as Programs 1033 and 1122, which allow for the transfer of military equipment to police, and for state and local governments to go through federal sources to buy supplies for anti-drug work, respectively. As CNBC has reported, departments have received roughly $7.4 billion worth of military equipment through program 1033 alone.
Outside of demilitarization, the proposal would also eliminate some direct payments sent to state and local governments, like the $61 million the Trump administration set aside in May 2020 to expand state, local, and federal law enforcement forces in seven cities with large minority populations “caught in the grips of violent actors.”
Ultimately, federal law enforcement under the BREATHE Act would look radically different than it does currently. For instance, the proposal calls for no longer funding many of the agencies tasked with carrying out the “war on drugs,” including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the DOJ’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section. This federal policy is often seen as having increased the police scrutiny and incarceration of people of color — 43 percent of Black people incarcerated federally as of September 2019 were imprisoned for drug offenses; according to an analysis by the NAACP, 33 percent of Americans incarcerated for drug crimes are Black, despite only about 5 percent of drug users being Black.
The act would also eliminate the Justice Department’s anti-gang groups, close parts of the FBI, and abolish large swaths of the Department of Homeland Security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Denaturalization Task Force.
To address the toll policing has taken on communities of color, the plan would enact a number of restorative federal policies, including, among many other things:
- Abolishing qualified immunity, which protects government officials (like police) from lawsuits
- Ending “pay only” probation, which makes those on probation responsible for the costs of their supervision — while relaxing probation criteria
- Eliminating mandatory minimum sentences
- Creating a baby bonds program to close the wealth gap
- Guaranteeing all of the formerly incarcerated the right to vote in federal elections
- Studying reparations
- Working toward prison abolition
The BREATHE Act calls for using the money saved from reducing the federal law enforcement apparatus to fund federal offices focused on supporting youth and survivors of violence, and would go to Native governments and programming meant to promote “non-putative” justice system reforms.
Many of the activists I spoke with said that stripping these federal groups of their funding is essential to reform because they have proven too harmful to Black Americans; instead, they argue, it is better to, as the BREATHE Act suggests, create a new public safety system.
“We can’t keep building on a system that is broken,” Simpson said. “This is the time for us to look at legislation like the BREATHE Act that does call for more radical and revolutionary ways of dealing with this crisis that we are in the midst of in this country.”
Reimagining local policing begins with grants and incentives
The BREATHE Act’s changes would apply only at the federal level; it would not bring sweeping change to state and local policing immediately upon passage. But Clayton-Johnson noted that the proposal was designed with this reality in mind. The BREATHE Act includes federal grants and incentives meant to encourage, and provide resources to, state and local governments to make changes that mirror those that BREATHE would enact on the federal level.
These grants would be made available to state and local governments willing to pursue jail and prison closures, alternative public safety departments, and demilitarizing. Money would also be put aside for governments to dissolve departments accused of a “pattern of misconduct,” for those that repeal rules that shield officers from disciplinary action, that make allegations and complaints against officers public, and that abolish officer bills of rights. And it could be used both for “paying reparations to individuals who have been the victims of police misconduct” and to further invest in programs that provide alternatives to policing.
Clayton-Johnson acknowledged that these grants and incentives — although designed to be attractive and accessible — won’t be pursued by all state and local governments, just as many states rejected the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, despite the federal government’s offer to cover 90 percent of costs for those states willing to expand the program.
To safeguard against this reality, the proposal does three things. First, it creates separate grants and incentive programs for state and local governments. That way, if state-level officials are opposed to reform but local officials want to make changes, those local officials can apply for grants (or receive incentives) unilaterally. The opposite is also true — county officials might block reform, but state officials could engage with state-level benefits to work around that.
Second, it empowers activists and community organizers to continue their advocacy regardless of their local political reality, by providing money for initiatives on overcoming trauma, violence reduction, post-incarceration life, public safety, and expanded access to housing.
Programs such as these work to attack factors that have been found to lead to increased police violence, such as housing segregation, and to reduce the need for police — a 2017 study from the American Institutes of Research, for instance, found community-based youth enrichment programs led to 5 to 5.7 fewer victims of violence ages 14 to 24 per 100,000 people per month. Beyond being a resource for continuing community activism, these grants could also be used to lobby state and local officials resistant to reform for change.
Finally, it provides grants and incentives for reforms in areas that do not necessarily seem connected to policing on their face — such as inequities in education, internet access, health care, transportation, and housing — but that can contribute to overpolicing and increases in the carceral state. Governments do not have to change their policing practices to be eligible for this money, but meeting the requirements would likely reduce contact with officers; for example, the education grants could be used for a range of student support and violence reduction services that could take the place of police officers in schools.
Ultimately, the BREATHE Act is an ambitious proposal that goes far beyond the reforms that lawmakers began discussing in the wake of 2020’s nationwide civil rights protests. And, as it requires defunding law enforcement, it demands enacting reforms most lawmakers — of both parties — have said they are uncomfortable with.
But many activists argue that by remaining in their comfort zones, lawmakers are placing Black Americans in a dangerous position. The BREATHE Act was created to push the envelope, and to try to move the Overton window — the range of ideas considered feasible, or at least worthy of serious consideration and debate — toward sweeping reform. Many activists I spoke to acknowledged that support for the policies included in the BREATHE Act is limited at the moment, but said that did not mean it should be read only as an aspirational document.
“We’re going to have to do some education around why we don’t have time to tinker around the edges of a policing system that puts targets on the backs of black people,” Abdullah said. “We don’t have time to say, you know, we’re gonna think about it, we’re gonna put Band-Aids on it, we’re gonna make temporary fixes. Now is the time to be bold and courageous.”
There’s reason to be hopeful about federal police reform, but challenges remain
It will certainly take great effort to make the reforms in the BREATHE Act a reality. But there have been suggestions that police reform of some sort may be possible now that Democrats control both Congress and the White House.
Biden has promised to focus on enacting a range of reforms, including some featured in the BREATHE Act, such as the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences and the expansion of social service programs. He has rejected defunding law enforcement, but many activists see him as more willing to alter policing policy than his predecessor.
Democratic congressional leaders have signaled plans to quickly pursue reform, but on more limited terms: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer recently announced plans to for an early March vote on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was introduced in the last Congress and would force state governments to report all use of force incidents to the Justice Department.
That act would bring about significant change — from ending qualified immunity to expanding collection of policing data to banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants at the federal level — but would offer little incentive for state and local reforms, and in general falls far short of the sweeping change proposed by the BREATHE Act, leaving many activists concerned that, should it pass, the legislation would not significantly reduce police violence.
Simpson argues that politicians should not be afraid to make radical changes, given “the ways that our folks have been voting” and “the ways that people have been showing out and showing up whenever there is an injustice.”
Lawmakers do appear to be facing more constituent pressure to take on police reform than ever before. Throughout the country, police reform ballot initiatives saw broad success during the 2020 election, and polling done during the height of 2020’s civil rights protests found most Americans believe police need to make changes to ensure all Americans are treated equally.
Those demonstrations brought many Americans who had never protested before into activism. They also further galvanized reformers long working to end police violence, giving new strength and coordination to the activist movement, Clayton-Johnson said.
“Our Movement for Black Lives and all of our allies are clear, and are stronger than we have ever been,” Clayton-Johnson said. “We’re incredibly organized and incredibly motivated to push in this moment.”
That organization has paid off, she said, in creating among both the public and lawmakers “a deep level of sophisticated understanding about what it is going to take for Black people to be safe.”
It’s all these things together — a civil rights movement that has the support of most Americans, the continued work of national and local activists, and having a party in power that has made policing reform a priority, as well as constant graphic and tragic examples of the scale of the problem — that make for a unique moment in which it feels possible to bring about reform that would truly improve the lives of Americans of color, particularly Black Americans.
To waste such a rare opportunity would be foolish.
President Nicolas Maduro delivers a virtual speech, Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 22, 2021. (photo: Twitter/CancilleriaVE)
Venezuela Lost Over $30 Billion Due to the US Blockade
teleSUR
Excerpt: "At the 46th session of the United Nations, Human Rights Council held on Monday, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro repudiated the unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union on his country and recalled that they have contributed to exhausting the epidemiological crisis."
President Maduro denounced the continuous attacks against his country and recalled that those resources could have been used to fight the pandemic.
"The U.S. has applied over 450 unilateral coercive measures, which have caused economic damages for over US$30 billion, which could have been used to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and achieve better living standards for Venezuelans," said Maduro.
His statements were previously backed up by United Nations Human Rights expert Alena Douhan, who recently visited Venezuela and rendered a report on the negative impact of U.S. sanctions on this South American nation.
Although the U.S. blockade is a major obstacle in the fight against COVID-19, Venezuela has managed so far to keep the virus transmission under control.
Besides recognizing the importance of the World Health Organization (WHO) to face the global pandemic, the Venezuelan President ratified multilateral approaches are the most effective solution to overcome it since it is a problem that equally affects everyone.
Therefore, Maduro called on world leaders to join forces and put aside selfish and individualist behaviors when addressing the COVID-19 vaccine distribution.
As of Monday morning, Venezuela had reported 136,068 COVID-19 cases and 1,316 related deaths.
Electric cars. (photo: Grist/3dgoksu/Dan Reynolds Photography/Getty Images)
How to Ensure Electric Cars Aren't Just for Rich People
Maria Gallucci, Grist
Gallucci writes: "Two big roadblocks keep many drivers from ditching their gas-burning vehicles: the lack of home garages and shared spaces to charge batteries, and the cost of buying a new car, electric or otherwise."
n late January, General Motors announced a pledge to only sell electric vehicles by 2035 and make roughly 30 different models of automobile without a traditional combustion engine. A week later, Ford revealed it was pouring more than $20 billion into its EV program and that it would only offer electric cars in Europe by 2030. By 2025, Jaguar will become an all-electric luxury line of cars. Meanwhile, Tesla, the world’s biggest EV maker, is building a massive factory near Austin, Texas, where it will build not just sedans and trucks but also, potentially, the batteries.
As automakers ramp up EV production, U.S. car buyers are increasingly making the switch themselves. With more than a dozen new electric cars and SUVs set to hit U.S. showrooms this year, sales are poised to reach record levels in 2021, industry analysts say.
That’s driving state agencies, electric utilities, and startups to install thousands more EV charging stations in public places so that drivers can get around without running out of juice. Chargers are popping up in office building garages, retail outlet parking lots, highway corridors, and apartment complexes.
The challenge is figuring out how to make these accessible to everyone.
In California, for instance, low-income communities on average have the fewest total chargers per capita, while high-income communities have the most, a recent state assessment found. In some cases, the chargers in low-income areas are primarily used not by residents but commuters, who might top off their Teslas on their way to another part of town.
This imbalance largely reflects the current market: Private charging companies build stations where electric cars are likely to circulate, not in places with limited EV adoption. So as the EV industry enters a likely boom phase, efforts are accelerating to ensure that all drivers can join the transition to zero-carbon transportation. Advocacy groups and government agencies nationwide are working to close gaps in existing EV programs, which have broadly struggled to reach both people in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.
“A lot of subsidies and market incentives have catered to the ‘early adopters,’ the people who can afford this technology,” said Leslie Aguayo of the Greenlining Institute, a racial and economic justice group in Oakland, California. “We want the focus to be on the frontline, hard-to-reach communities that are most impacted by poverty and pollution, not the folks that already have income and are getting Teslas.”
Aguayo manages Greenlining’s environmental equity program, which mainly works in California to shape and study electric transportation policies. Along with curbing carbon dioxide emissions, EVs have other more immediate benefits, she said. Battery-powered cars are generally cheaper to operate than internal combustion engines, due to lower fueling and maintenance costs. And electric vehicles don’t emit any of the toxic tailpipe pollutants that disproportionately affect poorer people and people of color.
Yet two big roadblocks keep many drivers from ditching their gas-burning vehicles: the lack of home garages and shared spaces to charge batteries, and the cost of buying a new car, electric or otherwise.
California has more than 650,000 battery-powered cars on its roads today, and millions more are expected to join them in coming years. The state is currently working to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — creating an urgent need to expand charging infrastructure across the state.
Last fall, the California Energy Commission, or CEC, said it would spend $384 million over three years to begin filling the equity gaps regarding the locations of battery charging stations, along with building refueling stations for cars that run on hydrogen gas. About half that investment is focused on building EV chargers within low-income communities — particularly at or near multifamily dwellings.
The funding is meant to serve areas that the private sector won’t, including rural regions, said Patty Monahan, CEC’s lead commissioner for transportation in Sacramento. Some individual EV charging stations may never pencil out financially for their operators, but they’re still needed in order to connect more people to the larger network. “Ultimately, we want it to be easier to refuel an electric vehicle than to refuel a conventional vehicle,” Monahan said.
California isn’t alone in its effort. In New York, a $750 million program is underway to create more than 50,000 charging stations statewide, with about a quarter of that funding set aside for low-income communities. Ohio’s largest utility, AEP, is providing $10 million in incentives to offset some of the cost of installing EV chargers at apartment buildings, workplaces, and local government buildings; about 10 percent of stations will be in limited-income areas. Colorado regulators recently approved Xcel Energy’s $110 million plan for transportation electrification, which includes adding 20,000 charging stations by 2023. The utility will also offer enhanced rebates for low-income customers and “higher-emission” communities that want to install EV charging equipment or purchase vehicles.
Nationwide, the number of public charging stations still falls “significantly short” of what’s needed to meet the projected demand for 15 million light-duty EVs in 2030, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory said in a recent report. But the infrastructure build-out is actually surpassing current charging demand, and nearly 100,000 public and workplace EV chargers are available, according to the latest count by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fueling Station Locator.
Abby Brown, who leads the station locator, said the database doesn’t currently specify if charging stations are installed in low-income census tracts. But researchers are exploring whether to add such capabilities. The locator can be used to help planners “determine where charging infrastructure isn’t available, but might be needed to serve the public and underserved communities,” Brown said.
Locating charging stations in lower-income and rural areas only solves the fueling issue. In Seattle, Elizabeth Escobar is working to help democratize EV adoption.
Escobar is the chief business officer at Express Credit Union, a nonprofit financial cooperative. In August 2019, her team launched an EV loan program in partnership with the national advocacy group Plug In America. Express’s “fair financing” loans offer lower interest rates for electric models purchases versus those for standard autos loans. People with lower credit scores can borrow money for EVs without making big down payments. And, importantly, the loan programs applies to both new and used models.
“We really feel that owning an EV will benefit our members financially,” Escobar said. She noted that used electric cars in the area go for around $10,000 — nearly one-fourth of the price of a new electric sedan.
So far, the credit union has issued nine EV loans. However, none have gone to people from lower-income backgrounds, and Escobar said the program has struggled to draw interest in general. She speculates that might be because people aren’t aware of the potential cost savings, can’t navigate English-language materials, or assume that only wealthy people can own EVs. The COVID-19 outbreak thwarted last year’s plans to host test-driving events, but her team has hosted webinars in English and Spanish to promote the loans.
Escobar said she’s undeterred. With President Joe Biden promising to increase federal EV incentives, and with new models hitting the road, more credit union members might soon decide to participate. “We’ll be here ready,” she said.
Aguayo of the Greenlining Institute stressed that electric car ownership is only one piece of building a cleaner, more equitable transportation system.
For some communities, public investments in pedestrian-friendly sidewalks or bike lanes might serve a more immediate need than battery charging stations, she said. Other areas could benefit more from well-run fleets of battery-powered buses, or from car-sharing models that allow many people to use the same electric car. Electrifying freight trucks and other medium- to heavy-duty vehicles will have the greatest impact on eliminating toxic tailpipe pollution, even if gas-guzzling passenger cars continue to circulate.
“It’s not just about replacing internal combustion engines with EVs,” Aguayo said. “It’s about, ‘How do you holistically create a transportation system that works for the community?’”
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