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21 February 21
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RSN: Harvey Wasserman | The Once-Proud New Yorker Soils Itself in Radioactive Offal
Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "Graced by its signature brand of droll, sophisticated cartooning, the magazine's exquisitely edited screeds have reliably delivered profound analyses of the world's most pressing issues. But in a breathless, amateurish pursuit of atomic energy, the editorial staff has leapt into a sad sinkhole of radioactive mediocracy."
or decades, The New Yorker has set a high bar for journalistic excellence.But in a breathless, amateurish pursuit of atomic energy, the editorial staff has leapt into a sad sinkhole of radioactive mediocracy.
The latest is Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow’s shallow, shoddy “Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power,” yet another tedious plea that we learn to love the Peaceful Atom.
For at least a century, countless scientific pioneers have exposed the murderous realities of nuclear radiation. Legendary researchers like Marie Curie, Alice Stewart, Rosalie Bertell, Helen Caldicott, John Gofman, Ernest Sternglass, Thomas Mancuso, Karl Z. Morgan, Samuel Epstein, Robert Alvarez, Arnie Gundersen, Amory Lovins, and others have issued vital warnings.
In Pavlovian opposition, the industry has rolled out an endless array of amateur “environmentalists” whose activist credentials are distinguished only by an endless love for atomic power.
Most infamous are Greenpeace veteran Patrick Moore and Berkeley-based Michael Shellenberger, both climate skeptics who share a theatrical passion for uninspected, uninsured nukes. With no credible scientific credentials, this unholy pair has conjured imaginative advocacies for companion corporate embarrassments like genetically modified food, clear-cut deforestation, and more.
With far more prestige, climate pioneer Dr. James Hanson and Whole Earth Catalogue founder Stewart Brand have brought significant gravitas to the nuclear debate.
But The New Yorker dotes on two workers at California’s Diablo Canyon. Neither is a scientist. Both claim to be “environmentalists.” One wears a lavender pendant made of uranium glass which “emits a near-negligible amount” of radiation, despite a huge body of scientific evidence warning this is a literally insane thing to do – especially for someone who might be around small children.
The writer lauds her heroines for calling themselves “Mothers for Nuclear” while snubbing legendary “Mothers for Peace” activists who’ve organized locally for a half-century. While touring Diablo with her new best friends, the author coos that “we smiled as if we were at Disneyland.”
Such “Nuclear Renaissance” absurdities are very old news.
Given The New Yorker’s stellar history, we might expect a meaningful, in-depth exploration of today’s core atomic realities: no more big reactors will be built in the US, and our 90+ old plants are in deep, dangerous disarray.
Forbes long ago branded atomic power “the largest managerial failure in US history.” America’s very last two reactors (at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle) sucked up $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees from Barack Obama plus $3.7 billion more from Donald Trump. Years behind schedule, Vogtle’s final price tag (if it ever opens) will exceed $30 billion.
South Carolina’s engineering and legal morass at V.C. Summer wasted more than $10 billion on two failed reactors. In Ohio, $61 million in utility bribes for a massive nuke bailout have shattered the state.
As for alternatives, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow says, “nuclear scientists, for their part, are working on smaller, more nimble nuclear reactors. There are complex economic considerations, which are inseparable from policy.”
In other words, the proposed Small Modular Reactors are already so clearly uncompetitive that only obsessive pro-nukers (like Bill Gates) think they’ll hold market value against wind and solar (which The New Yorker attacks).
Precisely as ice storms froze feedwater pipes and shut one of two reactors at the South Texas Nuclear Plant, the magazine falsely claims that atomic reactors do “not depend on particular weather conditions to operate.” Globally-warmed rivers can no longer reliably cool many French reactors. Earthquakes have dangerously damaged US-designed nukes in Ohio and Virginia. Intake pipes at Diablo and other coastal plants are vulnerable to tsunami surges. Staggering design and construction flaws (a major Diablo component was once installed backwards; boric acid ate through key parts of Ohio’s Davis-Besse) give the entire industry a Keystone Kops/Rube Goldberg aura.
Tuhus-Dubrow skims the waste issue. Dry casks at Diablo and elsewhere are generally less than an inch thick. They can’t be re-opened for inspection or maintenance, and are already cracking (more-versatile German casks are 19 inches thick).
With an average age of well over 30, US reactors face dangerous decay. After four years of Trump, and even longer as a corrupt rubber stamp, the infamously dysfunctional Nuclear Regulatory Commission has left these collapsing, uninsured jalopies virtually unregulated and uninspected.
Tuhus-Dubrow ignores the fact that (unlike Disneyland) Diablo Unit One was long ago reported to be severely embrittled. That means critical components could shatter like glass if flooded to contain a meltdown. Ensuing Chernobyl-scale steam and hydrogen explosions would spread apocalyptic radiation throughout the ecosphere.
Despite a petition signed by more than 2,000 Californians and key Hollywood A-listers, Gov. Gavin Newsom refuses to inspect Diablo’s decayed reactors.
The New Yorker says smoke coming from huge northern California fires dimmed solar panels. But those fires were caused by the gross incompetence, neglect, and mismanagement of the twice-bankrupt Pacific Gas & Electric, which runs Diablo.
PG&E is a federal felon, convicted for killing scores of Californians in avoidable explosions and fires. Tuhus-Dubrow simply ignores such slipshod mismanagement, which could prove catastrophic at a nuke as old as Diablo.
Overall, the nuke power debate has long since transcended random, folksy industry devotees who like to label themselves “green.” No serious analyst argues that, after the fiscal fiascos at V.C. Summer and Plant Vogtle, any big new reactors will ever be built in the US. Small ones are cost-prohibitive pipe dreams, especially as wind, solar, battery and LED/efficiency technologies continue to advance.
The question of how long America’s 90+ jalopy nukes can run until the next one explodes remains unanswered ... and utterly terrifying.
Somehow, the revered New Yorker has polluted its pages with a pro-nuke fantasy while missing this most critical atomic issue.
Let’s hope it corrects the deficiency before the next Chernobyl lays waste to our own nation.
Harvey Wasserman’s Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.solatopia.org, along with The People’s Spiral of US History. He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zoom on Mondays, 5 p.m. EST, via www.electionprotection2024.org
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Joe Biden. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Democrats Are Planning at Least Another $2 Trillion in Stimulus Spending
Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider
Zeballos-Roig writes:
emocrats are on course to approve $1.9 trillion in emergency pandemic spending within the next month. It would be yet another large infusion of federal aid only months after Congress passed a $900 billion aid package in December.
But Democrats show few signs of hitting the brakes anytime soon on federal spending. Instead, President Joe Biden is indicating he may press his foot on the gas and shrug off the growing federal debt.
"In order to grow the economy a year or two, three, and four down the line, we can't spend too much," Biden said on Tuesday during a CNN town hall. "Now is the time we should be spending. Now is the time to go big."
It's a remarkable split for Democrats a decade after the Great Recession. Confronted with the worst economic downturn in generations, President Barack Obama enacted an $800 billion stimulus package in February 2009. Many economists and Democrats now say it was inadequate to address the fallout of the financial crisis.
Previous efforts in Congress on infrastructure legislation collapsed during President Donald Trump's term. Now, Democrats are in the early stages of a sprawling effort that could encompass jobs, climate change, and energy. They appear emboldened by the Federal Reserve promising to keep borrowing costs low for the near future. Fed Chair Jerome Powell also recently called for a "society-wide commitment" to recover lost jobs.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Md.), vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee, told Insider that House Democratic leaders discussed a follow-up package this week with at least $2 trillion in further spending.
"I think the number one priority for the White House and Congress will be to build the climate initiatives we've so much wanted into an infrastructure bill," Beyer said in an interview. "The second big thing would be accessible, affordable broadband in rural America and lower-income, urban America."
The mass blackouts in Texas caused by an Arctic winter storm may add momentum to Democrats urging a major plan to revamp the nation's infrastructure. Some senior Democrats are starting to press for wide-ranging legislation that comes with tax increases on the wealthy and large businesses. "The catastrophe in Texas has underscored the urgent need to address the climate crisis and rebuild our infrastructure," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement to Insider. "In the recovery package, my priorities will be making these critical investments by ensuring the wealthy and mega-corporations pay their fair share."
Wyden added he would introduce proposals next month to remake the energy tax code and boost clean-energy manufacturing. He also said it was an "an opportunity to undo years of neglect" of roads, highways, and bridges by putting people to work repairing them.
"The past week has hopefully reminded all of my Republican colleagues that there's no escaping the effects of climate change and broken infrastructure," Wyden said.
"Historic investments in infrastructure"
The follow-up economic proposal after the Democratic rescue package will differ in two significant ways. The first is instead of delivering immediate relief to families and struggling businesses, the plan will be directed at sparking long-term economic growth.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday that Biden's plan "will make historic investments in infrastructure - in the auto industry, in transit, in the power sector - creating millions of good union jobs, and in the process, also addressing the climate crisis head-on."
The second is Democrats are expected to try and finance permanent parts of the initiative through new taxes instead of deficit spending to offset its addition to the national debt. Last year, Congress and President Trump approved $4 trillion in relief spending to put the economy on life-support and stem the rate of coronavirus infections.
Beyer, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said he believed many Democratic members of the panel "would really prefer there be a pay-for." The committee held a hearing early last year on funding infrastructure and one possible method under discussion at the time was raising the gas tax, a step not taken since 1993.
Biden administration officials say they are still hammering out the plan's details. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a CNBC interview on Thursday that tax hikes on wealthy Americans and corporations would form part of the bill, though they would be gradually implemented.
It's unclear how much of a package would be covered with new sources of revenue, though up to half is a possibility. During his presidential run, Biden signaled he was open to a 0.1% financial transactions tax on the selling and trading of stocks and bonds. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates such a tax could raise $777 billion in revenue over ten years.
"We can't have a repeat of their COVID bill"
Democrats are grappling with difficult math over the next two years. They control the evenly-divided Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tie-breaking vote.
Should they use reconciliation to bypass Republicans, Democrats cannot afford any defections - a steep climb given wide differences in views on how aggressively the federal government should move to tackle the climate crisis, create shovel-ready jobs, and levy taxes.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) last month said he supported up to $4 trillion in infrastructure spending. A conservative Democrat, Manchin's support will likely prove critical to the success of Democratic legislation. There are Republicans who support upgrading American infrastructure, making a path to a bipartisan deal possible. But drawing 10 Senate Republican votes could lead to difficult trade-offs some Democrats view as unacceptable.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), part of a Republican working group that pitched a $618 billion stimulus plan to Biden last month, said any infrastructure measure must be restrained in size and scope.
"We can't have a repeat of their COVID bill," Cassidy said in a statement to Insider. "To be successful, any action on infrastructure must be targeted spending and focused on real needs like expanding access to broadband in rural areas and fixing our crumbling bridges."
Other Republicans said they were reluctant to support a infrastructure plan carrying a major price tag.
"The main thing is that I want to be careful," Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma told Capitol Hill reporters after a White House meeting with Biden on the issue earlier this month. "When you're working on infrastructure, that's high dollars."
The hesitation from Republicans clashes with Democrats eager to embark on robust federal spending - and wield the full power of their control of Congress and the White House.
"We're only going to get a limited amount of bites at the reconciliation apple," Beyer told Insider. "Now that we have Chuck Schumer running the Senate, Joe Biden as president, and a 2022 election that will be very contested, we better use our legislative power while we have it."
Alex Jones joins supporters of President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 12. (photo: Evelyn Hockstein/WP)
US Investigating Possible Ties Between Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Capitol Rioters
Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett, The Washington Post
he Justice Department and FBI are investigating whether high-profile right-wing figures — including Roger Stone and Alex Jones — may have played a role in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach as part of a broader look into the mind-set of those who committed violence and their apparent paths to radicalization, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The investigation into potential ties between key figures in the riot and those who promoted former president Donald Trump’s false assertions that the election was stolen from him does not mean those who may have influenced rioters will face criminal charges, particularly given U.S. case law surrounding incitement and free speech, the people said. Officials at this stage said they are principally seeking to understand what the rioters were thinking — and who may have influenced beliefs — which could be critical to showing their intentions at trial.
However, investigators also want to determine whether anyone who influenced them bears enough responsibility to justify potential criminal charges, such as conspiracy or aiding the effort, the officials said. That prospect is still distant and uncertain, they emphasized.
Nevertheless, while Trump’s impeachment trial focused on the degree of his culpability for the violence, this facet of the case shows investigators’ ongoing interest in other individuals who never set foot in the Capitol but may have played an outsized role in what happened there through their influence, networks or action.
“We are investigating potential ties between those physically involved in the attack on the Capitol and individuals who may have influenced them, such as Roger Stone, Alex Jones and [Stop the Steal organizer] Ali Alexander,” said a U.S. official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a pending matter.
Stone is a longtime adviser to Trump, while Jones is a radio and web-streaming host behind Infowars.com. Both are frequent purveyors of conspiracy theories: Stone wrote a book suggesting Lyndon B. Johnson was behind John F. Kennedy’s assassination; Jones has spread and retracted claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a “hoax.”
All three amplified and intensified Trump’s incendiary claims that the 2020 election was illegitimate in the weeks leading up to the riot. But Stone and Alexander have directly credited each other with inspiring and planning the pro-Trump Stop the Steal campaign, with Alexander saying he came up with the idea and helped organize the Jan. 6 rally that drew Trump supporters to Washington. Stone and Jones also promoted the extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and had preexisting business or personal ties with members the government has charged with coordinating and planning certain parts of the breach or with violence at an earlier Trump rally, records and documents show.
A key task for prosecutors and agents is to sift through the multitude of motives and intentions of the roughly 800 people in the mob that descended upon the Capitol — from those who came as individuals drawn to the idea of derailing Joe Biden’s presidency before it began, to those who allegedly began organizing immediately after the election to show up in Washington in large numbers to use force to try to keep Trump in power.
The U.S. official and others familiar with the investigation cautioned that the role of firebrands like Stone and Jones may be important mostly to painting a complete picture of that day’s events, regardless of whether they ultimately rise to the level of conspiracy or other crimes.
Stone and Jones helped promote Trump’s false reelection fraud claims and earlier rallies in Washington and participated in pro-Trump events Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, but each has denied intending anything beyond peaceful protest.
Shortly after the riot, Jones said on Infowars that he was invited by the White House on about Jan. 3 to “lead the march” to the Capitol, and that he paid nearly $500,000, mostly donated, to help organize the event on the Ellipse.
Jones promoted the event vigorously, called for one million marchers and told his viewers on Jan. 1, “Roger Stone spent some substantial time with Trump in Florida just a few days ago, and I’m told big things are afoot and Trump’s got major actions up his sleeve.”
A day before the insurrection, Jones urged a pro-Trump crowd at Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington “to resist the globalists” with his refrain, “I don’t know how all this is all going to end, but if they want to fight, they better believe they’ve got one!” In a Jan. 6 post from near the same spot, he declared “1776” — a term co-opted by Trump fans urging a kind of second revolution against the government. “We’re under attack, and we need to understand this is 21st-century warfare and get on a war-footing,” Jones said.
On that day, however, Jones said he followed, not led, the rally crowd as people moved toward the Capitol, and became alarmed by the chaos.
“Let’s not fight the police and give the system what they want,” Jones was recorded shouting from an inaugural stage. His attorney Marc Randazza said the video shows Jones urged calm, adding, “If you wish to know what Alex Jones’ role was [on Jan. 6] you need look no further than the video.”
Later Jones is heard saying, “Trump is going to speak over here! Trump is coming!” in what appears to be an attempt to distract and move a crowd away from the building’s embattled west front.
Stone has also publicly distanced himself from the violence and criticized it, telling Moscow-funded RT television on Jan. 8 that he was invited to lead a march but “I declined.” He said in the same interview that when he addressed a rally at the Supreme Court on Jan. 5, he intended “peaceful protest” and added, “I have specifically denounced the violence at the Capitol, the intrusion in the Capitol. That’s not how we settle things in America.”
In the Jan. 5 speech, Stone characterized the next day’s events as “an epic struggle for the future of this country between dark and light . . . the godly and the godless . . . good and evil.”
Stone’s attorney Grant Smith said in a statement, “There is no evidence whatsoever that Roger Stone was involved in any way, or had advance knowledge about the shocking attack that took place at the US Capitol on January 6th. Any implication to the contrary using ‘guilt by association’ is both dishonest and inaccurate.”
Alexander, in a since-deleted video on Periscope weeks before the Jan. 6 rally, said he and three hard-line Republican Trump supporters “schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting” to change the minds of those who wouldn’t go against certifying Biden’s win.
Alexander did not respond to an emailed request for comment for this story. But in an email to The Post in mid-January, Alexander said he had “remained peaceful” during the riot.
“Conflating our legally, peaceful permitted events with the breach of the US Capitol building is defamatory and false,” he said. On Telegram, Alexander has since blamed outside “Capitol agitators” for sabotaging events.
Right-wing connections
In recorded videos and on Infowars, Stone and Jones have lifted the profiles of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence, and Oath Keepers — a loose network of self-styled militias — branding them as street-level security forces for right-wing causes and VIPs. A half-dozen alleged members of the Oath Keepers have been charged with conspiracy and leading up to 30 to 40 others in the break-in, according to court filings. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, has said he gave no direction or signals to members to storm the Capitol. The leader of the Proud Boys has said the group did not plan to interrupt Congress.
Stone was recorded on video both at the Supreme Court and at his Washington hotel on Jan. 5 and 6 with several Oath Keepers militia members who he has said were providing security.
Stone in online columns accused news organizations that reported the recordings of engaging in guilt by association and “more ‘Russian-collusion hoax-style’ smears.” Stone wrote that he knew of “no wrongdoing by the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys” and if credible information emerges that reveals a conspiracy, everyone involved should be prosecuted.
Already, officials have charged three Proud Boy leaders in connection with the Capitol riot or an earlier pro-Trump rally in Washington — Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, organizer Joe Biggs and Seattle leader Ethan Nordean. The three registered a company together last year, and Tarrio and Biggs also have preexisting personal or business connections to Stone and Jones, respectively, according to records and documents.
In proceedings while charged with obstructing Congress, Stone testified that Tarrio was one of a handful of aides he entrusted with his phones and social media accounts, explaining why Stone’s Instagram account had posted an image of the judge’s head next to what appeared to be gunsight crosshairs. Stone was convicted but pardoned by Trump last year.
Tarrio, 33, promoted Stone’s legal defense fund, launched an online store selling Stone and Proud Boys gear and led Latinos for Trump in Florida, which worked with the White House’s political liaison office. During last year’s campaign, Trump famously encouraged the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
On Dec. 29, Tarrio took to Parler to encourage the Proud Boys to “turn out in record numbers” to the Jan. 6 demonstration, adding in a Jan. 3 Telegram post, “What if we invade it?”
Biggs, 37, became an on-air personality for Jones’ online Infowars outlet starting in 2014, covering armed Oath Keeper vigilantes’ emergence at protests against police brutality at Ferguson, Mo., and ranchers’ violent standoff against U.S. authorities at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
In a Nov. 20 podcast promoted by Jones, Tarrio suggested viewers “kick off this [Biden] presidency with f------- fireworks,” infiltrate his inauguration and “turn [it] into a f------ circus, a sign of resistance, a sign of revolution.” That podcast, which featured Biggs and Nordean, and was first reported by online news site The Daily Dot, was posted to YouTube but has since been removed. The Post has viewed the video.
Nordean, 30, who called himself Rufio Panman online, became a Proud Boys spokesman after a video of him punching out a Portland protester in June 2018 went viral and was featured by Jones. Last July, Tarrio, Biggs and Nordean started a Florida business called Warboys LLC, promoting right-wing causes online in the footsteps of Stone and Jones and through Tarrio’s store, the 1776 Shop.
Americans must “desensitize” themselves to violence, Nordean said in a Parler-linked video Dec. 31 in which his guest called Proud Boys “soldiers of the right wing” at war.
Biggs’s defense attorney Michael Ryan has called the allegations against Biggs “speculative” and said he is not accused of damaging the Capitol.
Nordean’s attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Corey Endo of Seattle, has said his client is not accused of violence, and prosecutors were targeting Proud Boys via “guilt by association.”
Endo declined to comment, and Ryan did not respond to requests for comment.
Tarrio was not at the Jan. 6 rally and has not been charged with any wrongdoing related to the riot. He was arrested on Jan. 4 and pleaded not guilty to weapons and property destruction charges at a previous pro-Trump protest in the District. Tarrio said he posted “What if we invade it” referring to recruiting candidates to take over local and national Republican committees, not the Capitol. He said he was in touch with Stone and others about his plans to attend the Jan. 6 rally, but that was all.
“There was no plan to go into the Capitol . . . There was no plan to even interrupt Congress.”
Reviewing radicalization
The Proud Boys have been a major focus of the FBI investigation so far, in part because of their statements in the run-up to the attack, according to people familiar with the investigation. At least 18 Proud Boys or associates also have been charged, including several who, according to court documents, allegedly appeared to move in an organized fashion at the head of crowds storming police, forcing entry. Some also appeared to be wearing or using earpieces and two-way walkie-talkie style communication devices, prosecutors and the FBI said.
The group’s actions pose another critical question for prosecutors and FBI agents: How individual rioters grew “radicalized” to allegedly commit crimes that meets the textbook definition of domestic terrorism, and whether any criminal culpability extends beyond the rioters to anyone who may have worked with them.
Prosecutors and the FBI have cast a wide net for evidence of radicalization that led to violent criminal conduct at the Capitol, obtaining more than 500 search warrants and grand jury subpoenas and opening case files on more than 400 potential suspects as of Jan. 26.
A Jan. 21 search warrant for the home and electronic devices of a Maryland man charged with assaulting police on Jan. 6 sought information relating to “radicalization against the U.S. Congress, the 2020 presidential election, the Jan. 6 certification … and the Jan. 20, 2021 presidential Inauguration.”
The warrant also sought information regarding animosity toward U.S. officials or law enforcement; interest in the security and layout of federal buildings; and others who “collaborated, conspired or assisted [--] knowingly or unknowingly,” in the assault, or who communicated about related matters.
Justice Department spokesmen referred questions to the FBI, which declined to comment.
First Amendment litigator Ken White said the legal hurdle for charging incitement rises the further removed in time and distance the speaker is from any lawless activity.
“It’s incredibly hard under current law to say that someone like Alex Jones saying something a day or a week before is going to meet that standard as the law has been interpreted,” White said. “I anticipate that you will see increasingly creative alternative approaches by federal prosecutors, like conspiracy.”
Current and former U.S. authorities said investigators are likely excavating “layers” of rioters’ motivations, including whether any might have been part of any wider conspiracy. Those officials likened the process to investigating street-level drug dealers or gangsters who might “flip” and implicate higher-ranking captains or ringleaders.
“Every terrorism case I’ve ever worked on … has shown something about the radicalization process, or how a person came to harbor the views, animosity and intent to commit a crime of violence,” said Mary McCord, a top national security official at the Justice Department from 2014 to 2017.
Trump may have seeded and stoked rioters’ grievances with false claims of election fraud and thinly veiled calls for violence, said McCord, now at Georgetown Law School. But investigators are also probing whether rioters were lone actors or coordinated by others who directed them or provided resources such as money for travel, lodging, or weapons, she said.
“Just like the kingpin in a conspiracy, the fact he [Trump] gave directions doesn’t mean other conspirators are not guilty,” McCord said.
Michael M. Clarke, former lead FBI case agent investigating the 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, added, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to think some people conspired.” However, he added, “That doesn’t mean you have a grand conspiracy involving everyone, but you may have loosely connected groups.”
Joe Biden. (photo: Getty Images)
Fact Check: Biden's Comments on Loan Forgiveness and Elite Colleges
Elissa Nadworny, NPR
t a CNN town hall on Tuesday night, President Biden was asked if he supported the idea of forgiving up to $50,000 of student loan debt for individuals.
His answer: No. He supports cancelling $10,000 in debt, he explained. But he said he is wary of erasing big chunks of loans for people who went to Ivy League schools: "The idea that ... I'm going to forgive the debt, the billions of dollars in debt, for people who have gone to Harvard and Yale and Penn ..."
Instead, he explained, he'd rather use that money for other priorities, like early childhood education or making community college free.
But here's the problem: Regardless of the broader question about whether loan forgiveness is a good idea, Biden's comments do not reflect the true picture of the $1.6 trillion owed by federal student borrowers, or of the borrowers who would benefit most from forgiveness.
Most student loan borrowers did not go to highly selective colleges, because most students do not go to those schools. People who go to Ivy League schools represent less than 0.5% of the nearly 15 million undergraduate college students in the U.S., and a lot of them don't have to take out student loans to do it.
"Misperceptions that higher education graduates are all from elite institutions are pervasive, and do not help educate the public about the value of postsecondary education," says Fenaba Addo, an associate professor who studies student loan debt at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Think about it: Students who do go to the most selective schools tend to come from wealthy families, and many pay full tuition. Last year, 54% of undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, didn't even qualify for financial aid, according to data from the school. At Harvard, the number was 45%.
These highly selective colleges have long struggled to enroll students who aren't from the top tier of wealth in this country. A new report shows that, even today, low-income students who qualify for federal Pell grants make up less than 16% of enrollment at many of these schools.
And, for students at these institutions who do need financial aid? Many offer financial aid packages aimed at keeping students free from federal student loans. At Harvard, only 2% of the undergrad population receives any federal student loans, according to the College Scorecard.
Instead of focusing, as Biden did, on who shouldn't get the benefit, we should be focusing on who would really benefit from loan forgiveness, argues Jalil Mustaffa Bishop, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.
He says using the Ivy Leagues to argue for a much smaller amount of debt reduction, or none at all, is misleading: "The idea that small-level, or no debt cancellation is the best way forward because a trivial amount of rich people may benefit is a talking point to distract," he says. Households with student debt tend to have the least amount of wealth, federal data shows. The people who struggle to repay their student loans tend to be those that didn't graduate and have small debt amounts.
"If [Biden] is concerned that the rich or elite will benefit," Bishop adds, then there are policy approaches to deal with that: "He can focus on increasing taxes on households making over $400,000 as he promised during his campaign."
Bishop's research focuses on the burden of debt on Black borrowers, who are often the ones hardest hit by student debt. They face labor market discrimination, higher rates of unemployment, lower family wealth and other forms of systemic racism.
He argues that the $50,000 figure for loan forgiveness could go a long way towards reducing the inequalities in a system that both forces Black families to take out more debt, and to have more difficulty paying those loans back.
Addo, at UNC-Chapel Hill, agrees: "We know that Black borrowers struggle with repayment independent of their institution type and whether or not they completed a degree."
And so her advice for President Biden the next time he's asked about this issue? If you only get three sentences to talk about debt forgiveness, she says, "why not acknowledge that a 1.7 trillion dollar debt is an indication of a serious problem."
Sister Dianna Ortiz in 2003. (photo: Juana Arias/WP)
Dianna Ortiz, Nun Who Alleged US Connection to Brutal Abduction by Guatemalan Military Dies at 62
Ryan Di Corpo, The Washington Post
Di Corpo writes: "Dianna Ortiz, a slight Catholic nun from New Mexico, arrived in Guatemala in 1987 against a backdrop of devastating violence: a decades-long civil war, pitting Marxist guerrillas against the U.S.-backed military, that would ultimately claim 200,000 lives."
But as a member of the Ursuline teaching order who came to the country’s western highlands to help Mayan grade-school children learn to read and write and understand the Bible, she said she felt relatively insulated from the killings and disappearances.
Over the next two years, she disregarded menacing letters and the male stranger on the street who knew her name and tried to intimidate her into leaving the country.
“I didn’t think that the threats were something that I should have taken seriously, because I was a U.S. citizen, and I assumed that my citizenship would protect me,” she later told NPR. “But what I learned — that was not the case.”
The Guatemalan military’s subsequent abduction, gang rape and torture of Sister Ortiz — who died Feb. 19 at 62 in Washington of cancer — became a global news story when she claimed an American with ties to the U.S. Embassy had been complicit in her ordeal.
She was forced to defend her credibility, as a U.S. Embassy official at one point described her account as a “hoax” designed to derail an aid package to the government. The State Department eventually acknowledged that there was “no reason not to believe” her.
Settling in Washington, Sister Ortiz became a prominent advocate of survivors of state-sanctioned violence and helped campaign to expose classified U.S. documents showing American links to human-rights abuses in Guatemala. As a plaintiff in a lawsuit against a Guatemalan defense minister, she shared in a $47.5 million judgment in a U.S. court that concluded she had been a victim of his “indiscriminate campaign of terror” against thousands of civilians.
Despite her small frame — at 5-foot-3, she weighed less than 100 pounds — Sister Ortiz exuded what Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights group, called “a combination of absolute, angelic innocence and this indescribable inner strength to stand up again and again every time she was brutalized.”
On Nov. 2, 1989, assailants Sister Ortiz identified as Guatemalan security forces abducted her from a convent retreat-house garden in Antigua and drove her to a detention center in Guatemala City.
Targeted for working with the Indigenous community — which the military had long brutalized for presumed left-wing sympathies — she said she was blindfolded and raped by three captors.
They burned her with cigarettes as they demanded names of Indigenous subversives, she said; a doctor who later examined her counted 111 burn marks. She was lowered into a pit with rats and decomposing bodies and later forced to dismember another captive with a machete. She was told the killing was photographed and videotaped, to be used as blackmail if Sister Ortiz attempted to seek redress, she said.
About a day into her imprisonment, a fourth man, called Alejandro but whose accented Spanish led her to believe that he was American, entered the torture chambers and ordered the others to stop. He said Sister Ortiz’s disappearance was making headlines in the local and American media.
She said Alejandro apologized to her for what he claimed was a case of mistaken identity. During a ride to what he said was a safe haven — and what she assumed would be the place of her execution — the man advised her strongly to forget what had happened. She jumped out at a traffic stop and hid inside a store before calling members of her religious community to rescue her.
After returning to the United States two days later, Sister Ortiz experienced vast gaps in memory of her pre-Guatemala life; she recoiled from family and friends in the Ursuline community, many of whom she no longer recognized. She spent several years rebuilding her life, including intensive counseling. She said she had become pregnant through the rapes and had an abortion.
“I felt I had no choice,” she later told the Kennedy human rights organization. “If I had had to grow within me what the torturers left me I would have died.”
In the early 1990s, she filed Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain files from U.S. government agencies in the hope of identifying the suspected CIA operative. The Justice Department opened and then closed an investigation citing a lack of evidence. (She told The Washington Post she had stopped cooperating because of questions that made her feel revictimized.)
She began recounting her story in media interviews and on Palm Sunday 1996 began a weeks-long hunger-strike and vigil in Lafayette Square outside the White House. “I want to know why I was targeted,” she told the Washington Times, “and why a U.S. citizen had the authority to give orders to my torturers, and why he had access to a clandestine prison.”
Sister Ortiz was credited with other activists in helping to build political pressure that resulted in the release of classified documents about American involvement in Guatemala and the murders, kidnappings and torture committed in some instances by paid CIA informants.
“It was the first time the U.S. government was willing to openly question the way it had used killers in Guatemala to obtain intelligence,” said Kate Doyle, a senior analyst at the anti-secrecy group National Security Archive. (The 36-year conflict officially ended with a United Nations-backed peace accord in 1996, and the head of a subsequent U.N. truth commission report confirmed CIA and other “constituent structures” of the American government lent direct and indirect support to illegal state operations.”)
In her own case, however, Sister Ortiz said she continued to be “disappointed.” State Department files she obtained were heavily censored. A reference to “Alejandro,” Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory reported, “was followed by three pages of redacted material.”
The documents revealed that powerful figures within the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala had expressed doubts about the veracity of her account.
Thomas F. Stroock, a Wyoming businessman and political appointee serving as ambassador to Guatemala, told The Post he was among those at the embassy at the time who questioned the “motives and timing” of her claims — noting they arose just before a U.S. congressional debate about financial aid to the country, then in the grip of economic crisis.
“For a person who apparently knew little Spanish and did not know the capital well, had not slept for 24 hours, had suffered an intensive torture session including 50 to 70 cigarette burns, and in deep shock rendering her incapable of talking, Sister Dianna seemed to have little difficulty escaping by jumping out of a moving car, running at high speed, asking Guatemalans for protection . . . and then placing telephone calls to a retreat in Antigua she had only visited once,” Stroock wrote in a 1989 cable, according to the Washington Times.
Other notes from Embassy personnel suggested Sister Ortiz was a left-wing propagandist orchestrating a “hoax.” As part of what she called a smear campaign, Guatemalan military officials circulated a false rumor that she had invented the abuse story as cover for a sadomasochistic lesbian affair. Meanwhile, an investigation by the Organization of American States had found Sister Ortiz’s account credible.
Backed by a public-interest law organization, Sister Ortiz and eight Guatemalans filed suit in 1991 against former Guatemalan defense minister Héctor Gramajo under a federal law that allows Americans and foreign U.S. residents to sue any individual, while the accused is living in the United States, for human rights violations committed anywhere. (Gramajo was then in Massachusetts pursuing a degree in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.)
In 1995, a federal judge in Boston ordered Gramajo to pay $47.5 million to the plaintiffs, noting that Gramajo “was aware of and supported widespread acts of brutality committed under his command resulting in thousands of civilian deaths.”
Sister Ortiz’s share was $5 million but neither she nor the others collected from Gramajo, who denied the accusations and had returned to Guatemala without mounting a defense. In 2004, Gramajo died after being swarmed by killer bees on his avocado ranch, according to news reports.
As an outgrowth of Sister Ortiz’s work for the nonprofit Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, she started a project in 1998 that became the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International. Her Washington-based group, where she spent a decade as executive director, sought to unite and amplify the voices of torture victims and help them repair their lives.
“The reason that work is so difficult is because torture is deliberate, meant to control individuals and to break them,” said Meredith Larson, a human-rights advocate who survived political violence in Guatemala while working as a human rights observer. “For a lot of people who experience torture, you feel so broken afterwards, you feel so guilty. You are left as a shell of yourself. Like with Dianna, the process of trying to get the truth can be retraumatizing when you are not believed.”
Dianna Mae Ortiz was born in Colorado Springs on Sept. 2, 1958, and grew up in Grants, N.M., one of eight children. Her father was a uranium miner, and her mother was a homemaker. In 1977, she entered the Ursuline novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph in Maple Mount, Ky. She moved to Guatemala after teaching kindergarten in Kentucky.
With human rights advocate Patricia Davis, she wrote a memoir, “The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Journey From Torture to Truth” (2002). Survivors include her mother, Amby Ortiz of Grants; four brothers; and two sisters.
Last year, Sister Ortiz was named deputy executive director of Pax Christi USA, the American branch of the international Catholic peace movement. She lived in Washington at the Assisi Community, a Catholic community of lay and religious men and women.
Her death, at a hospice center, was confirmed by her friend Marie Dennis, a Pax Christi colleague.
At times, Sister Ortiz said she continued to struggle with the Christian ideal of forgiveness. “I leave that in God’s hands,” she told NPR. “The fact that I’m a Catholic nun and I’m not able to forgive, that makes me feel all the more guilty. I’m not sure what it means to forgive.”
Sunday Song: Sam Cooke's Chain Gang From the Movie One Night in Miami
Sam Cooke, YouTube
Cooke writes: "That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang."
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) tries his hand at recording music with Sam Cooke's guidance, 1963. (photo: AP)
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
All day long they work so hard till the sun is goin' down
Working on the highways and byways and wearin', wearin' a frown
Hear them moanin' their lives away
Then you hear somebody say
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
He don't love you, like I love you
If he did he wouldn't break your heart
He don't love you, like I love you
He's trying to tear us apart
Gonna find her, I'm gonna find her, I'm gonna find her
Oh, if I have to climb a mountain, you know I will
And if I have to swim a river, you know I will
And I might find her hidin' up on Blueberry Hill
How am I gonna find her, child, you know I will
'Cause I'm goin' searchin'
I'm goin' searchin'
Searchin’ everywhere
Just like some Northwest Mountie
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
All day long they work so hard till the sun is goin’ down
Working on the highways and byways and wearin', wearin' a frown
Hear them moanin' their lives away
Then you hear somebody say
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
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