21 March 21
The Only Way We Ever Get Into Financial Trouble
Super Low Donor Response. That’s it, that’s only thing that can bring RSN down. Anything even approaching a reasonable degree of responsiveness from our donors and RSN does fine.
So far for today 9,503 readers have visited RSN 8 have donated. That has to cause a crisis. And it is.
In earnest.
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21 March 21
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Charles Pierce | A Federal Judge Went Full Hannity. Never Go Full Hannity.
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes:
Apparently, everyone but Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page is in the tank for Democrats, so the whole press freedom thing is overrated.
hose of us who have followed the underground conservative campaign against the Clintons—which may never end, by the way—are familiar with Laurence Silberman, a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington. Back in the day, before David Brock came to Jesus, Silberman was one of his mentors among the “elves,” the cabal of right-wing lawyers dedicated to destroying the Clinton presidency. (And hello to you, too, George Conway.) In 2004, writing in Salon, Michelle Goldberg gave us the rundown on him.
Silberman's sojourn in the world of political scandal began during the run-up to the 1980 presidential election when, as a member of Ronald Reagan's campaign staff, he, along with Robert C. McFarlane, a former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Richard V. Allen, Reagan's chief foreign policy representative, met with a man claiming to be an Iranian government emissary. The Iranian offered to delay the release of the 52 American hostages being held in Tehran until after the election — thus contributing to Carter's defeat — in exchange for arms. A controversy continues to rage over whether the Reagan team made a bargain with the Iranians, as alleged by Gary Sick, a former National Security Council aide in the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations who now teaches at Columbia University. Yet no one denies that the meeting Silberman was at took place, and although Silberman has said the Iranian's offer was immediately rejected, none of the three Reagan operatives ever told the Carter administration what had happened. McFarlane, Allen and Silberman have all since insisted that they don't know the name of the Iranian man they met with.
The man has been a dedicated…er…activist for decades. And, on Friday, in a dissent in the case of Tah and McClain v. Global Witness, Silberman simply went full Hannity. You never go full Hannity, people. The case was a run-of-the-mill defamation suit brought by a couple of Liberian citizens against a human-rights group called Global Witness. Employing the standards set in the 1964 landmark Sullivan v. New York Times decision of the Supreme Court, by a 2-1 vote, the Appeals Court determined that Global Witness had not acted with “actual malice” when it accused the two Liberian officials of corruption. Silberman was the lone vote against Global Witness, and his dissenting opinion was a true banana farm.
First of all, Silberman wants Sullivan overturned—by any standard, a radical position in the area of press freedom.
Nevertheless, I recognize how difficult it will be to persuade the Supreme Court to overrule such a “landmark” decision. After all, doing so would incur the wrath of press and media. See Martin Tolchin, Press is Condemned by a Federal Judge for Court Coverage, New York Times A13 (June 15, 1992) (discussing the “Greenhouse effect”). But new considerations have arisen over the last 50 years that make the New York Times decision (which I believe I have faithfully applied in my dissent) a threat to American Democracy. It must go…I recognized, however, that convincing the Court to overrule these precedents would be an uphill battle. As I wrote, the Court has committed itself to a constitutional Brezhnev doctrine.
Oh, good. Nice analogy. Respect for precedent is the same thing as keeping Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. Gotcha. But the real gold in Silberman’s defense is to be found in why he thinks Sullivan must go. Gaze in awe.
Although the bias against the Republican Party—not just controversial individuals—is rather shocking today, this is not new; it is a long-term, secular trend going back at least to the ’70s…Two of the three most influential papers (at least historically), The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction. The orientation of these three papers is followed by The Associated Press and most large papers across the country (such as the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe). Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet. Even the government-supported National Public Radio follows along.
As has become apparent, Silicon Valley also has an enormous influence over the distribution of news. And it similarly filters news delivery in ways favorable to the Democratic Party. See Kaitlyn Tiffany, Twitter Goofed It, The Atlantic (2020) (“Within a few hours, Facebook announced that it would limit [a New York Post] story’s spread on its platform while its third-party fact-checkers somehow investigated the information.
As Learned Hand once put it, holy crap, this is nuts. In a footnote, Silberman moans about Candy Crowley’s moderation of one of the presidential debates in 2012. But he’s not done. He goes on to shill for right-wing outlets.
To be sure, there are a few notable exceptions to Democratic Party ideological control: Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. It should be sobering for those concerned about news bias that these institutions are controlled by a single man and his son. Will a lone holdout remain in what is otherwise a frighteningly orthodox media culture? After all, there are serious efforts to muzzle Fox News. And although upstart (mainly online) conservative networks have emerged in recent years, their visibility has been decidedly curtailed by Social Media, either by direct bans or content-based censorship.
Because they are run by crazy people whose “news coverage” might as well be written by semi-literate Martians. Silberman is 85. He’s done enough damage in his life. Sullivan shouldn’t go. He should leave the bench.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “It’s Your Voodoo Working” (Samantha Fish): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1929, are some women playing basketball on ice. Now that’s some madness. History is so cool.
Annnnnnnnd, scene. From the Colorado Times Recorder:
So anyone who tries to tell you that this is a fringe newspaper/media don’t listen to them. I have very good sources to say this is really good information. Is it a hundred percent? I don’t know. But it’s really good information. And we all know that there was information that was declassified just a few days before President Trump left office. And I know someone who is involved in declassifying that. And this person is getting very tired of waiting on the DOJ to do something about it. And we will be hearing about it very, very soon. And this is my opinion with that information that I have, I believe we will see resignations begin to take place. And I think we can take back the majority in the House and the Senate before 2022 when all of this is ended.
This person is an elected member of Congress.
That’s it. That’s all I have.
Is it a good day for dinosaur news, New Scientist? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
The bones of the ankylosaurid show that it had heavily built forelimbs and forefeet suited for digging.The fusion of several vertebrae and ribs may have helped keep the dinosaur’s trunk rigid, stabilising the body while it dug using its forelimbs. “These armoured dinosaurs, especially the Asian species, lived in arid to semiarid environments. They may have been able to dig out roots for food, and dig wells to reach subsurface water as modern African elephants do today,” says Lee. Digging dinosaurs are relatively rare, although some small dinosaurs are known to have dug burrows.
I dispute the so-called “experts.” I dig dinosaurs and I always have, because they lived then to make us happy now.
I’ll be back on Monday as an actual Infrastructure Week may break out in Congress. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, wear the damn mask, and take the damn shots.
Protesters clashing with members of the Chicago Police Department in August. (photo: Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/AP)
In City After City, Police Completely Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests
Kim Barker, Mike Baker and Ali Watkins, The New York Times
Excerpt:
Inquiries into law enforcement’s handling of the George Floyd protests last summer found insufficient training and militarized responses — a widespread failure in policing nationwide.
or many long weeks last summer, protesters in American cities faced off against their own police forces in what proved to be, for major law enforcement agencies across the country, a startling display of violence and disarray.
In Philadelphia, police sprayed tear gas on a crowd of mainly peaceful protesters trapped on an interstate who had nowhere to go and no way to breathe. In Chicago, officers were given arrest kits so old that the plastic handcuffs were decayed or broken. Los Angeles officers were issued highly technical foam-projectile launchers for crowd control, but many of them had only two hours of training; one of the projectiles bloodied the eye of a homeless man in a wheelchair. Nationally, at least eight people were blinded after being hit with police projectiles.
Now, months after the demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in May, the full scope of the country’s policing response is becoming clearer. More than a dozen after-action evaluations have been completed, looking at how police departments responded to the demonstrations — some of them chaotic and violent, most peaceful — that broke out in hundreds of cities between late May and the end of August.
Joyce Barnes. (photo: Joyce Barnes/he Cut)
Working Two Jobs, and Barely Surviving: The Abject Inhumanity of America's Minimum Wage
Bridget Read, The Cut
Read writes:
oyce Barnes has been a home-care worker in Virginia for 30 years, and she loves what she does; she left a full-time job in a hospital because she preferred working with patients one-on-one. “In home health care, I can be people’s eyes and ears for their family,” she says. “I can tell you about your mom, your parents, the things that you don’t even know because you’re not around as much as I am.”
She is also exhausted. Barnes works part time for two home-care agencies, where she makes $8.25 an hour with one employer and $9.98 an hour with the second. She cannot afford her employer’s health insurance. She does not receive paid sick days or vacation benefits. In the long hours of her work days, Barnes is responsible for nearly every aspect of her clients’ well-being: feeding them, bathing them, administering medications, taking them to doctor’s appointments, and shopping for necessities. She works with severely disabled, elderly clients, including a double amputee whom she helped coach through physical therapy. Even with long, draining hours, making rent and paying bills is always a struggle. “I’ll go to the grocery store and see people with baskets full of food and think, Man, I wish I could buy food like that,” she says. Her grocery budget is $80 a month; when she applied for food stamps, she was told she makes too much to qualify.
Barnes has thought about leaving the industry many times — most recently in 2016, when her teenage grandson came home from his first job, a janitorial position, and showed her his paycheck. Barnes recalls, “He said, ‘Nanny, look, I make $10.50 an hour!’ I said, ‘Baby, he gave you all that?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, Nanny, don’t you get that much?’ I just smiled. I didn’t want my grandson to know how low I get paid.”
Instead of quitting that day, Barnes joined a union. A representative from the SEIU, the largest health-care union in the country, happened to come over a few hours after that conversation with her grandson to try and convince Barnes to become a member of her local. “I was trying to get rid of her,” Barnes says. “She said, ‘You have a voice.’ I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to give you a chance.’ It was the best day of my life.”
Barnes was one of hundreds of domestic, home-care, and fast-food workers in 15 cities who took action last week with the Fight for $15 and a Union campaign in what feels like a do-or-die moment for the movement. Their demands are simple: They want to be paid enough to actually survive on what they make. President Joe Biden has been a vocal supporter of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 since his very first campaign speech in Pittsburgh. He helped carry states in the general election with support from union and Fight for 15 volunteers in Nevada, Arizona, and elsewhere. Organizers and advocates were thrilled when the measure was included in his administration’s $1.2 trillion relief plan unveiled in January. They were finally getting a return on their investment.
Now, as the relief package actually makes its way through Congress, the outlook is less sunny. Democrats are attempting to pass stimulus legislation through a process called budget reconciliation, which requires a slim majority in the Senate; it is unclear whether the $15 minimum wage would have enough support among Democratic senators to make it into the package. Senator Joe Manchin has said he would support an $11 minimum wage — just $1 more than a plan recently released by Republicans Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton. And reports circulated on February 18, just two days after Barnes and other Fight for 15–ers demonstrated on the state capitol steps in Richmond, that Biden’s own support is softening; he reportedly told a number of governors in a meeting that the $15 amount is “unlikely” to make it through. Even before it can be voted on, the $15 minimum wage faces a major procedural hurdle: getting past the Senate parliamentarian, who will determine whether it can even be included in budget reconciliation at all.
For minimum-wage workers, the debate is personal and agonizing. It is crushing to not just perform work that has been deemed essential by the government and struggle with essentials themselves — buying food, paying for shelter — but also to take the risk of speaking out and be told “Not yet.” Their demand for higher pay became desperate during the pandemic, when they were faced with the difficult choice of staying home and losing money or continuing to work at the risk of their lives. Home-care workers were especially vulnerable, even as states relied on them as hospitals strained to treat millions of COVID patients and nursing homes were thrown into crisis. Barnes says that when the pandemic hit, she received no instruction from her employer, “not even a pamphlet,” for how to continue her work safely. She bought her own gloves and hand sanitizer.
Barnes is anemic and says she is “doing the double mask and everything else” at work, “but it’s really scary. I’m afraid.” She’s unable to take days off for illness because she can’t afford to. The danger has persisted long before coronavirus. Barnes says a friend of hers once continued working through feeling unwell and died on the job. Barnes wasn’t even able to take time off to grieve her parents when they passed away in 2018.
“Those guys that make the decisions don’t know what home care is all about. They don’t know the work that we do,” Barnes said on a recent night at the end of her shift, sounding tired. She had little time to herself before getting on another Fight for 15 call. To her, the politicians haggling over this life-changing policy have no idea what it feels like to work tirelessly without the dignity of a solid, stable quality of life; they are far too willing to downplay the crisis for minimum-wage workers, who are largely women of color. Hearing a senator like Manchin say that $11 is a sufficient raise to their pay is “a slap in the face,” Barnes says. “When you’re older and you’ve been working so many years and you know you deserve better than this,” she said, “oh, it hurts.”
Between working with her home-care clients and attending union actions, Barnes is nervously watching the news. “It’s a lot of stress when you sit there and you’re wondering if it’s gonna pass. But I can’t turn away from it,” she says. Barnes is used to fighting; she stopped getting jobs at her old agency when she became vocal about being a member of the union. She was once kicked out of an orientation by another agency for talking too loudly about organizing. Still, Barnes is sick of telling family she can’t go on vacation with them, of taking care of other people without being taken care of herself. “If we could get $15 an hour, I could just work one job and live comfortable and be happy.”
Flowers, candles and signs lie at a makeshift memorial outside Young's Asian Massage in Acworth, Georgia. (photo: Bita Honarvar/Reuters)
Atlanta Spa Shootings: Georgia Hate Crimes Law Could See First Big Test
Lois Beckett, Guardian UK
Beckett writes:
hate crimes law passed in Georgia amid outrage over the killing of Ahmaud Arbery could get its first major test as part of the murder case against a white man charged with shooting and killing six women of Asian descent at Atlanta-area massage businesses this week.
Prosecutors in Georgia who will decide whether to pursue a hate crimes enhancement have declined to comment. But one said she was “acutely aware of the feelings of terror being experienced in the Asian American community”.
Until last year, Georgia was one of four states without a hate crimes law. But lawmakers moved quickly to pass stalled legislation in June, during national protests over racial violence against Black Americans including the killing of Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was pursued by several white men and fatally shot while out running in February 2020.
The new law allows an additional penalty for certain crimes if they are motivated by a victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender or mental or physical disability.
Governor Brian Kemp called the new legislation “a powerful step forward”, adding when signing it into law: “Georgians protested to demand action and state lawmakers … rose to the occasion.”
The killings of eight people in Georgia this week have prompted national mourning and a reckoning with racism and violence against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic. The attack also focused attention on the interplay of racism and misogyny, including hyper-sexualized portrayals of Asian women in US culture.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, has been charged with the murders of six women of Asian descent and two other people. He told police the attacks at two spas in Atlanta and a massage business near suburban Woodstock were not racially motivated. He claimed to have a sex addiction.
Asian American lawmakers, activists and scholars argued that the race and gender of the victims were central to the attack.
“To think that someone targeted three Asian-owned businesses that were staffed by Asian American women … and didn’t have race or gender in mind is just absurd,” said Grace Pai, director of organizing at Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Chicago.
Elaine Kim, a professor emeritus in Asian American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “I think it’s likely that the killer not only had a sex addiction but also an addiction to fantasies about Asian women as sex objects.”
Such sentiments were echoed on Saturday as a diverse, hundreds-strong crowd gathered in a park across from the Georgia state capitol to demand justice for the victims of the shootings.
Speakers included the US senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and the Georgia state representative Bee Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American in the Georgia House.
“I just wanted to drop by to say to my Asian sisters and brothers, we see you, and, more importantly, we are going to stand with you,” Warnock said to loud cheers. “We’re all in this thing together.”
Bernard Dong, a 24-year-old student from China at Georgia Tech, said he had come to the protest to demand rights not just for Asians but for all minorities.
“Many times Asian people are too silent, but times change,” he said, adding that he was “angry and disgusted” about the shootings and violence against Asians, minorities and women.
Otis Wilson, a 38-year-old photographer, said people needed to pay attention to discrimination against those of Asian descent.
“We went through this last year with the Black community, and we’re not the only ones who go through this,” he said.
The Cherokee county district attorney, Shannon Wallace, and Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, will decide whether to pursue the hate crime enhancement.
Wallace said she could not answer specific questions but said she was “acutely aware of the feelings of terror being experienced in the Asian-American community”. A representative for Willis did not respond to requests for comment.
The US Department of Justice could bring federal hate crime charges independently of state prosecutions. Federal investigators have not uncovered evidence to prove Long targeted the victims because of their race, two unnamed officials told the Associated Press.
A Georgia State University law professor, Tanya Washington, said it was important for the new hate crimes law to be used.
“Unless we test it with cases like this one, we won’t have a body of law around how do you prove bias motivated the behavior,” she said.
Given that someone convicted of multiple murders is unlikely to be released from prison, an argument could be made that it is not worth the effort, time and expense to pursue a hate crime designation that carries a relatively small additional penalty. But the Republican state representative Chuck Efstration, who sponsored the hate crimes bill, said it was not just about punishment.
“It is important that the law calls things what they are,” he said. “It’s important for victims and it’s important for society.”
The state senator Michelle Au, a Democrat, said the law needed to be used to give it teeth.
Au believes there has been resistance nationwide to charge attacks against Asian Americans as hate crimes because they are seen as “model minorities”, a stereotype that they are hard-working, educated and free of societal problems. She said she had heard from many constituents in the last year that Asian Americans – and people of Chinese descent in particular – were suffering from bias because the coronavirus emerged in China and Donald Trump used racial terms to describe it.
“People feel like they’re getting gaslighted because they see it happen every day,” she said. “They feel very clearly that it is racially motivated but it’s not pegged or labeled that way. And people feel frustrated by that lack of visibility and that aspect being ignored.”
Asylum-seeking mothers from Guatemala carry their children after they crossed the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico on a raft in Penitas, Texas. (photo: Adrees Latif/Reuters)
US to Place Some Migrant Families in Hotels in Move Away From Detention Centers
Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke, Reuters
Excerpt: "Some migrant families arriving in the United States will be housed in hotels under a new program managed by nonprofit organizations, according to two people familiar with the plans, a move away from for-profit detention centers that have been criticized by Democrats and health experts."
Sunday Song: Pete Seeger | Hard Times in the Mill
Pete Seeger, YouTube
Seeger writes: "Every mornin' right at six. Don't that ol' bell make you sick. Hard times in the mill my love. Hard times in the mill"
1948: Pete Seeger with Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace aboard a plane during a barnstorming tour. (photo: AP)
Every mornin' at half-past four
You hear the cooks hop on the floor
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
Every morning just at five
Gotta get up, dead or alive
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
Every mornin' right at six
Don't that ol' bell make you sick
Hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
The pulley got hot, the belt jumped off
Knocked Mr Guyan's derby off
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
And ol' Pat Goble thinks he's a Hun
He puts me in mind of a doodle in the sun
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
Section hand he thinks he's a man
He ain't got sense to pay off his hands
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
They steal his ring, they steal his knife
Steal everything but his big fat wife
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
My bobbin's all out, my end's all down
The doffer's in my alley an' I can't get around
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
The section hand, standin' at the door
Ordering the sweepers to sweep up the floor
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
An' every night when I go home
A piece o' cornbread an' an ol' jawbone
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
Ain't it enough to break your heart
Have to work all day, an' at night it's dark
It's hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
A man carries a bucket of plastic waste at an import plastic waste dump in Mojokerto, Indonesia, on December 4, 2018. (photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)
US Continues to Ship Illegal Plastic Waste to Developing Countries
Tiffany Duong, EcoWatch
Duong writes:
he majority of the world is working together to reverse the massive plastic pollution problem. But, the world's leading producer of plastic waste, the U.S., hasn't signed on and isn't following the rules.
In 2019, 187 countries, except for the U.S. and Haiti, voted to amend the 1989 Basel Convention to include plastic waste in the definition of hazardous materials, and to strictly limit how that trash is traded internationally. The binding framework hoped to make globally traded plastic waste more transparent and better regulated. It went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021.
UN officials hoped the agreement would curb ocean plastic within five years. Supporters believed the convention would level the industry's global playing field by allowing developing nations such as Vietnam and Malaysia to refuse low-quality and hard-to-recycle plastics before they were shipped from developed nations, a UN transboundary waste chief told The Guardian.
At the start of the year, when the new rules were just being implemented, the fact remained that the U.S. had not agreed to the amendment despite producing most of the world's plastic waste. Proponents held that the amendment would still apply to the U.S. anytime it tried to trade plastic waste with any of the participating 187 countries, many of which are poor and developing nations, CNN reported.
According to the Basel Action Network (BAN), a nonprofit organization that lobbies against the plastic waste trade, participating nations are prohibited from trading waste with countries that have not ratified the Basel Convention, The Maritime Executive reported. This creates an effective ban on plastic waste trade between the U.S. and most of the world, and makes U.S. plastic export shipments "criminal traffic as soon as the ships get on the high seas," BAN told The Maritime Executive.
Despite these new rules, U.S. Customs data from January shows that optimism about the convention's effectiveness may have been premature. According to The New York Times, American exporters continue to ship plastic waste overseas, despite the fact that receiving countries have agreed, per the Basel Convention, not to accept it. In fact, the new report showed that American exports of plastic scrap to poorer countries have barely changed and that overall exports of scrap plastics even rose.
The Times reported that environmental watchdog groups viewed this as evidence that exporters are either ignoring the new rules or following their own interpretations. American companies are justifying waste shipments as being legal even though recipient countries legally can't accept it. The former is using the logic that because the U.S. never ratified the global ban, the rules don't apply to originating shipments.
The Maritime Executive also noted that America's plastic waste shipments will continue to be associated with "uncontrolled dumping" in developing countries, and that much of the plastic waste collected in the U.S. under the guise of recycling actually ends up in overseas landfills and the oceans. In fact, a new Woods Hole study found that the U.S. is likely the world's third-largest source of ocean plastic, not just because it is the world's largest producer of plastic waste, but also because recyclables being sent to the developing world are often mishandled and discarded into the ocean.
"This is our first hard evidence that nobody seems to be paying attention to the international law," Jim Puckett, BAN's executive director, told The Times regarding the new trade data. "As soon as the shipments get on the high seas, it's considered illegal trafficking."
Because of the U.S.' continued disregard for the rules, it continues to ship illegal plastic waste "[a]nd the rest of the world has to deal with it," Puckett told The Times.
"You're starting to see an outcry in countries being flooded with waste. And we are already seeing more countries starting to put their foot down," David Azoulay told The Times. Azoulay is a Geneva-based lawyer with the Center for International Environmental Law. He added that the more Americans "learn that their waste ends up in fields in Malaysia, or openly burned in Indonesia or Vietnam, it's not going to sit very well."
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