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28 May 21
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Marcus Smith "Died Like an Animal" When Cops Hogtied Him. Police Have Known for Decades It Can Kill
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Despite decades of warnings against the practice, police departments across the country continue to hogtie people during arrests, sometimes with fatal results."
espite decades of warnings against the practice, police departments across the country continue to hogtie people during arrests, sometimes with fatal results. On September 8, 2018, Marcus Smith, a 38-year-old homeless Black man in Greensboro, North Carolina, was facing a mental health crisis and asked police officers for help. Instead, eight white officers brutally and fatally hogtied him. Police videos show officers pushed Smith face down on the street and tied a belt around his ankles, then attached it to his cuffed hands so tightly that his knees were lifted off the pavement. Smith’s family filed a lawsuit in 2019 alleging wrongful death, accusing the police department of a cover-up. “The Greensboro Police Department, spearheaded by the chief of police at that time, watched the video and then chose to put out a press release that … ignored and left out the crucial factor that he was hogtied,” says Flint Taylor, one of the lawyers for the Smith family and a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago. We also speak with Marshall Project reporter Joseph Neff, who says there is little data about instances of police hogtying. “It’s hard to know how extensive it is, because there’s no reporting requirement,” he says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
A warning to our listeners and viewers: This next story contains graphic police violence.
We look now at the shocking cover-up of the police killing of Marcus Smith in North Carolina. It was September 8th, 2018, when Smith, a 38-year-old homeless Black man, facing a mental health crisis, asked Greensboro police officers for help. He approached them and asked them to help him. Instead, they brutally and fatally hogtied him. Police body-camera and dashboard-camera video footage shows officers pushing Smith face down into the street and tying a belt around his ankles, then attaching it to his cuffed hands so tightly his knees were lifted off the pavement. This is part of the video footage.
POLICE OFFICER: What’s your name, partner? What’s your name?
MARCUS SMITH: My daddy call —
POLICE OFFICER: What is it?
MARCUS SMITH: I’m Marcus.
POLICE OFFICER: I know.
MARCUS SMITH: My name, Marcus.
POLICE OFFICER: OK.
MARCUS SMITH: Please, sir.
POLICE OFFICER: All right. Just stay here.
MARCUS SMITH: Please. No, sir.
POLICE OFFICER: Just go ahead and sit. Go ahead and grab a seat.
MARCUS SMITH: Man, just help me, man.
POLICE OFFICER: Just grab a seat. Grab a seat.
MARCUS SMITH: Call the ambulance.
POLICE OFFICER: Just grab a seat.
MARCUS SMITH: Call the ambulance, bro. …
POLICE OFFICER: Just take it easy.
POLICE OFFICER: We’re not going to hurt you.
POLICE OFFICER: Take it easy.
POLICE OFFICER: We’re not trying to hurt you. We’re not trying to hurt you. Settle down, bud. Come on. Roll over on your stomach.
MARCUS SMITH: [screaming]
POLICE OFFICER: Roll him the other way, towards you guys. There you go.
POLICE OFFICER: I can’t get my hand under him.
MARCUS SMITH: Help!
POLICE OFFICER: You got the cuffs?
POLICE OFFICER: Well, I did. They’re right here.
POLICE OFFICER: Now, watch your — watch your —
POLICE OFFICER: Take it easy. Take it easy. Take it easy.
POLICE OFFICER: Just watch yourself, because somebody got blood on him.
POLICE OFFICER: Take it easy.
POLICE OFFICER: Come on, bro.
POLICE OFFICER: Give us your other hand behind your —
POLICE OFFICER: Put your other hand behind you.
POLICE OFFICER: Behind your back. We’re not trying to hurt you.
POLICE OFFICER: Put your hand behind you. Hey, put your hand behind you.
POLICE OFFICER: Relax. Relax. Relax. Just relax. We’re trying to help.
POLICE OFFICER: Come on, buddy.
MARCUS SMITH: [screaming and gasping]
POLICE OFFICER: Come on, man. There we go. He’s a character. Come on, bud.
POLICE OFFICER: Is his hand going to get out of the — is there blood?
POLICE OFFICER: I don’t think so.
POLICE OFFICER: Yeah, he’s bleeding somewhere.
POLICE OFFICER: Let’s just go ahead and do this. And if you guys could help me carry him to the truck?
POLICE OFFICER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Marcus Smith’s family is charging cover-up and filed a lawsuit in 2019 alleging wrongful death.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. In Durham, North Carolina, Joseph Neff is with us. He’s an investigative reporter for The Marshall Project who examines the deaths of Marcus Smith and others across the country in a new report headlined “'He Died Like an Animal': Some Police Departments Hogtie People Despite Knowing the Risks.” And in Chicago, Flint Taylor is with us, one of the lawyers for the Marcus Smith family, founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Flint Taylor, start off by continuing to describe that night, where Marcus approached eight white police officers and asked them for help. Within minutes, he would be dead.
FLINT TAYLOR: Thank you, Amy. It’s great to be on with you and Juan and also to follow Professor Hinton.
I can’t see the video as you showed it, but just listening to it, as I have watched it several times, of course, it makes me completely upset. I’m sure that it’s tremendously traumatizing to not only people who are watching, but to the family.
What happened in that case was that these eight white police officers decided that they were going to hogtie Marcus Smith. And this wasn’t something that was unusual in the Greensboro Police Department. We have, in our lawsuit, documented that in the past five years, before the hogtying of Marcus Smith that caused his death, 275 people were hogtied by the Greensboro Police Department and that 68 or 69% of those people were African American, and over 15% of them were suffering a mental crisis, such as what Marcus was suffering.
But what happened in the case, after Marcus died in the hospital — or, actually, lost his breath and stopped breathing, and his heart stopped on the street there — the Greensboro Police Department, spearheaded by the chief of police at that time, watched the video and then chose to put out a press release that, like the first press release up in Minneapolis, ignored and left out the crucial factor that he was hogtied — what they called, in the parlance of the police department, maximum restraint. So they put out a press release that made it sound like Marcus had collapsed: He was suicidal, and he was agitated, and he just collapsed in police custody.
And that was the start of a cover-up that has continued in various forms, has been perpetrated and continues to be perpetrated not only by the police department, but by all of the politicians — many of the politicians — the mayor, the City Council, the city attorney and others in Greensboro. And, of course, as you mentioned, we have had a civil suit that we’ve been dealing with for the past two years. We have taken statements and depositions of all the main actors in the case, all the police, the chief of police, the mayor, the city manager. And what’s happening now is that the city wants to put all of that testimony and all of our arguments about why it should not be secret under seal, and they want to hold us in contempt for what they say is disseminating information, information that’s not confidential, information that should be in the public domain. They want to hold us in contempt, and, unbelievably, they want to bar us from practicing law in the state of North Carolina.
And so, that’s where we stand now in this remarkable case, a case that should be looked at along with the George Floyd case and so many other cases where unnecessary and brutal restraint is used. And it’s starting to come to light, thanks to people like Joe Neff at The Marshall Project and you, Amy, so that people can see and understand the breadth of racist police violence in this country.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Joseph Neff, I’d like to ask you. Your investigation uncovered at least 23 deaths that have occurred in the past decade from people being hogtied by police departments across the country. Could you talk about how extensive this practice is?
JOSEPH NEFF: Well, it’s hard to know how extensive it is, because there’s no reporting requirement. For example, in Greensboro, where Marcus Smith died, police do not view the hogtie as a use of force, so they don’t even count it within their own department. We made public records requests from the country’s 30 biggest police departments on use of force, every type of use of force, and we got records back from about 11 of them. So, it’s really hard for the public to know. To find these 23 people who died while being hogtied, we looked in court records. We looked for news stories. That was the — we just had to scrape the web like that to find these cases.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about how many departments permit this, or which ones don’t?
JOSEPH NEFF: Well, out of the top 30 departments that we surveyed, the 30 largest, 22 of them explicitly forbid this practice. Another four — Charlotte, Houston, Indianapolis and one other — allow it under different circumstances. So, it’s hard to — I would say that the practice is more common in smaller police departments. The big ones — New York has banned this practice for decades.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to another case. In 2017, Vanessa Peoples was doing laundry in the basement of her Aurora, Colorado, home when police officers showed up for a child welfare check. Peoples told NBC, who you did this project with, Joe, what happened next.
VANESSA PEOPLES: The next thing I knew, they threw me down on the ground, and they had my arm behind my back. And I kept telling them, I said, “There’s something wrong. My arm doesn’t feel right. It hurts.” And he had his knee in my back. And it was like, at that moment, I felt like I was going to lose my life.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is Vanessa Peoples describing this, Joe. And this is Aurora. That’s where Elijah McClain would be killed a few years later, and then another woman describing the same thing happening to her. She was hogtied in front of her neighbors. And can you also talk about the hobble?
JOSEPH NEFF: The hobble is the actual strap that police use to wrap around someone’s ankles, and then they attach it either to the handcuffs or to, in the case of Vanessa Peoples, to a belt around her waist. If you showed this picture to any person in a Walmart parking lot, they would look at it and say, “Oh, that’s a hogtie,” because the feet are pulled up behind the person’s back, and the person is handcuffed behind their back. So, there’s a slight difference in that the hobble is used without attaching to the handcuffs sometimes. But it’s still — if you look at it, it’s virtually the same position.
And Vanessa Peoples, she shouted out seven times during while she was restrained, while they were restraining her, that she couldn’t breathe. And then, you’re right, they took her out, and eventually she was laying in her front yard for all her neighbors to see like that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Flint Taylor, I wanted to ask you. You mentioned the efforts of the officials to get you — to run you out of North Carolina. But in terms of the — what kind of attacks has the Smith family had to deal with since they sought to find justice for Marcus?
FLINT TAYLOR: Well, Juan, I first want to commend the wonderful strength that Mary Smith, the mother of Marcus Smith, and the father and the sister, Kim and George, have shown, from the moment that they saw the video that revealed that their son had been hogtied. It wasn’t 'til a month later that the video was shown to the Smith family. Mary couldn't watch it, but George watched it. And that’s the first time that anyone knew, outside of the police department and the powers that be, that there was a hogtie. They had completely covered up not only the fact that he was hogtied, but the video itself. They hadn’t released it. They hadn’t moved to release it to the public.
From that moment that the family learned what actually happened to Marcus to this present day, Mary Smith, particularly, and the family, generally, has stood behind justice for Marcus Smith. And I want to say that there’s a remarkable movement on the ground in Greensboro, that is a multiracial, a multigenerational movement, that appears at every City Council meeting and asks questions about what in fact is being done about this case. They stand in front of City Hall every Monday — Mondays for Marcus — with banners calling for justice in the Marcus Smith case. And one of the things that the — what’s being demanded by the movement on the ground there is that there be a full apology from the mayor and the City Council for the death of Marcus Smith, there be a memorial for Marcus Smith in the city of Greensboro, and there be just compensation for the family.
The City Council and the mayor have been doing a lot of different diversionary tactics, a lot of misinformation publicly, including slandering the family, and particularly Mary Smith, who is the plaintiff in our lawsuit. We’ve been trying to fight back publicly. And that’s when they came down on us and said, “We can talk, but you can’t.” And I think that it raises — not only does the hogtying and the idea of the different kinds of prone restraints that are used across this country that being so dangerous because of positional asphyxia and sudden death syndrome and all those kinds of activities, but also now we’re looking at an attack on lawyers, an attack on the community, which they are singling out, as well as the community activists who have spoken up — a First Amendment attack.
AMY GOODMAN: Flint, you mentioned Kim Smith, Marcus’s sister. This is Kim speaking to NBC about the treatment of her brother.
KIM SUBER: Imagine your closest sibling, looking at them die. … I had no idea what a hogtie was. I had no clue. That’s how you treat an animal.
AMY GOODMAN: So, looking at this nationally, the scores of people who have died with this use of the hobble, no centralized database about how it is used, Joe Neff, the responses of the police departments to your repeated requests to explain what their policies are?
JOSEPH NEFF: Some departments were very helpful. And actually, in Aurora, they released the data. They actually released on the types of restraints that they were using. So, that is how we were able — is one of the few cities where we could actually count the times the hobble was used. And to their credit, in the —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds.
JOSEPH NEFF: OK. Their credit, the police chief has denounced the practice and fired the officer who hobbled Shataeah Kelly and left her in the well of a car for a drive down to the police station. She has denounced it.
AMY GOODMAN: An astounding story, which you write about in your Marshall Project piece, “'He Died Like an Animal': Some Police Departments Hogtie People Despite Knowing the Risks.” We will link to it. Joe Neff, thanks so much for being with us, and also Flint Taylor, lawyer for Marcus Smith’s family, with the People’s Law Office in Chicago. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Stay safe. Wear a mask.
Supporters of President Trump storm the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2020. (photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Getty)
Senate Republicans Block Creation of US Capitol Attack Commission
Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Senate Republicans have blocked the creation of a special commission to study the deadly 6 January attack on the Capitol, dashing hopes for a bipartisan panel amid a Republican push to put the violent insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters behind them."
Republicans killed effort to set up a 9/11-style inquiry into the 6 January attack despite broad support for such an investigation
Republicans killed the effort to set up a 9/11-style inquiry into the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob despite broad popular support for such an investigation and pleas from the family of a Capitol police officer who collapsed and died after the siege and other officers who battled the rioters.
In a procedural vote in the Senate on Friday, six Republican senators broke ranks to back the commission, which was more than expected, but four fewer than the 10 needed to overcome a filibuster and for it to advance.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer condemned Republican colleagues for blocking a bipartisan commission. “Shame on the Republican party for trying to sweep the horrors of that day under the rug because they’re afraid of Donald Trump,” Schumer said in a Senate floor speech immediately after the vote.
The insurrection was the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years and interrupted the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s win over Trump.
But the Republican party remains firmly in the grip of Trump who had made his opposition to the commission very clear. Observers believe that senior party figures do not want to anger the former president or his legion of supporters might also fear what the commission might uncover in terms of links between some of the rioters and Republican lawmakers.
Though the commission bill passed the House earlier this month with the support of almost three dozen Republicans, Republican senators said they believe the commission would eventually be used against them politically.
Trump has called it a “Democrat trap”.
While initially saying he was open to the idea of the commission, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, turned firmly against it in recent days. He has said he believes the panel’s investigation would be partisan despite the even split among party members. McConnell, who once said Trump was responsible for provoking the mob attack on the Capitol, said of Democrats: “They’d like to continue to litigate the former president, into the future.”
The Republican opposition to the bipartisan panel has revived Democratic pressure to do away with the filibuster, a time-honored Senate tradition that requires a vote by 60 of the 100 senators to cut off debate and advance a bill.
With the Senate evenly split 50-50, Democrats needed the support of 10 Republicans to move to the commission bill, because Republicans invoked the filibuster. The episode has sparked fresh debate over whether the time has come to change the rules and lower the threshold to 51 votes to take up legislation.
On Friday, the Democrats only got 54 votes by the time the vote was gaveled out.
Friday’s vote marked Senate Republicans’ first official use of the filibuster to defeat a bill, and Schumer said he hoped this was not the beginning of a trend of Republicans blocking “reasonable, common-sense legislation”.
The six Republicans who voted for the commission to proceed were Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Rob Portman of Ohio.
A spokesperson for Republican Senator Pat Toomey told HuffPost that he was not in Washington for the commission bill vote today because of a family obligation However, the spokesperson said, Toomey would have voted in favor of starting debate on the bill.
Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter: “If Senate Republicans can block an independent commission investigating a deadly armed attack on the Capitol because it might hurt their poll numbers with insurrectionists, then something is badly wrong with the Senate. We must get rid of the filibuster to protect our democracy.”
The Republicans’ political arguments over the violent siege – which is still raw for many in the Capitol, almost five months later – have frustrated not only Democrats but also those who fought off the rioters.
Michael Fanone, a Metropolitan police department officer who responded to the attack, said between meetings with Republican senators that a commission is “necessary for us to heal as a nation from the trauma that we all experienced that day”. Fanone has described being dragged down the Capitol steps by rioters who shocked him with a stun gun and beat him.
“So I don’t understand why they would resist getting to the bottom of what happened that day and fully understanding how to prevent it. Just boggles my mind,” she said.
Video of the rioting shows two men spraying Sicknick and another officer with a chemical, but the Washington medical examiner said he suffered a stroke and died from natural causes.
The energy industry was shaken by a trio of events this week that could help shape the future of oil and gas. Here, the sun sets behind two under-construction offshore oil platform rigs in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, in 2010. (photo: Saul Loeb/Getty)
The Week That Shook Big Oil
Camila Domonoske, NPR
Domonoske writes: "These events shook the oil industry to its core, upending assumptions about the future of the fuel that powers the global economy."
his week's news was nothing short of astonishing.
A court in the Netherlands issued a landmark ruling against Royal Dutch Shell — an oil company already pledging to cut its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 — ordering it to act faster.
At Chevron's shareholder meeting, investors voted to demand that the company reduce its contribution to climate change. The demand was short on specifics, but investors made it clear that it was not enough to use renewable energy to power oil and gas operations: Real action on climate change means selling less oil.
And a much bigger shareholder revolt took place at Exxon Mobil. Activist investors took on the giant and won, delivering a stinging rebuke to the company's management.
The hedge fund Engine No. 1 placed two new directors on the board of what was once the world's most influential oil company — to prepare it for a world that might stop burning oil and gas.
These events shook the oil industry to its core, upending assumptions about the future of the fuel that powers the global economy.
But this moment has been a long time coming. The scientific consensus that burning oil and gas is driving climate change has been firmly established for decades. For just as long, activists have wielded this scientific evidence in a fight against the world's massive oil and gas giants. They have sued in courts around the world. They have picketed. They have held die-ins.
And they've used the tools of business, arguing that oil and gas is a bad long-term investment.
In a world where governments are determined to tackle climate change, a lot of oil and gas investments might never pay off — they'd become "stranded assets," and companies would lose money.
Activists have presented this financial logic to corporate leaders. They have submitted shareholder proposals. Sometimes they've even won incremental victories.
But they've never had a week like this.
So what changed?
"What's different about this moment is that now we have technologies that are cheaper, cleaner and better, and so the market is recognizing that oil and gas are no longer indispensable," argues Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund. "The argument that used to be somewhat theoretical about stranded assets is now very tangible and real."
The cost of building new wind and solar power has fallen dramatically. Electric appliances and heat pumps could conceivably replace natural gas in homes. And after Tesla proved that battery-powered vehicles didn't have to be glorified golf carts, the entire auto industry is racing to pivot toward electric vehicles.
Meanwhile, governments around the world — particularly in Europe and China — have been promoting green technology through increasingly aggressive incentives and penalties. Outright climate denial, while still prevalent in countries like the United States, is no longer in the political mainstream.
And more and more investors, including giant, influential money managers like BlackRock, are focusing on climate change. Some groups cite moral reasons, while others focus on the bottom line.
"The biggest risk for us as investors is assuming the status quo and not seeing those risks or those technology disruptions that are around the corner," says Aeisha Mastagni of CalSTRS, the retirement fund for teachers in California. The group was a high-profile backer of the shareholder revolution at Exxon.
"I don't know what the price of oil is going to be tomorrow. I don't know exactly when the world's going to transition," she says. "But I do know that change is coming and Exxon Mobil needs to change with it."
This sense of impending change has reached some oil CEOs and boards of directors.
"Certainly in Europe, there has been a real awakening on the part of a growing number of directors," says Karina Litvack, who serves on the board of directors for the Italian energy company Eni and co-founded the World Economic Forum's Climate Governance Initiative.
"We're certainly not there with everybody, but ... directors are aware of the urgency and the complexity and the scale of the climate challenge," she adds.
Increasingly aggressive carbon targets in Europe put pressure on American companies to follow suit; meanwhile, as the Dutch court decision against Shell shows, the bar continues to be raised in Europe.
All these forces have converged to create a remarkable moment of reckoning for oil and gas giants.
This week's dramatic news does not suggest that the fight over climate change is over.
In the sometimes-perverse lexicon of corporate America, the idea that the world will wage a successful battle against climate change is a "risk." Specifically, it's called "transition risk."
If the world decides to tackle climate change and transitions away from oil and gas, then a wide array of companies will need to adapt or go under. It may or may not happen, but if it happens, it will carry costs. So from a corporation's point of view, it's a risk.
Exxon Mobil has repeatedly argued that the odds of this happening were so low that it didn't merit planning for it.
Based on the investor revolt this week, Wall Street clearly thinks that a substantial shift away from oil and gas is possible.
Proxy advisory firms, companies that issue recommendations on how investors should vote on shareholder proposals, even used the word "inevitable." And since beliefs about what's possible can shape what's politically viable, this is no small development.
But there's no consensus on when this change would happen.
The oil industry points out that cutting production too early — before the world's demand for oil has actually decreased — would cause price spikes and shortages that would fall somewhere between disruptive and disastrous.
And for demand to drop quickly enough to ward off the worst effects of climate change would require massive investments in renewable power, widespread adoption of electric vehicles, lifestyle changes to cut energy demand, the political will to make disruptive policy changes and international cooperation among rivals and outright enemies.
The world is not currently on track for that kind of transformation.
In short, the fate of the climate is profoundly uncertain. But this week's boardroom and courtroom decisions point to an expanding sense of what's possible.
A massive shift away from fossil fuels is a prospect that Big Oil can no longer rule out.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet with 10 Republican senators in the Oval Office on February 1, 2021. (photo: Doug Mills/Getty)
Democrats Are Falling for Republicans' Fake Negotiations Again
Ryan Cooper, The Week
Cooper writes: "President Biden's infrastructure package is bogged down in fake negotiations with Republicans. After weeks of haggling with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and five other GOP senators, the talks are reportedly on the verge of collapse."
resident Biden's infrastructure package is bogged down in fake negotiations with Republicans. After weeks of haggling with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) and five other GOP senators, the talks are reportedly on the verge of collapse. But if you were worried about something getting passed, fear not! Another group of GOP senators are reportedly preparing another fake deal to take its place and waste more time.
As Eric Levitz argues at New York, this entire effort is pointless. Bipartisanship has ceased to be. Worse, every moment of delay raises the risk of neurotic Democratic members of Congress derailing the process with frivolous or corrupt objections, or the party losing its Senate majority outright from an untimely death. This dithering could ruin Biden's presidency.
The total lack of good faith even among so-called Republican moderates can be seen in the White House's negotiations with the Capito group. Biden (who has long boasted of his ability to cut deals with the other side, and is plainly eager to get some stamp of bipartisanship) lopped off $500 billion in his latest proposal, taking it down to $1.7 trillion. The Republicans, who have been demanding the middle and working class shoulder the cost with user fees instead of tax increases on the rich, responded by reportedly upping their bid by just $50 billion — that is, one tenth as much. Biden has already categorically ruled out the user fees idea, erasing any possibility of agreement. (Besides, there aren't even enough senators in the Capito group to overcome a certain filibuster.)
At time of writing, Biden has set a deadline of Memorial Day on negotiations, and Republican senators are reportedly scrambling to put together a $1 trillion plan that would supposedly be paid for with unallocated pandemic relief money. There may actually be that much money that hasn't been spent yet, but redirecting it would require defunding previous Democratic priorities.
Let's be real: Republicans obviously don't want Biden to pass anything. They want to string him along with fake promises of bipartisanship, running out the clock on the Democratic majority, until they get a chance at taking control of Congress in the 2022 midterms. If that happens, they will try to strangle the economy by demanding massive austerity every time the government needs to pass a budget or raise the debt limit — trying to create a recession that Biden will be blamed for, so that the Republican nominee (probably Donald Trump) will be elected in 2024.
This is exactly what Republicans like Sen. Chuck Grassley did the last time Democrats controlled Congress and the presidency — promise an illusory bipartisan compromise to make proposals worse and eat up time, then vote against them anyways. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell openly proclaimed his priority of winning above all else in 2010, and he's saying the same thing now. "One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration," he said in early May.
Even more ominously, the Democratic conservative wing is finding more and more complaints about the tax hikes in the infrastructure bill. Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) doesn't like the corporate tax hike. Reps. Cindy Axne (Iowa) and Ritchie Neal (Mass.) don't like the inheritance tax increase on the ultra-rich. Sens. Bob Menendez (N.J.) and Mark Warner (Va.) don't like the capital gains hike. A whole bunch of others want to cut taxes on the rich by repealing the cap on the deduction of state and local taxes.
This mobilization to keep down taxes on the rich is of course baldly corrupt, but it's also characteristic of the Democratic personality. As a rule, the deciding votes in the party caucus are anxious, fussy, and above all terrified of doing anything. Their primary objective is to avoid blame, not accomplish things. Hiding in a closet while Republicans plot to gerrymander you out of power is a good way to lose, but at least you can generally avoid negative media attention and say "it wasn't my fault," even if it's not true.
It follows that speed and urgency are vital for breaking through this mewling timidity. As we saw during the pandemic rescue package passage, a crisis atmosphere is basically the only thing that can get big policy through Congress. Every minute burned up in fake negotiations with Republicans means more time for the coward caucus to invent reasons to sit on their hands and do nothing.
The other huge time risk here is the minuscule size of the Democratic Senate majority. Democrats have just 50 senators, so their control of the chamber relies on Vice President Harris' tie-breaking vote. There are 11 Democratic senators in states where, should they pass away or resign, a Republican governor would appoint a replacement to serve out their term: Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Jon Tester of Montana, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Krysten Sinema and Mark Kelly of Arizona. (In the latter two states, the governor is required to appoint someone from the same party, but someone could probably be found who would just switch parties afterwards.)
Three in this group are over 70 — one unlucky illness, and there goes the Democrats' ability to pass anything. This also happened the last time Democrats controlled the government, when Massachusetts' Sen. Ted Kennedy died and his anointed successor, Martha Coakley, whiffed the ensuing special election, losing Democrats' a filibuster-proof majority in the process.
Even the most conservative Democratic members of Congress agree on the need to do something on infrastructure. The question is whether they can muster the pattern recognition skills of a dim golden retriever and match the 2009-10 history to today. They can either figure out internally (and quickly) what they want to do and pass that on a party-line vote, or they can do nothing and effectively collaborate with the Republican plot to topple Biden and set up one-party rule. Those are the only options.
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) participates in a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol, May 20, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
More Than 150 House Democrats Call on Biden to Expand Medicare
Peter Wade, Rolling Stone
Wade writes: "A majority of the House Democratic caucus, 156 members, signed a letter to the White House attempting to pressure President Biden to keep his campaign promise and expand Medicare by lowering the eligibility age and adding dental, vision and hearing coverage."
“We respectfully request that you fulfill your commitment to expand and improve Medicare,” the lawmakers said in a letter to the president that more than 70 percent of House Democrats signed
majority of the House Democratic caucus, 156 members, signed a letter to the White House attempting to pressure President Biden to keep his campaign promise and expand Medicare by lowering the eligibility age and adding dental, vision and hearing coverage.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who leads the House’s progressive wing, and centrist Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), along with Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) have joined forces to urge both the president and Vice President Kamala Harris to include a major expansion of Medicare in the administration’s infrastructure package.
In the letter, lawmakers say they want Medicare’s eligibility age to be lowered from 65 to 60, adding approximately 23 million Americans to the program. The House Democrats are also looking for improvements to the program by adding coverage for dental, vision, and hearing — something that according to Jayapal “nearly 80 percent of older voters want.”
Additionally, the lawmakers want Medicare empowered to negotiate for drug prices, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would save approximately $450 billion over the next decade.
“We are asking for you to prioritize the expansion and improvement of Medicare in the American Families Plan,” wrote the 156 lawmakers. “Lowering the Medicare eligibility age and improving its benefits would provide immediate and substantial relief for millions of individuals throughout the United States, as well as much-needed long-term security.”
“To pay for Medicare expansion, we believe Medicare and the federal government must finally be able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower the high price of prescription drugs,” they wrote.
Congressman Golden pointed out how the Department of Veterans Affairs is able to negotiate drug prices and saves billions because of it.
“I helped lead this effort because I represent one of the oldest & most rural districts in the country,” Golden tweeted. “Allowing Americans 60+ to get the Medicare benefits they’ve paid into for their entire working lives would be a huge win for my constituents.”
Golden added, “Crucially, we can pay for it by lowering Rx drug costs. We’d save $100s of billions by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices — which the VA already does for veterans — and we can use those savings to help over 100,000 Mainers get more affordable health care at 60.”
The congressman is correct. A study by the Government Accountability Office found that the VA paid an average of 54 percent less per unit than Medicare, even after taking into account rebates and discounts that Medicare Part D receives.
“Now is a historic opportunity to also make an important expansion of Medicare that will guarantee health care for millions of older adults and people with disabilities struggling with the health and economic realities of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the letter said.
In a post on her congressional website, Jayapal noted the popularity of Medicare, citing a Gallup poll that showed 65 percent of all Americans are in favor of lowering the program’s eligibility age.
“Even a majority of people who cast their votes for Donald Trump back expanding Medicare,” Jayapal wrote.
Protests in Medellin on May 19. (photo: Joaquin Sarmiento/Getty)
Colombia's Protests Rumble On Into Their Second Month
Dave Lawler, Axios
Lawler writes: "Colombia has been wracked by protests for a month, with critical supplies cut off due to roadblocks, another nationwide strike expected on Friday and accusations of police brutality growing louder."
Why it matters: "Things are worsening every single day," says Marta Lucía Ramírez, Colombia's vice president and foreign minister. She says the roadblocks are preventing food and critical medical supplies like oxygen from being transported between Cali — the epicenter of the protests — and the capital, Bogotá.
Speaking to a small group of reporters Thursday at the Colombian ambassador's residence in Washington, Ramírez said the roadblocks and the destruction of public transport systems were "destroying the conditions for normal life."
- She described Colombia's crisis as a worrying test for the country's democracy, in part because of the intense political polarization on display.
The big picture: The protests began on April 28 over tax reforms proposed by conservative President Iván Duque. The reforms were withdrawn, but the protests grew into a major social movement focused on poverty and inequality that has drawn tens of thousands into the streets.
- The protests have attracted international attention mainly due to allegations of police brutality and the rising death toll, which the government puts at 17 but human rights groups say is at least 50. Four police officers have been charged with homicide.
- At least 55 Congressional Democrats have called for the Biden administration to cut off assistance to the Colombian National Police over the alleged abuses.
- Ramírez met on Thursday with members of Congress as well as USAID director Samantha Power and Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere. She'll meet with Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Friday.
- She asked the Biden administration for donations or loans of coronavirus vaccines and other help in fighting the pandemic, which she says is driving the social unrest.
What she's saying: "We agree that there are so many reasons to be concerned about the future, to have some fears for the future. So many people have lost their jobs [and] loved ones," she said. Poverty has spiked to such an extent that "in a year we lost so many years of efforts."
- At least some of the frustrations pre-date the pandemic, as the unpopular Duque also faced large protests in 2019.
- As for the anger around police brutality, Ramírez said it resembled the aftermath of George Floyd's killing in the U.S.
What's next: Ramírez said the strike leaders were making demands like a basic income for 30 million Colombians that would be "impossible" to deliver due to budget constraints and that they're "not in a hurry" to make a deal despite entering into negotiations with the government.
- Thus, she fears the crisis could drag on for some time.
Worth noting: As the meeting ended, Ramírez mentioned that one reason for the divisions in Colombian society was that men were in charge — a possible signal of her own ambitions ahead of the presidential elections next year.
In 2019, several lions at Pienika Farm, in North West Province, were found to have mange and be suffering from malnutrition and neglect. (photo: Nichole Sobecki)
South Africa Announced Plans to End Controversial Captive Lion Breeding Industry
Audrey Nakagawa, EcoWatch
Nakagawa writes:
outh Africa is taking steps to resolve its controversial captive lion industry, making headway in major conservation efforts. This response brings an end to the international treaty that bans the global sale of products made from big cats.
Lion bones, teeth, and claws aren't supposed to be sold and traded globally, with the exception of products that come from South Africa, according to a report made by The Independent.
These lion body parts are used in scientifically discredited medicine, according to Yale Environment 360, and the sale of them will no longer take place. This new policy change is not yet a law.
In 2019, a panel started to review various policies related to the "management, breeding, hunting and trade of South Africa's elephants, lions, leopards, and rhinos," according to National Geographic.
On May 2, South African Minister of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, released a set of recommendations and hoped for key outcomes for the country's lion industry, including promoting "human-wildlife coexistence."
The South African government has banned the issuing of permits for breeding and is revoking current permits. Additionally, there is a recommended ban on hunting, and interacting with captive lions, according to National Geographic.
"Thousands of farmed lions are born into a life of misery in South Africa every year in cruel commercial breeding facilities," Edith Kabesiime, the wildlife campaign manager of the nonprofit World Animal Protection, wrote in an email to National Geographic.
This move by the South African government has garnered positive attention from wildlife groups who want to see lions live in the wild or in reputable conservation parks, according to AP News.
Conservationists are particularly happy about seeing an end to "canned hunting." This practice is when lions are raised in tight captivity and then moved to larger living quarters where they will face death by hunters that pay to shoot them. Hunters keep the head and skins of the lion, and the bones are shipped and sold mainly to Asia, according to National Geographic.
"If your mandate was that you want to shoot a lion in an easy way, with not so much effort, then South Africa was your No. 1 destination," Neil Greenwood, regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare said in a statement to AP News.
There are around 2,000 lions in South Africa, a number that has decreased during the last quarter-century. This decrease in wild lions is attributed to splintering habitats and a decrease in antelopes, a frequent meal of wild lions, according to National Geographic.
In addition to making recommendations on lion captivity, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment also accepted the panel's recommendation to push back on reopening trade on rhino horns and ivory.
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