06 June 21
Simply Ignoring Funding Kills an Honest Organization
People will pay a number of big corporations for “services,” but they see an information watchdog as an unwelcome expense. Even as they come to learn on a daily basis.
If you only support the corrupt institutions, then only the corrupt institutions will remain.
The funding-drive needs attention.
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Founder, Reader Supported News
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06 June 21
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Charles Pierce | Mike Pence Wants the Votes of His Own Hangmen
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "The former veep and his former boss have agreed to disagree about that whole 'Hang Mike Pence' thing."
t is said that, immediately before the ax fell, Sir Thomas More told the headsman not “to fear your office, you send me to God.” I always thought that was just a tad too generous, but hey, different strokes for different martyrs. Anyway, up in New Hampshire on Thursday, former Vice President Mike Pence took the opportunity to tell the mob that attacked the Capitol chanting that he should be hung that it was very impolite to have done so, and that he and his former boss disagree on whether the crowd should have been chanting for Mike Pence to be hung, but hey, what about that tax cut, huh? From 10Boston:
As I said that day, Jan. 6 was a dark day in history of the United States Capitol. But thanks to the swift action of the Capitol Police and federal law enforcement, violence was quelled. The Capitol was secured…And that same day, we reconvened the Congress and did our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States. You know, President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office. And I don't know if we'll ever see to eye on that day. But I will always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years.
My god, Mike Pence is a weird man. We all are still mocking Ted Cruz for supporting the former president* after the latter slandered Cruz’s wife and his father. Here we have Mike Pence, supporting the guy who incited the posse that wanted to serve him with a necktie party. That is a singularly weird man.
That he’s dumb as a sack of hair is a given. The rest of his speech in New Hampshire was a whole mess of the latest conjuring words—“critical race theory” and “Joe Biden is a radical” boogedy-boogedy.
I will not allow Democrats or their allies in the media to use one tragic day to discredit the aspirations of millions of Americans. Or allow Democrats or their allies in the media to distract our attention from a new administration intent on dividing our country to advance the radical agenda...My fellow Republicans, for our country, for our future, for our children and our grandchildren, we must move forward, united.
The aspiration shared by hundreds of Americans on that “tragic day” was to dangle Mike Pence like a piñata on the National Mall. Were I Mike Pence, I might want to discredit that aspiration going forward, especially if I wanted to run for president, which he apparently does. But he is a Republican in 2021, and not a particularly bright one, either. He needs the vigilante caucus. He needs his hangman’s vote.
Chuck Schumer. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
100 Progressive Groups Press Senate Democrats to Abolish Filibuster
Jacob Knutson, Axios
Knutson writes: "More than 100 progressive groups called on Senate Democrats this week to abolish the filibuster after Senate Republicans used the legislative tactic to block the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot."
ore than 100 progressive groups called on Senate Democrats this week to abolish the filibuster after Senate Republicans used the legislative tactic to block the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Why it matters: The blockage, which the was the first legislative filibuster of the Biden presidency, did not change certain Senate Democrats' stances toward the procedural hurdle, namely moderates Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).
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Context: Retaining the filibuster may hinder President Biden's chances of enacting his agenda, which includes climate change, voting rights, tax and gun reform legislation.
- Before the procedural vote in May, Manchin said he would not support abolishing the filibuster if Republicans blocked the creation of the commission, saying he is not "willing to destroy our government."
- Manchin has said that doing away with the filibuster and allowing the chamber to invoke cloture by a simple majority would create "serious problems" and instead supports reforming the tactic to make it more painful for the obstructer.
What they're saying: "We have moved past hypotheticals and entered a perilous new moment for our democracy," the progressive groups, led by Fix Our Senate, said in Thursday's letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
- "Senate Republicans’ decision to block legislation establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection is a shameful abdication of their duties to our country," they added.
- "In the face of Republicans’ inability and unwillingness to defend our democracy, it is clearer than ever that the filibuster needs to be eliminated. We cannot allow the filibuster to stand in the way of progress or imperil the health of our democracy."
- Signatories included March For Our Lives, Our Revolution, the Sierra Club and the Sunrise Movement.
The big picture: Schumer has not ruled out getting rid of the filibuster to achieve his goals, instead opting for trying to find common ground with Senate Republicans.
- Biden has publicly supported reforming the filibuster but has privately held discussions on the potential ramifications of doing away with it.
New York attorney general Letitia James. (photo: Mike Segar/Reuters)
NRA Drops Lawsuit Against New York Attorney General Letitia James
Connor Perrett, Business Insider
Perrett writes: "The National Rifle Association on Friday dropped its lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James and her office."
"The NRA dropping its countersuit today in federal court is an implicit admission that their strategy would never prevail," James said in a statement to legal news outlet Law & Crime.
"The truth is that Wayne LaPierre and his lieutenants used the NRA as a breeding ground for personal gain and a lavish lifestyle," she continued. "We were victorious against the organization's attempt to declare bankruptcy, and our fight for transparency and accountability will continue because no one is above the law."
According to CNN, the NRA said in a statement the suit was "voluntarily" withdrawn in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York "in favor of pursuing the same claims against James in New York State court in Manhattan.
The organization filed a similar lawsuit against James in New York state court earlier this year, according to CNN.
Lawyers for the NRA sued James and her office in August 2020, claiming James and her office were illegally investigating the organization for political reasons.
"There can be no doubt that the James's actions against the NRA are motivated and substantially caused by her hostility toward the NRA's political advocacy," lawyers for the NRA claimed in the filing the lawsuit last year.
As Law & Crime reported, that lawsuit was filed the same day James' office filed a petition seeking the dissolution of the NRA over claims of fraud at the organization, including that longtime CEO Wayne LaPierre and others improperly organization funds for pay for things like travel and "expensive meals."
A federal judge last month dismissed the NRA's request to declare bankruptcy and said its petition to do so had not "been filed in good faith" and that the NRA attempted to file bankruptcy to avoid litigation in New York.
A vaccine. (photo: Artyom Geodakyan/Tass)
US Finally Offers to Send Vaccines Abroad, but Lack of Global Plan Leaves Poorer Nations in Crisis
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "The Biden administration announced that the U.S. will donate 25 million surplus doses of COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, pledging to donate a total of 80 million doses by July."
Economist Jeffrey Sachs says rich countries have enough production capacity to speed up vaccine distribution and immunize the whole world within the next year. “There’s massive supply, but there’s no plan for allocation,” he says. We also speak with South African health justice activist Fatima Hassan, who says the global vaccine imbalance comes down to political will. “Even now countries are still sitting around a table and talking and having long conversations instead of figuring out an urgent way to ramp up manufacturing, scale up production and get as many doses to as many people as possible all over the world.”
AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration announced plans to send 25 million COVID vaccine doses to dozens of countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, where COVID cases continue to surge. The majority of the vaccines will be distributed through COVAX, a program backed by the World Health Organization. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the administration plans to send a total of 80 million doses by the end of the month.
JAKE SULLIVAN: We’re sharing them in a wide range of countries within Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and across Africa in coordination with the African Union. This includes prioritizing our neighbors here in our hemisphere, including countries like Guatemala and Colombia, Peru and Ecuador and many others.
AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration’s announcement comes just before the president heads to Britain to take part in a G7 summit. Many public health experts say the U.S. plan falls far short of what’s needed to address the global crisis, which has killed at least 3.7 million people, though public health researchers say the true toll is likely approaching 8 million deaths.
According to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, more than a million COVID deaths have occurred in the past four months, since the leaders of the G7 failed to collectively back a waiver of intellectual property rules for COVID vaccines. The United States now backs the waiver, but other G7 nations and the pharmaceutical industry continue to oppose the waiver.
Based on current vaccination rates, the People’s Vaccine Alliance estimates it could take 57 years to fully vaccinate everyone in low-income nations. The New York Times reports 85% of vaccine doses have gone to people in high- and middle-income countries. On Thursday, the World Health Organization warned, quote, “The threat of a third wave in Africa is real and rising.” Cases are rising in at least 14 African nations over the past two weeks.
In moment, we’ll go to Cape Town to speak with Fatima Hassan, a South African human rights lawyer and HIV/AIDS and social justice activist, founder and director of Health Justice Initiative. But first we begin with economist Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Jeffrey Sachs is also the author of several books, including The Ages of Globalization. He led the WHO’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health from 2000 to 2001.
Jeffrey Sachs, welcome to Democracy Now!
JEFFREY SACHS: Thanks a lot, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Start off by responding to Biden’s plan to immediately send out 25 million doses, then hit 80 million by the end of the month.
JEFFREY SACHS: Well, we need a comprehensive strategy. What’s happened is, the United States is reaching the target levels of immunization within our own country, but the amount of production is massive, so there is vaccine available for mass distribution around the world. The same is happening in Europe, in the U.K., in China.
We need a global plan. We can estimate that there are hundreds of millions of doses being produced each month now, but there is no plan for getting them to the people in need. You quoted a study that said it would take — it could take 57 years. I would put it a different way. We could get comprehensive immunization around the world certainly within the next 12 months. Certainly. Let me underscore that. And it could be even faster, given the scale of production.
But we do not have an allocation plan. We don’t even have transparency right now. We have the companies that have been approved. How much are they producing per month? What contracts do they have? Where are these doses going right now? How should they be allocated across the world for prioritization? This is basic stuff, but the United States is not sitting down with China, with Russia, with the European Union, with the United Kingdom, with the WHO as the overall orchestrator, to make sure that there is a just, inclusive, rapid, comprehensive coverage. It’s unbelievable, actually, that we don’t have this sorted out. It’s a matter of a spreadsheet. And it’s a matter of disclosure and transparency by companies. And it’s a matter of the United States talking with China, not just yelling at China. And this is what’s missing right now to this moment.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what would it actually require?
JEFFREY SACHS: Ah, it would not require much. It would require some Zoom meetings of senior officials in China, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, together with WHO, together with representatives of the producing companies — Moderna, Pfizer, BioNTech, Sinopharm, Sinovac. How many doses are you producing per month right now? What are your contractual relations, which may have to be overridden because the public sector has paid for all of this?
We don’t have that clarity. When I make rough calculations with my colleagues on this, we have enough production globally to get comprehensive immunization within the next 12 months. But then, when I ask WHO or U.S. officials, they say, “Well, we don’t really know exactly where Pfizer is selling.” Are you kidding? We’re in a global emergency of unprecedented dimension. How can you not know precisely what is happening? And why is there no plan to this date?
AMY GOODMAN: And can you explain what the —
JEFFREY SACHS: That’s — that’s the amazing situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what the most efficient way to do this — not necessarily to send doses from the United States, but to make a deal, like Biden made with Merck and Johnson & Johnson? Merck didn’t develop the vaccine; Johnson & Johnson/Janssen did. But Merck then also helps to reproduce that vaccine, to manufacture that vaccine. The idea that there are many pharmaceutical companies in the world that didn’t develop vaccines, but if they’re given the recipe and the means of — it’s also a lot of hardware — they can help to manufacture these millions and millions of doses that are needed.
JEFFREY SACHS: That is correct. That’s why the IP waiver is, in a way, a no-brainer right now, period. But I would say, even in addition to that, there is a production flow that is underway that is sufficient to immunize the adult population worldwide comprehensively.
The mistake, Amy, is to think that this is about markets, that this is about the secret deals that Pfizer-BioNTech can make with high-paying customers, that there can be no transparency because that’s a trade secret. This is mind-boggling. Governments have paid for all of this.
We need a global distribution system for worldwide safety, not only given the fact that people are dying in surge countries, but given the fact that variants are developing in surge countries and spreading worldwide. This requires a systematic political mobilization. But in the middle of this, we have a crazy kind of Cold War that we’re not speaking with China about a coordinated strategy. We don’t have the main players at the table. And these days you don’t even need a table; you need a Zoom. And that’s all that is needed, actually, to get this done.
Financing can also be arranged. These companies also should abide by normal pricing. It’s not that this should be — the word is “free market.” It’s insane. This is not even a market. It’s like auctioning seats on a lifeboat, the way they’re doing it right now.
In other words, the most basic standards of management logic are not being applied right now, even though this is the greatest global emergency in modern history. Why is Jake Sullivan announcing just what the United States is going to do, without transparency, for July, for August, for September? And why is he saying it not in the context of a globally agreed plan, but of the United States announcing some number? Beats me, because when I look at this — and I’m involved in it day to day — what is needed is a strategy over six months. Countries need to know when doses are going to arrive. They need to have supply chains locally ready. They need to train. They need to have the capacity to get the vaccines into operation.
So, this is an operational challenge. It is not some market mania, which is the way that it has been treated 'til now, as if companies have the right and the prerogative to do what they want, sign what secret contracts they want, without any disclosure. That's the situation we’re in right now.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the People’s Vaccine Alliance reports profits from COVID vaccines have helped at least nine people become billionaires during the pandemic, with a combined wealth of over $19 billion, more than enough to cover the cost of fully vaccinating all people in low-income countries.
I want to bring in Fatima Hassan, founder and director of the Health Justice Initiative in South Africa, speaking to us from Cape Town. We just had in headlines the World Health Organization warning of a sharp increase in COVID-19 in many parts of Africa, cases rising in at least 14 countries. Talk about what this means, the fact that it is so difficult to get vaccines to the developing world, that it would take something like — what was the estimate? Fifty-seven years?
FATIMA HASSAN: Yeah. Thanks. And I think, you know, the previous speaker is right: We could be addressing this in the next few months, if there was the political will to ensure that many of these front-runner vaccine companies would actually share the knowledge and share the vaccine know-how. In my own country, we’re still waiting for supplies from Johnson & Johnson because of an issue that has arisen in the U.S., and we’re waiting for the FDA clearance. That has halted half of our vaccination program, because we are totally reliant on supplies from two pharmaceutical companies who refuse to issue multiple voluntary licenses, who refuse to allow others to manufacture the vaccines, to share the knowledge and to allow others to be able to be part of the supply chain system.
So, the situation that we have around the number that it will take — the number of years that it will take to vaccinate everybody in the Global South is one of artificial, self-created scarcity. There aren’t enough supplies, because there is knowledge hoarding. And where there are supplies, they’re not coming fast enough. In my own country — it’s June 2021 — we’ve only vaccinated just over 1 million people, half of whom who were part of a study trial. So that tells you there’s something fundamentally wrong with the supply chain system, which is very tenuous in the world at the moment. And despite the WHO saying, you know, in the first half of 2021, let’s at least use available supplies for all healthcare workers around the world or all people over 80, that has not happened. So, you know, I agree there isn’t a prioritization. There’s definitely a scarcity of supplies. But that scarcity can be addressed, and it is self-created.
AMY GOODMAN: So, explain how it could work in South Africa. What would it require of the wealthiest countries, like the United States? I mean, you have the G7 meeting today. That’s the Group of 7: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. What do you want to see come out of that meeting? What are your demands?
FATIMA HASSAN: So, all of those countries, except the U.S., are actually blocking what we call the TRIPS waiver. The U.S. has indicated partial support for the waiver only in relation to vaccine, not in relation to diagnostic technologies or not in relation to therapeutics or other kind of interventions that could actually help us manage the epidemic. For over eight months, the G7 have been sitting on a proposal for the TRIPS waiver that would allow other manufacturers around the world, wherever there is untapped capacity, to be able to make versions of these vaccines so that we can get millions of doses into many different parts of the world. So they’re blocking that, while their own populations are quite advanced in terms of vaccination levels. In some parts of the G7 member states, they’re actually vaccinating younger, healthy people. In my own country, people who are over 80 are still waiting for an appointment for a vaccine.
So, it tells you that the G7 could do a lot more. Many of them have co-invested in some of these vaccines. They actually own the technology. But they’re really fearful. They are deferential to pharmaceutical intellectual property interests. And even with the current state that we’re in, with a number of countries facing a wave three — some may also be facing a wave four — with the hospitalization data that we’re seeing, the morbidity figures that we’re seeing, particularly in Africa, even now countries are still sitting around a table and talking and having long conversations instead of figuring out an urgent way to ramp up manufacturing, scale up production and get as many doses to as many people as possible all over the world.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to just share some figures that are pretty astounding. The People’s Vaccine Alliance made calculations with the Health Justice Initiative, Oxfam and UNAIDS. They found last month people living in G7 countries were 77 times more likely to be offered a vaccine than those living in the world’s poorest countries. Between them, G7 nations were vaccinating at a rate of 4.6 million people a day in May. Meanwhile, if this rate continues, everyone living in G7 nations will be fully vaccinated by January. At the current rate, 63,000 people a day, it would take low-income countries 57 years. How many millions of people had to die, Jeffrey Sachs — have to die to make these pharmaceutical drug company billionaires?
JEFFREY SACHS: Let me put it in a somewhat different perspective, if I might. The United States has now vaccinated more than half of the population. Sadly, we have vaccine resistance, which is another tragedy. And I’ll put that aside for the moment. The U.S. has been producing hundreds of millions of doses per month. That is now available for the rest of the world. And that’s why this announcement has been made. But there is no plan of allocation. A similar situation applies in Europe, though Europe is six to eight weeks lagging the United States. A similar situation applies to the U.K., which is also a producing country. China is producing a lot of vaccine now and getting a lot of coverage within China. What it means is that we’re producing globally at a rate maybe of immunizing half a billion people a month. That’s the rate if you add across the companies, roughly. That is plenty of production. But there’s no plan for allocating these vaccines right now. That is unbelievable to this moment.
So, I think the production levels are actually high. They have gone overwhelmingly to the rich countries in the early months, but the rich countries are saturated, essentially, or becoming saturated with coverage, because they have reached, or close to reaching, targets. And that means that this production is available for the world, which needs it urgently, where people are dying without it.
But countries don’t even know a target date right now. They have no idea. They’re completely in the dark. Should they wait for COVAX? Should they go try to sign some agreement with Pfizer at some incredibly marked-up price? Should they make side deals? Should they accept this one or that one? Nobody knows, because there’s no system. And I think that that is largely the fault of the United States and its failure to cooperate transparently and publicly with China, with Russia, with the European producers, with India and with the United Kingdom. In other words, there’s massive supply, but there’s no plan for allocation.
AMY GOODMAN: Final comment, Fatima Hassan, on the issue of the vaccines and what’s happening in South Africa, what’s happening in Uganda, what’s happening in different African countries, what people need to know, on the continent and outside?
FATIMA HASSAN: So, I would say two things. I would slightly disagree: We don’t think the production levels are sufficient, which is why we’re having a supply crisis in almost all of Africa, which also explains why less than 3% of people in Africa have actually received supplies and have actually been vaccinated.
And COVAX is obviously not the solution, even if the U.S. puts in a trickle of 20 million doses into COVAX. COVAX has indicated that by the end of 2021, it’s only likely to cover about 27 to 30% of vulnerable populations in low-income countries. So, COVAX, I think, is a tremendous failure.
The supplies are not sufficient. We don’t believe production levels are enough. And we really need to ramp up manufacturing through the sharing — and urgent sharing — of the vaccine know-how and knowledge. And, you know, the waiver is just one part of that. There now has to be moves for governments, particularly the G7 member states, to compel pharmaceutical companies to share the technology and to transfer the technology, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, is there concern that the U.S. will be sending, for example, AstraZeneca, when it hasn’t even approved it itself in the United States? And also, the fact that even Moderna and Pfizer vaccines only have emergency use authorization; they haven’t been fully approved. Do you understand the reason for that?
JEFFREY SACHS: Hey, are you asking me?
FATIMA HASSAN: So, in relation —
JEFFREY SACHS: Oh, I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go to Fatima, and then I’ll end with Jeffrey Sachs.
FATIMA HASSAN: Sorry, Jeffrey. But in relation to South Africa, Moderna hasn’t even submitted its regulatory dossier. So we wouldn’t, for example, be able to take their supplies right now. They refuse to enter low-income countries. South Africa has taken a decision not to use AstraZeneca. So, at the moment, you know, like I said in the beginning, we’re reliant on Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. So the issue of vaccine selection in Africa is as equally important. And I think Jeffrey is right. Where is the conversations with Russia and with China? We now know some dossiers from Sputnik, Sinopharm, Sinovac have been submitted. But there seems to be, in some parts of the world, a reluctance to use those vaccines and to rely primarily on vaccines that come from Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. And that, I think, is going to be our undoing, because certainly don’t have enough supplies of vaccines to go around the world expeditiously.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Jeffrey?
JEFFREY SACHS: Just to be clear, I agree on the need for ramping up, but what I’m saying is the reason that Africa has gotten so little, in part, is that the rich countries used all the production in the beginning. And that phase is at an end. It was not an appropriate way to do things. It was the way it was done. Now there is a massive supply that could be brought to bear, and that is the point that I wanted to make. So it’s not a disagreement on what to do. It is a point that we have a massive supply coming available, but without a plan to bring it about.
On the question, should AstraZeneca, should Moderna and others be used, I would say yes. From everything we know about the clinical evidence and the practical efficacy, we need to get comprehensive coverage as rapidly as possible. We are in an unprecedented crisis, but also an unprecedented situation where vaccines have come online for a new disease in a record time. Is there some uncertainty? Yes. But does that merit delay? In my view, absolutely not.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank Fatima Hassan, founder and director of the Health Justice Initiative in South Africa, joining us from Cape Town, and ask Jeffrey Sachs to stay with us after break. I want to ask you about the G7 finance ministers, expected to agree on support for a global minimum corporation tax, and also your criticism of President Biden for backing off of his massive infrastructure plan, what’s being compromised. Stay with us.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman. (photo: Caroline Brehman/Getty Images)
Jamaal Bowman Is Right - the Left Should Draw a Line in the Sand Over Infrastructure
Luke Savage, Jacobin
Excerpt: "On infrastructure, Joe Biden is sliding back into the disastrous 'bipartisan' mode of negotiations that sank so may progressive initiatives in the Obama years. Jamaal Bowman has now drawn a line in the sand rejecting that approach - and others in Congress should join him."
In centrist-speak, “bipartisan” has long been a term of praise regardless of what is actually being referred to. For some Democrats in particular, affixing the label to any bill is not only an inherently virtuous act but one that ordinary members of the public are bound to celebrate.
t’s a strange and perplexing assumption for several reasons, the most obvious of which is the idea that average voters are sufficiently tuned into the wheeling and dealing of elite brokerage politics to care about the finer points of the legislative process. In the abstract, there’s also nothing intrinsically good or bad about a piece of legislation being partisan or bipartisan: what ultimately matters is the content.
It’s for these reasons that the rationale currently being offered by the Biden administration around its infrastructure bill are so obviously wrongheaded and self-defeating. “In the White House there is a belief,” Politico reported last week, “that the public will reward the president for reaching a bipartisan agreement on infrastructure.”
“Seeking out a bipartisan agreement” naturally means seeking out Republican votes and, to this end, Biden’s team has inevitably begun the familiar process of scaling down its already inadequate ambitions in a quixotic mission to win over a handful of GOP lawmakers who probably won’t vote for the bill anyway: the initial $2.3 trillion figure being first reduced to a more modest $1.7 trillion before, in its latest incarnation, coming in at just $1 trillion in a form that would also roll back proposed corporate tax hikes.
A recent op-ed in (of all places) the Financial Times concisely summed up how this process is almost certain to play out:
Here is the historic template for how post-Lyndon Johnson Democratic presidents negotiate with Senate Republicans. First, halve the size of your desired outcome so that you can commence by meeting Republicans in the middle. Second, allow Republicans to negotiate that down to a quarter. Third, watch Republicans unanimously vote against your bill regardless. Fourth, take a lot of well-deserved flak from your base for having self-emasculated on behalf of your political enemies and wasted valuable time. Fifth, congratulate yourself for being bipartisan. Finally, rinse and repeat for the next big reform.
For many years, centrist Democrats have considered the very idea of negotiation synonymous with the practice of offering concessions to the Right (it being taken for granted that left-wing lawmakers, insofar as there have even been any, will treat whatever is put in front of them as the best of all possible worlds and obligingly give it the desired rubber stamp). Though still regrettably small in number, there are now more left-wing members of Congress than at any time in living memory. Given the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the House, a few lost votes could potentially mean a great deal and, for this reason, a series of recent tweets from New York’s Jamaal Bowman suggest we could soon see why.
“If what I’m reading is true,” Bowman said (referring to a report from the Washington Post on the latest round of infrastructure negotiations), “I would have a very hard time voting yes on this bill. $2 trillion was already the compromise. @POTUS can’t expect us to vote for an infrastructure deal dictated by the Republican Party.” He continued:
The crises we face are immense and urgent. We have an economic crisis, a climate crisis, and a crisis of racial injustice. We have a historic opportunity to act, and history won’t judge us kindly if we let it pass us by. Republicans have given Democratic governance the middle finger since the day President Biden was inaugurated. We can’t — and won’t — reward them by keeping Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts in place and slashing our infrastructure package in half. Racist infrastructure has damaged districts like mine for generations. Their holistic care is not for compromise. Republicans don’t only discredit this — they’ve worked to unravel it. We can’t compromise against the best interest of working class people. No Republican vote in favor of an infrastructure package should supersede our mission: to build an America that works for the people, not for massive corporations. Getting Republicans on board is not necessary. Getting the American people back on their feet is.
Bowman is exactly right: there is no substantive political case for bargaining down an already compromised infrastructure proposal. If the Biden administration is intent on pursuing such a course, it can and should suffer consequences for scaling down its own plans — and have to contend with lawmakers willing to vote “nay” before allowing the bogus quest for bipartisanship to water down yet another major piece of legislation.
At time of writing, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib had all retweeted Bowman’s thread, an encouraging sign that some left wing members of Congress may be willing to withhold their votes from any infrastructure bill diluted in a bid to secure Republican support. They should, and other Democrats in the House and Senate should join them.
On infrastructure, Joe Biden is sliding back into the disastrous “bipartisan” mode of negotiations that sank so may progressive initiatives in the Obama years. Jamaal Bowman has now drawn a line in the sand rejecting that approach — and others in Congress should join him.
Sunday Song: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young | Find the Cost of Freedom
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, YouTube
Excerpt: "Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground."
One of the truly iconic rock bands of the of the American Rock Renaissance era, Crosby Stills Nash and Young. (photo: Henry Diltz/Corbis)
Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down
Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down
Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down
Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down
A firefighter checks on the evolution of the Castle Fire as it burns in the Sequoia national forest. (photo: Étienne Laurent/EPA)
How Federal Agencies Are Failing Their Wildland Firefighters
Zora Thomas, Grist
Thomas writes: "Wildfire, a feature of California ecology since prehistory, has in recent years become a harsh and intrusive reality that the state struggles to reckon with."
ometime in the blur of September 2020, I stood on a ridgeline in the Plumas National Forest in Northern California and watched as the year’s deadliest fire ripped nearly 30 miles down the Middle Fork of the Feather River. The northeast winds that fueled the blowout howled around me and the other members of my crew throughout our 18-hour shift, peeling hard hats from heads, cracking lips, sandblasting eyelids until they puffed shut around grit-scratched corneas.
It was the middle of my first season on a Forest Service Hotshot crew. We’d come up to the mountaintop in the early morning to catch a slopover, a point where the wind had brought fire across our containment lines. Though dawn had barely broken, it was already windier than I could ever remember a day being, and the flames were making fast angry lunges through patches of dense brush toward a stand of thick timber.
We caught the slop and lined it. If you don’t live near constant wildfire, you might not know what that means; we used saws and hand tools to clear the vegetation in a perimeter around the flames, depriving it of fuel. We were just spreading out to hold the line when a dark column began to materialize a couple of canyons away, chewing in on itself and boiling outward, erupting skyward like a particularly beautiful and untidy mushroom cloud. Above us, a veteran firefighter was scouting from a plane — a position also known as Air Attack — advising those of us on the ground below. It was hard to hear the radio over the wind, but I made out his firm suggestion that anyone in that area get out immediately.
Wildfire, a feature of California ecology since prehistory, has in recent years become a harsh and intrusive reality that the state struggles to reckon with. Climate change, rampant overgrowth of fuel, and an ever-expanding rural population make the job of wildland firefighters harder every year. But while wildfire as a concept has become familiar to Californians, the logistics of how fires are dealt with remain opaque, and understandably so. It is, as one might expect, a battle of much sweat and blood and a few tears on the part of firefighters. But it’s also one of exhaustive bureaucracy. Cal Fire, the state’s proprietary fire and medical response agency, tends to dominate media coverage and the public understanding of firefighting. But suppression and prevention of wildfires involve an extensive and interdependent network of different agencies.
Of the approximately 33 million acres of forest in California, 57 percent is administered by the federal government. Both on this land and off it, containment of wildfires falls to an assortment of agencies including the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Wildland firefighters who work for one of these federal agencies share a common plight: the pay is low and the benefits are scarce. That makes it hard to retain people. If you wonder why there might not be enough firefighters this summer, that’s one good reason why.
By some estimates, around 20 percent of permanent positions in federal firefighting went unfilled last year, and this can mean dangerously diminished efficacy on the fire line. Let me translate that: If you don’t take care of federal firefighters, you don’t understand what they do or who relies on them. It’s a failure to recognize the realities of fighting wildfires and the danger the blazes present to the public.
A couple days before the blowout, I was working a quiet spot with one of our saw teams, using chainsaws to clear debris, when a public information officer wandered up the line and asked to take our picture. Filthy and haggard, with 10 days’ worth of soot coating my face and staining my teeth, I demurred. He insisted, so I let him snap a picture of me talking into my radio. “Thanks,” he said. “You know, most of the public are really supportive, really appreciative, but you do get those ones who think you all are just out here sitting in the woods, collecting a paycheck.” In light of the summer we’d had, the idea was so patently absurd that we all laughed for a minute.
But he had a point. There’s a vague mythology of the Hotshot as a rugged and daring outdoorsman. Along with that comes another piece of fantasy: that all firefighters are well-paid, comfortably employed, and well-cared for. In reality, different firefighters have distinct responsibilities and capabilities, and wildly disparate levels of compensation.
It’s easy to get confused. There’s an alphabet soup of agencies at work on any given fire, and within them, countless different roles for an individual firefighter. Ask an average Californian what a Hotshot is, and they’ll probably tell you it’s a guy who works for Cal Fire and jumps out of helicopters. In reality, they’re members of highly qualified, self-sufficient crews based on land, almost all of whom work for federal agencies. Those people who jump out of planes into fires? They’re called smokejumpers, and they also work for the feds. So do around 15,000 other wildland firefighters, whose duties can vary from hand crews (frontline firefighters who use hand tools to maintain firelines) to helitack (wildland firefighters who specialize in the use of helicopters to suppress fire) to wildland fire modules (crews whose specialty is prescribed or controlled burns, as well as back burns, which deplete a fire of fuel).
These federal firefighters — or, as they’re officially known, forestry technicians — earn a fraction of the pay collected by their peers in other agencies. Entry-level salaries at Cal Fire or Pacific Gas and Electric, perhaps the closest analogues to the feds in terms of day-to-day work, are nearly double an average first-year salary for the Forest Service. That gap only widens as seniority increases. GS-3s, entry-level employees in federal fire, earn a base rate of around $13.50 per hour. A Hotshot superintendent, who’s responsible for the lives of their 20 crew members and required to hold a plethora of specialized qualifications accumulated over the course of at least a decade of experience, will enjoy a base rate of about $22.00 to $28.00 per hour.
Defenders of the federal agencies will be quick to note that the real money to be made in fire comes with overtime and hazard pay. But even with these pay bumps, forestry technicians won’t take home anything close to their state or municipal counterparts. And federal firefighters, who work infamously long hours, can be shortchanged on overtime. It’s sometimes unavoidable that unpaid time is spent on gear maintenance or preparation for the next shift, rather than sleeping and eating, and much of the pay increase forestry technicians earn for overtime is immediately lost to a higher tax rate.
Similarly, the “hazardous” distinction and its attendant pay raise apply only to officially designated incidents, not to prescribed burns, fuel reduction operations, or training exercises, all of which are perfectly capable of causing injury or death and have done so in a handful of tragic accidents. This is one of a few commonly derided policy loopholes that reduce the pay of forestry technicians. Another is the lack of an official on-call designation. When they’re not on fires, many federal firefighters are required to remain within a two-hour “call-back” radius of their station and be ready to report to duty at any time, but are paid neither for travel time nor any kind of on-call wage.
The low hourly rate earned by forestry technicians is also meted out very differently from the pay of their peers. On wildland incidents, Cal Fire and many other agencies are paid using a ‘“portal-to-portal” system. From the moment they leave their station’s door to the moment they return, they are being paid, 24/7.
Federal resources, on the other hand, are off the clock and unpaid between shifts, though they remain on-site at the fire for the duration of their 14-day assignments. The adoption of a portal-to-portal pay system by the federal agencies is a commonly proposed tactic to alleviate staffing problems, but so far, it’s failed to come to fruition. As of now, conventional wisdom among forestry technicians dictates that each summer, financial security comes only after working 1,000 hours of overtime, accrued in shifts ranging from 10 to 40 hours.
So it’s not surprising that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are having trouble retaining firefighters. What’s shocking is how very little is being done about it. The federal agencies, which are budgeted through congressional appropriations, are given billions of dollars in discretionary funding for wildfire every year. That so little makes it into the hands of the men and women playing the most critical role in confronting wildfires seems like more than an oversight. It seems like negligence, and suggests the belief that any warm body is as good as the next on the fire line; that there is an unlimited supply of men and women willing to trade high risk for low wages.
The California Hotshot season starts in late spring with two weeks of intensive training, physical and otherwise. I spent the winter anxiously preparing for this initiation, deeply concerned that I wouldn’t make the cut. I ran 30 miles a week, did 200 pushups a day, crunched until my abs spasmed, and every few days took a 50-pound bag of coarse gravel for a long walk up a steep hill. On the day of our first crew hike, I felt some of the purest relief I’ve ever known that I wasn’t a straggler, with an irate lead firefighter shouting in my ear, “Pick it the FUCK up!”
Fitness is a crucially important component of a successful Hotshot crew, but it’s far from the only one — and the idea that wildland firefighting consists solely of brute-force unskilled labor is a damaging misconception. Even relatively inexperienced members of a Type I crew are expected to be proficient in skills ranging from programming radios to repairing small engines to taking command of medical incidents.
The unpredictable nature of wildland firefighting requires adaptability and capability in a workforce, as well as the accumulation of years of knowledge and experience. The job can be extremely dangerous, and when this is the case, crews rely entirely on their leadership to keep them safe and working. I spent the season amazed that there aren’t more injuries and fatalities. Every time I reached across a chainsaw in a moment of exhausted carelessness or wrestled myself free from an impenetrable thicket of head-high manzanita shrubs I’d just set on fire around my own body, I felt like it was a small miracle that we all made it through our days. The presence of highly capable supervisors is the difference between fighting a fire effectively and letting it get away. It can also be the difference between life and death.
There are a lot of reasons I chose this job. I like being outside and feeling useful. I love a good sufferfest. I have a self-indulgent tendency towards itinerancy — it’s fun. Those are reason enough for someone in my position— a rookie in my 20s, free of financial burdens and real responsibilities. But this is the crux of the federal agencies’ struggle to meet their staffing needs. Among firefighters at the career stage most important to those agencies — those sharp, hardworking, and experienced enough to take on the responsibility of helping to run a crew— the myriad sacrifices the job requires increasingly outweigh its rewards. Public service and a dismal hourly rate can become fragile justifications for half-year chunks of absenteeism from the lives of spouses and children, not to mention the extreme toll on the bodies and minds of forestry technicians. Chronic injuries abound, as does psychological damage. I can’t cite hard numbers because the federal government does not compile them, but among wildland firefighters, there is ubiquitous acknowledgment of problematically high rates of divorce, chronic sleep problems, depression, PTSD, and suicide.
When federal firefighters are injured on the job, they can technically seek help from the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs. But dealing with OWCP is universally acknowledged among crews to be a nightmare: Workers’ comp claims stagnate, unpaid, for years, and are regularly denied or botched to the point of being wholly ineffective. When firefighters die on the job, as they do every year, their families are left largely unsupported, grieving, and financially insecure. Where the federal government fails, nonprofits like the Wildland Firefighter Foundation pick up the slack, but that’s hardly a long-term or comprehensive solution. The WFF is funded largely by donations from other wildland firefighters and their families. In the end, it falls to forestry technicians to take care of each other.
The problems faced by federal firefighters are not widely recognized in large part because historically, they haven’t been discussed outside the insular world of wildfire. To complain is deeply antithetical to both the ends and means of the job; to be seen as a whiner is the worst of all possible sins. This ethos is not without purpose. The ability to accomplish a lot when given very little is, necessarily, the hallmark of federal firefighting. But as the cost of living in much of the West rapidly outstrips the wages earned by forestry technicians, they’re beginning to state their case more publicly. This summer, a Vice documentary team followed the El Dorado Hotshots around for a while, making the second installment of a series on wildland firefighting. Captains, superintendents, smokejumpers, and others have written an array of open letters to their peers and their agencies, describing the challenges they’ve faced during decades on the job — what has changed, and what, notably, hasn’t.
The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a group of current and former smokejumpers and Hotshots, is attempting to focus the ample energy of the federal firefighting community. Some of my crewmates sat in on a Zoom meeting with the GWF while on assignment this fall, during which a tired-sounding smokejumper explained over a crying kid in the background that the organization was advocating for title changes, adequate pay, and comprehensive well-being. They offer on-the-ground perspective and potential solutions to lawmakers, as well as ways for the public to get involved.
Even against the impenetrable monolith of federal bureaucracy, forestry technicians are ready to do what they do best: solve problems. Unfortunately, this is a problem only the federal government can solve.
There’s certainly precedent for the type of overhaul that many forestry technicians are hoping for. Firefighters today are the beneficiaries of decades’ worth of hard-won labor reforms, from the provision of sleeping bags and hot meals to boot stipends, work-to-rest requirements, and the now-standard 14-day assignment. In the early 2000s, Region 5, which covers California, was able to provide retention bonuses for forestry technicians without congressional approval. This policy saw some success in slowing attrition in the federal fire workforce, but since its expiration in 2011, retention problems have redoubled and crept into other regions, underscoring the need for permanent, agency-wide solutions.
Unfortunately, those larger-scale reforms are contingent on a cumbersome series of federal approvals. When forestry technicians or their union, the National Federation of Federal Employees, manage to bring a policy update before Congress, the change must be approved not only by the legislature, but also by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. This three-step approval can take years, and, depending on the political climate, might not happen at all.
Other, similarly hamstrung federal workers have turned to strikes to effect change. But federal wildland firefighters couldn’t organize a general strike, and not just because they’re contractually prohibited from doing so. To strike during fire season would be, for obvious reasons, ethically fraught, and a winter strike seems unlikely to muster much bargaining power.
It’s clear though that the problems facing forestry technicians are not inevitable or unchangeable. The ”it is what it is” philosophy doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It is what it is, until it isn’t.
Or, to borrow a line from the crew: Can’t lives on Won’t street.
In October 2020, we spent an assignment on the Red Salmon Complex, a fire that stretched across the Six Rivers and Klamath National Forests in Northern California, near the Oregon border. It had been burning since the middle of summer; in this unprecedentedly busy season, there simply weren’t enough resources to contain it. Colder weather had come to the Coast Range, the relative humidity was recovering overnight, and the fire behavior was mellow compared to what we’d been working with for months.
When the conditions were good, we burned green pockets out of the mountains above the Salmon River, the flames spitting flurries of gold and red leaves above us as we dragged our torches. We scrambled down the slick black boulders of tributaries, shooting flares from a .22 to burn the understory where the canyon walls were too steep to walk. On day 14, as we drove out of the canyon, high on the banks of the Salmon, I watched helicopters thrum down to the river below us to fill their buckets and sideslip up the canyon towards their targets, trailing shining drops.
Over the course of this assignment, a few of the guys brought up the Wildland Firefighter Recognition Act, a bill introduced a couple months earlier by Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa, whose congressional district covers much of the interior of Northern California. The act proposed a change of our title, from “forestry technician” to “wildland firefighter.” The rebrand would come with a new occupational series of positions for federal firefighters and an unspecified pay bump “based on the unusual physical hardship or hazardous nature of the position.” A prior iteration of the bill died in Congress in 2019, in a session held squarely between the two worst fire seasons in modern American history.
The bill’s reintroduction wasn’t the only political attention the unprecedented strain of the 2020 fire season garnered. In October, probably while my crewmates and I were burning on the Klamath, then-Senator Kamala Harris sent a letter to the secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture departments, advocating on behalf of federal wildland firefighters. And this past April, the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands held a hearing that at least attempted to confront some of federal fire’s problems. Riva Duncan, a former fire staff officer and the executive secretary of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, gave impassioned testimony on the challenges she’s grappled with during more than three decades with the Forest Service, and the dire need for change.
It’s certainly unusual for now-Vice President Harris to come down on the same side of an issue as LaMalfa, a staunch conservative who represents one of California’s reddest (and most fire-prone) districts. Reform in the name of federal firefighters seems to present a rare opportunity for bipartisan progress in Washington.
All this constitutes an unprecedented level of engagement with the challenges wildland firefighters have faced for decades. Congress and agency administrators are beginning to confront the reality they have so far struggled to grasp. There’s a steep cost, both financially and functionally, associated with training a new and inexperienced forestry technician to replace one who has moved on.
Ultimately, that cost is borne by the public. A shortage of federal firefighters has a predictable and devastating outcome: towns and wilderness throughout the American West won’t be adequately protected. But whether all the politicking will incur meaningful reform remains to be seen.
The day after the blowout on the Bear Fire, one of our leads was hit by the top of a tree. He was on his own, down in a steep drainage, orchestrating a handful of helicopters to cool down a leading edge of the fire and give the rest of us time to prepare a road to burn off. He didn’t see the dead top of the tree, or hear it fall. He’s lucky to be alive.
The piece that hit him was large enough to be fatal, but decomposed enough to break on impact. It smashed him down the steep hill he was working on, filling pockets on his pack with rot and woodchips. He’s been in wildland fire for most of his adult life and has had plenty of close calls, but this one was enough to make him call his mom, just to say hi.
On our way back to camp that evening, after he hiked out of the ravine and rejoined the crew, he mentioned the incident so casually that it took me a moment to register what he was saying. Tree strikes are killers, the stuff of nightmares, and he spoke with the blasé manner of someone describing how he’d been cut off in traffic.
As he told the story, we laughed and joked, glad he was OK. But the exchange left me sobered and bewildered. After a decade of experience, the accumulation of innumerable specialized skills, and the consistent risk of his life and his health, he still only merits the title of “forestry technician,” and an hourly pay rate comparable to a senior barista at my local Starbucks. There’s a damaging disconnect between the lionized figure of the firefighter and the reality of the men and women who fight more fire than anyone.
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