26 June 22
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This term, by the way, was coined by William Keegan to describe Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. But sado-monetarist has come to mean a person who always seems to demand higher interest rates and fiscal austerity, regardless of the state of the economy.
And such people have just had a good year: the inflation they’ve always warned about finally materialized. In 2021, U.S. policymakers, like many economists, myself included, badly underestimated inflation risks — as they themselves admit. This candor, incidentally, is itself refreshing and welcome. Back in the 2010s very few of those who wrongly predicted runaway inflation ever admitted having been wrong.
More important, policymakers are acting to undo their mistakes. Budget deficits are plunging. The Federal Reserve has begun raising the interest rates it controls, and the longer-term rates that matter for the real economy — especially mortgage rates and corporate borrowing costs — have soared. These policies pretty much ensure a slowdown in the U.S. economy, which might be sharp enough to be considered a mild recession.
But there’s a loud chorus of voices insisting that the Fed must tighten even more — indeed, that it must drive the U.S. economy into a sustained period of high unemployment something like the big slump of the early 1980s. And there’s a real danger that the Fed may be bullied into overreacting.
So let’s talk about why the demands for even more aggressive Fed action are misguided.
First, how did inflation get so high? A large part of the story involves shocks like rising oil and food prices, disrupted supply chains and so on that are outside the control of policymakers — that is, policymakers other than Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine has seriously damaged the world economy. These nonpolicy shocks explain why inflation has soared almost everywhere — for example, British inflation just clocked in at 9.1 percent.
Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story. In the United States, at least, inflation isn’t confined to a few troubled sectors; even measures that exclude extreme price changes show inflation running well above the Fed’s 2 percent target, although well below the numbers you may see in headlines. And the breadth of inflation suggests that the combination of large federal spending last year and easy money has caused the economy to overheat — that we’ve been suffering from a classic case of too much money chasing too few goods.
As I said, however, policymakers have already taken strong steps to cool the economy back down. So why isn’t that enough?
The answer I keep hearing is that harsh policy is necessary to restore the Fed’s credibility. And to be fair, there are good reasons to believe that credibility is an important factor in keeping inflation under control. What we don’t have are good reasons to believe that this credibility has been lost.
Economists have long accepted the idea that persistent inflation can be self-perpetuating. By 1980, for example, almost everyone expected high inflation to continue indefinitely — and these expectations were reflected, among other things, in big wage deals that gave inflation a lot of inertia. So Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman at the time, had to impose a severe, extended slump to break the inflationary cycle.
But aside from the sado-monetarists themselves, who currently expects inflation to remain persistently high (as opposed to staying high for, say, the next year)?
Not the financial markets. On Wednesday, the five-year breakeven inflation rate — a measure derived from the spread between U.S. government bonds that are and that aren’t protected against inflation — was only 2.74 percent. And part of that reflects expectations of near-term price rises that investors don’t expect to continue; the markets expect inflation to fade.
What about the general public? Last month economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which carries out regular surveys of consumer expectations, noted that consumers apparently expected inflation to “fade over the next few years” and that five-year expectations had been “remarkably stable.”
A few weeks ago a different survey, from the University of Michigan, showed a bump in long-term inflation expectations, which had previously been stable. But the New York Fed numbers didn’t show the same bump. And as anyone who works with economic data can tell you, you shouldn’t make too much of one month’s number, especially if other numbers don’t tell the same story.
To be clear, I’m not saying that any of these predictions are necessarily right. What they tell us, instead, is that expectations of persistent inflation aren’t entrenched the way they were in 1980. So it doesn’t look as if we need harsh, Volcker-type policies that punish the economy until morale improves.
Inflation is a real problem, and tighten the Fed must. But it will be tragic if the Fed listens to people who are, in effect, demanding a much deeper slump than the economy seems to need.
Bombing in Ukraine. (photo: Ukrayinska Pravda)
Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, information as of 18:00 on 26 June
Quote: "On the Bakhmut front, the enemy fired with mortars and rocket artillery on Ukrainian positions near Mykolaivka, Berestove, Pokrovske, Kodema, and New-York.
Ukrainian soldiers inflicted significant losses on the enemy near the village of Pavlivka. The occupiers retreated after an unsuccessful assault attempt."
Details: On the Sloviansk front, Russian occupying forces fired on the areas around Nova Dmytrivka, Dibrivne, Virnopillia, Velyka Komyshuvakha, Dolyna, and Ridne. Ukrainian forces successfully repelled Russian assault operations near Dolyna, Kurulka, and Mazanivka.
On the Donetsk front, Russian troops are attempting to block the city of Lysychansk from the south with the support of artillery. They fired on civilian and military infrastructure in and around Lysychansk, Verkhniokamianka, and Loskutivka and conducted an airstrike near Vovchoiarivka. Russia has reinforced its artillery presence on the Donetsk front in order to support the actions of its troops.
On the Avdiivka, Kurakhove, and Zaporizhzhia fronts, Russian troops fired with mortars and rocket artillery on the positions of Ukrainian troops in the areas of Vodiane, Pisky, Mariinka, Prechystivka, Huliaipilske, and Bilohiria. Russians attacked civilian infrastructure in towns and villages to the rear of the Ukrainian Defence Forces with rocket artillery.
Russian occupying forces did not conduct active combat operations on the Kramatorsk front, but fired on the area around Maiaky with artillery.
On the Volyn and Polissia fronts, there is evidence that units of Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups are undergoing training on the territory of the Republic of Belarus in order to conduct further operations on the territory of Ukraine.
On the Sivershchyna front, units from the Western Military District continue to be demonstratively deployed in border-adjacent regions of Bryansk and Kursk oblasts (in Russia) in order to pin down the Ukrainian Defence Forces. The Russians fired on civilian and military infrastructure near Khrinivka and Yanzhulivka.
On the Kharkiv front, Russian troops deployed tanks and artillery of various calibres to fire on Ruski Tyshky, Chepil, Chuhuiv, Zolochiv, and Mospanove. Russian aircraft conducted airstrikes near Yavirske, Dementiivka, and Zamulivka. Russian troops attempted to conduct assault operations in order to improve their tactical position near Dementiivka, but were unsuccessful.
On the Pivdennyi Buh front, Russian occupying forces fired on civilian infrastructure with mortar and rocket artillery in the areas around Osokorivka, Trudoliubivka, Dobrianka, Hannivka, Zoria, Blahodatne, and Luch. Russia launched rockets on the infrastructure of the city of Mykolaiv.
Aircraft-supported Russian forces attempted to regain control over Potiomkine, but were unsuccessful and retreated.
Russia continues to block all shipping in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.
Russian occupation regimes on the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine continue to undertake so-called "filtration" measures in relation to the residents of those territories. Counter-reconnaissance operations are being strengthened at Russian checkpoints.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also reports that the commanders of some of the Russian units banned all leave for their military personnel due to the fact that many of the soldiers who were withdrawn from Ukraine in order to restore their combat readiness are now refusing to return to continue fighting on the territory of Ukraine.
Mifepristone (Mifeprex) and Misoprostol, the two drugs used in a medication abortion, are seen at the Women's Reproductive Clinic, which provides legal medication abortion services, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on June 17, 2022. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Since Friday, more than 100 clinicians have come forward to seek help in offering medication abortion to patients, according to the abortion-rights advocacy group Plan C.
“There’s been an overwhelming amount of interest,” said Christie Pitney, a certified nurse midwife who coordinates Plan C’s efforts to increase the number of clinicians offering telehealth abortions by guiding them through the various steps required to do so. According to Pitney, who herself began providing telehealth abortions in 2021 through her private practice Forward Midwifery, Plan C has gotten 20 requests for help since May, when a leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion was published by Politico. Since Friday, more than 100 more clinicians have come forward, she said, including dozens from states that have already banned abortion or are poised to do so over the next several weeks.
A medication abortion is performed using a two-drug regimen consisting of mifepristone and misoprostol, access to which is tightly restricted by the Food and Drug Administration. When it was approved in 2000, mifepristone was regulated under what’s called a “risk evaluation and mitigation strategy,” or R.E.M.S., which is typically reserved for drugs associated with a serious risk of adverse events. Though mifepristone is safer than Tylenol, the FDA requires it be dispensed only in clinics, medical offices and hospitals; only to patients who have signed an FDA-approved patient agreement; and only by, or under the supervision of, a provider certified to prescribe the drug.
Abortion rights advocates have long argued that there is no medical justification for applying the R.E.M.S. to mifepristone, the safety of which has been well established, and that the decision to do so was politically motivated. In April of last year, the FDA suspended enforcement of the requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in a medical clinic for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. In December, FDA lifted the in-person requirement entirely.
But it maintained the provision that providers must register with either Danco Laboratories or GenBioPro, the only FDA-approved manufacturers of mifepristone, and that requirement remains in place today.
Doctors, midwives, advance practice nurses and physician assistants are all able to order and prescribe mifepristone. When a request comes in, Pitney connects the provider with one of several telemedicine start-ups—groups like Hey Jane, Choix, Just the Pill, or Abortion on Demand—that mail abortion drugs to patients after a consultation via telemedicine. For those interested in setting up their own telemedicine practice, Pitney provides information about registering with GenBioPro, and points providers to an online “toolkit” published by a physician-led team at the University of Washington Department of Family Medicine. A step-by-step guide to registering and prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol, the document gets regularly updated with new clinic protocols and regulations.
“The separation of abortion from general primary care has made it an easy target for those who wish to ban abortions,” said Dr. Emily Godfrey, an associate professor in the department of family medicine at UW, who leads the Access, Delivered initiative, a partnership between Plan C and UW aimed at creating new channels of abortion access in the U.S.
“As primary care providers and other clinicians step up to protect the health and wellness of patients, the U.S. public may come to realize that first trimester abortion care belongs in primary care along with other reproductive health services and not just in stand-alone, independent abortion clinics.”
Fredrika Newton stands next the bust of her late husband, Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton. NPS is considering a Black Panther Party National Historical Park. (photo: Marisa Penaloza/NPR)
"The Black Panther Party is an American story, and that's the job of the National Park Service is to tell the American story," Newton says.
Once upon a time, former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called the Panthers the "greatest threat to internal security."
A half-century later, as perspectives have mellowed, the Huey Newton statue could eventually become part of a National Historical Park. Other possible stops: the former Panther party headquarters, locations of the group's free medical clinics and free children's breakfast program, and the spot where Newton was murdered. All of it may one day be patrolled by a park ranger in a traditional NPS flat hat.
The exploration of a Black Panther historical site is just one example of how the National Park Service is striving to incorporate more Black history into its storytelling about America. The Park Service has a growing network of national historic sites across the Deep South that recognize achievements and atrocities during the civil rights movement. But the idea of a Black Panther Party National Historical Park is singularly controversial. In 2017, the Park Service had to cancel the idea after police groups complained to President Donald Trump that the nation was commemorating a violent separatist group.
"It's one of the most misunderstood legacies of this party," Fredrika Newton says. "It wasn't hate. It wasn't a nationalist organization. It was not a racist organization. Our mission was to fight oppression for all oppressed people."
But with a Democrat in the White House, the project is back under study.
"I'm encouraged," she says. "There is a hunger for knowledge of what it was that the Black Panther Party did."
There are currently about 40 sites in the park system referred to as "African-American experience sites." These include the Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park in Kansas, the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site in Arkansas, the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument in Alabama, the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, and the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Miss. That's the house where the NAACP's state field secretary was murdered in 1963.
It may come as a surprise that the National Park Service — which gave us "America's Best Idea," from the majestic landscapes of Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon — is highlighting chapters of modern history that some Americans are ashamed of.
"Now's the time," says Alan Spears, senior director for cultural resources at the National Parks Conservation Association, a non-profit that advocates for the National Parks System. "We can quote Charlie Parker, now's the time to really begin addressing these stories, looking at them in a candid way.
"I think there's a great deal of pain out there," Spears adds, "and it's the pain that comes from having unresolved history and history that's been deliberately overlooked and neglected."
Even more African-American experience sites are being considered.
In addition to a possible Black Panther park, NPS is studying a location that remembers the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner — in Mississippi, and a location that spotlights the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black youth accused of offending a white woman in Mississippi. New national parks are established either through an act of Congress or a presidential proclamation.
Alan Spears, who is Black, says if these new historic designations become a reality, they'll create opportunities for visitors to have conversations about race.
"And sometimes that makes them controversial to some people, but critical to folks like myself," he says, "who think that we gain much more than we lose by taking a direct look and a candid look at our history and our past."
As Spears says, some of this history is unresolved.
A case in point: the National Park Service erected a sign beside the highway outside of Anniston, Ala., on the spot where in 1961 white segregationists fire-bombed a bus that was carrying the interracial Freedom Riders through the Deep South to protest segregated bus station waiting rooms. Earlier this year, a car rammed the NPS sign and sprayed mud all over it.
Yet, there's more reconciliation than resentment these days.
Charles Person, now 78, was one of the original Freedom Riders, and he is urging the Park Service to commemorate their ride. He remembers a trip he took back to Anniston, and how the town is now promoting the official Freedom Riders National Monument.
"When we came there, a gentleman showed up and he was a grandson of one of the klansmen," Person remembers. "And he apologized for the beating they gave, for setting the bus on fire."
During that trip, Person continues, "We were so amazed at the things the town was trying to do. I would live there now. I mean, that's how much the attitudes of the people have changed."
The National Park Service's Southern Regional Office in Atlanta is studying the designation of future Mississippi civil rights sites, as well as Atlanta's West Hunter Street Baptist Church, home church of the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the civil rights leader and close friend of King.
"When we talk about the story of America, its founding, its development and its reality today, many of those stories are noble, but they are sometimes shameful and sad," says NPS Atlanta spokesperson Saudia Muwwakkil. "But, collectively, they define who we are and who we can be."
One of the first civil rights sites in the NPS network was the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park, established in 1980. It's grown into a major tourist attraction in Atlanta. Visitors can see his birth home, his church, the sprawling visitor center and the World Peace Rose Garden.
But this is not just a place to learn about the life and times of MLK. For the people of Atlanta, the King park continues to connect them to the spirit of non-violence and the struggle for racial justice.
"When Mandela passed away people came here," says Marty Smith, interpretative ranger at the King Historical Park. "When Congressman John Lewis passed away, people came here. George Floyd, people came here. So that just shows you how powerful this site is."
The night that Barack Obama was elected 44th president in 2008, Smith says he walked out onto the grounds and encountered hundreds of people who were drawn to the King historical park to celebrate. That, he says, is living history.
'Medicare for All.' (photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
A new report finds that Medicare for All would have saved one-third of the one million lives lost to COVID in the US. That’s 340,000 deaths at the hands of our for-profit health system — all to make the private insurance companies even richer.
The study, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), lists a few key reasons for the lower death rate under Medicare for All, including reduced transmission, higher vaccination rates, and more hospital capacity.
For starters, researchers found that Medicare for All would have lowered the level of COVID comorbidities such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. All these underlying conditions are less prevalent among insured people, whose access to care makes them more likely to be aware of their conditions and more likely to have them under control.
Second, having Medicare for All in place would have meant fewer people skipping care due to cost. In 2019, before the pandemic, a staggering twenty-eight million adults were uninsured, and millions more underinsured (burdened by co-pays and deductibles they simply couldn’t afford). Thanks to the United States’ employer-based insurance system, an additional fourteen million people were thrown off their insurance plans as the pandemic started and businesses shut down. And while the federal government offered financial assistance during the pandemic, eligibility was narrowly limited to COVID treatment for uninsured patients.
When people can’t afford health care, they don’t seek it out — putting themselves (and in the case of COVID, everyone else) at higher risk of death. Fourteen percent of US residents who had COVID symptoms at the beginning of the pandemic reported forgoing care due to cost, slowing down the health system’s ability to diagnose, treat, and isolate patients.
Third, access to care in rural areas was hindered by underfunded hospitals that rely on low rates paid by Medicaid and often must care for patients without any compensation. According to the PNAS study, “rural hospitals were more prone to shortages of ventilators, personal protective equipment, ICU capacity, and healthcare workers.” Higher Medicare reimbursement rates, in addition to provisions in the Medicare for All 2021 bill that tackle geographic inequalities, would have significantly reversed this.
The PNAS study further argues that vaccine hesitancy would have been lower if more people were able to go to a trusted primary care provider, and that fewer non-COVID procedures would have been delayed if hospitals weren’t so overwhelmed by hospitalizations.
And if all of this wasn’t enough — the hundreds of thousands of lives saved, the reduction in jarring inequalities, the untold amounts of heartbreak and stress and grief averted — the PNAS study goes on to estimate that Medicare for All would have saved over $105 billion in COVID-related medical expenses (in addition to the hundreds of billions it would save annually). Savings would have come from more efficient investment in preventative care, lower administrative overhead, and stronger negotiating power for purchasing drugs and equipment.
In short: hundreds of thousands of fewer deaths, at a far lower price tag.
This important report should put to bed any illusions about the merits of our current system. The study’s lead author, Alison Galvani — director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at the Yale School of Public Health — puts it bluntly: “Americans are needlessly losing lives and money.”
The United States is the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t provide universal health care, despite being the wealthiest nation on earth. We spend more on health care than any other country, with worse health results. Our COVID death rate has dramatically exceeded that of every other comparable country.
As the PNAS report shows, the pandemic’s unfathomably deadly toll was not a purely natural disaster — it was in part a product of our profit-driven health system. Unless we want to continue being had by private insurance companies, transferring wealth year after year as lives are needlessly lost, it’s time to replace the for-profit health system with Medicare for All.
We need more progressives in Congress to speak out against such outrageous spending!
Can't afford FREE LUNCH for hungry American children, but feeding an agency that can't account for their spending?
excerpt:
"Granting $37 billion to a war machine that can't even pass an audit while saying that we 'can't afford' what American families and communities need is quintessential hypocrisy," said Weissman. "Congress can still correct this misstep—rerouting that funding into investments like economic stability, climate justice, and affordable healthcare for all Americans instead."
The House panel's increase comes less than a week after the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to add $45 billion to Biden's $813 billion request, pushing the upper chamber's total proposed budget for national military spending in the coming fiscal year to a whopping $857.6 billion—including $817 billion for the Pentagon, $30 billion for the Department of Energy, and an additional $10.6 billion that falls outside NDAA jurisdiction.
During a speech Wednesday in which she explained why she voted against Golden's "unconscionable" amendment, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Cailf.) stressed that "there are simply not military solutions to every problem."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) also voted against Golden's amendment and explained his opposition in remarks delivered from the House floor.
"If you're supporting this amendment, you're basically paving the way to a trillion-dollar defense [bill]," said Khanna. "Is that what we want in this country?"
"I just want to be clear," he added. "There is no country in the world that is putting over half its discretionary budget into defense and I would rather for us to be the preeminent economy of the 21st century by investing in the health of our people, in the education of our people, in the industries of the future."
Public Citizen, meanwhile, noted that the military spending increase approved by the House panel costs 10 times more than preserving the free school lunch program that Congress is allowing to expire "because it's 'too expensive.'"
Public health experts from the progressive advocacy group have also spent more than a year urging the U.S. to ramp up vaccine manufacturing and inoculate the world against the coronavirus with an investment of just $25 billion, or roughly 3% of the nation's annual military budget.
Last week, Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.)—co-chairs of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus—introduced the People Over Pentagon Act of 2022, which proposes cutting Pentagon spending for the next fiscal year by $100 billion and reallocating those funds toward threats facing the nation that "are not military in nature," such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate emergency, and worsening inequality.
Although a majority of U.S. voters are opposed to military spending in excess of $800 billion, earlier efforts to slash the Pentagon's budget have failed to gain enough support to pass the House or Senate thanks in part to lawmakers who receive significant amounts of campaign cash from the weapons industry, which benefits from constantly ballooning expenditures.
Roughly 55% of all Pentagon spending went to private sector military contractors from FY 2002 to FY 2021, according to Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute. "If this privatization of funds rate over the last 20 years holds," Semler wrote in December, arms dealers will gobble up an estimated $407 billion in public money in FY 2022.
Security forces at the site of a shooting outside the London Pub in central Oslo, Norway, on June 25. (photo: CNN)
Two people were killed and eight others taken to hospital after the shooting near the London Pub, which describes itself on its website as “the largest gay and lesbian venue in Oslo.”
Police received multiple calls about the shooting at 1:14 a.m. local time, and arrived at the scene minutes later. They apprehended the male suspect three minutes after arrival, police said.
The suspect, charged with terrorism, is a Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, and was “known to the police,” but has only received “minor convictions” up until now, prosecutor Christian Hatlo told reporters in Oslo Saturday.
Norway’s domestic intelligence service said it was working to clarify whether more acts of violence may be planned after the shooting. The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) announced in a tweet Saturday that it was “informed about the shooting in Oslo on Saturday.”
“We are now contributing all the relevant information we have to the Oslo police district and are working to clarify whether more acts of violence may be planned. We do not currently have any indications of that,” the PST said.
Hatlo said police had charged the suspect with “murder, attempted murder and terrorist acts.”
He said the terrorism charge was justified on the basis of the number of injured and dead people, the number of crime scenes and an “overall assessment” indicating that the accused intended to “create serious fear in the population.”
At the time of the press conference, police had attempted to question the suspect but had not yet been successful in doing so, Hatlo said. The suspect was taken to the police station, and police told CNN there were currently no other suspects.
As for the charges, Hatlo said the authorities will see “what the investigation shows.”
The suspect was armed with two weapons during the shooting, police said. They did not confirm what weapons he used due to the pending investigation.
There were wounded people on the ground inside and outside the bar when the police arrived. “The scene was chaotic, it was a warm evening and a lot of people were outside, so there were people running everywhere,” police told CNN.
Among the eight in hospital, three people are in critical condition. Another 14 victims sustained minor injuries.
In a statement published on Facebook after the shooting, the London Pub condemned the incident as “absolutely awful and pure evil.” The bar said all its employees were safe, and expressed condolences for the victims and their families.
Oslo’s annual Pride parade, scheduled to take place on Saturday, was canceled in the wake of the shootings after “clear advice and recommendation from the police.”
Writing on Facebook, organizers asked everyone not to attend and said all events in connection with Pride were also canceled.
“We will follow the police’s recommendations and take care of each other. Warm thoughts and love go to relatives, the injured and others affected,” said leader of Oslo Pride, Inger Kristin Haugsevje, and leader of the Association for Gender and Sexuality Diversity, Inge Alexander Gjestvang, in a joint statement.
“We will soon be proud and visible again, but today we will hold and share the pride celebrations from home.”
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre also expressed his condolences to the victims, calling the shooting “a cruel and deeply shocking attack on innocent people.”
Støre later called for unity and said “even though we do not know if the queer environment was the goal, the queer environment is regardless the victim.”
“This day, June 25th, we were to celebrate love, we were to fill the streets in the colors of the rainbow, we were to showcase our community and our freedom. Instead, we are filled with grief,” he said. “Let there be no doubt. We are a community, we are a diverse and strong community, and we will never be threatened or give up our values.”
He re-reiterated that the perpetrator belonged “to an Islamist environment” but emphasized that “if this is Islamic terror, as PST [the Norwegian Police Security Service] points out, then many Muslims will feel vulnerable today and, in the time ahead. And I know that many Muslims in our country are also scared and in despair. It is our common responsibility to make it clear that no one other than the person or the people behind the attack is responsible for it.”
The White House said it was shocked by the killings. “We’re all horrified by the mass shooting in Oslo today, targeting the LGBTQI+ community there. And our house our hearts obviously go out to all the families of the victims, the people of Norway, which is a tremendous ally,” John Kirby, the NSC coordinator for strategic communications, told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Biden was flying to Europe.
He said the US has been in touch with the Norwegian government to offer condolences and offer any support they need after the shooting.
New Jersey. (photo: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection/Grist)
The company is accused of dumping thousands of tons of toxic paint sludge and other pollutants where Ramapough Lenape Nation members live.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in state court, accuses the company of disposing of thousands of tons of toxic paint sludge and other pollutants on the site of a former iron mine in northern New Jersey in the 1960s and 70s, then donating or selling the land without disclosing the contamination. As a result, tribal members say they have experienced cancer, birth defects, and other negative health effects.
“I lost my grandmother to cancer,” Ramapough Lenape Nation member Angel Stefancik said at a press conference announcing the suit. “I’m 22 years old and I suffer with a list of chronic illnesses because of what has been done to me.” At the same time, Stefancik said, leaving is not an option. “I want to be there for the rest of my life … I was born there, and I’m gonna die there.”
The lawsuit, though, doesn’t focus on these health issues specifically. Instead, it seeks damages for the destruction of natural resources, and accuses the company of “deliberate acts or omissions taken with a wanton and willful disregard for the welfare of the residents of New Jersey.” Contaminants such as lead, arsenic, benzene, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs — likely human carcinogens, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency — have been found at the site.
In a statement, Ford told Grist that it has not yet had time to review the lawsuit and fully respond to its claims. “Ford takes its environmental responsibility seriously and has shown that through our actions to address issues in Upper Ringwood,” the neighborhood where the dumping occured, the company said through a spokesperson. “We understand this has affected the community and have worked cooperatively with the Borough of Ringwood, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency while implementing the remediation plan stipulated by the EPA.”
Ford opened an auto assembly plant in the nearby town of Mahwah in 1955, and the company purchased the 500-acre Ringwood Mine site 10 years later to use as a landfill. Over the next decade, according to the EPA, it dumped toxic waste into the forests and wetlands of the site, as well as abandoned mine shafts. The area has been the home of the Lenape people since long before European colonization, and parts of the site were used as affordable housing for the Ramapough people, who trace their ancestry to the Lenape, in the 1970s. Ringwood meets the criteria for an “overburdened community” under New Jersey’s 2020 Environmental Justice Law.
“Today we hold Ford accountable for Natural Resource Damages — for knowingly polluting some of the State’s most precious environmental assets, then walking away without disclosing the toxic mess they had made or attempting to mitigate the harm,” New Jersey’s acting attorney general, Matthew Platkin, said in a press release.
In 1983, the EPA designated Ringwood a Superfund site, and Ford conducted cleanups throughout the 1980s and 1990s. But further waste was discovered in the following years, and Ringwood was re-listed as a Superfund site in 2006, the only time the EPA has done so; Ford eventually agreed to pay the state $2.1 million to cover the costs of the cleanup. The new lawsuit builds upon this past recourse, seeking an as-of-yet-unspecified amount in damages for the destruction of natural resources, which would fund projects to further restore the contaminated land as much as possible.
Ford has also faced a class-action lawsuit from around 600 Ramapough Lenape Nation members, who sued the company in 2006 for property damage and personal injury. The legal battle was the subject of an HBO documentary, “Mann v. Ford,” that followed the tribe’s lawsuit against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent automotive industry downturn. Fearing that Ford might go bankrupt, the Ramapough accepted an $11 million settlement with the company, according to the documentary. But waste remains at the site, and cleanup is ongoing; the EPA doesn’t expect “final remedial action” to begin until 2024.
The Ramapough Lenape Nation’s struggle against Ford is part of a global trend; around the world, Indigenous people suffer disproportionately from the impacts of pollution, according to a 2020 study from Helsinki University. Also on Thursday, the U.S. government announced it had reached a $32 million settlement with New Mexico over a 2015 spill that polluted rivers in the Navajo Nation with arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals.
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