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But Republicans fail the future (and the present)
With apologies to decorum, Obama’s summation is warranted.
The bill is called the Inflation Reduction Act, which most economists think is an accurate description. Inflation reduction is a worthy goal, but what is even more noteworthy — rising to the level of historic — is how the legislation intends to accomplish that feat. It is a compendium of long-desired action on the part of Democrats around health care costs, taxes, and climate change (representing the most ambitious climate measures ever enacted by Congress).
The details are varied and have been covered admirably in other publications. Were they everything that most Democrats sought? No. But they were significant. Once again, a BFD.
For the sake of this column, however, let us focus less on the policy than on the politics, and specifically the fact that this bill squeaked through on a purely party-line vote. All Democrats in the House and Senate voted "yea." All Republicans who voted (four representatives did not) voted "nay." All of them.
Perhaps we have become inured to this unblinking partisanship. Chalk it up to cynicism, to pure party politics, to the zero-sum game that seems to rule Washington, particularly from Republicans when Democrats are in the majority. Obstruct. Delay. Obfuscate. That is the playbook. But while extreme partisanship might explain the actions, it certainly does not excuse them.
This bill aimed to tackle tough challenges, particularly climate change. And on this issue in particular the politics of our time should not be measured in some temporal tally of wins and losses for congressional seats; this is about wins and losses for the habitability of our planet.
This isn’t about four-year election cycles. It is about epochs measured in millennia.
Those are the stakes. And on this score, most prominent Republican elected officials seem eager to deny reality. And the few who don’t fall into that camp are apparently satisfied with doing nothing.
There may not be a more serious yardstick by which to measure our political era than this failure. As we have often cautioned here, the future of American democracy is at risk these days. But, let us be clear, so is the future of planet Earth. Perhaps even more so.
When I tweeted the above, I expected to get a decent response; I never expected this level of engagement, but it makes sense. Unlike the politicians, according to polls, most Americans understand the peril and want action.
In this upside-down reality, questions emerge that demand answers and accountability:
How can a politician who doesn’t take climate change seriously be taken seriously?
How can someone who fails to protect our nation from the increasing threat of natural disasters be considered a voice to heed on national security?
How can someone who denies this reality be considered a credible judge of the truth?
This is not a debate about policy. “How should we tackle this existential threat?” is a legitimate question on which fair minds can disagree. Should it be tax cuts for business or government regulation? Or both? A carbon tax or subsidies for new technologies? Is nuclear energy a viable option? Should we invest more in electric cars or public transportation? Let’s have a vigorous debate. Go at it. There is no monopoly on wisdom. And the country needs a strong two-party system, with a Congress of conscience on both sides of the aisle, to have such debates.
But debate whether we should do ANYTHING??? Really????
(Perhaps from the all caps and the number of question marks you can sense my feelings.)
This bill was a major step forward on addressing climate change. It’s not nearly enough. But it is something. A lot. A BFD. So say the scientists. It’s a foundation upon which to build.
But it was also a test of the seriousness of the Republican Party on the most serious of issues. It is a test they failed. All of them in Congress.
That is not political spin. It’s the truth. Just ask Mother Earth. She’s screaming out for all to hear. Maybe at some point the politicians who refuse to listen to her pleas will be forced to answer why, and not be taken seriously until they can answer in accordance with reality.
Russian serviceman patrols the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Energodar, Ukraine, May 1, 2022. (photo: Andrey Borodulin/Getty Images)
UN secretary general calls for urgent withdrawal of Russian forces and equipment from Zaporizhzhia
Guterres, on his second visit to Ukraine since the Russian invasion, joined the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for meetings and then a press conference in the western city of Lviv.
“We are worried. We don’t want another Chernobyl,” Erdoğan said. It was the first visit to Ukraine by Turkey’s leader, who has been a key intermediary in negotiations with Russia.
Zelenskiy said he agreed with Guterres on a framework for a visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency watchdog to inspect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. It was taken over by Russian forces in March but is still being run by Ukrainians.
The UN chief called on Russian forces to leave with their military equipment, amid fears that fighting around the site could lead to a deadly disaster. Moscow and Kyiv have traded accusations of shelling the site.
“The facility must not be used as part of any military operation. Instead, agreement is urgently needed to re-establish Zaporizhzhia’s purely civilian infrastructure and to ensure the safety of the area,” Guterres said.
Video footage shared online by a New York Times reporter showed at least five apparently military trucks parked inside the plant’s engine room near the turbo generator.
In the hours before the international summit in western Ukraine, Russia announced it had deployed warplanes armed with hypersonic missiles to its Kaliningrad region, an enclave on the Baltic Sea that borders the EU and Nato members Poland and Lithuania.
The commander of its Black Sea fleet has also been replaced, the Russian RIA news agency said, in one of the most high-profile military sackings since the invasion. It came after a series of humiliations for the fleet, including the sinking of its flagship Moskva cruiser and an attack on a key airbase in Crimea.
Inside Ukraine, Russian forces stepped up attacks on Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, ahead of the summit in Lviv. In attacks overnight and early on Thursday morning, at least 11 people were killed and more than 40 injured and a residential block was destroyed.
Ukraine’s defence intelligence agency said it was concerned that Russia had plans to stage an incident at the plant on Friday, and had information that staff with Russia’s Rosatom nuclear company had left the site.
Russian state media had already accused Ukraine of planning a “provocation” at the plant to coincide with the UN leader’s trip, raising fears that Russia’s military could be planning a “false-flag attack”. When Guterres travelled to Kyiv in April, Moscow carried out an airstrike on the city.
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s interior minister, Denys Monastyrsky, said Ukraine must “prepare for all scenarios”, during a drill for emergency workers in Zaporizhzhia.
On Wednesday, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, warned Russia’s seizure of the plant had “raised the risk of a nuclear accident or incident” and accused Moscow of being “reckless” by using the area as a staging platform to launch artillery attacks on Ukrainian forces.
Russia said it may shut down the plant, claiming backup support systems had been damaged in strikes. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radioactive, chemical and biological defence force, said if there was an accident at the site, radioactive material would cover Poland, Germany and Slovenia.
Ukraine’s hydrometeorological institute also warned of contamination spreading across Europe, a BBC journalist reported.
Two issues are causing deepening anxiety about the situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant. International nuclear safety officials have become concerned over the lack of spare parts, access for routine maintenance of the reactors, and contact with staff, all of which have been disrupted by the conflict.
A second issue is shelling around the plant. According to Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear authority, the impacts from Grad missiles earlier this month were close to the spent fuel storage area, with the plant’s operator claiming Russian troops “aimed specifically” at the containers, despite the Russian military’s presence at the site.
Russia accuses Ukraine of carrying out the shelling.
On Friday, Guterres will travel to the Black Sea port of Odesa, a crucial gateway for Ukrainian grain to reach the rest of the world. He will then continue to Turkey to visit the Joint Coordination Centre, the body tasked with overseeing the accord.
Ukraine’s fields feed hundreds of millions of people worldwide, so the abrupt halt to shipments has pushed up global grain prices at a time when famine is already threatening east Africa.
The UN last month brokered an agreement to let shipments restart. So far, 24 ships have left Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, a monitoring group said.
Kyiv has a backlog of 18m tonnes of grain from last year’s harvest, even as it starts bringing in the 2022 crop. It hopes to soon raise exports to 3m tonnes a month, easing world prices and clearing storage space for new grain.
It will be six months on 24 August since the start of the invasion – which Russia calls a “special military operation” – and several UN security council members, including the US, Britain, the Republic of Ireland and Norway, have called for a meeting on that date.
Kyiv is expected to launch a counteroffensive in southern Ukraine in the coming weeks and has carried out spectacular attacks deep inside Russian-held territory, including on an airbase in Crimea. But despite shipments of western weapons and ammunition, Ukraine is still struggling against heavy Russian artillery bombardment along the eastern front.
The Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video on Wednesday that the war had reached a “strategic deadlock”.
“Russian forces have achieved only minimal advances, and in some cases we have advanced, since last month,” he said.
American flags representing each of the 1,892 veterans and service members who died by suicide in 2014 stand on the National Mall in March 2014, in Washington, D.C. (photo: Ken Cedeno/Getty Images)
Most Navy websites do not comply with regulations to promote the Veterans Crisis Line, an internal audit found, as officials take unprecedented steps to prevent suicide in the military.
Sixty-two percent of the 58 homepages did not comply with Navy regulations for how to display the link to the Veterans Crisis Line, or VCL, which is run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a 2019 investigation conducted by the Naval Audit Service and obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act. Almost three years since the audit, The Intercept has found that many Navy homepages are still missing the required icon linking to a resource that has been shown to help veterans in crisis. In the eight years since the mandate was first introduced, hundreds of sailors and tens of thousands of veterans have killed themselves.
“When suicide crisis links and phone numbers are not prominently advertised on Navy Web sites, there is a missed opportunity to facilitate and encourage Sailors, civilians, and veterans to seek assistance in a critical time of need,” the audit reads.
The White House has been sounding the alarm on suicide among current and former members of the military. In a recent speech, President Joe Biden said that an average of 17 veterans kill themselves every day — meaning that the number of veterans who die by suicide each day is nearly equal to the number of U.S. troops killed in combat in 2020 and 2021 combined.
Military and elected officials are making unprecedented efforts to address suicide in the military. The Defense Department set up an independent panel to assess the scope of the crisis and advise steps toward prevention, while Congress has pushed for bipartisan legislation that would devote billions of dollars to veterans’ mental health as well as improvements to the VCL system that included its incorporation into 988, the suicide hotline formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline that launched in July.
“Our country’s military and federal government must ensure this critical lifesaving resource is easily accessible for veterans and active-duty service members in crisis,” Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., a Navy veteran who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and spearheaded the changes to the VCL, told The Intercept. “It is unacceptable that a majority of the Navy homepages do not contain the required link to the Veterans Crisis Line.”
The audit report says the Navy Office of Information, or CHINFO, did not provide clear guidance or sufficient oversight to ensure compliance on Navy websites. However, Charlie Spirtos, a Navy spokesperson, told The Intercept that blame lies with individual commanders who have failed to enforce the mandate.
“CHINFO is the lead for developing policy for publicly accessible website content across the Navy, and for maintaining cognizance for content of publicly accessible websites across the Navy,” he wrote in an email. But he said compliance “rests on individual commanders, commanding officers, and officers in charge.” It is not clear how the Navy enforces compliance with the regulations. A Navy spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not have an answer for The Intercept.
Spirtos also said that the nearly 80 websites under CHINFO’s purview were now in compliance with the Navy’s VCL regulations, but after repeated questions from The Intercept, Cmdr. Reann Mommsen, a Navy spokesperson, clarified that an unspecified number of homepages were missing the VCL icon.
“A review and update is underway to ensure all Navy websites contain the logo,” she said.
Since 2007, the Veterans Crisis Line has fielded more than 6.2 million calls, providing 1.1 million referrals to VA suicide prevention coordinators and more than 233,000 dispatches of emergency services.
Many veterans have reported that they were able to get the help they needed when calling the hotline. In a 2021 study in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 87 percent of users expressed satisfaction with the VCL, almost 82 percent found it helpful, and nearly 73 percent said that it kept them safe. Of those with suicidal thoughts, almost 83 percent said that calling the hotline helped stop them from killing themselves. A study from earlier this year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that callers had five times greater odds of a reduction in distress, almost five times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal ideation, and 11 times greater odds of a reduction in suicidal urgency by the end of the call.
Research also shows that promoting the VCL increases the likelihood that veterans in crisis will call. A 2016 study of VCL advertising campaigns found that “messaging was associated with help seeking,” which supports significant associations found in a 2014 study between public messaging and an increased awareness and use of crisis lines among veterans.
Since 2014, the Secretary of the Navy has mandated that all Navy homepages contain an icon and link to the Veterans Crisis Line. A 2020 Navy Suicide Prevention Program handbook also states that all Navy websites must display a “Life Is Worth Living” icon, hyperlinked to the Military Crisis Line, or MCL, for active-duty personnel. However, according to Spirtos, that requirement is defunct.
The 2019 Navy audit examined 58 Navy homepages and found that 36 were “noncompliant,” 27 used an outdated “Life Is Worth Living” icon, eight used the VCL icon, four used both icons, one used a “Suicide Prevention” icon, and 18 had no icon at all. (The report does not list which websites were surveyed by auditors.) The audit also discovered that the URL to the required VCL icon within the regulations was broken.
The Naval Audit Service found that 23 of 36 noncompliant commands were unaware of the requirement; the other 13 did not respond.
The Naval Audit Service recommended that CHINFO “establish internal controls and oversight to ensure all Navy Web sites display the required Veterans Crisis Line link” by September 30, 2021, to which the Department of the Navy Chief of Information agreed.
But almost one year since the target date passed, the Navy has still failed to comply with its own regulations, according to a follow-up investigation by The Intercept.
When The Intercept began its own survey this spring of 58 Navy homepages — including Navy.mil and some of the largest commands — it found 57 percent without a “Life Is Worth Living” icon, a VCL icon, or a working VCL link.
After reaching out to CHINFO for comment on the findings, compliance radically changed. Screenshots available through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine show that just before or just after The Intercept submitted questions, Naval Special Warfare Command and U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility and Japan Regional Maintenance Center, for example, did not display the VCL link. Now working links appear on those homepages as well as 48 others surveyed by The Intercept. However, 87 percent of the 58 websites still do not have the VCL icon.
For example, the homepage of Navy.com, the Navy’s recruitment website, lacks both a VCL link and icon. The homepage of the Secretary of the Navy — the office that issued the VCL regulation — provides an outdated “Life Is Worth Living” icon that links to the 988 hotline rather than the VCL.
Spirtos said that since the audit, websites that were once overseen by CHINFO are now on a new web host provided by Defense Media Activity, the Pentagon’s internal media and public relations organization.
“All of these websites comply with the Veterans Crisis Line link requirement,” Spirtos told The Intercept. But Mommsen later acknowledged that while links were present on all the homepages, the VCL logo is not. The Intercept found that out of those 79 websites under Defense Media Activity’s purview, just 17 — or 21.5 percent — fully comply with the VCL regulations.
While the Veterans Crisis Line has been a benefit to many former military personnel, outside experts and government watchdogs for years have highlighted management and quality control issues, including long wait times, crisis calls sent to voicemail, and improperly trained staffers. Recent investigations by the VA Office of Inspector General have also highlighted lethal shortcomings. In 2018, for example, a veteran died of an overdose of alcohol and drugs after speaking to two crisis-line responders who failed to contact local authorities. The next year, a veteran shot and killed a family member after talking with a VCL staffer. The inspector general found that the “responder’s management of … [the] call was insufficient and delayed.”
Congress has taken significant steps to provide resources and improvements to the VCL and mental health care for veterans in general. Last year, Sherrill, the New Jersey representative, helped lead bipartisan efforts to require an outside evaluation of the VCL’s training curriculum, improve responder guidance for high-risk callers, and increase quality control over calls. The efforts also enabled the VCL to become part of 988, which aims to be a more professionalized system that can not only assist callers but also dispatch mobile response teams.
This spring, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill that included $13.2 billion in funding for veterans’ mental health, $598 million of which was allocated to suicide prevention outreach. In June, the House passed the Support the Resilience of Our Nation’s Great Veterans Act — known as the STRONG Veterans Act — which mandates improvements to the training of VCL staff, including in the critical areas of risk assessment, lethal means assessment, substance use and overdose risk assessment, referrals to care, and dispatch of emergency services. The legislation also requires the development of enhanced guidance and procedures to respond to callers at high risk of overdose. It is now awaiting action in the Senate.
“Far too many servicemembers return home suffering from the invisible wounds of war, and it’s on us to make sure the Department of Veterans Affairs has the tools it needs to connect those who served with their earned support,” said Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Jon Tester, D-Mont., who wrote the VCL bill within the STRONG Veterans Act, in a June press release.
The Pentagon is also grappling with how to address the military suicide crisis. Between 2016 and 2020, the suicide rate among active-duty service members jumped 33.5 percent, prompting a Government Accountability Office report in April that found gaps in suicide prevention policies, programs, and activities — such as counseling for service members. The Navy was singled out for specific failures in command- and base-level suicide prevention efforts. While the Army and Air Force have, for example, designated a director of psychological health at each base outside the continental United States — as required by Defense Department policy — the Department of the Navy had “not fully done so for Navy and Marine Corps installations,” according to the report. The same month the report was issued, three sailors aboard the Navy’s USS George Washington died by suicide in just one week.
“Suicide is a massive problem for us,” said Russell Smith, master chief petty officer of the Navy, during a congressional hearing in May.
This spring, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the creation of an independent commission to address military suicides. The committee will conduct a review of “relevant suicide prevention and response activities” and report back on necessary policy changes to Austin and the congressional armed services committees.
The Defense Department has expressed support for suicide hotlines for current and former service members. “The VCL/MCL is a vital resource in the military community setting that provides support to individuals in crisis,” Maj. Charlie Dietz, a Pentagon spokesperson, told The Intercept via email. “It provides free and confidential support to veterans and Service members 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”
Whether the Navy will enforce its own VCL regulations remains an open question. Whether the Senate Armed Services Committee — which provides oversight of the U.S. military, including the Department of the Navy — cares to intervene is also unclear. After weeks of failing to respond to emails from The Intercept concerning the Navy audit, Cole Stevens, a committee spokesperson, declined to comment. After multiple follow-ups, Stevens still did not offer comment.
Veterans’ advocates, however, are eager to see the Navy comply with its regulations — and for other service branches to implement similar policies.
“Adding information, phone numbers, or links to the Veterans Crisis Line on service websites is a simple step to increase awareness for those service members, veterans, and family members who are struggling and need assistance,” said Ron Conley, the former national commander of the American Legion and current chair of the veterans association’s committee on post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. “The American Legion urges all the military services to include Veterans Crisis Line information on all unit and command homepages.”
Josh Lafazan campaigns on Long Island, N.Y., Aug. 17, 2019. (photo: Sarah Stacke)
No Labels and a crypto PAC are boosting Joshua Lafazan, a former far-right party nominee, in a Long Island Democratic primary.
Cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is spending over half a million dollars through his political action committee aimed at pandemic prevention, Protect Our Future, to boost Lafazan in the run-up to the New York Democratic primary on Tuesday. The support from cryptocurrency interests, which Lafazan appears to have actively courted during his campaign and time in the Nassau County Legislature, gives him a financial advantage over a crowded field vying to replace retiring representative and failed gubernatorial candidate Tom Suozzi.
Voters in the 3rd District have a history of electing corporate-friendly Democrats. Suozzi, who has endorsed Lafazan, is considered one of the staunchest defenders of business interests in the caucus. But while Suozzi is a reliable defender of key Democratic priorities like firearm regulation, abortion rights, and LGBTQ+ protections, Lafazan’s history suggests there are few, if any, issues he is unwilling to compromise on in order to secure elected office.
That Lafazan has not rejected the sizable outside support raises further questions about his independence from corporate interests and conservative activists who have supported his prior runs for public office. Lafazan, who registered as a Democrat in order to run for Congress last year, has accepted the ballot line of a far-right New York political party in his last two runs for office and has long touted his close relationships with local business interests — including a recent endorsement from corporate interest group No Labels, which worked to halt the passage of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda last year. Lafazan, who is presenting himself as a mainstream Democrat in his campaign’s political advertisements, did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this story.
Lafazan’s apparent public auditioning for support from crypto kings began in March, when he self-published an op-ed extolling the technology’s virtues. In it, he drew attention to legislation he introduced in the county legislature to create a task force charged with “exploring how crypto can help bolster Nassau’s economy” and determining ways to attract crypto businesses to the county. That op-ed was followed by an announcement in June that his campaign would accept donations made via cryptocurrency, though it is unclear whether any donors have actually chosen to utilize the option.
Lafazan’s embrace of cryptocurrency interests is the latest episode in a political career marked by high-profile appeals to powerful interest groups. That record includes a questionable relationship with a local billionaire couple who provided a loan to Lafazan for college tuition while he pursued political office — a relationship that is now the subject of a Federal Election Commission complaint by one of Lafazan’s opponents.
Lafazan’s political career started before he received his high school degree. As a senior, he ran for and won a seat on the Syosset County Board of Education in 2012, becoming the youngest elected officeholder in the state of New York. After reelection to another term in 2015, Lafazan rode the wave of anti-Trump sentiment to a seat in the Nassau County Legislature by defeating Republican incumbent Donald MacKenzie in 2017.
During his reelection bids in 2019 and 2021, Lafazan, who caucuses with the Democrats in the Naussau County Legislature, accepted the ballot line of the far-right Conservative Party, which touts extremist stances against gun control, abortion rights, criminal justice reforms, and a host of other issues. While Lafazan has distanced himself from the progressive Working Families Party, on whose ballot line he has also appeared, he defended his association with the Conservative Party earlier this year, telling local outlet City … State New York that “the Conservative Party’s two biggest priorities were taxes and substance abuse — and they happen to agree with me on both of those issues.” His continued alignment with the party’s stances on taxes in particular signals that he is likely to continue courting corporate interests while in Congress.
Lafazan put even more distance between himself and the Democratic base following the uprisings over the murder of George Floyd. After declaring to a crowd of protesters that “institutional racism is alive and well in this country, and in 2020, racism is alive and well in this county,” Lafazan appeared to then reverse his position and curry favor with local police unions by supporting staunchly pro-police legislation that that sought to make law enforcement officers into a protected class and restrict bystanders’ ability to record police interactions the following year.
Local leaders, including the NAACP’s Long Island Regional Director Tracey Edwards, condemned Lafazan’s apparent opportunism in stark terms at a hearing for that legislation in August 2021. After recounting Lafazan’s words to Black Lives Matter protesters, Edwards expressed disbelief at Lafazan’s turnaround. “Which legislator are you?” she asked repeatedly.
Despite the considerable blemishes on Lafazan’s record, mainstream and progressive Democrats in the district appear poised to enable his election by failing to coalesce behind one of the three other candidates competing for the seat: Suffolk County Deputy Executive Jon Kaiman, Democratic National Committee member Robert Zimmerman, and progressive activist Melanie D’Arrigo.
No challenger is emerging as an ideal candidate to consolidate behind and overcome Lafazan, who has raised over $1.6 million in addition to his support from special interests. There is no public polling available to indicate which candidates are competitive, but fundraising records and endorsements indicate a two-man race between Lafazan and Zimmerman.
While D’Arrigo is the favorite of progressive organizations — she has the endorsement of the Working Families Party — her FEC reports indicate that she is entering the final leg of the race with less than $30,000 on hand — an amount far short of the resources necessary to mount a serious campaign. Kaiman, a moderate Democrat who entered the final stretch of the race with almost $200,000 on hand, has also lagged far beyond Lafazan in fundraising, bringing in only $600,000 over the course of the campaign. Zimmerman, who has never held an elected office, has managed to keep pace with Lafazan by raising $1.4 million, and his campaign began August with nearly half-a-million dollars on hand.
Despite holding elected office for the entirety of his adult life and his consistent appeals to conservative voters and business interests, Lafazan has deftly moved to position himself as an outsider with mainstream liberal positions in his bid for the Democratic nomination. In a recent campaign advertisement, he ignores D’Arrigo’s candidacy and alleges that Kaiman and Zimmerman are “career political insiders,” and emphasizes his support for gun reform and abortion rights.
Zimmerman’s campaign manager, Evan Chernack, told The Intercept that their campaign is uniquely poised to consolidate the anti-Lafazan vote because his support comes from efforts to appeal to all corners of the party. While he has close relationships with the Democratic establishment, Zimmerman supports progressive priorities like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. “Robert is the only candidate in the race with overwhelming support from progressive activists, labor groups like the AFL-CIO and current and former party leaders like Hillary Clinton,” Chernack said.
"Cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is spending over half a million dollars through his political action committee aimed at pandemic prevention, Protect Our Future, to boost Lafazan in the run-up to the New York Democratic primary on Tuesday. The support from cryptocurrency interests, which Lafazan appears to have actively courted during his campaign and time in the Nassau County Legislature, gives him a financial advantage over a crowded field vying to replace retiring representative and failed gubernatorial candidate Tom Suozzi."
Warren Buffett called CRYPTO Rat poison squared!
That alone should disqualify a candidate.
Over 1,600 of the Brightest Scientific Minds in Technology Have Signed a Letter Calling Both Crypto and Blockchain a Sham
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 13, 2022 ~
BubblesThe letter is a punch in the gut to the Wall Street underwriters who have brought billions of dollars of crypto related companies to the public markets, most of which have now collapsed in price. It makes the billionaire venture capitalists who have invested billions in crypto startups look like fools. And it renders the big-name celebrities who have promoted this garbage in TV commercials look like the shills that they are.
The letter was sent to key members of Congress and to the Chairs of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees. It is signed by more than 1,600 computer scientists, software engineers and technologists from around the world. There are 45 signatories who currently work at Google; 19 who work at Microsoft; 11 employed at Apple. (Those three companies currently have a collective market capitalization of more than $5.75 trillion; they can afford to hire the best and the brightest.) There are signatories that are Ph.Ds from the most prestigious universities in the world, including the University of Oxford and MIT. And all 1,600 have signed a letter that says this about crypto and blockchain:
“We strongly disagree with the narrative—peddled by those with a financial stake in the crypto-asset industry—that these technologies represent a positive financial innovation and are in any way suited to solving the financial problems facing ordinary Americans…
“As software engineers and technologists with deep expertise in our fields, we dispute the claims made in recent years about the novelty and potential of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal or data privacy mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design. Financial technologies that serve the public must always have mechanisms for fraud mitigation and allow a human-in-the-loop to reverse transactions; blockchain permits neither.”
The letter links to an article from Bruce Schneier, a Security Technologist who teaches at the Harvard Kennedy School. The article appeared at Wired on February 6, 2019 under the headline: “There’s No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology.” The article makes the following salient points:
“What blockchain does is shift some of the trust in people and institutions to trust in technology. You need to trust the cryptography, the protocols, the software, the computers and the network. And you need to trust them absolutely, because they’re often single points of failure.
“When that trust turns out to be misplaced, there is no recourse. If your bitcoin exchange gets hacked, you lose all of your money. If your bitcoin wallet gets hacked, you lose all of your money. If you forget your login credentials, you lose all of your money. If there’s a bug in the code of your smart contract, you lose all of your money. If someone successfully hacks the blockchain security, you lose all of your money. In many ways, trusting technology is harder than trusting people. Would you rather trust a human legal system or the details of some computer code you don’t have the expertise to audit?”
Losing your money is mostly what has been going on this year in crypto. In addition to crypto itself being a dubious “investment,” the Federal Trade Commission reported in June that “since the start of 2021, more than 46,000 people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams. That’s about one out of every four dollars reportedly lost to fraud during that period.” (For more on the perils of crypto investing, see our report on how customers on the Coinbase crypto exchange are being victimized.)
Given this factual background, the speech delivered by Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard at the Bank of England in London last Friday is an embarrassment to the U.S. central bank. In the speech, Brainard repeatedly makes reference to the “crypto financial system” as if it’s a real thing. Crypto is a “financial system” like Bernie Madoff’s illusory split-strike conversion was delivering consistent 13 percent returns each year. In both cases, there’s no “there” there.
Brainard’s idea is to regulate crypto. China had a better idea. It outlawed it, as have eight other countries with dozens more countries severely restricting its use.
The U.S. Congress appears to be too beholden to crypto money to take a stand. That needs to change and the way it can change is for corporate CEOs at top technology companies in the U.S., like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Intel, IBM and others, to start writing OpEds about the sham of crypto and blockchain in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other newspapers with wide circulations. If their own tech workers are willing to put their reputations and careers on the line by signing this letter, surely a CEO or two could find his voice before more Americans are defrauded and before the U.S. loses its competitive edge relentlessly pursuing a sham technology.
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/07/over-1600-of-the-brightest-scientific-minds-in-technology-have-signed-a-letter-calling-both-crypto-and-blockchain-a-sham/
Of the CRYPTO industry:
The Smartest Guys in the Room Call Bitcoin “Rat Poison Squared,” “a Colossal Pump-and-Dump Scheme” and “a Big Criminal Scam” but Federal Regulators Look the Other Way
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 12, 2021 ~
Bitcoin GraphicAnne Goldgar wrote of the Dutch Tulip bubble in her 2007 book, Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, that “the f1000 one might pay in January 1637 for one hypothetical Admirael van der Eyck bulb,” could have bought “a modest house in Haarlem,” or “nearly three years’ wages” of a master carpenter. Comparing that to U.S. dollars in 2007, the year her book was released, Goldgar says it would be like one Tulip bulb selling for $12,000.
Goldgar notes that as historians have looked back at this episode, the tulip mania of the 1630s in Holland has become a “byword for idiocy.”
In his 1841 classic on market bubbles, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay wrote this about the Tulip bubble: “The rage among the Dutch to possess them was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected…”
Four centuries have apparently not cured the propensity toward idiocy when the lure of riches beckons. The market cap of Bitcoin is now in excess of $1 trillion, despite the fact that it is backed by absolutely nothing.
No amount of disdain toward Bitcoin by the smartest guys in the room can stop the creature’s incessant climb. Bitcoin has multiplied more than five-fold since September, trading yesterday at over $56,000.
Bitcoin has been thoroughly discredited by some of the smartest people in the investment community and global finance, but that hasn’t stopped the oldest futures exchange in the U.S., CME Group, from offering futures and options trading on Bitcoin. CME Group’s federal regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), explains in this podcast that all that CME Group had to do to launch its Bitcoin futures was to “self-certify” its plan with its regulator, the CFTC. The self-certified plan may be just fine – it’s the underlying product based on nothing that the regulator seems to have ignored.
(We’re thinking of submitting a self-certified plan with the CFTC to trade futures on spinning straw into gold. We’re toying with calling it the RumpelstiltskinCoin.)
The CME Group has exchanges that provide for futures trading based on real things: like milk, wheat, soy beans, oil, gasoline, ethanol and so forth. These are real things that fuel economic growth in the United States and/or feed a nation of 331 million people.
To paraphrase Mackay in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds to sum up today’s Bitcoin craze in the U.S.: The rage among speculators to trade Bitcoin was so great that the harm this would do in the long-term to the reputation of integrity in U.S. markets was simply ignored by Congress and regulators.
One of the most respected investors in America, Warren Buffett, summed up Bitcoin like this in May 2018: Bitcoin is “probably rat poison squared.” In January of the same year, Buffett told CNBC in an interview that “In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending.”
Also in 2018, Bill Harris, the former CEO of Intuit and PayPal, wrote a detailed critique of Bitcoin for Vox, under the headline: “Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history.”
Harris elaborates:
“In my opinion, it’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen. In a pump-and-dump game, promoters ‘pump’ up the price of a security creating a speculative frenzy, then ‘dump’ some of their holdings at artificially high prices. And some cryptocurrencies are pure frauds. Ernst & Young estimates that 10 percent of the money raised for initial coin offerings has been stolen.”
If Bitcoin is a pump and dump scheme, nothing is going to help that scheme to succeed over the short term more than highly leveraged futures trading, so conveniently accommodated by the CME Group and its equally accommodating federal regulator, the CFTC.
Harris also takes on the proposition that there is some intrinsic value to Bitcoin. He writes:
“It helps to understand that a bitcoin has no value at all.
“Promoters claim cryptocurrency is valuable as (1) a means of payment, (2) a store of value and/or (3) a thing in itself. None of these claims are true.
“1. Means of Payment. Bitcoins are accepted almost nowhere, and some cryptocurrencies nowhere at all. Even where accepted, a currency whose value can swing 10 percent or more in a single day is useless as a means of payment.
“2. Store of Value. Extreme price volatility also makes bitcoin undesirable as a store of value. And the storehouses — the cryptocurrency trading exchanges — are far less reliable and trustworthy than ordinary banks and brokers.
“3. Thing in Itself. A bitcoin has no intrinsic value. It only has value if people think other people will buy it for a higher price — the Greater Fool theory.”
In July 2019, NYU Professor and economist Nouriel Roubini launched a scathing analysis of Bitcoin. In a Bloomberg interview, Roubini said this:
“Crypto currencies are not even currencies. They’re a joke…The price of Bitcoin has fallen in a week by how much – 30 percent. It goes up 20 percent one day, collapses the next. It is not a means of payment, nobody, not even this blockchain conference, accepts Bitcoin for paying for conference fees cause you can do only five transactions per second with Bitcoin. With the Visa system you can do 25,000 transactions per second…Crypto’s nonsense. It’s a failure. Nobody’s using it for any transactions. It’s trading one shtcoin for another shtcoin. That’s the entire trading or currency in the space where’s there’s price manipulation, spoofing, wash trading, pump and dumping, frontrunning. It’s just a big criminal scam and nothing else.”
Later in the interview, Roubini added this: “There are millions of degenerate gamblers that are retail suckers, and they’re gonna create something where they can leverage not 10 times, not 50 times, but 100 times. It’s worse than those drug pushers who give you crack cocaine for free to get you addicted and then lead you to be broke….”
One of the oldest and well-connected investment banks in the world, UBS, whose roots date back to 1862, published a bleak critique of bitcoin by the UBS Editorial Team on January 19 of this year. It made the following points:
“Bitcoin’s limited and highly inelastic supply exacerbates its volatility, and our analysis suggests institutional speculation could worsen this.
“Limited real-world use and extraordinary price volatility also suggest many buyers are seeking speculative gains.
“Swings in investor sentiment or fresh rounds of regulatory crackdowns and curbs pose risks, especially when bubble-like trading conditions take hold.
“So we suggest investors seek out assets with traditional valuation models.
“With no yield generated, cryptocurrency valuations models invariably rely on theoretical future use cases, which cannot be assured.
“We think investors looking to protect and grow their wealth over the long term should maintain discipline and exercise extreme caution on cryptocurrency speculation…”
The UBS Editorial Team ended with this:
“Eye-watering gains and tales of fast fortunes may tempt serious investors, but speculation in cryptocurrency is a gamble, not an investment.”
But since the trading of futures on Bitcoin is happening on one of the largest and oldest futures exchanges in the U.S., right under the nose of federal regulators and Congress, that would seem to suggest that Washington is endorsing “gambling” as a feature of U.S. markets.
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/05/the-smartest-guys-in-the-room-call-bitcoin-rat-poison-squared-a-colossal-pump-and-dump-scheme-and-a-big-criminal-scam-but-federal-regulators-look/
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What it means when miscarriage is a crime. (photo: iStockphoto/Getty Images)
A day later, the bleeding started on its own, and I bled nearly every day, expelling tissue, for 2½ months. I kept working. I bled in four countries, 10 states and a U.S. territory. Toward the end, concerned about infection, my doctor prescribed a third round of misoprostol. (I had declined a D…C (dilation and curettage), the surgical procedure to remove a uterus’s contents, because the cost after insurance was $6,000.)
Finally the bleeding stopped. For 10 days I moved through the world like an unmarked person. I briefly thought about other things, such as my teaching and my writing. But a few hours after the Dobbs decision was announced on June 24 — after I called my partner and sobbed, I don’t want to be a woman — I started bleeding again, heavily, for eight days. (My period, finally, resumed.) I have spent most of this year bloodied.
I grew up in Jackson, Miss., one mile from the Pink House: the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which until the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade was the only clinic in the state where doctors offered abortion services. I am also a historian who has written a book on motherhood and race in the 19th-century South. As I faced my own maternal pain for the first time, it was impossible not to think of the women I encountered during my research.
For instance: In 1830, a Black woman in South Carolina miscarried. The man who claimed to own her made a record of her loss in a list titled “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” On July 16, he wrote, “Sibby Misscarried; believe She did so on purpose. Stop her Christmas … lock her up.”
“Did so on purpose”? Maybe. Women knew how to achieve abortions through chewing the cotton plant’s root or drinking dogwood tea. Is it a crime not to want a child conceived through rape, born into suffering, bound for brutality? Or the miscarriage may have occurred spontaneously, brought on by poor nutrition or the physical labor demanded of pregnant women. Is it a misdemeanor to be a woman who’s alive?
Writing under the protective umbrella of Whiteness, I would never compare my life to that of an enslaved woman in the antebellum South. But I think about Sibby’s physical pain, her bewildered grief, who else was around to hold her. The fragility of her life.
I think also of the women living in 21st-century Mississippi, where before Roe was overturned, a Black woman was over 100 times more likely to die from maternity than from legal abortion.
I am trying to earn a living, to have productive thoughts, all while being at war with my body. It is expelling cells, opening itself up to infection, subduing me.
Yet even in this combat of dissociative grief, I have never felt a clearer ownership of my body. It’s no longer hypothetical: This writhing, inconstant substance is mine. My womb is mine. The embryo that emerged out of my matter, died within my matter, was mine.
It is an awesome power. But is it too much?
In the 19th century, it was too much for Sibby to own her uterus. Miscarriage transferred power from the male enslaver — who could rape at will and separate families — to the enslaved woman, whose reproductive might was so threatening that America has been legislating it since 1662. That was the year Virginia declared that children were “bond or free only according to the condition of the mother,” which meant White men’s rape would lead not to repercussions but to capital. An enslaved woman’s child was a commodity. To fail to make a child — by choice or chance — was to steal from the state. Lock her up.
In our time, Dobbs says that owning my uterus is still too much. That protecting “potential life” is too great a responsibility for my small wisdom. The misoprostol I was prescribed three times this spring is no longer easily available; some pharmacies are refusing to fill legal prescriptions. Dobbs seeks to punish me for my body’s power, to remind everyone with a womb that we belong to someone else: not to ourselves, not to the fetus but to the patriarchal state.
The Pink House has been shut down. If I become pregnant again, I may miscarry again; I may need an abortion. Will someone be watching to make sure I live? Will there be women to come and tend me, lift up my life? Or will a government mark my body as a crime? Lock me up.
Protestors march in Bogotá after President Iván Duque announced a partial veto of a statutory law that governs special tribunals. (photo: AFP)
The new government calls for negotiations with armed groups and new approaches to the war on drugs that includes affected communities.
For conflict-ridden regions such as Chocó, Cauca, and Catatumbo, where the law is imposed by criminal groups rather than the state, massacres are common, and the killings of social leaders brave enough to demand change has become a near daily occurrence, the stakes could not be higher.
These regions have been plagued by violence for decades and were hotspots for Colombia’s 53-year civil war with leftist rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Many hoped that the historic 2016 peace deal with FARC rebels might bring stability and alternatives to the black market economies that sustain armed groups in their communities, which have been long neglected by the government. Instead, a host of new criminal groups moved in to fill the vacuum left behind when the FARC disarmed and joined civil society—and the cycle of violence has continued unabated.
Petro is hoping to finally break that cycle for good.
“Without true peace, there can be no democracy,” was one of Petro’s mantras on the campaign trail. But when he speaks of “Total Peace,” what exactly does he mean?
Petro has pledged to fully implement the unfulfilled promises made by the government as part of the 2016 peace accord. These include investing in infrastructure and education in the regions formerly controlled by the FARC, as well as land-restitution for displaced communities and waiving criminal sentences in new negotiations with criminal armed groups. He has also called for a restructuring of public forces in Colombia, which have a long history of human rights violations. As part of that plan, his coalition has already begun legislation that would place the police, which currently report to military leadership, under civilian control, and impose mandatory human rights training on military forces.
He has further called for changes in drug policy that includes full decriminalization of marijuana, and an end to militarized “War on Drugs” policies that the United States has supported for decades.
The most controversial aspects of his program involves new negotiations with rebel groups, like the ELN, who weren’t party to the 2016 accord, as well as criminal armed groups like the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC)—or as the government calls it, the “Clan del Golfo”—which have origins in the paramilitary forces that fought on the side of the government during the civil war.
Petro’s plan of an integrated approach to peace-making may be “the only viable path we have to achieve real peace in Colombia,” said Kylie Johnson, an investigador at the Conflict Responses Foundation (CORE by it’s Spanish initials), “but it is a very, very difficult path to implement, full of both political and security challenges.”
Negotiating with Criminal Groups
Leftist rebel group ELN is one of the armed groups that has taken over where the FARC left off. The ELN was not part of the 2016 peace deal and has expanded its presence considerably, in both Colombia and Venezuela, since the accord was signed. Previous attempts at dialogues with the government were abandoned or scuttled, most recently in 2019, when ELN bombed a police academy in Bogotá, killing 22 people.
Shortly after Petro won the presidential elections, ELN leaders announced a willingness to negotiate with the incoming administration. Petro on Friday sent a delegation to Havana, where earlier talks with the armed group were held, and where some members of ELN leadership have lived in exile since talks stalled.
Preliminary talks, which have already begun, are being assisted by officials from Cuba and Norway, as well as representatives of the UN secretary-general, whose office has stated publicly that they view Petro’s plan “with optimism” and will work to support its implementation.
The ELN leadership and organization has changed considerably since many of the commanders have been exiled in Havana. Not only have they grown into the second-largest armed group in Colombia, but a number of commanders have been killed in Colombia by government operations, and their divisions taken over by new leadership.
Francisco Daza, a field investigador at the Foundation for Reconciliation and Peace (PARES), explained that as the group has grown in territory and power, some “blocs” have become more independent than others.
“We will know soon whether leaders in Havana still have the influence they enjoyed formerly,” he said. Much like with the FARC, he speculated that there will likely be “dissident” ELN groups, who reject whatever compromise is finally agreed upon in Cuba.
Even more unpredictable however, is how Petro’s overtures will be taken by narco-criminal groups like the AGC, which, since the 2016 accord with the FARC, has grown into the largest and most powerful armed group in Colombia.
Leading up to the first round of elections in May, the group carried out an “armed strike” across nearly a third of the country that forced businesses to close and brought transport to a halt, reaching normally secure areas just outside the city of Medellín. At least six civilians and two police officers were killed and dozens of trucks and buses burned.
They have also targeted police officers in a series of contract killings they call “Plan Pistola,” which has resulted in the deaths of 36 police officers so far this year. Despite this growing aggressivity, the group announced a unilateral cease-fire with the government on the day of Petro’s inauguration. Some factions of the group also announced a willingness to negotiate with the new government in an open letter that same day.
It is unclear, however, whether AGC has a central leadership capable of speaking for the entire organization. The group is an alliance of hundreds of semi-autonomous paramilitary and criminal groups. Further complicating negotiations is the fact that many of the group's illegal activities have roots in naro-trafficking, extortion, illegal mining, and human smuggling. Even if AGC disarms, these activities will likely be picked up by dissident groups from within the organization or new groups stepping into the vacuum.
Addressing the Roots of Conflict
Experts insist that real peace-building efforts must include alternatives to these black market activities, as well as direct consultations with the affected communities.
“Real peace isn’t just dismobilization,” said Daza. “The strategy must address the root causes of conflict in these territories as well.”
“And although AGC and ELN present challenges to comprehensive peace as the largest armed groups in Colombia,” he continued, “Petro also must keep in mind the example of FARC dissidents, many of whom returned to arms in recent years after they felt the government didn’t fulfill the promises it made in 2016.”
Miguel Suarez, of the Foundation Ideas for Peace (FIP) believes this is a critical factor. “There is a serious danger that after ELN or AGC leaves these territories new dissident groups arrive to take over, and violence simply continues, as happened after 2016 with the FARC.”
“The politics of the last 50 years of a militarized war against drug cartels has been a failure,” said Iván Cepeda, a senator in Petro’s “Historic Pact” political alliance. “We have to open a public debate about other ways of dealing with this problem.”
Previous administrations used a "peace in segments" approach without much success, he added, but Petro’s plan employs a new strategy. “The intention is to address the fundamental problems [faced by these regions] comprehensively and simultaneously.”
Suarez agreed that a more holistic approach is the only solution. “Total peace can only be achieved through a generational transformation, with investment in conflict zones and processes of humanitarian development,” he said. Every armed group in Colombia sustains itself, at least partly, through narco-trafficking, and any approach to peace-building that doesn’t deal with this root issue will not yield lasting results.
Further, decades of militarized and aggressive strategies to address this problem on the part of the government have led to grave human rights abuses on the part of armed forces, such as the “false positives” scandal, in which over 6,000 civilians were killed by security forces and recorded as guerillas in an effort to inflate casualty reports.
“The war against drugs has led the state to commit crimes against humanity,” Petro said in his inauguration speech last Sunday, “and has further damaged our very democracy.”
His administration and their allies are determined to build a new model of peace-making in regions wracked by conflict, and the United States has signaled a willingness to support these efforts. Whether Petro has the political capital to implement real transformative change remains to be seen, but popular support will be critical for the implementation of his programs.
“Petro has said many times that real peace isn’t created by official dialogues between the elites and armed groups, or only by the state,” said Cepeda. “Rather it is created by citizens themselves. Their participation is fundamental.”
Michigan river hit with second chemical spill. (photo: Joel Lerner/Getty Images)
The spill is yet another example of how contamination from corporate polluters can endanger entire communities.
Then, despite alarms signaling the spill, a plant operator overrode the alarm 460 times in roughly three hours, according to the agency, failing to report the spill for more than two days.
The July event marks the second time in four years that Tribar has been blamed for releasing harmful chemicals into the water, and, critics say, is yet another example of how contamination from corporate polluters can endanger entire communities.
“It just shows gross negligence,” said Sean McBrearty, legislative and policy director of Clean Water Action.
On August 10, a group of about 150 area residents, advocates, and lawmakers gathered for a rally on the banks of Huron River to call for new legislation to punish polluters, such as Tribar.
“I want them sued into oblivion,” said state representative Yousef Rabhi. “Why should taxpayers have to pay to clean up the mess that some company made for profit? They benefited from the pollution that they put in our river. They made money off of our lives.”
Hexavalent chromium, also called chromium-6, is used in stainless steel production, electroplating and in the manufacturing of dyes, inks, and surface coatings and other products. Research has linked chromium compounds to lung cancer, liver damage, reproductive problems, and developmental harm.
The 2000 film Erin Brockovich brought chromium-6 to national attention, featuring the true-life tale of a legal assistant who discovered elevated rates of cancer and death among residents of Hinkley, California, were linked to the contaminant in their drinking water.
Tribar said in a statement that the worker responsible for overriding its alarm system resigned from the company the day the spill was reported. State water regulators issued violations and continue to press the company for answers, including why the employee was present at the plant when it wasn’t in production.
A spokesperson for the FBI did not specify the scope of its inquiry, but told the Detroit Free Press that the agency can become involved in an incident involving a chemical leak when there is potential criminal activity.
The battle to keep hexavalent chromium out of drinking water is an effort that spans the nation. An interactive map by the non-profit Environmental Working Group found chromium-6 in tap water serving 251 million people throughout the US, at levels scientists deem unsafe.
The day of the spill, Tribar discharged its waste into the local sewer system, where it traveled to the wastewater treatment plant and out to the river.
Testing indicates that chromium levels in the river are below levels of concern for effects on human health. Still, some may have settled in the river’s sediment and could later spread, said Jeff Gearhart, research director of the Ecology Center. While so far no samples from Ann Arbor have contained hexavalent chromium, Gearhart said it could take several weeks to a month for the contamination to reach the city.
“We’re still concerned about the ecological impact of whatever did make it into the river and need a better understanding of what impacts that may have to the watershed,” said Gearhart.
In 2018, Tribar was responsible for releasing waste containing harmful PFAS, or forever chemicals, into a nearby creek that feeds into the Huron River.
Because of that contamination, signs were posted along the waterway to warn visitors not to eat the fish from the river. After the more recent discharge signs were once again erected warning visitors not to come in contact with the water on certain stretches of the river. The Michigan department of health and human services lifted that warning last week after concluding there was no health threat.
“Our first reaction to the news was heartbreak and concern for public safety. But as we heard more and learned that Tribar was responsible – this polluter that had previously contaminated the entire river system with PFAS – that heartbreak morphed into anger,” said Daniel Brown, a watershed planner with the Huron River Watershed Council.
“The anger is palpable,” Brown added. “For those of us that have been following these issues, there is really a fury in knowing that we have weak environmental laws, weak water protections that allow this to happen, and that we have a repeat offender in Tribar.”
Bruce Heavner, owner of a canoe and kayak rental company in the area, recalled how he and staff rushed to retrieve paddlers from the river when news of the spill broke. Heavner said business has dropped by 70 percent since the “do not contact” recommendation was issued, but said it wasn’t the most important concern.
“Wildlife, the fish, the birds, the turtles and other animals that call our river home,” Heavner said. “If there’s a chemical in the river, what happens to them?”
The Ecology Center and environmental advocates in Michigan have issued an open letter calling on automakers to stop doing business with suppliers that use hexavalent chromium, including Tribar, arguing that the facilities endanger worker and environmental health and that safer alternatives are available and in use.
Michigan once had among the strongest water protections in the nation. But McBrearty of Clean Water Action, which helped organize the rally, said Michigan began to gut polluter pay laws in the 1990s, which has meant consequences for bad actors amount to a “slap on the wrist” and leaves taxpayers on the hook for cleanup.
“These companies don’t care about the health of the people that are exposed to these chemicals or the health of the river. If all you’re looking at is the financial bottom line, and it’s cheaper to pollute than it is to do things the right way, they’re going to keep polluting,” said McBrearty.
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