28 October 20
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27 October 20
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RSN: Marc Ash | Final Stretch Report – October 27
Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
Ash writes: "If there is one word that defines voters in the 2020 election cycle it would have to be 'entrenched.' As in totally. Think WWI Trench Warfare for context."
Donald Trump’s approval rating has been in the mid-42% range for most of his presidency, and according to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com it’s at 42.8 right now. Donald Trump appears to be very good at making people love him or hate him, but in terms of producing an apathetic response, not so much. See, po-lar-i-za-tion for further details.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, appears to be the most popular unpopular guy in the history of American politics. He’s the guy no one wanted to vote for and he’s leading the race by 9.4 points. Which leads us to the 53.4% who hate Donald Trump. This math is designed to be simple. Simple in fact it is.
But the specter of 2016 haunts the inner psyche of those who long to be rescued from Trump Twilight Zone really, really badly. I’ve wanted to say this for four years, so here goes. I never believed the polls in 2016 were that wrong or missed that much.
If the Russian effort on behalf of Trump was half of what the U.S. intelligence agencies said it was, and the voter suppression was half as bad as Greg Palast’s research documented it was, and James Comey’s October surprise half as well timed for maximum effect as it appeared to be, then it was mischief, not the polls, that was to blame. I’ve always regarded the 2016 presidential election as a stolen one.
If the 2020 voter preference polls mean anything, Donald Trump’s goose is cooked. That and the fact that upwards of sixty-two million Americans have already voted. So they’re really unpersuadable.
Now comes the section under “What could go wrong?” Countless dictators have gloated over their control of vote counting. Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, who seized power in a 1936 U.S.-backed coup, summed it up succinctly: “Indeed, you won the elections, but I won the count.”
Bluntly stated, there are many in Trump’s extended entourage who are perfectly willing to hold onto power by means of a fraudulent vote count. It won’t be easy, and the legitimate voters can win – but make no mistake, that is where the battle will be fought.
Voter suppression, voter purges, vote disqualification. This is it, this is the moment when American Democracy defeats those tactics or those tactics defeat American Democracy. Voting is the warm-up. The real battle begins on November 3rd.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
'The effort to sabotage the current race failed by one vote when Chief Justice John Roberts refused to go along with the plot, allowing Pennsylvania to ease mail-in voting rules in light of the pandemic.' (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/AP/Shutterstock
The Supreme Court's Ultraconservatives Are Preparing a Radical Assault on American Democracy
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
Stern writes: "On Monday night, four Supreme Court justices signaled their desire to throw a bomb in the 2020 election-and every election thereafter."
They just need Amy Coney Barrett’s vote to put their plan into action.
Their effort to sabotage the current race failed by one vote when Chief Justice John Roberts refused to go along with the plot, allowing Pennsylvania to ease mail-in voting rules in light of the pandemic. But these four ultraconservative justices will soon be joined by Amy Coney Barrett. And they have made it clear that once Barrett is confirmed, the Supreme Court will pose a clear and present danger to American democracy.
Monday’s orders from SCOTUS were technically a victory for Pennsylvania voters. By a 4–4 vote, with Roberts joining the remaining liberals, the court refused to block a decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that compelled the state to count mail-in ballots received by Nov. 6. A Pennsylvania statute requires mail-in ballots to be returned by 8 p.m. on Election Day, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that this deadline would disenfranchise voters. Requests for mail-in ballots overwhelmed the state’s election officials in the primary, causing a delay; many ballots weren’t even mailed out until the night of the primary. The combination of COVID-19 and U.S. Postal Service delays threatened a similar train wreck in November. In light of this problem, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in September that ballots mailed by Election Day and received by Nov. 6 must be counted.
The court rooted its decision in the Pennsylvania Constitution’s free and equal elections clause, which protects “a voter’s right to equal participation in the electoral process.” It is a bedrock rule that state supreme courts have final say over the meaning of state constitutions. Here, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that its state Constitution protects voters whose ballots arrive up to three days late through no fault of their own. The federal judiciary has no power to overturn this reading of the law.
Pennsylvania Republicans appealed the court’s decision anyway. They presented two alarming arguments. First, Republicans claimed that the court’s rule would violate federal statutes establishing a nationwide Election Day. Second, they alleged that the court had infringed upon the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s authority over federal elections. The first argument is nonsense that would suppress a huge number of votes in 18 states and the District of Columbia. But it is a modest proposal in comparison to the second argument, which would give state legislatures free rein to suppress the franchise with impunity.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from Monday’s order, noting that they would have blocked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision. They did not explain why, but we can assume that they agreed with one or both of these claims. If a new challenge comes before the court, the justices may well use it to crush state safeguards protecting Americans’ right to vote in free and fair elections.
Start with Republicans’ first claim: that counting ballots received shortly after Nov. 3 runs afoul of the federal laws that create a uniform Election Day. The implications of this argument are breathtaking. At least 17 other states and D.C. count ballots received in the days or weeks after Nov. 3; if Pennsylvania’s three-day extension is illegal, so are these laws. For months, election officials have informed voters in these states that their ballot will be counted so long as it’s mailed by Election Day. If Pennsylvania Republicans prevailed, the voters who relied on this promise—thousands, at a minimum, and probably more—would be disenfranchised. So would voters serving in the military or living overseas, whose ballots are accepted after Nov. 3 in a majority of states.
But Pennsylvania Republicans’ legal interpretation cannot possibly be correct. Federal law only requires that ballots be cast by Election Day, not received. Republicans try to get around this problem by asserting that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court actually let voters mail back their ballots after Nov. 3. That’s just not true. The court adopted a procedure used in many other states: Voters must avow that they sent back their ballots by Election Day; those postmarked after Nov. 3 will not count, and those without a postmark are presumed valid if they arrive by Nov. 6 unless evidence suggests they were mailed late. Federal law prescribes no particular method for verifying ballots that arrive late, so states have filled in the gap. It is preposterous to insist that these widespread procedures are illegal. And if SCOTUS embraced this theory, it would have to strike down dozens of election laws on the eve of an election, nullifying countless ballots cast by Nov. 3 in reliance on state law.
Because this argument is so outlandish, it seems more plausible that the four conservative justices bought into Republicans’ second argument. Republicans cite two related constitutional provisions governing federal elections. These clauses give “the legislature” of each state power over the “manner” of holding congressional elections and appointing electors. The Pennsylvania GOP argues that the state Supreme Court’s rule unconstitutionally usurps power from the state legislature—which is currently under Republican control and opposes any expansion of voting rights.
Republicans have used this argument before, though it’s been unsuccessful thus far. In Bush v. Gore, then-candidate George W. Bush accused the Florida Supreme Court of wresting power of presidential elections from the Legislature. A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court declined to endorse the theory. More recently, in 2015’s Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, SCOTUS rejected Republicans’ theory that state legislatures have a constitutional right to gerrymander by a 5–4 vote. The majority held that other lawmakers—including the people themselves through a ballot initiative—can exercise “legislative power” in accordance with the Constitution.
But the Supreme Court has changed since 2015. The author of AIRC, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is dead, poised to be replaced by Barrett. The swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, has been replaced by Kavanaugh. And Barrett’s hard-right record suggests she’ll join Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh in reviving the theory giving state legislatures total power over federal elections.
If a majority of justices embrace this claim, it would effectively prevent a state judiciary from protecting voting rights whenever the legislature disagrees with its rulings. Every state constitution explicitly grants either the right to vote, the right to free elections, or both. State courts have repeatedly used these guarantees to combat voter suppression. For instance, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court previously interpreted the free and equal elections clause to limit partisan gerrymandering. So has the North Carolina judiciary. Other state courts have used state constitutions to invalidate draconian voter ID laws. If the conservative justices had prevailed on Monday, all these rulings would be in jeopardy. Whenever a state legislature disagreed with a state court about the “manner” of federal elections, the legislature’s view would win out. State courts would have no authority to protect the right to vote promised by their own state constitutions.
This theory could allow the Supreme Court to hand Trump the 2020 election. After all, the Pennsylvania case could come back to SCOTUS shortly after the election, when Barrett is confirmed. The presidential race may well turn on Pennsylvania, and the outcome in Pennsylvania could come down to those ballots received just after Election Day. If those ballots swing the state to Joe Biden, Barrett could vote with the four radical conservatives to reverse the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and throw them away. They could rule that the legislature—not the state judiciary, or even the voters themselves—gets to regulate elections and appoint electors. If the legislature says Trump is the true winner, the Supreme Court could once again overrule the will of the voters.
Take a step back from the legal dispute here and consider the broader implications of what four justices did on Monday. A mere 15 days out from a presidential election, these justices tried to stop a state Supreme Court from safeguarding the right to vote by enforcing its state’s constitution. Basic principles of federalism counsel against federal intervention in a state court’s interpretation of its own election laws. Yet four justices would leap in at the last minute to block the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s efforts on the basis of extreme theories that go against decades of precedent. Their actions evince a startling hostility to voting rights and fair elections. Democrats who celebrated Monday’s decision are either naive or delusional. It was a fleeting victory that portends a crushing blow to democracy the moment Barrett dons her robe.
From left, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, Rep. llhan Omar, D-MN, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The Squad Call for Expanding the Supreme Court With Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation
Celine Castronuovo, The Hill
Castronuovo writes: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took to Twitter late Monday to call for the expansion of the Supreme Court as Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in as a justice."
READ MORE
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (photo: AFP)
Republicans Closely Resemble Autocratic Parties in Hungary and Turkey - Study
Julian Borger, Guardian UK
Borger writes: "The Republican party has become dramatically more illiberal in the past two decades and now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former centre-right equivalents in Europe, according to a new international study."
Swedish university finds ‘dramatic shift’ in GOP under Trump, shunning democratic norms and encouraging violence
In a significant shift since 2000, the GOP has taken to demonising and encouraging violence against its opponents, adopting attitudes and tactics comparable to ruling nationalist parties in Hungary, India, Poland and Turkey.
The shift has both led to and been driven by the rise of Donald Trump.
By contrast the Democratic party has changed little in its attachment to democratic norms, and in that regard has remained similar to centre-right and centre-left parties in western Europe. Their principal difference is the approach to the economy.
The new study, the largest ever of its kind, was carried out by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, using newly developed methods to measure and quantify the health of the world’s democracies at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise.
Anna Lührmann, V-Dem’s deputy director, said the Republican transformation had been “certainly the most dramatic shift in an established democracy”.
V-Dem’s “illiberalism index” gauges the extent of commitment to democratic norms a party exhibits before an election. The institute calls it “the first comparative measure of the ‘litmus test’ for the loyalty to democracy”.
The study, published on Monday, shows the party has followed a similar trajectory to Fidesz, which under Viktor Orbán has evolved from a liberal youth movement into an authoritarian party that has made Hungary the first non-democracy in the European Union.
India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been transformed in similar ways under Narendra Modi, as has the Justice and Development party (AKP) in Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Law and Justice party in Poland. Trump and his administration have sought to cultivate close ties to the leadership of those countries.
The Republican party has remained relatively committed to pluralism, but it has gone a long way towards abandoning other democratic norms, becoming much more prone to disrespecting opponents and encouraging violence.
“We’ve seen similar shifts in parties in other countries where the quality of democracy has declined in recent years, where democracy has been eroding,” Lührmann said. “It fits very well into the pattern of parties that erode democracy once they’re in power.”
“The demonisation of opponents – that’s clearly a factor that has shifted a lot when it comes to the Republican party, as well as the encouragement of political violence,” she said, adding that the change has been driven in large part from the top.
“We have several quotes from Trump, that show how he has encouraged supporters to use violence against either journalists or political opponents.”
In western Europe, centre-right parties like Germany’s Christian Democratic Union and Spain’s People’s party have stuck to their commitment to democratic norms. By the same measure, Britain’s Conservative party has moved some way along the liberal-illiberal spectrum but not to the Republicans’ extremes.
“The data shows that the Republican party in 2018 was far more illiberal than almost all other governing parties in democracies,” the V-Dem study found. “Only very few governing parties in democracies in this millennium (15%) were considered more illiberal than the Republican party in the US.”
The institute has found the decline in democratic traits has accelerated around the world and that for the first time this century, autocracies are in the majority – holding power in 92 countries, home to 54% of the global population.
According to V-Dem’s benchmark, almost 35% of the world’s population, 2.6 billion people, live in nations that are becoming more autocratic.
Voters at a polling precinct. (photo: WP
62 Million and Counting: Americans Are Breaking Early Voting Records
Barbara Sprunt, NPR
Sprunt writes: "With about a week still remaining until Election Day, Americans have already cast a record-breaking 62 million early ballots, putting the 2020 election on track for historic levels of voter turnout."
That's some 15 million more pre-election votes than were cast in the 2016 election, according to the U.S. Elections Project, a turnout-tracking database run by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald.
McDonald calculates that nationally, voters have cast more than 45% of the total votes counted in the 2016 election.
"We continue to pile on votes at a record pace. We've already passed any raw number of early votes in any prior election in U.S. history," McDonald told NPR on Monday.
"It's good news, because we were very much concerned about how it would be possible to conduct an election during a pandemic," he said, citing concerns that mail-in ballots would be returned by voters en masse at the conclusion of the early voting period, overwhelming election officials. "Instead, what appears to be happening is people are voting earlier and spreading out the workload for election officials."
In 2019, McDonald predicted that 150 million people would vote in 2020's general election, which would be a turnout rate of about 65% — the highest since 1908.
But he's going back to the drawing board.
"I have increasingly been confident that 150 [million] is probably a lowball estimate," he said Monday. "I think by the end of the week I'll be upping that forecast."
Texas leads the way
Some states are quickly approaching their 2016 vote totals.
In Texas, for example, nearly 7.4 million early votes had been cast as of Sunday, marking 82% of the state's total votes in 2016.
Montana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia have also reached 65% or more of their 2016 vote totals.
McDonald cites Washington state as an example of the change in voter behavior this year since the state ran mostly all mail-in elections in both 2016 and 2020 under the same rules. Thus far, the state reports more than 2 million mail-in ballots have been returned, nearly three times the return rate in 2016.
Roberto Rodriguez, assistant deputy supervisor of elections in Florida's Miami-Dade County, says 42% of voters there have already cast their ballots.
"Normally in a presidential election, we have anywhere from 68% to 73% turnout," Rodriguez told NPR. "We're expecting 80% turnout this year based on the voting numbers that have come in."
He said more than 266,000 people had voted at an early voting site in person and more than 390,000 had voted by mail, as of Sunday night. Miami-Dade County has more than 1.5 million active registered voters.
Caution in interpreting partisan splits
Among states that are reporting data, voters have requested 87 million mail ballots, according to McDonald, and roughly 41 million ballots have been returned by mail.
Democrats currently hold a roughly 2-to-1 advantage in returned mail-in ballots in states with party registration.
But McDonald is quick to caution that early numbers don't paint the full picture.
"Usually the story for a typical election in recent years has been that the early vote is Democratic and the Election Day vote is Republican," he said. "And it looks as though we're going to have the same story this year, and we're going to have to wait to see what happens with that Election Day vote before we can really say what's going to happen."
But 2020 has brought a shift in the way in which people are voting early.
"Typically, when we talk about early voting, we're talking about Democrats voting in person early and Republicans voting by mail," McDonald said. "This election, those roles are reversed. But when you look at the overall electorate, there are many more people voting by mail than in person early in most states."
The shift could be at least in part due to President Trump's consistent false claims that voting by mail leads to widespread fraud, whereas Joe Biden's campaign has been aggressive in urging supporters to vote early, whether in person or by mail.
Strategically, it's helpful for campaigns to have voters cast their ballots early so they can use campaign resources more efficiently then to target less-motivated voters.
A surge in youth voters
People ages 18 to 29 are turning out to vote early in a big way.
According to data from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, a research center at Tufts University, the numbers of young people voting early have skyrocketed, particularly in states that will be critical for Biden and Trump to win, such as Michigan, Florida and North Carolina.
As of Oct. 21, 257,720 young voters in Florida had voted, according to CIRCLE. That's nearly 214,000 more than had voted at that time in 2016.
In Texas, almost 500,000 18- to 29-year-olds had cast their ballots by Oct. 21. However, there isn't data from 2016 with which to compare youth turnout.
Young people could wield significant political power: Millennials and some members of Generation Z make up 37% of eligible voters, roughly the same share of the electorate that baby boomers and older voters ("pre-boomers") make up, according to census data analyzed by the Brookings Institution.
For decades, youth voters have showed up to the polls at relatively low rates, a statistic voter education groups have been working to change this year.
Long lines remain
As early voting began, the pent-up voting interest showed as long lines formed in states such as Georgia and Texas, with some voters waiting for hours.
Election officials had warned that some in-person voting locations would face longer lines as some jurisdictions have had to consolidate polling places and adjust logistics to accommodate social distancing during the pandemic.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., criticized the long lines she experienced while voting Sunday in the Bronx.
"There is no place in the United States of America where two-, three-, four-hour waits to vote is acceptable and just because it's happening in a blue state doesn't mean it's not voter suppression," she said.
"If this was happening in a swing state, there would be national coverage."
A retail worker covers French products on October 25, 2020, in protest against French cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Amman, Jordan. The cover reads in Arabic: 'In solidarity with the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, all French products have been boycotted.' (photo: Muhammad Hamed/Reuters)
What's Behind the Middle East Boycott of French Products?
Linah Alsaafin, Al Jazeera
Alsaafin writes: "Political leaders such as Pakistan's Imran Khan, Turkey's foreign minister and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have said Macron's rhetoric alienates his country's six million Muslims."
Muslim leaders accuse Macron of using divisive rhetoric for political gain and alienating France’s six million Muslims.
rance has called a boycott of its products in several Middle Eastern countries “baseless”, saying the move is being perpetuated by “a radical minority”.
Bolstered by social media, the campaign asks Arabs and Muslims not to buy French products in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s statements this month describing Islam as a religion in crisis.
Macron has drawn further anger from some Muslims for backing the publishing of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the spirit of “freedom of expression”.
The prophet is deeply revered by Muslims and any kind of visual depiction is forbidden in Islam. The caricatures in question are seen by them as offensive and Islamophobic because they are perceived to link Islam with terrorism.
As the boycott dispute escalated, Macron on Sunday doubled down on his stance and promised that his country will not “give in, ever”.
“We do not accept hate speech and defend reasonable debate,” he said on Twitter. “We will always be on the side of human dignity and universal values.”
Political leaders such as Pakistan’s Imran Khan, Turkey’s foreign minister and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have said Macron’s rhetoric alienates his country’s six million Muslims – the largest Muslim minority in Europe – and spreads a culture of hatred.
So what is behind the boycott of French products and the backlash against Macron’s comments on Islam?
Marginalisation of France’s Muslims
Since 1905, France has adopted the laicite or secularism value, which forces the state to remain neutral – that is, to neither support nor stigmatise any religion.
With the collapse of the French empire following World War II, France’s largely homogenous society in the metropolitan areas changed overnight and became home to many former colonial subjects and their descendants, mainly from North and West Africa.
Yet the country’s reaction towards Islam on its own turf, spurred in part by its traumatic defeat in Algeria, has led to regulations that have targeted the visibility of Islam. According to the state, French Muslims live in a counter-society.
In 2004, France became the first and only European country to ban the hijab, a veil worn by some Muslim women, in public schools. A few years later, it also passed a law that banned the wearing of the niqab, or face covering.
And while a 1978 law forbids the French state from collecting statistics on race, religion or ethnicity, the rise of Islamophobia in recent years has been documented by human rights and civil society groups such as the Collective against Islamophobia in France, also known as CCIF.
Macron’s comments of seeking to reform Islam – a religion that is more than 1,400 years old and is followed by two billion people around the world – is an ambitious and provocative move; several activists have said the government should instead invest more effort in addressing the marginalisation of French Muslims in the banlieues, or surburban ghettos in the country.
Residents of these areas, often with ancestry in Africa and the Middle East, are alienated; they suffer from high levels of unemployment and poor social housing. They are marginalised in every sense of the word – public transport from the banlieues to the centre of Paris, for instance, is severely lacking.
Since 2012, there have been 36 attacks carried out by a fringe minority of Muslims on French soil.
Yet instead of tackling the root causes of this phenomenon – which some, including Macron himself, have argued include social alienation, the state instead has turned its attention to focusing on the entirety of its Muslim citizens, as though they are a monolith, while not directing the same energy towards white supremacists and Nazis in the country.
2022 presidential election
Macron has promised to put forward a draft law on December 9 to combat what he terms “Islamist separatism” by banning the “importation” of foreign-financed and trained imams.
He is also proposing tax breaks and state funding to mosques that sign a charter accepting French principles of secularism, democracy and the rule of law.
These measures in an increasingly populist political environment against France’s embattled Muslim community could be seen in the context of shoring up Macron’s base ahead of the 2022 presidential elections.
Immediately following his “Islam in crisis” speech, several analysts said Macron was pandering to the far right.
Currently, Macron is polling neck and neck with far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, who outwardly espouses Islamophobic views. In 2017, Macron and Le Pen made it to the second and final round of the election; he is desperately trying to avoid the same scenario emerging in two years’ time.
But sometimes, little differentiates his administration’s commentary on Muslims from the populists.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has said France is fighting a “civil war”: secularism against “Islamist separatism”. He has also called for ethnic food aisles in supermarkets to be shut down – a statement that was immediately mocked on social media.
Last month, a parliamentarian and member of Macron’s En Marche party, said a hijab-wearing citizen is somehow incompatible with participation in the public and civic sphere.
“I cannot accept that someone comes to participate in our work at the National Assembly wearing a hijab,” Anne-Christine Lang said, before walking out in protest against the presence of a Muslim woman in the headscarf at the institution.
Two years earlier, Macron himself said that the hijab was “not in accordance with the civility of our country”.
World reaction
It is against this backdrop that Macron has irked Muslims around the world.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused Macron of being divisive and encouraging Islamophobia.
“This is a time when Pres[ident] Macron could have put healing touch & denied space to extremists rather than creating further polarisation & marginalisation that inevitably leads to radicalisation,” Khan said in a series of tweets.
On Friday, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned what it said was France’s continued attack against Muslims.
The OIC said it was surprised that offensive rhetoric was being used by top officials, and warned that this moment, for the sake of political party gains, could fuel hatred.
Kuwait’s foreign ministry has also weighed in and criticised discriminatory policy linking Islam to terrorism, saying it “represents a falsification of reality, insults the teachings of Islam and offends the feelings of Muslims around the world”.
Jordan’s foreign ministry did not criticise Macron directly but condemned the “continued publication of caricatures of Prophet Muhammad under the pretext of freedom of expression”. It also denounced any “discriminatory and misleading attempts that seek to link Islam with terrorism”.
Turkey’s foreign minister said Europe’s “spoiled” politicians must stop their “fascist mindset”.
“When truth is spoken to their faces, Europe’s loser racists show up and try to exploit Islamophobia and xenophobia. Time has come to stop Europe’s spoiled politicians with fascist mindset,” Mevlut Cavusoglu said.
'While Pennsylvania has historically been a 'fossil fuel state,' it's not so clear that its actual residents want that cycle to continue.' (photo: Susan Vineyard/iStock/Getty Images
Are Pennsylvanians as Obsessed With Fracking as Trump and Biden Think?
Eve Andrews, Grist
Andrews writes: "My home state of Pennsylvania is always on the receiving end of some heavy pandering by presidential candidates."
y home state of Pennsylvania is always on the receiving end of some heavy pandering by presidential candidates: some feeble stabs at the Sheetz vs. Wawa convenience store debate, pointlessly coy hints at an allegiance with the Flyers or Penguins, a professed devotion to one hideous sandwich or another.
Generally, I can tolerate it. Part of the business of politics in general, and elections specifically, is to appeal to swing states using these kinds of caricatures. But the 2020 Pennsylvanian stereotype of choice perpetuated by Trump and Biden has not been so easy to stomach: that we Keystone State denizens are all wholehearted devotees of fracking.
“If you want to kill the economy, kill the oil and gas industry,” Trump opined during Thursday’s final presidential debate, before launching into the usual accusations that his opponent will ban fracking. Biden denied it, but Trump warned ominously: “You know what, Pennsylvania, he’ll be against it very soon.”
You might be forgiven for assuming fracking is simply a synonym for “American industry,” as that’s how it’s used in a lot of political rhetoric. In actuality, it is a method of oil and natural gas extraction in which a concoction of chemicals and minerals are injected into tunnels drilled parallel to the ground. Pennsylvania, which rests atop the majority of the highly productive Marcellus Shale, does a great deal of it. We are the second-largest producer of natural gas in the country, after Texas. Moreover, we are the third-largest net supplier of energy, extracting more than four times what we consume.
The Trump-Pence campaign refers to fracking as if it were a sort of sacred ritual deeply meaningful to the identity of Pennsylvanians (and our 20 electoral college votes) — as if babies here are born with a drill clutched in one tiny fist and a seismograph in the other before being baptized in gasoline and Yuengling. On the national stage, fracking is celebrated via monologues by various working-class characters in ads, defended breathlessly by top-level Republicans who insist that Biden will ban it (again, he won’t), and praised at rallies in the heart of gas country.
But, like so many policies framed as concessions to swing states in the general election, neither candidate’s stance on fracking bears any strong resemblance to the complicated lives of people who actually have to confront it. Which was why, over several months last year, I headed out to talk to people who live near a proposed fracking well, on the site of the last functioning steel mill in the county.
The Edgar Thomson Steelworks is massive; it spans roughly a mile along the banks of the Monongahela River, and in doing so it touches four municipalities on the outskirts of Pittsburgh: Braddock, North Braddock, East Pittsburgh, and North Versailles (pronounced Ver-SALES, and you’ll get a puzzled look if you say it otherwise). Old mill towns run all up and down the Monongahela Valley, once considered extensions of the city, and this particular cluster sits just southeast of the city.
From an energy efficiency standpoint, the mill is an ideal site for a fracking well: Natural gas produced on-site could directly power the operation. But the bigger draw for residents of the region, of course, is a financial one. Whereas “fracking” has taken on all kinds of significance in the national conversation about everything from climate change to the economy, in a lot of Pennsylvania towns that never recovered from the loss of manufacturing or mining jobs, it just means “money.”
Unlike nearby Pittsburgh proper, there are no new, shiny condo developments and tech incubators in these chopped-up old mill towns. While the more affluent downtown neighborhoods of Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, and East Liberty are flush with employees of tech, medicine, and academia (and the money they bring with them), Monongahela Valley towns don’t have the kind of tax base or customer cash flow that Pittsburgh has increasingly enjoyed over the years. That’s why the lure of tax revenue from Merrion Oil and Gas, the company that’s proposed to put in a well on the site of the mill, is so appealing.
Allegheny County’s mostly urban makeup has spared it a lot of well development to date; you need specific zoning that’s rare in such a dense area to be able to drill. And these towns on the border of Pittsburgh don’t look much different from some of the neighborhoods within the city itself. The whole metro area is a hodgepodge of rusting warehouses and factories, lovely mansions, falling-down brick duplexes, new-ish taupe and neon strip malls, grand old libraries, museums, and schools — with so much lush greenery exploding out from the cracks in between.
One of the landowners that stands to benefit from the proposed well is the Grand View Golf Course, which is perched on the hillside overlooking the mill and the river, mostly because of the size of the property. Underground laterals from the well would extend under the expansive greens, yielding leasing revenue. The golf course itself has seen better days — by its own admission — but its high vantage point affords it a rather spectacular perspective of the little hillside houses across the river; the rollercoasters of Kennywood, the amusement park, on the opposite shore; and the mill itself, smoke billowing endlessly from its stacks.
Tom Beeler, manager of the golf course, expressed his support for the well in an email to Grist. “That money quite frankly is desperately needed to help keep the golf course — which is a centerpiece of the community and one of its biggest taxpayers — in business. Like many golf courses, we have been struggling for the past few years hoping that this project can help to turn us around.”
But for most residents, it’s not as straightforward a benefit: While income from oil and gas leasing has completely transformed the circumstances of some families in the region, it’s not likely to do the same for private property owners in North Braddock or East Pittsburgh. Lease agreements tend to be structured in terms of quantity of gas obtained per acre, and the small parcels of an essentially urban area don’t offer much of a payout. And to make matters worse, gas companies famously prey on cash-strapped families who will be too eager for an income stream to worry much about the terms of the lease.
“Some people are like, ‘Are you crazy? We need the money. This is our new and improved roads. New and improved infrastructure will bring income to the communities,’” explained Vicki Vargo, who’s on the borough council of North Braddock, in an interview last summer. “And other people go: ‘Yeah, are you crazy? Who in their right mind is going to want to live here?’”
In August of last year, Rep. Summer Lee, who represents North Braddock in Pennsylvania’s state congress, wrote in a letter opposing the development to the county health department: “This proposal would be the most urban setting that we have ever seen for a fracking well in Pennsylvania, exacerbating the aforementioned health effects.” The proposed well at Edgar Thomson would threaten the integrity of the (already flawed) drinking water, Lee alleged.
Disturbing clusters of rare cancers and birth defects have popped up in fracking-heavy regions of the state. The environmental historian Joel Tarr wrote that natural gas and oil wells polluting water sources in western Pennsylvania dates back to the 1800s, as sediment from the drilling process infiltrated water tables and abandoned wells were allowed to leak into the surrounding ecosystem.
While Pennsylvania has historically been a “fossil fuel state,” it’s not so clear that its actual residents want that cycle to continue. Approval and disapproval of the practice is split relatively evenly in the state, with a slightly higher percentage of the state in the latter camp. One might look at these divided numbers and simply attribute it to Pennsylvania’s cultural makeup, which tends to be split along geographical divides: “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Kentucky in the middle,” as the adage typically goes. (Sometimes people say “Alabama in the middle,” but you can really substitute any region that pundits might consider a “backwards,” truck-driving, tobacco-spitting, Republican-voting part of America.)
But the realities of fracking — from its geological impact to the jobs it might create — defy many of the themes hyped up by our current political system: urban vs. rural, jobs vs. nature, liberal vs. conservative. All kinds of borders blur when it comes to the impacts fracking has on a community. After all, municipal borders do not extend to air and water.
Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh and many of its abutting mill towns, is already in the top 2 percent of cancer risk from air pollution in the country. It’s important to note that this is not tied directly to fracking, but to the industry that fracked gas powers here. There is pollution from the steelworks, to be sure, as well as sometimes criminal particulate emissions from the Clairton Cokeworks in a town just a few miles down the valley. Even in high-rent Lawrenceville, there’s a steel foundry that can bring air quality down to very retro levels.
There’s conflict among the towns themselves about the virtues and risks of the well: North Braddock, for example, is less affluent than East Pittsburgh, and the latter has filed complaints against Merrion Oil and Gas, the company proposing to put in the well, for its failure to observe regulations. The town also just voted to reject an extension of the company’s permit; Merrion has declared that it will appeal the decision. And residents from all over the county gathered at a community meeting a year and a half ago to loudly resist the proposal — because, in the end, it’s more than just the towns that host the well that stand to be affected.
Even the most fervent environmentalist can end up drinking water tainted by the “slurry” of chemicals used in the drilling process one town over; a boutique farm-to-table restaurant in Pittsburgh can benefit from the patronage of a well-paid field engineer; and the perceived treasure trove of gas reserves lying underfoot might tempt any cash-strapped municipality or property owner, blue or red, into issuing a fracking permit of their own.
Trump and Biden have each tapped into one partial truth: There is an allegiance to old industry in some Western Pennsylvania families, a belief that the wealth that steel and coal and gas brought to the region, albeit years and years ago, is owed a certain respect. That no one’s family would be here, would have been able to establish homes and raise generations, without the jobs provided by the mills and the mines.
You can find a logical descendent of that allegiance in support of fracking, even though the modern incarnation of that industry is less magnanimous than the old, which isn’t saying much. There are no pensions provided by a year-long gig drilling a well, there are no promises of any semblance of security once that well inevitably dries up. Even for those who own enough land to benefit from oil and gas royalties, they are not worth as much as they were five-ish years ago, before a lot of wells were tapped and energy prices dropped. But in the absence of other opportunities, there is always a temptation to lean on the old crutch of the region’s prodigious fossil fuel reserves, even though all the risks of dredging up those old dinosaur bones are better known now.
“I just can’t get over this feeling that we cannot keep digging out the inside of the Earth without some consequence,” says Vargo. “I’ve been here all my life. I understand where people are coming from when they say, ‘Oh, so now all of a sudden the mill is bad.’ You know, my family benefited from a job at the mill, it’s not like I don’t appreciate that. What I don’t appreciate is the fact that at least three people in my family have bladder cancer.”
It’s the classic Faustian bargain of selling off any natural resource; you can have the money for the community, but there’s a chance you might taint the water and air and land so much that you drive the whole community away. That is, those who can afford to leave.
“My family grew up in Dooker’s Hollow, which is right by the mill,” Vargo said. “I’ve seen pictures of the early days before they were able to control some of the emissions and there was no vegetation. The hillsides were bare. What does that tell you? I mean, if even weeds don’t grow. What does that tell you?”
When the Western Pennsylvania gas wells drilled at the end of the 19th century began to run dry (as they inevitably do), a lot of homes and industries quickly returned to coal, which was how we ended up with the “hell with the lid off” black skies for which Pittsburgh is infamous. Today, natural gas is held up by many self-proclaimed “climate realists” as a “bridge fuel” in the opposite direction: part of the transition away from coal toward fossil fuel-free sources of energy, and that’s its own heated debate. It’s impossible to silo even the supporters of natural gas ideologically.
It’s a necessity of political campaigns, particularly national ones, to deal in generalities. You are trying to appeal to the most people possible in the fewest words. But when you describe Pennsylvania, with its population of 12 million individuals, as a monolith, referring to something as complex as fracking as a simple issue of good and bad, you fail to understand how fossil fuel development may have formed a backdrop for life in Pennsylvania for centuries now, but never defined it.
Election Day is nearly upon us, and while it may bring change, it is unlikely to mark a truly meaningful moment in the fracking debate for states like Pennsylvania. So it is here, at the juncture of four towns with different and increasingly pressing needs, on the edge of a city that wants little to do with them, that the very lengthy saga of siphoning gas from the Earth will continue as a real, living thing.
