Kali Larsen sat at her desk at Fruitland Elementary School in Idaho earlier this year, trying to read the test questions as her classmates silently worked around her. Her anxiety climbed as she stared at the paper. She asked to use the bathroom and left the room.

Her mother, Jessica Larsen, had been substitute teaching that day when she received a call from the front office, notifying her that her 9-year-old daughter was having a panic attack. Kali, now 10, has dyslexia and struggles with reading and writing, Larsen said.

“Wouldn’t you be anxious?” Larsen told the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica.

For years, Larsen had been pleading with the Fruitland School District to get Kali qualified for special education for reading. Larsen, who herself was diagnosed later in life with dyslexia, had her daughter tested in first grade in 2021 by a private specialist who said Kali had the same disability. But a diagnosis doesn’t automatically qualify a student for special education. The school still wouldn’t evaluate Kali for help, saying she likely wouldn’t qualify, in part because her scores weren’t low enough, Larsen said.

Larsen grew more frustrated with each passing school year as her child — a shy girl who feels most confident when competing in rodeos on her horse, Pie — would cry after school and tell her she felt “dumb.” A year before her daughter’s panic attack in fourth grade, Larsen had filed a state complaint against the district, saying it refused to evaluate Kali for special education. A few months later, in March 2024, a state investigator agreed: The district had broken the law.

Parents of students with disabilities have increasingly resorted to filing complaints with the state over their schools’ failure to educate their children, alleging districts are violating federal law. Most of the time, state investigators have agreed and found that districts refuse to identify and evaluate children with disabilities, such as dyslexia or autism, and fail to follow plans to educate them fairly.

In Idaho, students with disabilities have performed worse in reading and math than many of their peers in other states, federal data shows. Idaho was among the states with the most founded complaints per capita in recent years, according to a national center that analyzes data on complaints and provides support to states. Over the past five years, investigators found in over 70% of the complaints filed in Idaho that districts had broken the law.

But the state often closes cases without making sure the districts have fully solved the problems, parents across Idaho told the Statesman and ProPublica.

Districts can resolve the violations without “really changing their ways,” said Amy Martz, a Utah-based attorney who has worked with families in Idaho. “There’s no teeth.”

State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield said the state Department of Education expects districts to make any corrections needed to be in full compliance with state and federal law, and that it has conducted listening sessions and piloted other programs to help meet the needs of students and parents.

Critchfield said the challenge with educating students with disabilities comes down, in part, to the way the state distributes funding, which is based on a flat percentage and not the actual number of students with disabilities in each district. She said staff members have large caseloads and districts lack trained staff and specialists.

Parents say it can take months for the districts to evaluate a child for services, and in some cases, districts have refused to provide the instruction or behavioral interventions students need.

Lawmakers have been reluctant to approve changes to the funding formula despite warnings from state officials about a shortfall between what districts spend on special education and what the state allocates. An independent oversight office this year estimated the gap to be over $80 million. Idaho routinely ranks last in the nation for funding per student overall.

Larsen said she didn’t want to get the district or teachers in trouble when she filed her complaint. But she said she risked retaliation, in a small community where speaking out can be damaging, because she intended to make public schools better for her daughter and other kids.

“We’re failing our kids. This is our future,” Larsen said. “Why are we failing them? And that’s my question to them, but they can’t answer.”

School districts nationwide are required to identify children who have disabilities or health impairments that could make it harder to learn, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or dyslexia, and evaluate them for special education services. A parent can also formally request an evaluation of their child. Under federal law, if the school has any reason to suspect a disability, it must provide that evaluation.

But when Larsen asked the district to evaluate her daughter, the school pushed back.

Records show that district officials over a period of 1 1/2 years provided numerous reasons Kali didn’t need or wouldn’t qualify for special education: Her low reading scores were mainly due to anxiety, rather than a disability; she needed to advocate for herself; she was “making progress”; a special education evaluation would take a long time; if she received special education services, she’d miss out on valuable instruction time in a general education classroom.

A few months after Larsen filed her complaint in 2024, an investigator contracted by the state Department of Education concluded that the district didn’t have procedures in place to make sure all students with disabilities were identified and helped, and that it hadn’t conducted a full evaluation of Kali, even after Larsen requested it. The investigators issued a corrective action plan and ordered the district to begin the evaluation process with Kali within about two weeks and to help her within two months if they found she qualified for special education.

Fruitland Superintendent Stoney Winston, who started in July 2024, after the state issued the corrective action plan, said the district has “made corrections” and is meeting current requirements. He said he can’t speak to what happened before he assumed his role.

Do you have personal experience with problems related to special education in Idaho or accessibility through the Americans with Disabilities Act in schools? We want to hear from you, whether you’re a student, a parent, an educator or an administrator. We will only use your name with permission. Reach out to Becca Savransky at bsavransky@idahostatesman.com or 208-495-5661.

Disability advocates have said the lack of funding makes it hard for school districts in the state to attract qualified specialists or special education teachers who fully understand the law, which can lead to improper education plans or other violations. High caseloads for staff members also mean less time for making or implementing specialized education plans, they said.

The state relies on a decades-old funding formula that assumes a set percentage of students in every district would qualify for special education: 6% in elementary school and 5.5% in middle and high school. State education officials acknowledged those percentages were never adequate. Officials said they don’t know how lawmakers first arrived at that formula.

“That 5.5 and that 6%, which was already insufficient back in 2016, is even more insufficient,” said Casey Petti, from Idaho’s Office of Performance Evaluations, an independent oversight agency.

According to the most recent data, about 12% of students in Idaho qualify for special education services — the lowest in the country.

In 2009, that agency told Idaho officials to consider tying special education funding to the actual cost of educating those students. In 2016, the office came out with a report with the same findings.

That same year, the Legislature created a committee to research the issue and rewrite the state’s funding formula. The committee met for three years, and in 2019, lawmakers proposed legislation. While those proposals would have provided money for special education based on the number of students actually receiving services, state education officials and school administrators said they were left out of the process and the legislation would be difficult to implement. The state superintendent at the time questioned whether it would even adequately fund special education.

Nearly 75% of school districts that received state funding for special education programs spent anywhere from $640 to $19 million more than what the state provided during the 2023-24 school year.

In the years since, lawmakers have introduced other bills to revise the funding formula, but the Legislature did not approve any of them. The cost to investigate complaints overall has nearly tripled since the 2020 school year, according to the state Department of Education, with each investigation ranging from a few hundred dollars to $30,000.

This year, the Idaho Legislature approved adding another specialist to help handle complaints. During the 2023-24 school year, the state received 53 complaints and found districts were out of compliance in most of them.

But while the state has spent more money to investigate the problems, administrators said they have been given little to fix them. In Idaho, districts rely on local taxpayers to fund special education more than in many other states, according to a 2024 study by Bellwether, a nonprofit that analyzed data from the National Center for Education Statistics for the 24 states where it was available.

Boundary County Superintendent Jan Bayer described special education as an “unfunded mandate.” The district spends about $1.7 million from its general fund to educate students with disabilities and goes to its taxpayers every two years to ask for additional funding to provide other programs.

Other superintendents said it was difficult to meet the needs of every student in special education.

“While we provide the vast majority of our students with the services they need, we do have a couple of higher need students who need more services than we can provide,” Butte County Superintendent Joe Steele, who retired this summer, said in an email to the Statesman. But finding educators or specialists with the proper training, and paying for them, would be challenging in the remote area, he said.

Kendra Scheid watched her son struggle in a larger district with high caseloads and inexperienced staff. Scheid’s son, who is autistic and nonverbal, qualified for developmental preschool before moving into the Pocatello-Chubbuck School District in eastern Idaho. But the district told her that her son could attend preschool only two days a week for 2 1/2 hours each day.

Before her son started attending full-day kindergarten, Scheid asked the school for a meeting to put together a revised education plan for her son. But the district refused, according to the complaint investigation.

Scheid went to school with her son on the first days, where he was placed with other students with disabilities, and witnessed what she described as chaos: kids climbing on tables, students injuring themselves with no staff intervention and teachers restraining children in their chairs. “They had no idea what any of these kids needed, what any of these kids were like coming into the classroom,” she said.

Pocatello school district spokesperson Courtney Fisher said the district is committed to “proactively addressing parent concerns” and improving its special education services. That includes putting into place a plan that meets all state requirements and hiring more staff, she said, and trying to address any gaps in its system to prevent issues in the future.

I feel like a bad mom because I didn’t know this stuff at the time. And I feel like I let my son down.

After school on the second day, Scheid’s son came home crying and covering his ears, something she said he hadn’t done before. After day three, Scheid disenrolled her son from the district. For the rest of that year, he saw outside therapists and Scheid worked with him at home.

After she filed a complaint with the state, an investigator found the district had broken the law when it failed to create a plan that would work for her son and to ensure the teacher had his previous education plan before school started. The state said the district must create a new education plan for her son should he reenroll, but Scheid had lost faith. Instead, she entered and won one of the few available lottery spots in a charter school, which her son now attends.

“I feel like a bad mom because I didn’t know this stuff at the time,” reflected Scheid, who said her son is now doing well in a charter school that’s more accommodating. “And I feel like I let my son down.”

About 20% of Idaho districts have broken federal disability law multiple times in the past five years, and nearly 40% have violated the law at least once, according to data from the state Department of Education. When they do, the state, which enforces the federal law and corresponding state rules, asks them to fix the problems through corrective action plans.

The plans reviewed by the news outlets ask district staff to undergo training, and sometimes a child gets additional hours of education to make up for the time missed. But a Statesman and ProPublica review of corrective action plans and interviews with parents showed districts repeatedly receive training for the same problems and commit similar violations.

Critchfield, the state superintendent, said there are several factors that could play a role in whether training is successful for districts permanently, including staff turnover and access to resources.

“Compliance with state and federal law is the ultimate goal,” she said in an email. “As a department, we are always prepared to provide remedial training and intervention to address additional concerns as they arise.”

The Pocatello school district received 11 complaints over the past five years, according to data from the state Department of Education. The Garden Valley School District received 10. In both of these districts, federal investigators found systemic violations in special education law that impacted more than one student. The state Department of Education refused to provide the number of founded complaints per district, citing federal law on student privacy, though some other states publicly post much of their complaint investigations online.

Andrew Branham was among several parents who filed complaints against the Garden Valley School District over the past three years.

The Branhams wrote in the complaint that their daughter received “virtually no education” and was denied services, such as speech and counseling. At one point, they said a school resource officer called her parents threatening to arrest her. Her parents said they rushed to school to find her barefoot in the middle of the parking lot as several adults looked on. A state investigator concluded that the district in some instances had “relied” on the resource officer to address the student’s behavior.

Branham said the district was “unwilling” to meet the needs of their daughter. The Branhams elevated their case, hiring an attorney who presented it before a state-contracted hearing officer. The Branhams received a financial settlement with the district and moved to Washington to get their daughter a better education.

“It is a shame what Idaho is doing to kids in that state,” Branham said in December. “I would never move back there, and I would never recommend anyone live in that state, especially if you have special needs kids.”

After the Branhams filed their complaint and went public, more than 20 families shared similar experiences, they said. So they filed a complaint on behalf of other families that alleged that the district ignored state and federal laws meant to protect students with disabilities and denied them an education.

The resulting state investigations concluded that at least 13 of the allegations were founded. The district failed to properly construct education plans for students. It also didn’t have the proper plans for supporting a child with behavioral issues. The district did not gather or share the data it needed to assess student progress and could not adequately determine whether students were meeting their learning goals, the investigations found.

The state decided the district needed extra help, ranking Garden Valley in 2024 as one of three districts in need of substantial intervention. The state now requires the district to follow an improvement plan and monitors its progress — but the district’s funding remains the same.

The Garden Valley School District did not respond to requests for comment.

Families in other districts have also pulled their children from local schools. Some parents and advocates who talked to the Statesman said they are especially worried about President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and leave it to the states when Idaho has long struggled to provide an education to students with disabilities.

In Kali’s case, the state’s corrective action plan issued in 2024, in addition to requiring that the district start to evaluate Larsen’s daughter, also mandated that the district help teachers learn how to spot students who should be evaluated for special education and identify those with disabilities.

The state closed the case earlier this year, about a year after it was filed. Kali had been struggling without adequate help for three years before the district conceded she was eligible for special education services.

Kali now has an education plan, but Larsen said the district still isn’t giving her the help she needs. She just finished fourth grade and still hasn’t mastered reading and writing. As her daughter prepares for middle school, Larsen is considering pulling her from the district next year. But Larsen doesn’t plan on filing another complaint. It was too much stress with little to show for it, she said.

When Kali was moved to a different classroom each day to receive more specialized instruction, her teachers sometimes told her to sit and read quietly, Larsen said.

“She can’t read,” Larsen said, exasperated. “It’s so frustrating.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Becca Savransky, Idaho Statesman.

As thousands of architects and planners flocked to New Orleans in 2014 for the world’s largest sustainable design conference, the city saw a chance to prove it belonged in the green building big leagues.

City leaders announced at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo that New Orleans would join Minneapolis, Seattle and a vanguard of other cities in developing a program requiring large building owners to track and disclose their energy use.

New Orleans’ embrace of “energy benchmarking” drew praise at the conference, with one green building expert declaring that the city was “paving the way” for the rest of the country to follow. 

But New Orleans lost momentum, waiting more than a decade before finally approving its benchmarking ordinance on Thursday. In the meantime, New Orleans fell behind about 50 other cities that have approved energy tracking and disclosure requirements for most large buildings.

“The benchmarking ordinance — finally!” New Orleans City Council member Helena Moreno said. “After many, many years, we’re finally getting there.” 

Benchmarking can both shame the power hogs and extol the virtues of the frugal. The data spurs investment in older, inefficient buildings and encourages more climate-conscious design in new ones, advocates say. 

“It’s well understood that one cannot change what one does not measure,” said Christopher Johnson, a board member with the New Orleans chapter of the American Institute of Architects. By passing the ordinance, the city is “empowering owners to take matters into their own hands to improve their buildings.”  

Buildings are responsible for 40 percent of total energy use in the U.S., and about 35 percent of the country’s carbon emissions, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Compared to much of the country, buildings in New Orleans tend to be older and less energy-efficient, with high air conditioning use and little insulation. 

Under the city’s plan, owners of buildings 50,000 square feet and larger would need to report annual energy use starting in 2026. In 2027, the requirement would expand to buildings more than 20,000 square feet. Noncompliance could result in fines between $1,000 and $3,000. 

The fines aren’t for inefficiency, Council President JP Morrell said. “They’re for failing to report the data.”

Energy use will be tracked on an interactive map and published in an annual report. 

Read Next

‘Chilling and dangerous’: Grassroots groups sue over Louisiana law that censors air quality data

Joseph Winters

The ordinance covers about 1,500 properties. While buildings over 20,000 square feet make up just 1 percent of all structures, they account for nearly 40 percent of the city’s total building area, said Greg Nichols, the city’s deputy chief resilience officer. 

Nearly 80 percent of the buildings covered under the ordinance are categorized as commercial, and about 20 percent are residential. Of the commercial buildings, a quarter are warehouses, 16 percent are hotels and 12 percent are offices.  

Funding for implementing the ordinance is covered with $1.5 million from a $50 million greenhouse gas reduction grant awarded to the city by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year. Much of the money for the program would support a full-time employee tasked with promoting it and helping property owners with compliance. 

While President Donald Trump has been canceling or reclaiming many climate-related grants awarded by former President Joe Biden’s administration, the EPA grant appears secure, Nichols said. 

“Climate action is under threat right now from the Trump administration,” he said. “But this is an action that the City Council can take right now to show leadership at a time when other efforts are being imperiled.” 

Benchmarking is a key component of the city’s climate action plan. Updated in 2022, the plan aims to cut the city’s greenhouse gas emissions in half before 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The benchmarking ordinance was supposed to be passed by the end of last year, according to the plan. 

“We are a city that’s committed to significant climate goals,” Morrell said. “It is nigh impossible to do that without benchmarking.” 

Cities with similar ordinances have seen building energy use drop by an average of 2.4 percent annually, according to the EPA. At that rate, the agency calculates that a 500,000-square-foot office building can save about $120,000 per year. 

Utility bill envy can be a potent motivator for property owners, Morrell said.

“It encourages a person to say, ‘Wait a second, we have similarly situated buildings, and I’m paying triple the cost in utility fees,’” he said. “‘It might be worth seeing how we can reduce those costs.’”  

New Orleans can look to its city-owned buildings for further proof of benchmarking’s effectiveness. The city began tracking each building’s energy use more than a decade ago. Between 2018 and 2021, energy use fell by about 23 percent, Nichols said. 

Most cities that require energy consumption tracking are concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast. Austin, Atlanta, Orlando and Miami are the only other Southern cities with benchmarking ordinances, according to the Institute for Market Transformation. 

“I’d love (New Orleans) to be one of the leading cities in the South in this area,” Nichols said. 

Read Next

In Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley,’ Black communities get all of the pollution, few of the jobs

Tristan Baurick

Concerns about privacy and fines hindered the ordinance’s progress, city leaders said. To ease those worries, the city will now require property owners to disclose a building’s total energy use, not that of its tenants or other occupants. The ordinance would also waive penalties during the first year and cap fines at $3,000. 

Councilmember Oliver Thomas expressed doubts about the ordinance, saying it may do little more than burnish New Orleans’ image. He cited the city’s recycling program, which diverts only about 2 percent of household waste from landfills — a rate that’s less than a tenth of the national average. 

“We have to be more cautious because we keep producing investments and more money that comes from the public to create a lot of trendy things,” he said. “I don’t want to make the same mistakes we made with recycling and some other initiatives.” 

Morrell called the comparison to recycling “inappropriate.” While recycling may be a costly solution for conserving some materials, benchmarking is a low-cost means of conserving both money and energy, he said. 

 “We’re showing that if you’re more energy efficient, you’ll see a direct reduction in costs,” said. 

Tracking the energy consumption of buildings can also spur economic growth, Nichols said. As property owners recognize the savings from energy upgrades, demand for the skilled workers who implement them will grow, he said.

Energy efficiency is projected to be Louisiana’s top clean energy job creator, with about 9,300 new roles for architects and heating, air conditioning and related tradespeople expected by 2030, according to a recent NREL report. The solar industry was expected to create up to 8,300 jobs, and wind energy would add nearly 600 positions during the same period. 

“While solar and wind have huge potential, it’s actually energy efficiency that has the most job potential,” Nichols said. “And that’s because it includes a wide range of jobs, such as HVAC (technicians), electricians and insulation contractors.” 

Benchmarking could also ease demand on the city’s outage-prone power grid, said Jesse George, the New Orleans policy director for the Alliance for Affordable Energy. A spike in power use during the sweltering Memorial Day weekend overwhelmed transmission lines and triggered rolling blackouts that cut the lights and AC for more than 100,000 households. 

“That showed we need every possible tool in our toolbox to reduce our energy load and demand,” George said. “This ordinance, in terms of the cost to implement versus the potential benefit, is a no-brainer.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Inside New Orleans’ plan to fix its energy-hogging buildings on Jul 11, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tristan Baurick.

In the latest installment of Inequality Watch, TRNN investigative reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis explore the roots of today’s historic levels of economic inequality and the system that has perpetuated it while devastating the lives and livelihoods of wage earners. To do so, they speak with renowned economist Dr. Richard Wolff about how ideas hatched in the classroom decades ago prompted economic elites to put the US on a treacherous path that would hollow out the middle class, suppress wage growth for working people, and ensure a future where only the wealthiest benefit from America’s economic growth.

Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Studio: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Inequality Watch. It’s a show that seeks to expose the dangers of extreme wealth inequality and discuss what we can do to fix it and to do so, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis

Stephen Janis:

Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Taya Graham:

It’s good to have you. Now, this is a form to examine the facts and figures, consequences, and solutions for our current wealth and balance, which infiltrates every aspect of our civic life. On this show, we won’t just tell you about inequality. We will dig deeper and show you how it works, how it affects your lives, and the political system that has grown inherently hostile to the working class. And to do so, we’ll be joined by a guest who knows more about this topic than anyone I can think of. Dr. Richard Wolfe is an expert economist who’s become YouTube’s foremost public intellectual at the intersection of economics and politics. And his analysis of what is driving America’s progression towards oligarchy has been critical for the movement to fight against it. And I know his historical context has helped me understand how politics can often sit decidedly downstream from economics.

So we’re going to have Dr. Wolff respond not just to the report, but to some recent pronouncements from politicians on Capitol Hill who we interviewed and some recent moves by the Trump administration. But before we get to Dr. Wolff, we want to delve into a new report about the devastating impact of our decades long march towards wealth imbalance, and it’s from the Rand Corporation. And reveal just how profoundly the inequities and unfairness are wired into the American economy. We will dig deep into the consequences of this stunning report and unravel deeper roots of unease. It is generated among Americans and how that lack of confidence in the system has manifested itself in the very tense politics of the present. But first, some of the details of the report itself. Now, as I said, it was released by the RAND Corporation. The premise of this analysis is relatively straightforward.

The authors take a look at working class income as a share of the overall GDP or all the goods and services produced by our economy in a given year. The study looks back 50 years to determine the share of income that went to working people and then compares it to the present. It’s an indicator of how much of the wealth of the largest economy in the world goes to the people who actually make it work. And guess what? It’s done nothing but drop consistently. Believe it or not, in 1975, roughly 75% of the total American economic output went to workers’ wages. That’s three quarters of all economic activity into workers’ pockets. You heard that right? Nearly 50 years ago, workers were the biggest beneficiaries of our country’s increasing wealth. But things have certainly changed. As recently as 2023, the RAND study found that the percentage had dropped dramatically to 46%. Over time, the share of the nation’s income that goes to workers has dropped by roughly 30 percentage points. And where has that income gone? Well, not just to the rich or the very rich or the extremely rich, but to the insanely rich to the top 1%, although, and all they’ve done well, don’t worry. In fact, the biggest bulk of the gain has actually gone to the 0.01%, not even the 1%, the actual

Stephen Janis:

Tip of

Taya Graham:

The iceberg 0.01%,

Stephen Janis:

The

Taya Graham:

Most absurdly wealthy group in America. And that income transfer has led to an astounding amount of loss of wealth for people who actually do the work to keep this country running. The RAM report estimates that since 1975, a jaw dropping $73 trillion of wealth has migrated from the working class to the elites. That’s trillion with a T. That’s twice the total annual output of our economy in any given year. And that trend is accelerating. That’s because in just 2023, a mind boggling, 3 trillion additional dollars would’ve gone to working people if wages had garnered the same share of economic growth as they did in the 1970s. And all of this, of course, brings us back to the most stunning takeaway from these incredible numbers, namely that wealth follows power. And with power accumulating and concentrating in fewer and fewer hands, our democracy becomes unable to solve complex problems. And Steven, this sort of becomes a vicious cycle.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I think that this report points out and sort of parallels that you need to bring up to understand just how catastrophic it’s been, is the fact that we have been living in a progressively extractive economy. In other words, as the worker share has diminished the parts of the economy that actually produce things for people that are useful and improved, their lives has diminished. And that economy has come more and more extractive. And just to illustrate that point, to make it very simple, as you think about what share financial services have played in the economy since the 1970s where it was about two to 3% of the economy, meaning hedge funds, investment bankers, hedge funds actually didn’t exist, but investment bankers, people who feed off the froth of the economy, well, it’s tripled since then, tripled to almost eight or 9%.

And at one point, just before 2008, before the great recession, about 40% of corporate profits came from companies that just did nothing but shuffle the deck and make money off of money. And so that illustrates what happens. And that’s when you’re talking about sort the political paralysis that precedes it because the more people are extractive, the more antagonistic relationship they have with the working class, working class doesn’t become a group that you want to lift up and improve their lives. It becomes people that you want to extract money from and make their lives worse. And so I think that’s what evolves in parallel, and that’s where we see these sort of mean billionaires, angry billionaires all the time. They’re always angry. Elon Musk is always angry, and Donald Trump is pretty much always angry. And it has to do with the fact that their relationship with the people who actually make this economy run has become purely antagonistic in the sense that their wealth is based upon extracting from people. So I think that’s a good point, and that’s what comes out in this report.

Taya Graham:

That’s actually such an interesting point, and I really hope Dr. Wolf will respond to it.

Stephen Janis:

Oh, he will.

Taya Graham:

And you’re basically saying that bad policy follows

Stephen Janis:

Wealth

Taya Graham:

In a way that we can’t see

Stephen Janis:

Because good policy requires collective thinking and it requires thinking that is most beneficial to everyone. That’s a hard thing to do in a democracy. We don’t understand that it’s not easy to build a bullet train or to improve housing or to build more affordable housing. It takes concerted effort where people are kind of on the same page where I will benefit from what you will benefit. But when the economy becomes purely extractive and wealth is based on the power of accumulating so much that the people underneath you have no power whatsoever. You can’t think big in that sense. You can think big on individual scale, but not collective scale. And I think that’s what we’re seeing,

Taya Graham:

Steven. I think this imbalance also destabilizes communities and makes them more susceptible to things like over-policing and economic exploitation. I mean, so many of the small towns that we covered

Stephen Janis:

Were

Taya Graham:

Also under economic duress, and they had issues with policing. They were overwhelmed by aggressive ticketing and fines and general overreach and overspending on things like law enforcement.

Absolutely. But these are questions we can put to our guests. Dr. Richard Wolf, I’m sure will have a lot of interesting things to say about all of it, and I’m sure most of you are familiar with him, especially if you’re watching us on YouTube. Dr. Wolf is an esteemed economist and founder of Democracy at Work whose ability to analyze the economics of the present through the history of the past is unparalleled. He’s also the author of multiple books, including his latest capitalism crisis, deepens, and he’s perhaps one of the best people we know to break down the mechanics of how rampant inequality is reflected in the politics of the present. A topic of great importance now more than ever. Dr. Wolf, thank you so much for joining us.

Richard Wolff:

My pleasure. I’m a big admirer of what you do as well, so this is thank an opportunity for me to join you, and that’s worth it for me right there.

Taya Graham:

Thank

Stephen Janis:

You, Dr. Wolf.

Taya Graham:

That’s so wonderful to hear. Thank you, Dr. So first I just wanted to address the Rand report, and to me the numbers were really quite shocking. So I guess my first question would be just taking in the raw numbers and weighing on the methodology, how does the economic share of wages drop so dramatically? I mean, how did the oligarchs pull this off basically? That’s a good question.

Richard Wolff:

Well, first of all, let me reinforce, this is a very historic process. You don’t see this very often. That is, you don’t see changes this big in so relatively short a historical period. So yes, you’re right to focus on it. It is stunning. And in order to explain it, you have to look at certain basic shifts here in the United States and in the global economy that span the last 40 years or so in terms of when this really took off. The 1975 is the right year for the Rand Corporation to have used because it is a crucial, not that particular year, but the 1970s are a crucial time. You should think about it as sort of the end of the very special situation that came out of the end of World War ii, 1945 to 75. Those 30 years were a period that the United States must have known, certainly the leaders knew could not possibly be sustained because all of the potential competitors in the world, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, were all destroyed.

Russia, if you want to ask them, they were literally destroyed. Immense bombing had wrecked their train systems, their factories, their cities killed enormous numbers and hurt enormous numbers of their people. So they were finished. Whereas in the United States, it was radically other, other than Pearl Harbor, no bombs fell in the United States. Pearl Harbor happened as you know at the very beginning. So for the bulk of the war, the United States was immune as a percentage of our population. We lost many fewer young people in the fighting compared to every other one of those countries. Japan had an atomic bomb dropped twice, we dropped it, but nobody dropped anything comparable on us. So in those years, the world readjusted itself. The war forced it, and suddenly we saw very dramatically the end, the final end, it had been dying, but the final end of the British empire that had dominated the world for the previous two to three centuries, it was completely gone.

The jewel of the empire, India became independent in 1947. It was over and there was no one to fill that void, no one with one exception, the United States. So in a very short time, the global currency went from the British pound sterling to the US dollar from the British Navy being the power force of the world to the American military operation on a global scale with atomic weapons. You cannot overstress this. The only way Japan and the Europe were able to rebuild from the war was because the United States lent them the money to buy the equipment from the US with which to do that. So after the 1970s, all of that was over the 1970s were in fact a watershed. The great fear in the United States, the great fear was to slide back into the economic problems that the United States had had before World War ii.

Let me remind you, 29 to the war or the great depression, the worst collapse of capitalism in the history of that system, even to this day, we have not had anything worse than the 1930s. So there was always a fear then that oh, what would happen if we slid back with that in the back of your mind? Then you get the results that the Rand Corporation, like many other investigations have shown that the response, and this is really important, folks, that the response of the capitalist class and who do I mean by that? I mean the people who are employers, the people who are in the position of hiring other human beings. The United States census tells us that 3% of the American people are employers, the other 97% are not. And what that means, whatever else you think, it puts that 3% in a position to make powerful decisions that the other 97% of us have to adjust to have to live with and basically have to accept unless we make a revolution, which as you both noticed, we have not had.

So here is what that 3% did, and then I’ll stop. The 3% started, particularly in the 1970s, realized that the Europeans in the Japanese had recovered from the war as everyone should have expected them to do. They were still the Germans in the Japanese, hardworking, highly skilled engineer, modern country, all of that. And they understood that their place in the sun could only be achieved if they could outdo the absolutely dominant economy in the world, namely the United States. So they set their goals on producing goods and services that were either better than or cheaper than, or hopefully both what was done in the United States that made the United States great, which is why Americans discovered in the 1970s and eighties, the Volkswagen and the Toyota and the Nissan, and they fill in the blank. They did it. They did what they set out to do. They produced better cars so that even Americans bought them ahead of the Ford, the Chevy, the Chrysler and so on.

And in that moment, the discovery of the American capitalist class was that if they didn’t do something dramatic, they would be sliding downward as their former adversaries. The Europeans in the Japanese made their move, and that move was more and more successful with each passing year. So here’s what they did. Number one, they made the decision to move the manufacturing base of the United States. Out of the United States. The working class in the United States had been so successful in pushing up wages over the previous century, a century in which profits froze faster than wages, but they rose fast enough right up until the seventies that the employer could share with the workers a modest increase every year that the union would negotiate. And when an employer didn’t do it, the unions had the muscle to strike and to get it, and so wages were much higher.

But in the 1970s, the invention of the jet engine and the invention of the internet made it possible to supervise, organize, monitor a manufacturing factory in China pretty much as easily as you used to do it across the street in New Jersey or St. Louis or Chicago or where you were. So they left. The second thing they did was to take advantage of their history and to automate, to really go about systematically focusing on replacing these high cost workers, which they kept seeing as their great problem. Wages were lower in Japan, wages were lower in Europe, significantly so, and so they realized how do we do well? We replace workers with machines and the third action bring cheap workers here when it wasn’t convenient to move production there where the cheap workers live, those three things, export of jobs, automation and immigration of working class people.

That is mostly people in their working ages, 20 to 50 who would come here with or without family. No one really cared but would work for Penny on the dollar compared to what Americans were used to. And I have to tell you that worked, that strategic move of the business class, those 3% who run the businesses work, they all did it. By the way, at the beginning. Many of them were hesitant. They didn’t want to go to China. China don’t speak English and China’s far away and China’s run by a communist party. Very scary, don’t want to do it. But they had to because the first ones who did it made such profits that those who were not willing to go had to overcome their cautionary anxieties and go, but I want to stress here because Americans are being fed real nonsense about all of this.

No one held a gun to their head. The Chinese never had the authority or the power to make that happen. They might’ve wished it, they might’ve wanted it, but they never had it. This is a decision made by Americans and by the way, their counterparts against whom they were competing in Japan and Europe followed suit, also went to China. And exactly for the same reasons, which is one of the reasons Europe is in the trouble. It is in now Japan having difficulties that it is in now. The world has changed. The people’s republic of China is an entity in the world economy, the likes of which we have not seen for a century. I need to explain to people so often, Russia, the Soviet Union, may and I underscore may, may have been an adversary, militarily may have been an adversary ideologically, but economically never.

It was much too poor. It could never hold a candle to the American economy. That was its Achilles heel. And then when it tried to match the arms race with the US, when it tried to control another country, Afghanistan, it discovered that it was simply too poor to pull that off. And having waited too late, it dissolved. It couldn’t survive. No one has missed that lesson, least of all the people’s republic of China. So they’ve been super careful. If you watch them now, they’re still, when they don’t actually need to anymore, be super careful. They don’t impose tariffs on us until and after we do that to them. That’s been their kind of behavior all the way through. But we Americans have to understand, we do not. We are not in position to win. We’re not even in a position to fight another Cold war. China isn’t the Cold War the way the Soviet Union was. The conditions are completely different. And if the United States pursues it, I as a betting person would bet we will lose. Not out of it, not that we aren’t strong, we are not that we aren’t rich, we are, but the world isn’t a place where statements like we’re rich and we’re strong carry the day that

Is over. And I think that is a necessary way to frame or to contextualize all of the other important issues.

Stephen Janis:

Well, Dr. Wolf, thank you so much for laying that out. That is really fascinating. And I guess when we’re talking about the Rand report, so they were at this sort of pivot point, they make this decision, was there an option to be more inclusive with the working class here? I mean, does it have to end up the way it did where wealth is so extremely unequal? I really appreciate the way you rooted that and we now kind of understand the mechanisms, but could they have done this a different way, in a way that would’ve led to less economic dislocation for the working class in this country, or was it just the table was set the way it was? That’s a good

Taya Graham:

Question.

Richard Wolff:

Well, the way I would answer it, which will upset some perhaps, but it’s the only way that makes sense to me. If you allow the system to function in the normal way that a capitalist economic system functions, then I have to give you the answer your own words. That’s the way the world was. That’s the way decisions got made and it isn’t neither surprising nor shocking that they were made in that way. Could you have had a different outcome? Absolutely. But in order to get it, and I’ll describe it to you in a moment, in order to get it, you would have to change the system. And what I mean by that is you would have to stop making the decision based on what is profitable. Look, I’m a professor of economics. I have learned about capitalism as the profit maximizing system. That’s what I learned, and I went to all the fanciest schools. This country has to learn it, and they tried their level best. Half of my professors were Nobel Prize winners and sitting next to me in my class at Yale where I got my PhD, was one of the very few women that took economics courses in those days, and her name is Janet Yellen.

Stephen Janis:

Wow. Oh my god. Wow. So you were there in the room where it happened,

Richard Wolff:

And I know these people personally because we all went through college and university together, et cetera, et cetera. If you make profit the guiding, if profit is the bottom line, which not only I was taught, but I have taught that to generations of students as a professor, then you get these results. If you don’t want these results, you’ve got to deal with the way people are taught to make decisions. I’ll give you the simplest example. If you move your manufacturing out of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and St. Louis and all the other places, Detroit. I mean I love to use Detroit. In 1975, it had 2 million people. Today it has 700,000 people. I mean, that’s it. End of conversation. That’s called an economic disaster. That’s as bad as having dropped bombs on that place and having killed all those people, obviously that’s not what happened,

But they were driven out by loss of jobs, et cetera, et cetera. So if you move your manufacturing, what is going to happen? Well, we know what happened to the companies that did it. They profited, which is why they did it and keep doing it. But let’s take a look, just you, me and the people participating here. If you produce it in China, it means you’re going to have to bring it back 10,000 miles from Shanghai or any of the in order to sell it to the American public. And you all know you can go buy an electronic device or furniture or kitchenware or a whole lot of other things and it says made in China. Well, what’s the problem here? The problem is you are be fouling the air with all the exhaust from all the freighters that are crisscrossing the ocean. What are you doing to the water? What are you doing to the fish?

Stephen Janis:

What

Richard Wolff:

Doing to the air? Well, here’s the important thing. No one has to worry about it because the companies that profit, even though they cause all of that turmoil, which will cost a fortune if you even can clean it up, they don’t have to pay a nickel. If they had to pay a nickel if they had to, they probably wouldn’t have done it because the profit wouldn’t have shown it as a reasonable thing to

Stephen Janis:

Do. So just so I understand, you’re saying that if the environmental costs were factored into this business decision to move everything to China, if the environmental costs were really factored in, then it wouldn’t be technically profitable to have this kind of transcontinental business or not transcontinental transatlantic. That’s

Richard Wolff:

Amazing.

Stephen Janis:

Wow.

Richard Wolff:

Only amendment I would give you is it’s not just the environmental costs. Let me give you a couple of other examples.

Stephen Janis:

Of course,

Richard Wolff:

When Detroit and I love the city, I’ve been there, I’ve been taken through it, the people treated me one, I have no complaint about the people, but an enormous part of Detroit is empty, burned out neighborhoods, mile after mile. They took me through, I’m talking, I’m not secondhand this, I saw with my own eyes, this is a disaster for these people. They had to pull up stakes, leave their homes, leave their families, leave their churches if they had kids in school, those kids at a very important time in life when they’re making friends and boyfriends and girlfriends, we yanked out of all of those relationships. One of the reasons all due respect that we have Mr. Trump in office is the dislocation of the white, particularly the white manufacturing working class.

It’s been a disaster for our labor movement because our unions were concentrated in manufacturing and you lost them and their member. And then remember all the communities in which those auto workers who lost their jobs lived, the stores in those communities went belly up. The housing market in those communities collapsed. They were unable to maintain their schools. How many children’s educations were interrupted, slowed down, deteriorated. This teach, if you add up all the costs, here’s the irony. Every one of the last eight or nine presidents of the United States have promised in their campaigns to bring manufacturing back. Our current president makes a thing of saying over and over again, he’s doing this to bring back manufacturing. None of them have done it. None of them have delivered on the promise. And we see why because private profit makes it. Well, let me give you an example. In his first presidency, Mr. Trump visited a factory in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, true temper or temper something, I forget the exact name. The factory made three quarters of all the wheelbarrows in the United States.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Richard Wolff:

In 2023, I just followed it through 2023, a venture capitalist bought the company out and did what they all do, which is carved it up into pieces, sold each of the pieces and made more money that way than they had to pay to get the factory in the first place. Today, that brand is still the brand of most wheelbarrows in America. But if you look at the label on the wheelbarrow underneath the same brand temper, whatever it was in small letters made in China,

Taya Graham:

Incredible.

Richard Wolff:

That’s how this works. If you leave the profit system in, if your loyalty to capitalism means that, then you’ve got a hard road ahoe because you’ve got to understand that commitment by you and by this society is producing the problems. Its presidents cannot and will not

Stephen Janis:

Solve. So Professor Wolf, this is kind of profound. It’s kind of effective because in Baltimore we have 11,000 vacant houses. I never conceptualized your thought of it that those ideas that were taught in that classroom, when you sat next to Janet Yell, and because we conceptualized profit in a certain way led to this destruction, which you kind of made an analogy to a war on the working class and cities like ours that were Baltimore is another example of postindustrial malaise. Absolutely. So you’re saying how these ideas were conceptualized, how we thought about profit, what profit meant has as much to do with the destruction we see as even any other force. Is that what you’re saying? I just want to understand because it’s pretty

Richard Wolff:

Profound. Yeah, you’ve understood me absolutely perfectly. We live in a society. Look, it’s really bad, you know that. I know that

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Richard Wolff:

That part of that understanding. I know a little bit about the history, that understanding is part of the history of where the Real News network comes from and what it was designed to do by the people who have worked at it all these years. It’s an understanding, but we are now evolved enough in the United States that the taboo I’m about to mention doesn’t have its hold anymore. And you were very kind at the beginning to talk about me being all over the internet. Believe me, I’m as amazed by that as possible because having been a critic of capitalism most of my adult life, I know that people approached me always as a kind of an odd duck. If I didn’t have the credentials of the fancy universities, I wouldn’t be in these auditoriums. I wouldn’t be invited. It’s not me, it’s all the other you all know. You know how America works.

I’m here to tell you. Yeah, we now have to do what we have been afraid to do for 75 years, as I like to say, Americans are good. We question our education system, our transportation system, our hospital healthcare system. My God, we are in the forefront of questioning institutions like marriage, heterosexuality and so on, and good for us that we open up those questions. But when it comes to questioning capitalism, oh, all the old taboo sets in and you’re not supposed to go there. You’re not supposed to. Here’s the problem if you don’t go there, if we don’t go there, we are foregoing the solution to the problems. We say we. We should never have undone our manufacturing system that because there’s anything special about it. But a balanced economy is a diverse one. Yes, we need service industry. Yes, we need, but we also need manufacturing.

Right now, the most troubled part of our population are relatively less educated in the formal sense. Males without jobs and without any prospect forgetting them, those were the people who worked in manufacturing and a manufacturing job doesn’t have to be dirty and dusty and it can be clean and in noling if you want it to be. All of that is within reach. Unless we hold on to the taboo and the only people left for whom that taboo works is the very elite that the Rand Corporation makes so clear to us sits at the top. If it weren’t for them, I would be able to talk to 10 times more people and all the others like me. And I can assure you, I’m not the only one out there ready and willing to go would have the audiences that need to hear that message.

Stephen Janis:

Amazing. You’re asking the question, but I was just going to say Toay and to Dr. Wolf. I remember sitting in my macroeconomic was class and the professor said, all people make rational decisions. That was like the basis of it. Now it’s all falling apart as Dr. Wolf. But go ahead. You had the next question.

Taya Graham:

I was just thinking that criticizing our for-profit system, the way we accrue profits and how

Stephen Janis:

And

Taya Graham:

Conceptualizing even a person who is wonderful at accumulating those profits, how they’re lionized, how they’re

Stephen Janis:

Heroes, right? The ideology. The ideology,

Taya Graham:

It’s such this incredible ideology built around it and tackling that as a last taboo is just so important

And very powerful because I think people do sense the imbalance and that’s why when tariffs were proposed by our president that people have the feeling, well, yes, we do want these jobs back, but instead the way tariffs have been implemented has caused a lot of confusion. And so what I want to know is if you’ve discerned any strategy behind it, but before I have you answer, I actually asked Senator Sanders about Trump’s tariffs and what he was doing and I just want you to hear what Senator Sanders response was. And I just want to ask you a question. President Trump has been describing America as a sick patient and tariffs as secure. Do you think America is sick and what would you say should be the remedy

Senator Bernie Sanders:

In America today? My definition of what is wrong with America is very different than Trump’s. My definition of what’s wrong is that we have three people in America who sat beside Trump in his inauguration who own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. My definition of what’s wrong with America is we’re the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right, that our childcare system is broken, that 60% of the people in this country, as you’ve heard today, are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to put food on the table. So that’s my analysis, which is very different than Trump’s. I happen not to believe in unfettered free trade. I helped lead the effort against nafta, PMTR, with China. I think we need trade policies that work for workers, not just the CEOs of large corporations. I think selective tariffs in the right time in the right place are exactly right. I think a blanket tariff in terms of what Trump is doing, which number one happens to be illegal, don’t have the power to do that, and second of one will be counterproductive. Okay, thank

Taya Graham:

You so much. So I guess my question for you is what do you think the approach should be with tariffs and what do you think of President Trump’s approach so far?

Richard Wolff:

Okay, I won’t comment on Bernie’s response, although that would be a conversation I think we could profitably all of us have about the tariffs. Here’s the problem. A tariff is a nasty action. It hurts other people. Americans love to imagine that somehow that’s not the case. If you put a tax, let’s take an example of our major trading partner Canada. If you put a tariff on the things that Canada ships into the United States, and remember, we have thousands of miles of unguarded border between our two countries and we are each other’s major trading partner. We more important for Canada than vice versa because it’s a much smaller country than we are in terms of population and activity, but nonetheless, we depend on each other. Okay? If you suddenly say that for every foot of timber Canada grows wood and we need wood for our housing industry and we bring it in from Canada, if every tree stump that we bring in has to now be paid for, so we have to give the Canadian company that cuts and ships the wood, whatever it costs to get it.

But now on top of that, the buyer in America has to give Uncle Sam tax. That’s what the tariff is. The tariff is exactly the same as a sales tax, right? When you go to the local store and you buy a shirt, if you are in a jurisdiction that has a sales tax, you pay for the shirt and then on top of it, the cash register rings for you. The tax, the sales tax that is for you, an extra cost of that shirt or that pot or whatever you bought. A tariff is exactly the same. It’s a sales tax on imported items, okay? This means that Americans will buy fewer of them because they have become more expensive. So a tariff imposes on the seller in this case, notice a American official not elected by any Canadian makes a decision, a tariff that hurts a Canadian lumber company. Same thing. If you put a tax on electricity, which US spies from Canada and from many other things, oil, gas, those are important exports. You are hurting them. You are telling them we here in America have some economic problems and we are going to kick you in the face to relieve ourselves.

You don’t do that unless either you have a sense of entitlement that the whole world will hate you for or you feel you can browbeat and force them to accept it. And then you have the nerve, which by the way, president Trump did today with the visiting new leader of Canada. He told him today, we don’t want to buy Canadian automobiles. We don’t want to buy your steel, your aluminum. He mentioned half a dozen items. Well then only Mr. Trump could say that and seem, because I watched it actually live, seemed not to grasp that he was condemning major industries in Canada to unspeakable decline in a short amount of time. I mean, he’s making Detroit’s out of these places, but he’s not elected by them. Why they are sitting there. These Canadians, you can be sure, and I can tell you this again from personal experience, they are sitting there transforming a really positive attitude towards Americans, which they had into a really deep hatred for Americans.

Yes, they understand Trump is not all American and they’re not not children, but you are putting them and then now multiply this by virtually every other country on earth. Here’s the irony. After World War ii, if you remember, the policy of the United States was containment. George Kennan was a great thinker in American political science. That was a strategy. So the Americans put bases around Russia and we isolated and we constrained Russia, the Soviet Union. Here’s the irony. Today it is the United States pursuing that kind of policy, but with the absurd opposite result. We are isolating us. We are turning the whole world into looking at the United States, and understandably, I wish I could say they were wrong about it, but they’re not.

Mr. Trump is doing unspeakable damage. Now on the economics, if you are going to put a tariff the way we are doing, and you’re going to say as Mr. Trump does, I want automobiles to be built here. I don’t want them to be built in Canada. I don’t want them to be built in Mexico where a lot of them are. Well, okay, then put a tariff and hope cross your fingers that the profit calculations of the car companies will lead them to do what you hope they will do if you impose such a tariff. But here’s the one thing you cannot do. You cannot say, here’s the tariff, and then two days later take it away and then a week and a half later raise it up a bit more. You know why? Because that introduces uncertainty and here’s why that matters. Go to any large company that’s busy in Canada or Mexico or anywhere else. They hear about these tariffs and do they consider moving into the United States? Of course they do. They want to escape the damage that a tariff does to them, but to move back into the United States takes two or three years, costs a ton of money, and is an immense risk. If you have any reason to doubt that this tariff will stay the way it is, you would never do it.

That’s why no one is going to do it. That’s why that such a point policy. Policy is a roaring failure from the get go. Wow. He has economic advisors. I know them. Either they’re intimidated and don’t tell him these things or they tell him and he doesn’t care or doesn’t listen. I don’t know. I’m not privy to that sort of thing, but I can tell you that the whole world watches this look, it was a long shot for him, which he didn’t understand because he’s not going to be president in three and a half years and most of these moves of companies, they take much longer than he will be president. So they have to worry that whoever comes in, Kamala Harris or anybody else will undo all of this, in which case they will have spent a fortune of money and moved and be regretful that they ever did it. They’re not going to move there, they just aren’t.

Stephen Janis:

Well, Dr. Wolf, I’ve been really thinking about some of the things you’ve said, and a lot of us we’re kind of naive. We always look at economics as a science, right, as a science. But from what you’re telling me, economics as a philosophy and it’s a philosophy, kind of turned somewhat as a religion where we’re worshiping at the feet of Milton Freeman or something, and that where prophet has become invaluable, prophet is like the catechism or something. You can’t question it, and I’m kind of profoundly affected by this because I did take micro macro and I feel like, wow, I was misled. I mean, you’re talking profit has become sort of invaluable. You can’t say anything against it, is that

Richard Wolff:

Where we are? But let me correct you about something you said a few minutes ago, and you were very wise. If I heard you correctly. You said you sat in a course and the course began with the teacher saying to you, in this course, we assume that everybody is a rational person, who

Stephen Janis:

That’s what was said.

Richard Wolff:

Yeah, that’s what was said. But you were clever when you said it a few moments ago in this program, I’ve got you here. You said you let us know that you thought that was nuts, what we were being told.

Stephen Janis:

Yes I did. Even at 19 years old I did.

Richard Wolff:

Yes. Here you were 19 years old. You already knew that this was crazy. Well, let me just tell you, I am married. I’ve been married a very long time. I know I’m a dinosaur. I got married at 23. I’m still married to the same lady. Congrats.

Taya Graham:

That’s lovely.

Richard Wolff:

She is a psychotherapist, and when I was a graduate student, we were just sort of getting together. Then when I was a graduate student, I came home one day and I told her that I had heard in my class what you heard, that economics is based on the notion that decisions are rational.

She fell off her chair laughing. She thought I was making it up to pull her leg to say something humorous. I said, no, there was no humor at all. And she said, oh my God. My whole field of psychology is an attempt to understand the very difficult combination of drives and urges and fears, half of which we’re not even conscious of that determine RB, the notion we are all rational calculators of costs and benefits. She could finish the sentence. She started laughing again at the thought of mature men and women sitting around talking like that. It struck her as incredible,

Stephen Janis:

But why do we worship the notion of prophet if it’s irrationally derived? Do you know what I mean? That’s what I’m just thinking about. What you said was so profound because these were conscious decisions, but they really were also exclusive decisions. That’s right. We are going to exclude the working class because of this idea of profit. How come we’ve come to worship at this idea of the science of it when it really is more like a philosophy, I guess is what I’m asking, because you’re there

Richard Wolff:

When I teach it. Now, in order to get at this, when I teach it now, I say to the students, profits are part of the revenue when you sell, if you make shoes or you make software programs, when you sell your product, you get a revenue and part of that revenue stream comes into the pocket of the worker, and we have a name for that. That’s wages and salaries, and another part of the revenue stream goes into the hands of the employer, and we call that profits. Now, if you want to make a economic system, have an objective, a goal, if you make it to profits, then you say the whole system is supposed to work to maximize what goes to a tiny minority of the people involved. Why wouldn’t you say more democratic for sure that it is the wages that we are most interested in securing because that’s where most of the people’s needs lie with the wages and the salaries, not with the, and when I explain it that way, everybody nods. It makes sense if you don’t explain it that way. If you explain it the way most universities and colleges do, and I still teach. I’m sitting here in New York City, I teach at something called the New School University,

But that’s a recognized American university. But most of my colleagues, they continue to teach profit maximization as the royal road to efficiency it.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean, inequality is not efficient, right? That’s right. Can you explain that a little bit? How inequality is not efficient economic

Richard Wolff:

Principle, you should have stayed with economics. You’re getting perfectly well,

Stephen Janis:

I blew it. I was an economics minor, English major as you can imagine, but never too late, right? But yeah, so inequality is inefficient, right? Professor?

Richard Wolff:

Yeah, it’s a terrible inefficiency. And again, you can see because nobody has to calculate it in a profit system. If inequality means that inner city schools across America can barely hold it together as disciplinary institutions, let alone chances to motivate, educate, and inspire young people who need it, then you are going to pay a cost in those kids’ lives not being anywhere near the contributions that they’re actually capable of not being able to earn the income that they need for their fear. The social cost of this is enormous to tell me that private profit doesn’t see its way clear to deal with this is to tell me that we got a system that doesn’t work well. It’s making profit driven decisions that are outweighed by the social costs that these private profit calculators never have to take into account. And that’s cuckoo. That’s the distill way of organizing yourself, right? Yeah.

Taya Graham:

Professor Wolf, you were mentioning how tariffs work, and I remember Peter Navarro, who’s the White House senior counselor for trade. He said that the administration intends to raise 6 trillion over the next decade via these reciprocal tariffs and that this would actually shrink the annual trade deficit, which is about $1.2 trillion. So I would have a two-part question for you. So would the US government actually directly raise trillions of dollars via tariffs? And my second question, is a trade deficit really a bad thing?

Richard Wolff:

Yes. It’s a very, very old question. Okay,

Let me make a parenthetical remark just to set the context. Tariffs are not, new. Tariffs have been used by many countries over centuries. I tell you this only because there is a vast literature that has developed in all modern languages about tariffs because they have been used so often and we have lots of empirical studies. Under what conditions did they achieve the goals they set? Under what conditions did they fail to achieve? I’ve taught courses in international trade, and there’s a segment of the semester when you talk about tariffs. That’s how established they are. So having said that and wanting to remain very polite, I would tell you that Mr. Navarro is considered even in the economics profession, to be, I’m searching for the polite word, difficult to take seriously. I’ll leave it at that.

Taya Graham:

That’s very diplomatic.

Richard Wolff:

Yes. So the notion of the trillions, there is no way to know how much money a tariff will raise. That’s what the literature shows. Mr. Navarro should know that because it depends always on how people react. So for example, if the tariff, let me give you an example that’s real. The best and cheapest electric vehicles in the world are currently made in China by Chinese companies, the most famous of which the BYD three letters, which stands by the way for the English words, build your dream. That’s the name. The Chinese company took BYD. Let’s say you wanted to get one of those cars, which by the way, you’ll see on the roads of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. The only place you don’t see him is here. Why? Because of the tariff. The tariff now stands right now at a hundred percent. It was raised from 27.5%.

That’s what Mr. Trump put on it in his first presidency, and Mr. Biden raised it to a hundred percent. So if you want a $30,000 BYD car or truck, you have to come up with 30 grand that goes to China to pay for the vehicle, and another 30%, another 30 grand, a hundred percent tariff go to Uncle Sam. So you would have to pay, or I would have to pay $60,000 for that $30,000 car. Now hear me out. Every competitor of the United States, every company in the world that uses electric trucks to get its inputs to ship its outputs, they are all able to buy the best and the cheapest truck for $30,000. But the American company that has to compete against them would have to pay 60,000 for the same truck. You know what that means? That America is shooting itself in the foot by what it’s doing.

It’s not going to make more jobs. And what are Americans going to do as a result? They’re not going to pay the tariff. They’re going to settle for a cheaper electric vehicle made by Ford or General Motors or Tesla or Toyota because it’s not as good as the Chinese, but it isn’t 60 grand. And so guess what? No tariff will be paid because Americans will get out of paying the tariff by buying the cheap car, buying the cheap truck with the end result. That step-by-step Americans will isolate themselves in a walled off tariff universe, which makes them progressively incapable of competing. Let me put it to you this way. I look at all of this as a professional economist, and my image is I’m watching one of those proverbial movie scenes where you see a train crowded with people having a good time, but from where you sit, you can see the train is heading for a stone wall. Oh, wow, Jesus. And you want to yell loudly, get off the train, but they’re having such a good time telling each other’s stories and drinking their cocktails that they simply can’t

Stephen Janis:

Hear me. Wow, it’s

Taya Graham:

A nightmare.

Stephen Janis:

I’m just thinking about what you’re saying. And so we have, as we discussed before, we have a irrational system that sort of presents itself with science, comes up to an irrational conclusion to create tremendous wealth inequality, which creates the conditions for a political class now that is making totally irrational decisions. And so are we looking at a point where capitalism is turning in on itself in America, because the elite said profit above all else, profit above people, and now people are pushing back. But what they’re getting is actually not a good solution, but really irrational decisions that are kind of based on that irrational idea in the first place. Not to be too circular, but

Richard Wolff:

Because of my time constraint, I have to get off, but let me end by breaking another taboo.

Stephen Janis:

Okay, great.

Richard Wolff:

Here it is. The way this system is going, the way it is acting, it is doing exactly what you said, holding on to the taboo and building the conditions, which I know we haven’t got there yet, but building the conditions where the next concept we will be discussing is revolution. You cannot do this to the mass of people. Our people are already showing many signs of extreme stress. Mr. Trump is an exemplar of where that stress can lead. It can go to the right, of course it can, but if it goes to the right, which it’s doing now, and if the right proves itself unable to solve these problems, which it’s clear to me it will, then the next step for the American people is to try to go to the left, which after all they did in the 1930s, there is no reason they can’t or won’t do it again. That’s a wonderful

Taya Graham:

Thing. Professor Wolf, I know you have a time constraint, but I was hoping I could just ask you one quick question.

Richard Wolff:

Okay. Quick.

Taya Graham:

Okay. The question is, I think this is really our most important question for you is what do you see on the horizon? What advice do you have for your average worker out there who’s paying off their car or their home or their credit card, who doesn’t have a whole bunch in their savings account, who doesn’t make over $70,000 a year? What should we be looking out for on the horizon? I mean, we’ve talked about the macro economics. What can we do on the micro to protect our wallets? What do we need to look out for?

Richard Wolff:

Well, the first part of the answer is to be honest. If people say to me, which they do, is it possible by some mixture of good luck that this all works out for Mr. Trump? The answer is yes, that could happen. It’s not a zero probability it could, but if you want me to tell you what I think is going to happen, I think it’s going to be a disaster. And therefore, I would say to every working man or woman, any person, you must now be extremely careful about your financial situation. Don’t make major expenditures if you don’t have to. Hold on. Find ways of accommodating and economizing because there are risks now of a recession, which by the way, most of Wall Street expects later this year or early next year, there are serious risks of an inflation. There are serious probabilities of a combination of both of those things, which we call stagflation. And all of those are terrible news for the working class. And I’ll add one more. Having told the working class for the last 70 years that there is this thing called the American Dream, and that if they work hard and study hard, they will have an entitled chance to get it, an nice home, a car, a vacation, a dog, a station wagon, all the rest of it.

You’re not providing that now to millions of people. And if we have an economic crisis, and remember the last two were immense. The 2008 and oh nine crisis was very, very bad. And the 2020 so-called pandemic crisis. Also, if we have another one on those scales on top of the receding American dream, you are putting your working class under X extraordinary stress, and it would be naive not to expect extraordinary political ideological outgrowths from that situation.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Richard Wolff:

Well,

Stephen Janis:

Dr. Wolf, thank you.

Taya Graham:

We appreciate you so much. So can

Richard Wolff:

We take your class?

Taya Graham:

I would like to sign up, please.

Richard Wolff:

Okay. Send me an email. I’m sure we can work it out.

Taya Graham:

That would be wonderful. I’m going to take you up on that. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much,

Stephen Janis:

Dr. Wolf.

Taya Graham:

We really appreciate you Professor Wolf.

Stephen Janis:

We take care. Bye.

Taya Graham:

Wow. We learned something new from

Stephen Janis:

Him.

Taya Graham:

Every time we ask a question,

Stephen Janis:

I mean the discussion of economics, it always sort of presents itself with a science. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I didn’t pursue it because it felt scientific to me. But the way he unpacks it, you understand. You see, you, Vince, the philosophy that defines it, which is so profound. We don’t even think about it. We accept it. Well, profit motive is the only thing. And look, I sound a little pollyannaish, but still to think about it in that context where he kind of turns it into a philosophy that you can kind of wrestle with and see the underlying assumptions is pretty powerful. And I really appreciate the way he does that, because we need to think of it that way. If we’re going to survive the next decade, we need to think of it as something that comes with conscious decisions, not made from scientific analysis, but someone’s preference. Preference of having inequality. And that’s the preference you’re expressing, right?

Taya Graham:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

That’s what Milton Freedom Express is, absolute inequality, because there can only be so many capitalists. So when he equated, and I thought about Baltimore does look like a war zone. I mean, our own city looks like a war zone, right?

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, we have 11,000 vacant buildings. A lot of them are burned out. We were just in Santown Winchester where Freddie Gray was killed in police custody. It doesn’t look any different. Someone’s living in a house that’s connected to a burned out building with part of the roof

Stephen Janis:

Missing.

Taya Graham:

I mean, how can you have hope to have any value in your home? How can you hope to have any wealth to pass on to your children when you have a home attached to a burned out building?

Stephen Janis:

And I used to think of it like Baltimore. I would look a war zone like post drug war, but the way Dr. Wolf said it, it was really post economic malaise. It really was affecting me profoundly. But anyway,

Taya Graham:

What’s interesting is the idea of interrogating the very base assumptions. I mean, for years he’s been speaking about interrogating those base assumptions. Exactly the way we run. That’s a better way our economy.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah,

Taya Graham:

It is for profit. Is that the direction it should be? It should be for profit, or should it be for people? And he’s asking us to really take a look at that, and I think people are finally now ready to at least ask these questions. It’s no longer so taboo to even ask the question, which

Stephen Janis:

It was. It’s interesting you called it taboo, because it really is.

Taya Graham:

Oh, absolutely. It really is. Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

But thank you.

Taya Graham:

Well, as we discussed, the Rand report is shocking and sort of makes a point about the uncertain times we’re living in now. I mean, regardless of your partisan preference, it is undeniable that the curtain era is both turbulent and unpredictable, which is why the Rand Report meets such a deep impression for me, because along with the truisms, it revealed about how wealth inequality breeds more wealth inequality. I couldn’t help but think of something else, a special type of influence that accompanies this kind of economic dislocation. And that’s chaos. I mean, utter chaos. Just think about it, that shrinking piece of the pie for workers harms, people’s lives, real lives, people with family, with loved ones, with children, with elders, people who watched as their incomes technically shrank, who could nothing as fewer and fewer of the benefits of the wealthiest country in the world, were not shared with them. I don’t even think shared iss the right word here. Maybe denied or withheld. You know what? How about stolen? You know what? Pick your adjective. Pick your verb. But the effect is the same. But let’s use the word stolen in this case.

I mean, when you look at the numbers, I want you to imagine the lives that impacted and then imagine the chaos it created. All of us, no matter where we are in our lives, have experienced the trauma of losing a job or having trouble paying off a student loan or getting squeezed by your landlord or trying to figure out how you can pay for a car or fund your kid’s education or take care of your grandma. All of us have confronted these choices and often ask a question, how can anyone afford this? And what the heck are we going to do? And don’t even get me started about surprise medical bills. A fact that Bernie Sanders shared during his press conference pushing for Medicare for all. He said, think about this. 60% of cancer patients go through their entire life savings two years after their diagnosis, cancer patients and their families left destitute.

And add to that, the even more disturbing reality that roughly 500,000 people a year are pushed into bankruptcy by medical debt. That’s right, due to being in an accident or getting sick. How’s that for the wealthiest country on earth? But it’s also why this Rand report hit so hard, because it’s not just about 50 years of a declining share of income. It’s also about 50 years of chaos for working people. It’s about five decades of shrinking paychecks, fewer opportunities, insane student loans and unaffordable housing. It’s about the time we spend worrying about a utility bill or keeping a cell phone on or paying for an ailing parent that needs around the clock care. And even worse, it’s often about keeping a job we don’t even like just for the health benefits or working two jobs or even three, or working for a way to offers just enough to get by, but not enough to build a future.

Meanwhile, the horizon and opportunities for the 1% keeps expanding. The future for them gets brighter and brighter and brighter while ours, the working people of this country gets dimmer and dimmer. In fact, today’s conversation isn’t just about numbers or charts or percentages on a page. It’s about the lives of everyday Americans who have been systemically deprived of dignity, stability, and justice. By extreme wealth inequality, $73 trillion didn’t just disappear. It was taken. It was taken from working families, from communities and from our collective future and handed over to a tiny elite whose power and influence grow more unchecked each day. This isn’t an accident. It’s a choice, a political and economic decision made by those who benefit the most from the imbalance. But here’s our choice. We can stay informed, we can stay vigilant, and we can demand accountability, and we can refuse to accept a rig system is normal. This type of inequality thrives in silence, and I guess you can tell we won’t be silent. Isn’t that right, Steven?

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely. Clearly.

Taya Graham:

Well, I just want to again, thank our guest economist, Dr. Richard Wolfe, for helping us make sense of the dismal science and our current fiscal ups and downs. And of course, I have to thank you my cohost, reporters, Steven and Janice. Great. Thank you. I appreciate your insights in helping make this show

Stephen Janis:

Possible. Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

And of course, I have to thank our friends in the studio, Kayla Cameron, and Dave, thank you all for your support and I want to thank you out there watching. Thank you for watching us. Thank you for caring, and thank you for fighting the good fight. My name is Taya Graham. I’m your inequality watchdog. See you next time.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis.

So if it’s perfectly safe to consume recycled toilet water, why aren’t Americans living in parched Western states drinking more of it? A new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Natural Resources Defense Council finds that seven western states that rely on the Colorado River are on average recycling just a quarter of their water, even as they fight each other and Indigenous tribes for access to the river amid worsening droughts. Populations are also booming in the Southwest, meaning there’s less water for more people. 

The report finds that states are recycling wildly different proportions of their water. On the high end, Nevada reuses 85 percent, followed by Arizona at 52 percent. But other states lag far behind, including California (22 percent) and New Mexico (18 percent), with Colorado and Wyoming at less than 4 percent and Utah recycling next to nothing. 

“Overall, we are not doing nearly enough to develop wastewater recycling in the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Basin,” said Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA and co-author of the report. “We’re going to have a 2 million to 4 million acre foot per year shortage in the amount of water that we’ve promised to be delivered from the Colorado River.” (An acre foot is what it would take to cover an acre of land in a foot of water, equal to 326,000 gallons.)

The report found that if the states other than high-achieving Nevada and Arizona increased their wastewater reuse to 50 percent, they’d boost water availability by 1.3 million acre feet every year. Experts think that it’s not a question of whether states need to reuse more toilet water, but how quickly they can build the infrastructure as droughts worsen and populations swell.

At the same time, states need to redouble efforts to reduce their demand for water, experts say. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, for example, provides cash rebates for homeowners to replace their water-demanding lawns with natural landscaping, stocking them with native plants that flourish without sprinklers. Between conserving water and recycling more of it, western states have to renegotiate their relationship with the increasingly precious resource.

“It’s unbelievable to me that people don’t recognize that the answer is: You’re not going to get more water,” said John Helly, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who wasn’t involved in the report. “We’ve lulled ourselves into this sense of complacency about the criticality of water, and it’s just starting to dawn on people that this is a serious problem.”

Yet the report notes that states vary significantly in their development and regulation of water recycling. For one, they treat wastewater to varying levels of purity. To get it ultra-pure for drinking, human waste and other solids are removed before the water is treated with ozone to kill bacteria and viruses. Next the water is forced through fine membranes to catch other particles. A facility then hits the liquid with UV light, killing off any microbes that might remain, and adds back those missing minerals. 

That process is expensive, however, as building a wastewater treatment facility itself is costly, and it takes a lot of electricity to pump the water hard enough to get it through the filters. Alternatively, some water agencies will treat wastewater and pump the liquid underground into aquifers, where the earth filters it further. To use the water for golf courses and non-edible crops, they treat wastewater less extensively. 

Read Next

A California town’s wastewater is helping it battle drought

Naoki Nitta

Absent guidance from the federal government, every state goes about this differently, with their own regulations for how clean water needs to be for potable or nonpotable use. Nevada, which receives an average of just 10 inches of rainfall a year, has an environmental division that issues permits for water reuse and oversees quality standards, along with a state fund that bankrolls projects. “It is a costly enterprise, and we really do need to see states and the federal government developing new funding streams or revenue streams in order to develop wastewater treatment,” Garrison said. “This is a readily available, permanent supply of water.” 

Wastewater recycling can happen at a much smaller scale, too. A company called Epic Cleantec, based in San Francisco, makes a miniature treatment facility that fits inside high-rises. It pumps recycled water back into the units for non-potable use, like filling toilets. While it takes many years to build a large treatment facility, these smaller systems come online in a matter of months, and can reuse up to 95 percent of a building’s water. 

Epic Cleantec says its systems and municipal plants can work in tandem as a sort of distributed network of wastewater recycling. “In the same way that we do with energy, where it’s not just on-site, rooftop solar and large energy plants, it’s both of them together creating a more resilient system,” said Aaron Tartakovsky, Epic Cleantec’s CEO and cofounder. “To use a water pun, I think there’s a lot of untapped potential here.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The fix for parched Western states: recycled toilet water on Apr 11, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

But the very thing that makes them such an amazing climate solution is also their biggest challenge. A common refrigerant called R-410A pumps through their innards so they can warm and cool homes and offices and anything else. But that refrigerant is also liquid irony, as it can escape as a greenhouse gas over 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. (This is known as its “global warming potential,” or how much energy a ton of the gas absorbs over a given amount of time compared to the same amount of CO2.) Leaks can happen during the installation, operation, and disposal of heat pumps. 

But this year the industry is rolling out alternative refrigerant formulations like R-454B and R-32, which have around 75 percent less global warming potential. That’s in response to Environmental Protection Agency rules mandating that, starting this year, heat pump refrigerants have a global warming potential of no more than 700. Manufacturers are looking even farther ahead at the possibility of using propane, or even CO2, as the next generation of more atmospherically friendly refrigerants.

“The whole industry is going to be transitioning away from R-410A, so that’s good,” said Jeff Stewart, the refrigeration chief engineer for residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning at Trane Technologies, which makes heat pumps and gas furnaces. “We’re getting lower global warming potential. The problem is, it still has some, right? So there’s concern about ‘OK, is that low enough to really help the environment?’”

To be clear, heat pumps do not release greenhouse gases at anywhere near the scale of burning natural gas to heat homes, so their environmental impact is way smaller. “Even if we lost all the refrigerant, it still actually has a much smaller effect just having a heat pump and not burning gas,” said Matthew Knoll, co-founder and chief technology officer at California-based Quilt, which builds heat pump systems for homes. “I would actually want to make sure that doesn’t hamper the rapid adoption of heat pumps.”

But why does a heat pump need refrigerant? Well, to transfer heat. By changing the state of the liquid to a gas, then compressing it, the appliance absorbs heat from even very cold outdoor air and moves it indoors. Then in the summer, the process reverses to work like a traditional air conditioner.

The potential for refrigerant leaks is much smaller if the heat pump is properly manufactured, installed, and maintained. When a manufacturer switches refrigerants, the basic operation of the heat pump stays the same. But some formulations operate at different pressures, meaning they’ll need slightly different sized components and perhaps stronger materials. “It’s all the same fundamental principles,” said Vince Romanin, CEO of San Francisco-based Gradient, which makes heat pumps that slip over window sills. “But it does take a re-engineering and a recertification of all of these components.”

While Trane has transitioned to R-454B, Gradient and other companies are adopting R-32, which has a global warming potential of 675 and brings it in line with the new regulations. Gradient says that with engineering improvements, like hermetic sealing that makes it harder for refrigerants to escape, and by properly recycling its appliances, it can reduce the climate footprint of heat pumps by 95 percent. “Our math shows R-32, plus good refrigerant management, those two things combined solve almost all of the refrigerant problem,” said Romanin. “Because of that data, Gradient believes the industry should stay on R-32 until we’re ready for natural refrigerants.”

Those include CO2, butane, and propane. CO2 has a global warming potential of just 1, but it works at much higher pressures, which requires thicker tubes and compressors. It’s also less efficient in hot weather, meaning it’s not the best option for a heat pump in cooling mode in the summer.

Propane, on the other hand, excels in different conditions and operates at a lower pressure than the refrigerants it would replace. It also has a global warming potential of just 3. Propane is flammable, of course, but heat pumps can run it safely by separating sources of ignition, like electrical components, from the refrigerant compartments. “It is kind of perfect for heat pumps,” said Richard Gerbe, board member and technical advisor at Italy-based Aermec, another maker of heat pumps.

That’s why Europe is already switching to propane, and why the U.S. may soon follow, Gerbe said. A typical heat pump will run about 10 pounds of propane, less than what’s found in a barbeque tank. Gas furnaces and stoves, by contrast, are constantly fed with flammable natural gas that can leak, potentially leading to explosions or carbon monoxide poisoning. “If you’ve got a comfort level with a gas stove in your house,” Gerbe said, “this is significantly less of a source.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The quest to fix the irony at the heart of every heat pump on Apr 4, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

The nation’s demand for Persea americana has surged by 600 percent since 1998. Most of the avocados consumed in the U.S., and many of those eaten elsewhere in the world, are a single variety grown in Michoacán, a state in west-central Mexico with an immensely profitable export industry worth at least $2 billion annually. But this “green gold rush” has come at a steep climatic cost, as vast tracts of protected land are razed for orchards. 

“We are losing the forest,” said Alejandro Méndez López, who has been the secretary of environment in Michoacán since 2022. Every year, up to 24,700 acres are illegally cleared for avocado production. “The main contribution of Michoacán for climate change is land-use change. So I think the whole world should be concerned.”

The state government hopes to mitigate that through a certification program that ensures packinghouses that ship the fruit to international markets are buying sustainably grown avocados. The effort, called Pro-Forest Avocado certification, launched last fall, and uses satellites to monitor orchards for signs of clear-cutting. Ultimately, the aim is to do away with deals between processors and producers that aren’t adhering to Mexico’s sweeping anti-deforestation law. 

That hasn’t gone over well with everyone in a business that has grown so profitable that it’s attracted interest from drug cartels and civilian militias.

Méndez López helped create this program and is its public face. He has spent the past month meeting with angry avocado growers throughout Michoacán, always in a car outfitted with bulletproof windows and accompanied by police. Despite his attempts to ease their concerns, he says many leave no less irate. Their problem isn’t so much with him, but what his presence represents: the government’s rollout of a program that is voluntary for packinghouses but leaves growers fearing they have little choice but to comply. 

“They were very angry. I was telling them that this certification is not compulsory, but many of them believe that this is a hidden way to tax them,” he said. Given the powerful role cartels play in the avocado business, his efforts to address the industry’s ecological and climatic impact has created no small risk to his safety. Some growers have started anonymously boycotting packinghouses that join, denouncing them as “traitors.” “I don’t want to be killed,” he said. “I’m a bit afraid, because right now we are touching their economic interests.” 

Climate activists and analysts say the program could replicate the market changes seen with other ethical labeling efforts like fair trade coffee and dolphin-free tuna. Locals are more skeptical, and worry that the industry’s history of corruption will undermine progress. And there’s always the question of it receiving the support needed to succeed. But Méndez López believes this is a legitimate solution to a grave issue. Even threats of violence won’t deter the work.

“We have very few resources,” he said. “They can come to my office and put a gun to my head, but they won’t be able to shut down a satellite.”  

Nearly a third of the avocados consumed worldwide — more than 2 million metric tons annually — are grown in Michoacán’s “Avocado Belt.” Fertile volcanic soils, elevated terrain, and warm, subtropical microclimates with ample rainfall make it the only region in the world with large-scale production year-round. 

Michoacán started moving toward the center of the global avocado trade in 1994 when the North American Free Trade Agreement opened the U.S. to imports from south of the border. By 2007, it was the only Mexican state authorized to send avocados throughout the U.S. This provided consumers with year-round access to the fruit, which further drove demand. Since 2019 alone, avocado exports to the United States have surged 48 percent. (Some 90 percent are the market-dominating Hass variety.)

That explosive growth has brought opportunity to economically disadvantaged areas. Juan Gabriel Pedraza, an Indigenous Purépecha farmer in the town of Sicuicho, told Grist that his people plant orchards even as they strive to protect the forests. He raises roughly 720 avocado trees alongside the pines. The crop “has brought life” to his community, which was once “extremely, extremely poor.” 

“We are like guardians of the forest, because if the forest disappears, then it’s going to affect everything else,” he said in Spanish. “We are always careful with keeping the forest healthy. It’s a duty of ours.”

Over the years, enormous avocado export profits have led to an escalation of violence that has surged alongside demand. Local cartels have bribed agricultural officials and police and extorted or kidnapped growers to maintain a stronghold in the lucrative business, while civilian militias have fought for control of their communities. Avocados are now Michoacán’s, and one of Mexico’s, biggest agricultural exports. This booming industry has triggered widespread violation of a federal law banning clear-cutting without government approval. About 95 percent of the deforestation in Mexico happens illegally. 

The problem has since expanded to neighboring Jalisco, the only other Mexican state authorized to ship avocados to the U.S. Some 40,000 to 70,000 acres across the two states were cleared between 1983 and 2023 to grow the fruit destined for American supermarkets, according to a Climate Rights International report. It also found that major U.S. supermarket chains, including Costco, Target, and Walmart, bought from packinghouses whose supply chains included orchards on recently deforested land. 

“More and more, these forests were disappearing and being transformed into avocado orchards,” said Antonio González-Rodríguez, a forest conservation scientist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Michoacán’s capital city of Morelia. 

In 2022, his team estimated that another 100,000 hectares of orchards could be established in Michoacán by 2050 — an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan — of which more than two-thirds would lead to forest loss. That includes protected reserves home to endangered species like the eastern Monarch butterfly. Such a loss would represent “more than 10 percent of the remaining forest,” said González-Rodríguez. 

That comes with a staggering planetary cost. Chopping down forests eliminates vital carbon sinks and diminishes an ecosystem’s ability to store carbon. Meanwhile, warming threatens to reduce the amount of land highly suited to avocado cultivation by up to 41 percent worldwide within 25 years. 

Clear-cutting also contributes to water scarcity by increasing soil erosion and disrupting natural filtration processes, throwing off the water cycle. Over the course of one decade, deforestation can have the same impact on a community’s access to clean drinking water as a 9 percent decrease in rainfall. This is increasingly an issue as Mexico faces a severe supply crisis.

It doesn’t help that avocado trees need a lot of water and are only getting thirstier as the world warms. Water demand for the crop in Uruapan, Michoacán’s second largest city, rose nearly 24 percent from 2012 to 2017, with orchards drawing 120 percent of the amount allocated to agriculture, creating shortages. Last year, droughts prompted some growers to illegally siphon it from lakes or basins into unlicensed irrigation ponds. 

“The expansion of the avocado industry is creating a conflict over water,” González-Rodríguez said. “It’s going to become one of the more serious problems, socially and politically.” 

Voluntary certification programs that rely on public interest in fair and sustainable practices have reshaped consumer purchasing of everything from coffee to tuna. But assessing their impact can be difficult, said Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director of the Center for Biological Diversity. 

One fundamental flaw many of these efforts share is a reliance on self-reporting, with little accountability and inadequate follow-up. Those that operate independently of the government often lack regulatory oversight, while others attempt to cover so many products, or so large a geographic area, that they rarely disrupt large industries or markets, she said. Crops associated with widespread deforestation, such as the Cavendish banana, often end up bogged down in too many certification schemes, with multiple retailers requesting several iterations of “sustainable” labels. At worst, these efforts provide little more than greenwashing, and typically at a high cost to producers.

Michoacán’s Pro-Forest program sidesteps many of those issues by focusing on a single product grown in a specific region and sold primarily to one international market. Its labeling scheme was created by a forest conservation nonprofit working in collaboration with the state government, researchers at local universities, and environmental organizations. It could soon end up boosted by Mexico’s federal government, which on January 30 announced the forthcoming launch of a national program to eliminate deforestation and water exploitation for agricultural exports. A week later, Michoacán Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla issued anti-deforestation certificates to six packing plants and two orchards that together supply roughly 31 percent of the state’s avocados sold to the U.S. 

Orchards qualify for the scheme if they’ve had no deforestation since 2018, no forest fires since 2012, and do not operate on protected land. Government subsidies cover enrollment costs for packinghouses, while growers are charged about $40 for every 2.5 acres for certification. Growers must also pay for the conservation of a forest area to make up for the water consumption of their avocado cultivation. In a “plus” version of the program, companies commit to prioritizing buying from locally certified orchards. (No incentive for this tier exists just yet). 

So far, about 10 percent of the state’s packinghouses that send avocados to the U.S. have signed on. That means they’ve agreed to be informed which orchards are complying with the guidelines — and to cease working with those that do not. Packinghouses that continue buying from orchards in violation of the anti-deforestation guidelines lose the ability to certify their avocados as sustainably sourced.

But no one is promising to buy avocados only from orchards bearing the state’s official seal of approval, because there simply aren’t enough of them. As it stands, 937 out of the state’s 53,105 orchards have signed up, a number that changes almost daily, Heriberto Padilla Ibarra told Grist. Ibarra leads Guardian Forestal, the nonprofit overseeing the program’s remote sensing efforts.  

The scant participation may reflect the fact that local producers must pay for certification that packinghouses receive for free. It could also be because growers like Icpac Escalera have little faith in government initiatives. Escalera runs his family’s organic avocado orchard in the town of Acuitzio del Canje. Although he considers the labeling a valiant effort, he says the 2018 date barring deforestation “is not enough.” He also doubts the state has sufficient resources to enforce it, and is worried that it will further disenfranchise smaller producers “without political clout.” 

“The political situation hasn’t really helped anything in terms of making sure that deforestation is being properly handled,” Escalera said in Spanish. “Many politicians have avocado fields. It’s a well-known secret. There are not enough incentives for the smaller producers to maintain the forest, and because of that, the forests are disappearing.” 

Read Next

Mango farms where? Climate change is scrambling where the world’s food is grown.

Ayurella Horn-Muller

All the while, global demand for avocados continues to soar. Production in other top exporters like Colombia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic is booming, and breeders are developing new varieties. Even as avocados could overtake pineapples and mangos to become the world’s most traded tropical fruit as early as this year, regulators are stepping in to minimize their environmental and climatic impacts.

The European Union is set to begin implementing “deforestation-free” product regulations in December. The United States took strides in that direction one year ago when several senators urged the Biden administration to address the role the country takes in driving the crisis as a primary market for avocados. Ken Salazar, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, announced that avocados grown in illegally cleared orchards should be blocked from the market, before the administration released a policy framework on how to begin doing so for all agricultural imports in December.

President Donald Trump has yet to address the topic, but given his administration’s hostility toward climate action, he isn’t likely to do much about the issue for that reason. But the impending threat of tariffs on Mexico imply the administration may be interested in doing something about it, if for no reason than to limit overall imports from the country, said James Sayre, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis. “In a way, the Trump administration could end up acting on the deforestation issue,” he said. 

Despite the controversial reputation of product labeling, Méndez López remains optimistic about Michoacán’s certification initiative. He hopes to see Mexico and its biggest avocado market federally mandate the need for such schemes. “It would be wonderful if the U.S. had a compulsory [requirement] for the imports of avocado to be deforestation-free. That would be perfect. But, we didn’t get so far [with the Biden administration]. And I don’t know if this new administration will do that,” he said. 

For Julio Santoyo Guerrero, an environmental activist in the Michoacán municipality of Madero, the program, while “barely a lifeline” is at least a measure that warns people of the dire ethical and environmental costs linked to every avocado they consume. 

“Our biggest cancer is corruption … I believe that the cause that originated the expansion of avocados, the market demand, will be the same thing that can stop it,” said Guerrero in Spanish. “If the market continues to function without regulation, our forests will continue to be destroyed.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline America’s avocado obsession is destroying Mexico’s forests. Is there a fix? on Feb 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

New research finds that by deploying fog collectors — fine mesh stretched between two poles —  in the mountains around Alto Hospicio, the city could harvest an average of 2.5 liters of water per square meter of netting each day. Large fog collectors cost between $1,000 and $4,500 and measure 40 square meters, so just one placed near Alto Hospicio could grab 36,500 liters of water a year without using any electricity, according to a paper published on Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science. 

By placing the collectors above town — where the altitude is ideal for exploiting the region’s predictable band of fog — water would flow downhill in pipelines by the power of gravity. So that initial investment for collectors would keep paying liquid dividends year after year. “If you’re pumping water from the underground, you will need a lot of energy,” said Virginia Carter Gamberini, a geographer and assistant professor at Chile’s Universidad Mayor and co-lead author of the paper. “From that perspective, it’s a very cheap technology.”

It’s a simple idea that’s already in use around the world. Fog is just a cloud that touches the ground. Like a puffy cloud higher in the atmosphere, it teems with tiny water droplets that gather in the mesh of a fog collector, dripping into a trough that runs into a tank. Communities across South America, Africa, and Asia have been deploying these collectors, though on very small scales compared to other methods like pumping groundwater.

So why haven’t cities expanded their use? For one, if a region gets rain, that volume of water is much higher than what can be extracted from fog, and communities can store that rainfall in reservoirs. Fog collection also requires constant attention, as the devices can break in fierce winds, requiring repairs.

The economics are tricky, too. Water remains very cheap in places with modern infrastructure, disincentivizing fog collection, said Daniel Fernandez, an environmental scientist at California State University, Monterey Bay who studies the technology but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “They’re going to catch a few gallons, if you’re lucky, in a day,” said Fernandez, who also founded a company that installs collectors. “That’s kind of cool to get that much from fog. But how much is that going to cost you to turn on your tap and get that much?” 

The investment is more enticing where water is scarcer and therefore more expensive, Fernandez said. As climate change makes droughts more intense, communities struggling to get enough water might find the economics make sense. Supplementing aquifers, reservoirs, and other established sources with fog would help a region diversify its water system, in case one of them dries up or gets contaminated. Alto Hospicio can’t just rely on its aquifers, since they’re no longer being replenished by rain. “Without thinking outside the box, including fog harvesting, that solution places a limit on how long human habitation can exist there,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, who wasn’t involved in the new paper.

Dense cities, though, may struggle to deploy fog collectors compared to the countryside. “The wind load on a fog collector is like that on the sail of a sailing ship,” said Robert S. Schemenauer, executive director of FogQuest, a Canadian nonprofit that advises on collection projects. “It has to be very strongly anchored. Therefore, placing it on the building could lead to building damage or material ending up on the street below.”

Beyond drinking water, using the fog for hydroponic farming could help Alto Hospicio and other parched communities grow their own food. Gamberini is already doing additional research elsewhere in the Atacama to expand this kind of farming, growing tomatoes, lettuce, and other crops with fog water and bountiful desert sunlight.

Even in the United States, where water is comparatively cheap, gardeners are experimenting with fog collectors. Peter Weiss, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been installing them in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. In the summertime, fog can provide enough water to sustain a home’s established plants without turning on the hose. 

For Weiss’ next project, he wants to bring fog collection to California’s vineyards. “That could be a way to make it more sustainable, less water intensive,” he said. “At first I hated fog because it’s so dreary. But then I started collecting it, and I loved it.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Droughts are getting worse. Is fog-farming a fix? on Feb 20, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

Last week, we attended a protest outside the US treasury to oppose Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal purse.

It was raucous and impassioned but also revealed something that we had not fully grasped until we tried to peek our cameras over the surging crowd: the current lethargy of the left is more than just a temporary illness.

Several key Democratic legislators, along with a federal workers union, called the demonstration to push back against Trump’s historic executive overreach. At issue was the seemingly unfettered access to sensitive data and financial records bestowed upon anonymous tech bros working at the behest of Trump and his co-president, Musk.

The attendees were crammed into a small sliver of sidewalk. An array of democrats blasted Trump while accusing Elon Musk of being an unelected illegal actor tearing down constitutional safeguards with the carelessness of a child.

Still, the event itself—despite several thousands of vocal supporters—felt more hollow than substantive. The rallying cries of “if we fight, we win” seemed almost laughable, given the recent election results, which conveyed the Republicans’ stranglehold on all three branches of government.

Part of the dilemma for Democrats was that, once again, Trump had maneuvered them into the posture of tragically ineffectual opposition. Liberals were playing defense, defending institutions that the public mistrusts, fighting back against often fictive waste and abuse, and being loud and angry about being loud and angry.

Constantly being on defense sucks. And the Democrats always seem to be playing it.

But liberals can’t exclusively blame Trump for forcing them to constantly fight uphill. The problems for Democrats actually begin far from the capital.

As reporters, our coverage tends to be more thematic than geographic. This means we report on specific topics like criminal justice and economic inequality rather than the goings-on in a particular area of governance or geography.

This affords us the opportunity to observe party dynamics vertically, from top to bottom, from national to local. And in our opinion, backed by the facts we will recount, Democrats need to start playing offense at home. And that means enacting politics that actually work.

We recommend that instead of just fighting Trump’s fusillade of Constitution-wrecking executive orders, Democrats pivot to implementing progressive local policy as the true form of meaningful resistance.

That’s right: Start small. Fix the places you’ve broken. It would be a markedly better use of civic fortitude to advance effective initiatives in locations where they still have some say—namely, the bluest of blue states and cities.

It’s worth noting before we delve into the details of how this would work that the pushback against Trump has turned the Democratic party into a reactionary—and, often, regressive—entity that has been unable to even tout its occasional wins.

The years-long priority on pointing out how Trump is a norm breaker, de facto criminal, and just generally corrupt has rewired progressivism. Too angry to think about much else, progressives are in a constant state of outrage that not only distracts from focusing on better policies—even worse, it actually empowers the man they seek to contain.

I mean, why else would healthcare have been totally absent from the 2024 campaign?

Democrats wrongly bet on the power of Trump’s foibles to persuade—a mistake that became even more glaring after the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, when Americans of all ideologic stripes let the world know how much they hated the particularly cruel way our country pays for healthcare.

What were they thinking?

It seems mostly about Trump. Simply put, good policy has become anathema to Democrats, who are measuring their own capabilities and accomplishments against the ineptitude of a malignant narcissist.

Not a good place to start if you want to improve people’s lives through governance.

This criticism does not diminish or deny the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Bill, among others, were bold initiatives that, in part, enacted solid progressive ideas.

But in enclaves where Democrats have no opposition and should technically be able to thrive, they often fail to proscribe effective government-backed solutions. Places that should be a laboratory for sound progressive policymaking have become fierce economic inequality machines.

We know this because we live in one of these so-called blue oases where establishment Democrats allow legislation for transparency and accountability to wither and fail. We have witnessed firsthand how bad governance leads to outcomes that are astounding—given liberals’ alleged allegiance with the working class.

All of this failure is due to a simple, uncomfortable fact: the Democratic playbook often eschews the policies that directly improve people’s lives. Instead, they have conjured neoliberal solutions frequently tied to corporate subsidies, public-private partnerships, and corporate welfare that only heighten our currently historic economic imbalance.

This is not a new argument, but it is worth examining in detail if the party and our country want to move past the left-right debate and genuinely start solving problems.

In fact, we have a detailed example to illustrate precisely how this works, a front-row seat in one of the bluest epicenters and most efficient purveyors of this bad policy admixture: Baltimore.

The city hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Theodore McKeldin left office in 1967. But even with an absolute governing supermajority for decades, Baltimore’s political leaders have engaged in a myriad of ill-conceived, if not embarrassingly flawed, policy initiatives that have left the city depopulated, at times dysfunctional, and, worst of all, a generator of extreme economic inequality.

A recent report by the Baltimore Sun and some of our reporting illustrates this point. 

The Sun revealed that some 80% of all new apartment construction in the city since 2020 was deemed ‘higher-end’ or ‘luxury.’ That means the rent for most of the 6,700 units constructed since 2020 is simply unaffordable for residents of the city, which has a median household income of roughly $58,000.

It’s an astounding fact for a city that has one of the highest proportions of people living in poverty in Maryland. But it’s also mind-boggling because many of those same residents subsidized it.

As we outlined in our investigative documentary Tax Broke, the city has relied on an array of tax breaks to spur development and build those luxury apartments. There are so many incentives with acronyms like TIFs and PILOTs that it takes a glossary to define them all. 

Almost every new apartment complex built over the past 10 years has been constructed with a taxpayer subsidy. And it was a Democratic plan full of twisted policy prescriptions that made this questionable policy push possible. In Baltimore, Democrats have used the PILOT to engineer an entirely new form of corporate welfare.

PILOTs were originally designed to encourage tax-exempt organizations to contribute money to fund city services, hence the name: Payment in Lieu of Taxes. Johns Hopkins has a PILOT agreement with the city, though a recent analysis determined it is woefully inadequate to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars which Hopkins would have paid if its property were taxed.

The city’s primary PILOT program, known as High-Performance Apartment, gives 10 years of tax breaks for building an apartment complex anywhere in the city. The taxes are eventually phased in, but the costs to the city over that time are substantial.

Consider the high-end luxury enclave known as Harbor East.

Our investigation found that the 20-acre high-end dining and apartment sanctuary collected at least seven PILOTs. Over the 10-year period for which we were able to obtain records, the city paid out over $110 million in subsidies. Among them was a 25-year PILOT for the towering luxury Marriott Waterfront Hotel. That deal netted developers $57 million over its lifetime. And the residents of this shining city subsidize all of it.

But it gets worse.

Baltimore has been at the forefront of using another tax break, known as a TIF, or Tax Increment Financing, to keep development humming. TIFs allow a property owner to invest future property taxes into the property itself.

Some cities, like Chicago, divert the money into special tax funds. Baltimore, however, turns it into a lucrative financing mechanism for wealthy developers. The city sells bonds to Wall Street to refund up to 30 years of future taxes to a developer upfront. The developer then pays off the bonds by simply remitting their normal property tax payment.

This type of tax incentive contributes mightily to economic inequality, first by exempting massive developments that use city services from paying for them, and second by funneling tens of millions of interest payments to Wall Street that would otherwise go into the city’s general fund.

Baltimore’s last annual financial report showed the extent of the city’s commitment. TIF deals have led to an excess of $660 million in future taxes and interest diverted from the general fund. That means a poor, struggling city mired in poverty is paying the interest on bonds used to fund luxury developments out of projected future revenues.

This is an extraordinarily regressive policy for a city that touts equity as its unifying philosophy. It has led to a variety of tax-exempt zones in the middle of a city whose residents shoulder the highest property tax burden in the state.

Excluding wealthy developments from paying for services is just the beginning of the public largesse doled out to the rich.

That’s because many city-financed projects have been sold for extraordinary sums. The aforementioned hotel commanded a $122 million asking price. Another property—the former Legg Mason building—in the Harbor East development sold for a record-breaking $468 per square foot.

The city had a profit-sharing agreement with the Legg Mason developers in exchange for a tax break. However, the building’s owners forced the city to forgo that profit-sharing in exchange for a one-time $1.5 million payment. The details of that deal remain secret.

On top of the extraordinary financial benefits granted to developers, the way Democrats have managed this policy is even more troubling.

Last year, State Senator Jill P. Carter introduced a modest piece of legislation that would have authorized a special Tax Break Transparency Task Force to study the effectiveness of these policies. That task force would have gathered a variety of stakeholders to obtain the data and then analyze whether the city had actually benefited from this type of tax break. 

But the bill died in the House Ways and Means committee. Not because a member objected to it—at least not publicly—but because committee Chair Vanessa Atterbeary would not bring it up for a vote.

Bear in mind that this bill did not have a fiscal note. In other words, it would not have cost taxpayers a single dime. However, the questions about tax breaks it was designed to answer—including their total cost to Baltimore City and its residents—remain a mystery.

The city did pay for a firm called Municap to analyze TIFs.

Municap’s report was mostly laudatory, citing statistics about increased economic activity due to subsidies given to projects like Harbor Point and Baltimore Peninsula. The problem is that Municap profits from the same deals it analyzes. It makes money preparing applications for developers and also profits from the bonds that are used to finance them by, again, providing analysis.

That city officials have touted this system as an unbiased check on the wisdom of forgoing hundreds of millions of dollars in future tax revenue is, again, bad policy. So bad that it makes one wonder why the Democratic Party continues to debate how it became estranged from the working class. It wasn’t pronouns that did in liberals; it was policies like Baltimore’s tax break bonanza and the arrogance that surrounds them.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this recipe is that Baltimore’s predicament was predicted almost three decades ago. Then, a former mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, an esteemed urban planner named David Rusk, wrote a book called Baltimore Unbound. In it, he argued that the city’s high tax rate and “inelastic boundaries” had doomed it to population loss and wealth extraction.

And that is exactly what has happened.

All of this is to say that if Democrats can’t fix Baltimore, how can they run a country? Because despite all the tax breaks and corporate welfare, the city’s population continues to shrink. People are voting with their feet.

The point is that the resistance to the Trump administration should be focused on fixing issues that have been ignored—improving people’s lives not by fighting ideological battles but by thinking like progressives. This means every policy move should be premised upon answering the following questions:

How do we solve the problems that people care about? How do we build affordable housing? How do we make a tax system fair and progressive? How do we create a process of governance that devises effective solutions instead of ideological cage matches?

This is an idea we plan to test in this purportedly blue state. That’s because a state delegate, Caylin Young, has decided to reintroduce the Tax Break Transparency Task Force. The bill is largely unchanged, but the political landscape is decidedly different. Still, Young says the issue needs to be addressed.

“I think that it’s a good issue,” Young said. “Transparency is always a positive thing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

And that’s not the only bill we’re going to follow.

Maryland currently faces a $2 billion deficit. Gov. Wes Moore has said everything is on the table, including an ambitious school funding bill that sought to bolster education, particularly in poorer cities like Baltimore.

That’s why we’ll also monitor several other efforts to bring economic equality to the state in our reporting this year.

Delegate Gabriel Acevero will attempt to legislate a common-sense change to the tax code that seems like common sense but has proven quixotic: roll back a tax law that exempts country club golf courses from property taxes.

Maryland carves out a special tax exemption for country clubs with more than 100 members. The land used for golf courses is specifically included in a statute that exempts “open space” from being taxable.

Acevero says it cost the state tens of millions of dollars over the years and is misguided, given that the assembly will soon be considering cuts to public education to reduce the deficit.

“I think first we have to take a look at Maryland’s tax code as a whole, which is very regressive,” Acevero told TRNN. “I think that’s really the overarching issue, it’s not necessarily only the issue of the country clubs that are manipulating a tax incentive.”

Another piece of legislation we will be watching is even more quixotic than attempting to make country clubs pay taxes.

The Maryland Prescription Affordability Board is another Democratic artifice that has done very little to fix the problem its name invokes.

The board was chartered by the general assembly in 2019. Since then, it has only issued reports that advise the state to tamp down high drug prices. The lack of actual results may be in part due to the fact the first chair of the hoard was a drug company lobbyist. But it also was the victim of last-minute changes to the enabling legislation that turned it into little more than a glorified “study group,” according to STAT, a healthcare journalism site.

In this legislative session, new powers have been proposed for the board that might actually allow it to fulfill its titular purpose.

At a press conference in Annapolis this week, supporters of the bill said it would expand the board’s reach beyond patients covered by government plans and include private insurers.  Vincent DeMarco, who heads the advocacy group Maryland Healthcare for All, said it had approved “upper limit” prices for two drugs: Jardiance and Farxiga.

But if that price range is purely advisory or actually a cap remains to be seen.

That’s why we will be watching to see what happens with the proposed change as well, to see if Maryland can create a new blue wall to stand up to the pharmaceutical lobby.

Stay tuned for that.

All of this is an effort to shed light on the often obscure and unseen process of passing legislation. Bad policy often results from good ideas being buried under an avalanche of self-interest and petty politics. This year, we promise to shine a light on all of it, for better or worse.

We will report regularly on progress, or lack thereof. This time, at least, we hope the closed doors will not have the deciding vote.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Cynthia Robertson could be forgiven for feeling that the banner was aimed at her. Its white-on-black lettering — “FUCK BIDEN AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM” — hung from the wooden house right across the street from her own.

Hostility toward the outgoing Democratic president is no surprise in Sulphur, Louisiana, a red town in a red state in a country that has handed the White House and Congress to Republicans. Yet the message felt like a poke in the eye at a time when Robertson was seeking funding through Biden’s signature climate law so her nonprofit organization could repair and retrofit hurricane-battered houses in the area — including her neighbor’s. Not even a fraying tarp, a tar patch or the piece of corrugated metal tacked on the roof could keep the rain from pouring inside.

Donald Trump has vowed to overturn the law that would provide the funding, the Inflation Reduction Act, which he has referred to as the “new green scam.”

If he follows through once he assumes office, Trump would be rolling back a law that has disproportionately benefited red areas like Sulphur that make up his base.

Though not a single Republican legislator voted for the law, an outsized portion of its historic $1 trillion in climate and energy provisions has benefited red congressional districts and states that voted for Trump, according to a report by E2, a group tracking the effects of the law. Red districts had the biggest growth in green jobs, the report said. Red states, including Nevada, Wyoming, Kentucky and Georgia, have seen the biggest jumps in clean energy investments, according to an August report from the Clean Investment Monitor, which tracks public and private investments in climate technology. Texas has received $69 billion in clean investments since the law passed, second only to California.

Not all of the money has been spent yet. And several provisions are vulnerable to rollbacks, among them tax credits for home energy improvements and certain alternative fueling sites. Billions hang in the balance, including, to Robertson’s chagrin, more than $100 million for disadvantaged communities, like Sulphur, to combat pollution and better weather the effects of climate change.

An ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church, Robertson, 66, wears her wavy white hair short, cusses freely and greets by name the homeless of Sulphur, a city of some 20,000 people. Miss Cindy, as she’s known in her neighborhood, named her nonprofit organization, Micah 6:8 Mission, after an old testament verse about caring for the poor.

Last summer, she and other community leaders worked around the clock to submit the grant proposal seven weeks in advance of a fall deadline. Among her partners is Build Change, which specializes in creating housing that can withstand natural disasters in the developing world. The organizations have sought more than $19 million for their local improvement plan, which includes shoring up roofs, remediating mold and mildew, providing homes with solar-powered air conditioning and building a community center where residents can find refuge during emergencies.

But in mid-December, an email from the Environmental Protection Agency explained it didn’t have enough time to make a decision on her application before the inauguration.

It will be up to the Trump EPA to determine whether Sulphur and some 2,000 other communities get the grants they applied for.

Now, Robertson said, all she can do is pray that Republicans will see that the investment is in everyone’s best interest, including their own.

As her small staff gathered for a weekly meeting in December, she bowed her head. “Dear Lord,” she said, “if it’s your will, may we get this damn grant, please.”

Sulphur is near the beating heart of the extremely profitable petrochemical industry. Huge multinational corporations — including Westlake Chemicals, Citgo Petroleum, LyondellBasell and ConocoPhillips — have plants just a few miles from Robertson’s home and the office of her environmental nonprofit. But Portie Town, the crisscross of streets lined with low-slung homes on the north side of Sulphur where she lives, seems to have gained little for its proximity to these engines of wealth.

Named for a widow who moved to the area with her eight children in the early 1900s, Portie Town (pronounced Por-shay) remains a place of struggle. Median annual income is around $40,000 and life expectancy is 69, nine years short of the national average. Climate change has added another layer of challenge. The hurricane risk in Calcasieu, the parish where it is located, is in the top 3% in the country, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which rates the expected annual loss from storms in the area as high and the resiliency as low.

With its shore on the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana has always been vulnerable to storms, but the threat has unquestionably worsened in recent years. Climate change has raised temperatures, causing the air and water to warm. Storms intensify as they travel across the warmed oceans, pulling in more water vapor and heat, which makes hurricanes stronger and more intense.

When Hurricane Laura hit in August 2020 — its eye passing directly over Sulphur — it was the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the state’s history, killing at least 30 people and knocking out the power in Portie Town for weeks. Many residents couldn’t afford generators or the fuel to run them and went without air conditioners and refrigerators even as the temperature soared above 90 degrees. Shortly after the power was restored, it was knocked out again by Hurricane Delta, which was followed by a deep freeze caused by Winter Storm Uri. The next year, Hurricane Ida tied Laura’s record for the strongest winds measured in Louisiana.

“The storms have been getting closer and closer together, more and more active,” said Jessica McGee, who lives with her adult son in a small, cream-colored house a few blocks from Robertson in Portie Town. The McGees haven’t had gas since Hurricane Laura; they have used electric space heaters and cooked their meals in a microwave oven for the past three years. Boards nailed over their windows before the 2020 storm remain there.

McGee, who lives on disability benefits, said she has neither the strength nor the money to repair the hurricane damage. “It’s my water, it’s the pipes, it’s the floor…,” she said. “The next one, our roof is going to be gone.”

If Robertson’s nonprofit is awarded the grant it is seeking, McGee’s house may also benefit. She brightens at the thought that government funding could bring her home back from the brink of inhabitability, but remains skeptical of politics.

“I don’t vote,” McGee said, shrugging. “It’s not for me.”

The sprawling Inflation Reduction Act had many goals, including funding the Internal Revenue Service and lowering health care costs, but its main aim was to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change through tax credits, customer incentives and grants. Despite its purpose, its authors conspicuously omitted the word “climate” from its name in an effort to get bipartisan support for it.

The benefits of the law were felt widely, spurring clean energy projects in almost 40% of the country’s congressional districts; 19 of the 20 that got the most funding were led by Republicans.

In August, as he was standing on a corn and bean farm next to the deputy administrator of the Biden EPA, Jim Pillen enthused about his state’s grant. Pillen, the Republican governor of Nebraska, called the agency’s $307 million IRA grant “a once-in-a-lifetime, extraordinary opportunity.” In Pocatello, Idaho — a town in a red county that is still recovering from the 2012 Charlotte Fire — “folks are pretty excited” about the planned greenway path that will decrease wildfire risks and allow residents to bike by the river, Hannah Sanger, the city’s science and environment administrator, told me. And in Alaska, where Trump also won handily, the recipients of a grant of more than $47 million to electrify two ports described themselves as “ecstatic” about the money.

Still the law remains a political lightning rod. Republicans in Congress have tried to repeal parts of it dozens of times, and Trump railed against it on the campaign trail. “My plan will terminate the Green New Deal,” Trump told a group assembled at the Economic Club of New York in September. “It actually sets us back, as opposed to moves us forward. And [I will] rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.”

Clay Higgins, the Republican who represents Sulphur in Congress, voted against the IRA, which he attacked as a “monstrosity of a bill” that “wastes hundreds of billions of dollars on Green New Deal subsidies.” Higgins, who receives campaign funds from the oil and gas industry, notes on his website that “fossil fuels are the lifeblood of our modern society.” He did not respond to questions about Robertson’s hope to use IRA money to shore up the houses in his district.

In November, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a report that attacked the EPA’s IRA grants as a “green group giveaway” and characterized some of the recipients as “extremist organizations.” The lawmakers criticized funding groups that educate the public about climate change, or “environmental activist organizations that work to influence public and elected officials to adopt their often-extreme views, such as completely eliminating the use of fossil fuels.”

Despite the fiery rhetoric, a full repeal of the law seems unlikely, in part because it would require a majority of the House and Senate to agree on it. In August, 18 House Republicans wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson urging him to preserve the IRA’s energy tax credits, which are already funding projects. And it will be extremely difficult for the new administration to claw back grant money that has already been awarded.

Even if he fails to get the congressional support necessary to repeal the law, Trump could reverse the executive order that grants the authority to implement it. He could also cut short its longer term provisions, some of which were supposed to extend through 2029 and beyond. He can interfere with the funding that now flows through more than 12 federal agencies. And he can put a halt to the two dozen proposed rules that would carry out the law’s goals, according to the Brookings Institution. Congress could also severely undermine the law by targeting the rules that have been issued since Aug. 1 — and can thus be overturned through the Congressional Review Act.

Soon after the IRA was signed into law in 2022, Robertson began looking for ways it could benefit Portie Town.

Her charity had already been distributing food, clothing and “hurricane buckets” filled with mosquito repellant, canned ham, batteries and other supplies to locals when it and several other organizations together received $407,000 in IRA funds in 2023. The grant pays for the groups to distribute “evidence-based materials” about pollution, climate change and public health, according to its application. It also paid for two air monitors, which regularly document dangerously elevated levels of particulate matter in the air, pollution that is associated with premature death and breathing problems.

The IRA’s Community Change Grants, designed to provide approximately $2 billion for climate-related projects in disadvantaged communities, offered more direct help.

Robertson despaired on the December day when she learned that the Trump administration, not Biden’s, would be deciding whether Portie Town will get the grant.

“This community needs this so badly,” she said through tears. “Damn it.”

Just that morning, she had visited with Janet Broussard, 82, who lives by herself a few blocks away. The two had stood outside Broussard’s trailer imagining how the grant might improve it. Broussard’s roof had come off more than four years ago during Hurricane Delta. It was replaced, but, within two years, the new one was damaged by a tornado. She had no insurance that would pay to repair the damage and catches the rain in a bucket that she empties after storms.

But Robertson said that if the grant came through, Micah 6:8 Mission would be able to help fix the roof. “We’ll also be able to take the siding off, insulate, put new siding on, take the windows out, put in double-paned insulating windows,” Robertson had said.

Zealan Hoover, a senior adviser to the EPA administrator who oversaw the IRA grant program, said the agency made a herculean effort and managed to distribute more than 95% of the money. But agency officials didn’t have time to give the proposals that were submitted in the final weeks of the application period the careful reads they deserved, he said, and so they decided to reserve some funds so the next administration can finish the process. “We are going to give those 2,000 applicants who came in at the very end, you know, some hope and chance of being selected,” said Hoover, who pointed out that, under any administration, “the agency’s mission is to protect human health and the environment.”

What it decides will matter to Tony Rodriguez, who hung the “FUCK BIDEN” banner outside his home in the fall. A slight man with a graying beard who goes by Burnout, Rodriguez said he hung the banner to raise awareness about “all the bad stuff” Biden did. He had heard on the news — he can’t remember the exact source — that the president was to blame for children being sex trafficked, repeating a false conspiracy theory, and had sold out our country.

Still, he said he would be grateful if Miss Cindy would use some of the money she is hoping to get from the law championed by the outgoing president to stop the rain from coming into his bedroom.

“At least then he’d have done something good,” he said.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Sharon Lerner, photography by Annie Flanagan for ProPublica.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

To uncover the truth about a pernicious insurance industry practice, staffers with the New York’s state attorney general’s office decided to tell a series of lies.

So, over the course of 2022 and 2023, they dialed hundreds of mental health providers in the directories of more than a dozen insurance plans. Some staffers pretended to call on behalf of a depressed relative. Others posed as parents asking about their struggling teenager.

They wanted to know two key things about the supposedly in-network providers: Do you accept insurance? And are you accepting new patients?

The more the staffers called, the more they realized that the providers listed either no longer accepted insurance or had stopped seeing new patients. That is, if they heard back from the providers at all.

In a report published last December, the office described rampant evidence of these “ghost networks,” where health plans list providers who supposedly accept that insurance but who are not actually available to patients. The report found that 86% of the listed mental health providers who staffers had called were “unreachable, not in-network, or not accepting new patients.” Even though insurers are required to publish accurate directories, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office didn’t find evidence that the state’s own insurance regulators had fined any insurers for their errors.

Shortly after taking office in 2021, Gov. Kathy Hochul vowed to combat provider directory misinformation, so there seemed to be a clear path to confronting ghost networks.

Yet nearly a year after the publication of James’ report, nothing has changed. Regulators can’t point to a single penalty levied for ghost networks. And while a spokesperson for New York state’s Department of Financial Services has said that “nation-leading consumer protections” are in the works, provider directories in the state are still rife with errors.

A similar pattern of errors and lax enforcement is happening in other states as well.

In Arizona, regulators called hundreds of mental health providers listed in the networks of the state’s most popular individual health plans. They couldn’t schedule visits with nearly 2 out of every 5 providers they called. None of those companies have been fined for their errors.

In Massachusetts, the state attorney general investigated alleged efforts by insurers to restrict their customers’ mental health benefits. The insurers agreed to audit their mental health provider listings but were largely allowed to police themselves. Insurance regulators have not fined the companies for their errors.

In California, regulators received hundreds of complaints about provider listings after one of the nation’s first ghost network regulations took effect in 2016. But under the new law, they have actually scaled back on fining insurers. Since 2016, just one plan was fined — a $7,500 penalty — for posting inaccurate listings for mental health providers.

ProPublica reached out to every state insurance commission to see what they have done to curb rampant directory errors. As part of the country’s complex patchwork of regulations, these agencies oversee plans that employers purchase from an insurer and that individuals buy on exchanges. (Federal agencies typically oversee plans that employers self-fund or that are funded by Medicare.)

Spokespeople for the state agencies told ProPublica that their “many actions” resulted in “significant accountability.” But ProPublica found that the actual actions taken so far do not match the regulators’ rhetoric.

“One of the primary reasons insurance commissions exist is to hold companies accountable for what they are advertising in their contracts,” said Dr. Robert Trestman, a leading American Psychiatric Association expert who has testified about ghost networks to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. “They’re not doing their job. If they were, we would not have an ongoing problem.”

Most states haven’t fined a single company for publishing directory errors since 2019. When they do, the penalties have been small and sporadic. In an average year, fewer than a dozen fines are issued by insurance regulators for directory errors, according to information obtained by ProPublica from almost every one of those agencies. All those fines together represent a fraction of 1% of the billions of dollars in profits made by the industry’s largest companies. Health insurance experts told ProPublica that the companies treat the fines as a “cost of doing business.”

They’re not doing their job. If they were, we would not have an ongoing problem.

Insurers acknowledge that errors happen. Providers move. They retire. Their open appointments get booked by other patients. The industry’s top trade group, AHIP, has told lawmakers that companies contact providers to verify that their listings are accurate. The trade group also has stated that errors could be corrected faster if the providers did a better job updating their listings.

But providers have told us that’s bogus. Even when they formally drop out of a network, they’re not always removed from the insurer’s lists.

The harms from ghost networks are real. ProPublica reported on how Ravi Coutinho, a 36-year-old entrepreneur from Arizona, had struggled for months to access the mental health and addiction treatment that was covered by his health plan. After nearly two dozen calls to the insurer and multiple hospitalizations, he couldn’t find a therapist. Last spring, he died, likely due to complications from excessive drinking.

Health insurance experts said that, unless agencies can crack down and issue bigger fines, insurers will keep selling error-ridden plans.

“You can have all the strong laws on the books,” said David Lloyd, chief policy officer with the mental health advocacy group Inseparable. “But if they’re not being enforced, then it’s kind of all for nothing.”

The problem with ghost networks isn’t one of awareness. States, federal agencies, researchers and advocates have documented them time and again for years. But regulators have resisted penalizing insurers for not fixing them.

Two years ago, the Arizona Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions began to probe the directories used by five large insurers for plans that they sold on the individual market. Regulators wanted to find out if they could schedule an appointment with mental health providers listed as accepting new patients, so their staff called 580 providers in those companies’ directories.

Thirty-seven percent of the calls did not lead to an appointment getting scheduled.

Even though this secret-shopper survey found errors at a lower rate than what had been found in New York, health insurance experts who reviewed Arizona’s published findings said that the results were still concerning.

Ghost network regulations are intended to keep provider listings as close to error-free as possible. While the experts don’t expect any insurer to have a perfect directory, they said that double-digit error rates can be harmful to customers.

Arizona’s regulators seemed to agree. In a January 2023 report, they wrote that a patient could be clinging to the “last few threads of hope, which could erode if they receive no response from a provider (or cannot easily make an appointment).”

Secret-shopper surveys are considered one of the best ways to unmask errors. But states have limited funding, which restricts how often they can conduct that sort of investigation. Michigan, for its part, mostly searches for inaccuracies as part of an annual review of a health plan. Nevada investigates errors primarily if someone files a complaint. Christine Khaikin, a senior health policy attorney for the nonprofit advocacy group Legal Action Center, said fewer surveys means higher odds that errors go undetected.

Some regulators, upon learning that insurers may not be following the law, still take a hands-off approach with their enforcement. Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services, for instance, conducts spot checks of provider networks to see if those listings are accurate. If they find errors, insurers are asked to fix the problem. The department hasn’t issued a fine for directory errors since 2019. A spokesperson said the agency doesn’t keep track of how frequently it finds network directory errors.

Dave Jones, a former insurance commissioner in California, said some commissioners fear that stricter enforcement could drive companies out of their states, leaving their constituents with fewer plans to choose from.

Even so, staffers at the Arizona Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions wrote in the report that there “needs to be accountability from insurers” for the errors in their directories. That never happened, and the agency concealed the identities of the companies in the report. A department spokesperson declined to provide the insurers’ names to ProPublica and did not answer questions about the report.

Since January 2023, Arizonans have submitted dozens of complaints to the department that were related to provider networks. The spokesperson would not say how many were found to be substantiated, but the department was able to get insurers to address some of the problems, documents obtained through an open records request show.

According to the department’s online database of enforcement actions, not a single one of those companies has been fined.

Sometimes, when state insurance regulators fail to act, attorneys general or federal regulators intervene in their stead. But even then, the extra enforcers haven’t addressed the underlying problem.

For years, the Massachusetts Division of Insurance didn’t fine any company for ghost networks, so the state attorney general’s office began to investigate whether insurers had deceived consumers by publishing inaccurate directories. Among the errors identified: One plan had providers listed as accepting new patients but no actual appointments were available for months; another listed a single provider more than 10 times at different offices.

In February 2020, Maura Healey, who was then the Massachusetts attorney general, announced settlements with some of the state’s largest health plans. No insurer admitted wrongdoing. The companies, which together collect billions in premiums each year, paid a total of $910,000. They promised to remove providers who left their networks within 30 days of learning about that decision. Healey declared that the settlements would lead to “unprecedented changes to help ensure patients don’t have to struggle to find behavioral health services.”

But experts who reviewed the settlements for ProPublica identified a critical shortcoming. While the insurers had promised to audit directories multiple times a year, the companies did not have to report those findings to the attorney general’s office. Spokespeople for Healey and the attorney general’s office declined to answer questions about the experts’ assessments of the settlements.

After the settlements were finalized, Healey became the governor of Massachusetts and has been responsible for overseeing the state’s insurance division since she took office in January 2023. Her administration’s regulators haven’t brought any fines over ghost networks.

The industry doesn’t take the regulatory penalties seriously because they’re so low.

Healey’s spokesperson declined to answer questions and referred ProPublica to responses from the state’s insurance division. A division spokesperson said the state has taken steps to strengthen its provider directory regulations and streamline how information about in-network providers gets collected. Starting next year, the spokesperson said that the division “will consider penalties” against any insurer whose “provider directory is found to be materially noncompliant.”

States that don’t have ghost network laws have seen federal regulators step in to monitor directory errors.

In late 2020, Congress passed the No Surprises Act, which aimed to cut down on the prevalence of surprise medical bills from providers outside of a patient’s insurance network. Since then, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the two large public health insurance programs, has reached out to every state to see which ones could handle enforcement of the federal ghost network regulations.

At least 15 states responded that they lacked the ability to enforce the new regulation. So CMS is now tasked with watching out for errors in directories used by millions of insurance customers in those states.

Julie Brookhart, a spokesperson for CMS, told ProPublica that the agency takes enforcement of the directory error regulations “very seriously.” She said CMS has received a “small number” of provider directory complaints, which the agency is in the process of investigating. If it finds a violation, Brookhart said regulators “will take appropriate enforcement action.”

But since the requirement went into effect in January 2022, CMS hasn’t fined any insurer for errors. Brookhart said that CMS intends to develop further guidelines with other federal agencies. Until that happens, Brookhart said that insurers are expected to make “good-faith” attempts to follow the federal provider directory rules.

Last year, five California lawmakers proposed a bill that sought to get rid of ghost networks around the state. If it passed, AB 236 would limit the number of errors allowed in a directory — creating a cap of 5% of all providers listed — and raise penalties for violations. California would become home to one of the nation’s toughest ghost network regulations.

The state had already passed one of America’s first such regulations in 2015, requiring insurers to post directories online and correct inaccuracies on a weekly basis.

Since the law went into effect in 2016, insurance customers have filed hundreds of complaints with the California Department of Managed Health Care, which oversees health plans for nearly 30 million enrollees statewide.

Lawyers also have uncovered extensive evidence of directory errors. When San Diego’s city attorney, Mara Elliott, sued several insurers over publishing inaccurate directories in 2021, she based the claims on directory error data collected by the companies themselves. Citing that data, the lawsuits noted that error rates for the insurers’ psychiatrist listings were between 26% and 83% in 2018 and 2019. The insurers denied the accusations and convinced a judge to dismiss the suits on technical grounds. A panel of California appeals court judges recently reversed those decisions; the cases are pending.

The companies have continued to send that data to the DMHC each year — but the state has not used it to examine ghost networks. California is among the states that typically waits for a complaint to be filed before it investigates errors.

“The industry doesn’t take the regulatory penalties seriously because they’re so low,” Elliott told ProPublica. “It’s probably worth it to take the risk and see if they get caught.”

California’s limited enforcement has resulted in limited fines. Over the past eight years, the DMHC has issued just $82,500 in fines for directory errors involving providers of any kind. That’s less than one-fifth of the fines issued in the two years before the regulation went into effect.

A spokesperson for the DMHC said its regulators continue “to hold health plans accountable” for violating ghost network regulations. Since 2018, the DMHC has discovered scores of problems with provider directories and pushed health plans to correct the errors. The spokesperson said that the department’s oversight has also helped some customers get reimbursed for out-of-network costs incurred due to directory errors.

“A lower fine total does not equate to a scaling back on enforcement,” the spokesperson said.

Dr. Joaquin Arambula, one of the state Assembly members who co-sponsored AB 236, disagreed. He told ProPublica that California’s current ghost network regulation is “not effectively being enforced.” After clearing the state Assembly this past winter, his bill, along with several others that address mental health issues, was suddenly tabled this summer. The roadblock came from a surprising source: the administration of the state’s Democratic governor.

Officials with the DMHC, whose director was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, estimated that more than $15 million in extra funding would be needed to carry out the bill’s requirements over the next five years. State lawmakers accused officials of inflating the costs. The DMHC’s spokesperson said that the estimate was accurate and based on the department’s “real experience” overseeing health plans.

Arambula and his co-sponsors hope that their colleagues will reconsider the measure during next year’s session. Sitting before state lawmakers in Sacramento this year, a therapist named Sarah Soroken told the story of a patient who had called 50 mental health providers in her insurer’s directory. None of them could see her. Only after the patient attempted suicide did she get the care she’d sought.

“We would be negligent,” Soroken told the lawmakers, “if we didn’t do everything in our power to ensure patients get the health care they need.”

Paige Pfleger of WPLN/Nashville Public Radio contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Max Blau.

While it is a tragedy that Scott and Rubio were not able to learn this basic fact prior to being elected to the Senate, it is not surprising. In recent years, Florida has become a platform for Neoconservatives to practice political grandstanding rather than good politics. Instead of focusing on issues which truly matter to their constituents, imperialists like Scott and Rubio have been focused on proposing legislation like the Securing Timely Opportunities for Payment and Maximizing Awards for Detaining Unlawful Regime Officials (STOP MADURO) Act. The STOP MADURO Act proposes that the already preposterously-high fifteen-million dollar bounty for “information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro” to one hundred million dollars. The bill alleges that Maduro and other government officials have been engaged in “conspiring to import cocaine” and using and conspiring to use “machine guns and destructive devices” to carry out “narco-terrorism”.

While many Neoconservatives in Washington have sought to act as judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to the conspiratorial claim that Maduro is Venezuela’s Pablo Escobar, many independent journalists have pointed out the obvious flaws in this narrative. According to The Grayzone, the myth that Venezuela is a narco-state has already been debunked by the Washington Office in Latin America (WOLA), a think tank in Washington that generally supports US regime change operations… less than 7% of total drug movement from South America transits from Venezuela”. The bill also claims that Maduro had a “narcoterrorism” partnership with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for the past twenty years. This similarly dubious accusation has also been discredited as far back as 2019, with Venezuelanalysis reporting that “…FARC was involved in the drug trade only at its lowest levels, levying taxes on coca sales. Moreover, since the 2016 peace accords and FARC demobilization, coca crops in Colombia have reached record levels year after year, confirming that the guerrillas played no major role in the illicit trade.”

Rather than working on behalf of the people of Florida to address the state’s terrible healthcare system, rampant homelessness, and extreme income inequality, Sen. Scott, Sen. Rubio, and their ilk have chosen to put ideology over policy. Instead of making the American Dream an American reality, Neoconservatives in Washington have forever sought to strangle all nations who do not conform to the dogmatic doctrine of market fundamentalism with the binds of sanctions. Sanctions, such as those currently targeting Venezuela, have been shown to lead to the deaths of countless civilians; in Iraq, for example, The Transnational Institute reports that “two million Iraqis… died from sanctions, half of them children”. Similarly, in Cuba, Al Jazeera reports that “With restrictions on the import of food, it has contributed to malnutrition – especially among women and children – and water quality has suffered with chemicals and purifying equipment banned.” For the Neoconservatives, no price is too high to pay for spreading corporate oppression throughout the world.

Clearly, the foreign policy priorities of Senators Scott and Rubio are not in tune with basic morality let alone the wants and needs of their Floridian constituents. Therefore, it is not astonishing that both Rubio and Scott are diehard supporters of Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza. Both Senators have joined together in making the Orwellian assertion that Israel is the “victim” of Palestine in the United Nations. Furthermore, Rubio has made clear his support for genocide in occupied Palestine saying “I don’t think there’s any way Israel can be expected to coexist or find some diplomatic off-ramp with these savages…. They have to be eradicated.”

In comparison to Senators Scott and Rubio, Venezuela has consistently supported Palestine in its struggle against colonialism. In fact, prior to his passing, President Chavez was one of the most popular leaders in the Arab world for his fearless support of Palestinian self-determination and his efforts to hold Israel accountable for its numerous crimes. To this day, Venezuela has continued to support Palestine in the United Nations by backing South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel. In stark contrast to Scott and Rubio who have poisoned the well of discourse with their irrational and destructive support for Israel, Venezuela has constantly acted as a voice for the voiceless in occupied Palestine.

As they carry on waging legislative warfare on Venezuela’s sovereignty with dubious bills like the STOP MADURO Act, one must ask: are Scott and Rubio truly interested in representing their constituents, or merely the interests of the rich and powerful? If Senators Scott and Rubio have any self-respect, they will cease being pawns in a larger geopolitical game and will redirect their focus back on their constituents. Florida deserves leaders who are problem solvers, not ineffectual thorns in the side of foreign governments.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by J.D. Hester Hester.

Criswell knew how the system worked at FEMA, but her mandate was to change the status quo at an agency that is often accused of acting too slowly after disasters — and of being far too slow to adapt to climate change. In her three years leading the agency, she has attempted to overhaul FEMA’s disaster aid programs, overseen billions of dollars in new spending on forward-looking adaptation projects, and navigated tough disputes over the rising cost of insurance and reconstruction in vulnerable areas. Her goal was not just to ensure that FEMA ran well during disasters but also to shift the agency’s culture, making it more responsive to survivors’ needs and more forward-looking about disaster preparedness.

With peak hurricane season approaching, Grist sat down with Criswell to discuss how she’s handled some of FEMA’s biggest challenges and how she’s attempted to transform the agency from the inside. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q. Among communities that get hit with a lot of disasters, FEMA has a reputation for slowness and bureaucracy. From your perspective, after both working here and being a FEMA customer, how much of that is merited?

A. We’ve heard that a lot, and I think that there’s a lot of people that still have memories of Hurricane Katrina — they think of the FEMA of today as the FEMA from Katrina. We are a different team. We respond faster. We have more resources for recovery. We have more resources to help reduce impact, more resilience programs. We know that recovery is really complicated, and some communities are more complex than others. But recovery is doable, and so what we have to do is work with a community to understand what their recovery needs are. We have these integrated recovery teams that go in and don’t just implement FEMA programs, but they help bring the whole space — federal agencies, philanthropies, and nonprofits — together to help identify what that community’s recovery goals are and help them with that complicated road to recovery. While I think some of [the criticism] is warranted at times, I think that we are a very different agency than we were after Katrina, and we’re making huge gains. 

Q. Earlier this year, FEMA unveiled a set of reforms to its individual assistance programs, cutting red tape and offering survivors more money for food and housing after disasters. These reforms address many of the longest-standing complaints and criticisms about how that program works. Why didn’t this happen earlier?

A. We’ve been working on that since the day that I came into this office. I think this really came about through hearing from the people that are trying to get assistance and the struggles and the barriers that they’re facing. I’ve been a local emergency manager in a small community in Colorado. I’ve been a local emergency manager in New York City. So I know what it’s like to be a customer of FEMA. In my very first year, I visited a lot of our joint field offices to hear from people and hear some of the challenges that they were facing. 

I think that lens helps us keep it at the top of our priority list, and helps us keep focused on putting people first, and always trying to understand their barriers, and knowing that we can’t just have a one-size-fits-all approach to the delivery of our programs. So I think a lot of it really has to do with the fact that we’ve had a lived experience of being on the other side.

Q. FEMA’s resilience programs allocate billions of dollars to climate adaptation and disaster preparedness. But a large share of the money from programs like Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, goes to white and wealthy areas, and there are a few “superuser” states that get a lot of the money. I’m wondering what FEMA has done or could still do to address those disparities.

A. When I came in, the first round of BRIC money was going out. Under a previous resilience program, there was a cap of $5 million federal spending, and BRIC gave us a $50 million cap, so people were really excited. But we saw from the first round that the structure that we had put in place was certainly not representative of all communities across America, and it really seemed to favor some of our coastal communities. So every year we have made adjustments to ensure everybody has a fair chance in the competitive side of the program. We have direct technical assistance, which is also making a big impact — bringing in experts, especially for our most under-resourced communities that don’t necessarily have the expertise or the personnel or the time to be able to think about the next mitigation [project] that they can do. We continue to expand that every year. 

What I’ve asked my team to do now is to study the return on investment of resilience projects to see what’s working. We want to see projects succeed, and sometimes we see projects that don’t get across the finish line because of a poor start. We’ll continue to refine the way that we are scoring these projects to ensure that communities that have the greatest need can get some of the benefit — for instance we’re adding points to the score for new applicants, or if you’re in a [vulnerable area].

Q. In response to protests from environmental groups and cities such as Phoenix, who have criticized FEMA for not responding to heat waves, FEMA has said that it can only declare a disaster when state and local financial resources are exceeded. But few communities apply for heat disaster declarations because it’s difficult to show how heat waves overwhelm local finances. Do you think FEMA can or should modify its threshold for declaring a heat disaster? And if it did, what could FEMA do to help residents during a heat wave? 

A. I’m going to start with the preparedness side. We know heat comes every year, just like we know hurricanes come to the Gulf Coast and the East Coast every year. So the individual preparedness piece is really important, and we can’t negate that. We need people to know what their risk is, know what kinds of severe weather events are going to impact them, and what their personal needs are. If I know that I have a condition that makes me more vulnerable to heat, what am I going to do during extreme heat days if my power goes out? We also can help reduce the impact through our mitigation programs — we’ve got many communities that are using BRIC funding to plant tree canopies to reduce the impact from urban heat islands, or painting roofs white, or putting in place splash pads for kids. That reduces the overall impact.

But let’s go into emergency response. I was working in New York City during Covid, and we were very concerned about the number of people that didn’t have air conditioning and the fact that we didn’t want to put them in congregate settings. So New York City utilized money [from the federal housing department’s home energy assistance program LI-HEAP] to put air conditioners in people’s homes. From a cost perspective, if that was a disaster declaration, could FEMA have reimbursed the city for the air conditioners that they put in? I don’t know. Perhaps, but it also takes other agencies, right? We need a whole-of-government solution to help these communities. 

I think about what happened in Houston with Hurricane Beryl recently, and the power outages. What could we or could we not do there? We could use some of our programs to perhaps help individuals that are vulnerable make sure that they have a place to go, like a cooling center, or if it’s a long period of time and they have to relocate somewhere, perhaps our programs could help there. We are not opposed to having a state come in and ask for a heat declaration. I just need to know what I’m reimbursing them for that isn’t part of their normal budget. Some of the things that I read are like, “we want FEMA to be able to pay for cooling centers.” Well, I don’t like the phrase “pay for a cooling center” because it makes it sound like I’m building something brand new, and really I’m just opening up the library, or I’m having people go to the library.

Q. Since Hurricane Ian struck Florida in 2022, I’ve heard from people trying to rebuild in Lee County that rising flood insurance costs are prohibitively expensive and rebuilding a house to code is really, really costly — so much so that a lot of people just can’t afford it. To what extent is that the intended outcome of these programs — to discourage this kind of waterfront living? How much is this something that you think FEMA or Congress should try to address through affordability mechanisms?

A. I get asked all the time, “Should we let people rebuild there?” And in some areas, I say probably not, and that’s why we have programs to help buy people out and move. But most of the time it’s not a matter of where, it’s a matter of how. When we look at what’s going on in Lee County right now, we don’t want people to rebuild and put their lives at risk. It’s not just about how much it’s going to cost to rebuild that home: During Hurricane Ian, 150 people lost their lives. They were in homes that weren’t elevated high enough, or they chose not to evacuate. 

So this is about not just the cost of rebuilding, but also about: How are we doing everything we can to protect the lives in an area that’s prone to a severe weather event? This is about protecting lives and saving the people that live in those areas, and people will have to make personal choices about whether or not this is the right location for them to live based on what that’s going to require. 

But to your last point about affordability [of flood insurance], we do believe that there are certain communities across the U.S. that are certainly in an area that is at high risk, but they came to be there through an environmental injustice — they’re low income neighborhoods, but they’re at a high risk, and so their costs are really high. So we do believe an affordability plan is needed to ensure that people can get the type of protection that they need. But we also know that we have homes that are high value and high risk, and we were subsidizing their rates prior to this.

Q. For the second year in a row, FEMA has run low on money and Congress has not acted to replenish its budget. As a result, the agency has once again had to implement “immediate needs funding,” which means it has paused almost all its recovery and resilience projects and restricted spending only to emergency response operations. With peak hurricane season approaching, what’s the realistic worst-case scenario here, and what can FEMA do about it without action from Congress?

A. We’ve done immediate needs funding in the past, but it has usually been after a major weather event has caused us to expend the funds that we have. What we’re finding right now is, as we close out Covid-19 [reimbursements], all of those bills are coming in. We always want to make sure that we have enough funding to support immediate responses to big incidents like Hurricane Ian, and we go into immediate needs when I reach a balance that’s going to allow me to respond to one of those events. That’s where we’re at now.

On the response side, I keep enough money to respond to one event. As we were watching Hurricane Debby, I was really concerned, because it was going to hit Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and then on up. If it had materialized as we thought it might, that could have drained the rest of the money that I have available very quickly. There’s not much that I can do other than getting a supplemental [appropriation] from Congress, and I have walked the halls of Congress to make sure that they know really where we’re at — once I have that one big event, or maybe two events coming back to back, I’m going to have to come back to them, and they may have to act faster than they’ve planned.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden’s FEMA director tried to fix the agency. Did she succeed? on Sep 4, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

As sky-high rents and a housing shortage become major issues in the 2024 presidential election, the U.S. Justice Department has sued software company RealPage, alleging its algorithm enabled landlords nationwide to collude in raising rents on tenants. The DOJ says the price-fixing scheme has impacted millions of renters across the United States. ProPublica reporter Heather Vogell, whose investigation first exposed RealPage, says as much as 70% of big apartment buildings in some neighborhoods are owned by property managers using RealPage, with landlords seeing the software “as a way to have a rising tide that lifts all boats.” We also speak with tenant rights organizer Tara Raghuveer, who says RealPage is guilty of “some of the grossest, most extractive business practices” documented in recent years, but the firm is hardly alone. “For so much of the market which is a catastrophic failure, landlords’ business model is predicated on tenants’ instability,” says Raghuveer.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection – Public Domain

President Biden once pledged to adopt more humane immigration policies than his predecessor.

But in practice, as immigrant rights advocates have documented, his administration has escalated the attack on the legal right of people facing life-threatening conditions to seek safety. Even though this right is guaranteed regardless of how asylum seekers enter the country, he has sought to restrict access to ports of entry.

Under both U.S. and international law, anyone fleeing persecution in another country has a right to request asylum and have their claim assessed. But both the Trump and Biden administrations have dramatically undermined these protections.

Most recently, Biden’s executive order and accompanying federal rule on “Securing the Border” — which effectively closed the U.S.-Mexico border this June — all but suspended the right to asylum altogether.

The new rule bars asylum access for the vast majority of people once the daily average of border crossings reaches 2,500 between ports of entry for seven consecutive days — a completely arbitrary figure with no basis in law.

In addition, while the ban is in effect Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents will no longer screen arriving asylum seekers at the border to see if they have a reasonable fear of returning to their home countries. Instead, the burden is on individuals and families to “manifest” their fear of persecution to CBP agents, who have a known record of intimidating asylum seekers. And the majority will have to do so without legal assistance.

The executive action relies on a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that President Trump previously invoked and resembles his unlawful attempts to ban asylum seekers — which the courts repeatedly struck down. The same statute makes it crystal clear that any person arriving on U.S. soil may request asylum regardless of their manner of entry.

Returning people back to countries where they could face persecution, torture, or other irreparable harm is not only illegal, but cruel and immoral. Nor will it “restore order” at the border. If anything, Biden’s crackdown on asylum will only create more panic and confusion.

As political and economic conditions continue to deteriorate in Haiti, Venezuela, and throughout Central America, more and more people are being displaced. Biden’s order essentially forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, where they are exploited by cartels and other criminals, or else deports them back to places where they’ll face harm.

Like previous presidents, Biden has ignored the root causes of forced displacement.

We must begin by re-examining U.S. policies toward our neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our trade policies and sanctions (like those against Venezuela) have devastated local economies. And many have fled the violence and repression of U.S.-backed authoritarian governments across the region.

Fully “shutting down” the border would be physically impossible. Efforts to do so have merely produced a costly, militarized border security and detention apparatus that punishes people for requesting asylum — and has a vested interest in never fixing our broken immigration system.

Instead, we need a just and humane approach grounded in law and the inherent dignity of all people.

Common sense measures should include improving the arrival process at ports of entry, ensuring that asylum applications are reviewed promptly and fairly, hiring more asylum officers and properly staffing immigration courts to address backlogs, providing access to legal counsel, and establishing more legal pathways to citizenship.

Seeking asylum from persecution is a fundamental human right that transcends borders and partisan politics. America has a long tradition of providing a safe haven for the persecuted. We must not lose sight of this value in our immigration policies.

The post Biden Can’t Fix the Immigration System by Banning Asylum appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Farrah Hassen.

Such disruptions tend to disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic families, a point underscored by a recent study that found customers of Minnesota’s largest electricity utility who live in communities of color were more than three times as likely to experience a shutoff than those in predominantly white neighborhoods. The finding, by University of Minnesota researchers, held even when accounting for income, poverty level, and homeownership. 

Energy policy researchers say they consistently see similar racial disparities nationwide, but a lack of empirical data to illustrate the problem is hindering efforts to address the problem. Only 30 states require utilities to report disconnections, and of those, only a handful provide data revealing where they happen. As climate change brings hotter temperatures, more frequent cold snaps, and other extremes in weather, energy analysts and advocates for disadvantaged communities say understanding these disparities and providing equitable access to reliable power will become ever more important. 

“The energy system as it is currently designed is failing to adequately serve all customers,” said Shelby Green, a researcher with the nonprofit Energy and Policy Institute. “Economically disadvantaged and minority people’s lives will be the ones most at threat.”

The research in Minnesota, led by Bhavin Pradhan and Gabriel Chan, found that households of color served by Xcel Energy experienced disproportionately more shut offs and more frequent outages. Between 2020 and 2022, neighborhoods with the highest concentration of people of color were 47 percent more likely than other areas to lose power for more than half a day.

Pradhan told Grist he was surprised to find that those racial differences held even over a period of several years. “It wasn’t just one year where there was a spike, but consistently over time,” he said. The team analyzed data for groups of a few hundred households from 2017 to 2022 — a level of spatial detail that allowed them to isolate the effect of race at a neighborhood level. Xcel Energy has noted that its own grid equity analysis found similar racial disparities in shut offs and outages. But the utility highlighted the age of a home as an equally significant factor for extended outages, and largely attributed cutoffs to a customer’s income. In a submission to the public utilities commission, the company noted that “disconnections are correlated with poverty, and — for a variety of deeply entrenched economic and social reasons that are not driven by the energy system — poverty is correlated with race.” It added that the utility offers programs to help customers cover their bills. 

Erica McConnell, staff attorney at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, countered that the utility’s own disconnection data proves those efforts are insufficient. Xcel Energy is currently updating a five-year plan outlining future grid investments, a process McConnell says provides an opportunity for the utility and regulators to invest in communities disproportionately impacted by disconnections and outages. The Center and other organizations have also called on the state Public Utilities Commission to consider reinstating a moratorium on disconnections, introduced at the height of the pandemic, until it can determine how best to address these disparities. 

Read Next

Biden’s ‘Solar for All’ awards $7B to bring affordable energy to low-income families

Syris Valentine

One potential measure that could help is expanding community solar, battery storage, and other distributed energy resources. The University of Minnesota study found that the communities bearing an outsized burden of disconnections and outages also have the greatest capacity to host small-scale clean energy projects like rooftop solar — a point McConnell echoed.

“Historically, a lot of communities haven’t had access to those kinds of programs,” she said. In the long term, distributed energy resources that “encourage ownership by the communities and wealth-building could be a valuable way to address the issue” by ensuring residents have access to cheap, reliable power.

Green, the researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, noted that rather than simply pointing to broader issues, utilities like Xcel Energy should look at how their operations might be perpetuating or amplifying existing inequities. 

Minnesota’s study is one of a few that have documented the role race plays in shutoffs. In Illinois, researchers found that from 2018 through 2019, electricity customers in predominantly Black and Hispanic zip codes were four times more likely to be disconnected than other areas, even when accounting for income and other factors. A national survey by researchers at Indiana University reached a similar conclusion: between April 2019 and May 2020, researchers found that Black and Hispanic households were roughly twice as likely to have their power shut off compared to white households. 

Those studying energy insecurity aren’t sure exactly what causes so strong a correlation between race and shutoffs. Sanya Carley, a professor and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, cites two possible factors. One is energy burden, or the proportion of a household’s income spent on gas and electricity. The other is the age of their housing, since older buildings tend to be less energy efficient. But her team’s research has found that those reasons account for only around 10 percent of the racial disparities found in utility disconnections. 

“There is something left unexplained about the energy experiences of Black and Hispanic households that needs to be identified to fully understand the prevalence of energy insecurity in these groups,” the study authors wrote. Green suggested another factor could be implicit bias in utility operations. A customer service representative, for example, could respond less leniently to a customer living in a community of color or low-income area. But overwhelmingly, energy policy experts told Grist that more data is needed to understand the extent of racial inequities and the forces driving them. Carley noted that unless required by law, most utilities don’t voluntarily share data on disconnections. Just six states, including Minnesota, Illinois, and California, require location data on utility shutoffs, typically at the zipcode level. In most others that require reporting, utilities often share only the total number of disconnections each year. What’s more, those laws apply only to regulated investor-owned utilities, meaning municipal utilities or co-ops may not share any data at all.

Energy justice advocates have long called for widespread requirements for utilities to report on disconnections and who they impact. Pradhan, the co-author of Minnesota’s study, told Grist that access to such data could enable “more studies and more data-driven decisionmaking” on where and how utilities should invest in improving their grid and electricity service. 

More urgently, Carley, Green, and others say consumer protections against disconnections can shield households from the brunt of life-threatening cutoffs. Already, 41 states prevent or limit utilities from disconnecting customers during bouts of extreme cold. But only 20 states, including Minnesota, have restrictions against shut-offs during periods of extreme heat — though that is beginning to change. After a deadly 2021 heat dome across the Pacific Northwest, lawmakers in Washington passed a law last summer preventing utilities from cutting off power to customers on days when a heat-related alert is issued. 

“Power and water can be a matter of life and death during a heat wave,” Washington State Representative Sharlett Mena said at the time. “This legislation will ensure that every Washingtonian has the ability to protect themselves against extreme heat.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A lack of data hampers efforts to fix racial disparities in utility cutoffs on Jun 11, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Akielly Hu.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Ten months after Georgia officials said they would take steps to ensure that counties were correctly handling massive numbers of challenges to voter registrations, neither the secretary of state’s office nor the State Election Board has done so.

In July 2023, ProPublica reported that election officials in multiple Georgia counties were handling citizens’ challenges to voter registrations in different ways, with some potentially violating the National Voter Registration Act.

Instead of fixing the problem, the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature passed SB 189 at the end of March. The bill’s authors claim that it will help prevent voting fraud, while voting rights advocates warn that it could make the issue worse. Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law on Monday.

“I see this as being pro-America, pro-accuracy, pro-transparency and pro-election integrity,” state Rep. John LaHood said of the bill, which he worked to help pass. “I don’t see it being” about voter suppression “whatsoever.”

When it takes effect in July, SB 189 will make it easier for Georgia residents to use questionable evidence when challenging fellow residents’ voter registrations. Voting rights activists also claim that the law could lead county officials to believe they can approve bulk challenges closer to election dates.

“It’s bad policy and bad law, and will open the floodgates to bad challenges,” said Caitlin May, a voting rights attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, which has threatened to sue over what it says is the law’s potential to violate the NVRA.

ProPublica previously reported on how just six right-wing advocates challenged the voter registrations of 89,000 Georgians following the 2021 passage of a controversial law that enabled residents to file unlimited voter challenges. We also revealed that county election officials may have been systematically approving challenges too close to election dates, which would violate the NVRA.

The Georgia secretary of state’s office said at the time that it was “thankful” for information provided by ProPublica, that it had been working on “uniform standards for voter challenges” and that it had “asked the state election board to provide rules” to help election officials handle the challenges. And the chair of the State Election Board told ProPublica last year that though the board hadn’t yet offered rules due to the demands of the 2022 election, “now that the election is over, we intend to do that.”

With the new law soon to be in effect, the State Election Board is determining its next steps. “We’re going to probably have to try and provide some instruction telling” election officials how to respond to SB 189, said John Fervier, who was appointed chair in January after the former chair stepped down. “I don’t know if that will come from the State Election Board or from the secretary of state’s office. But we’re one day past the signing of the legislation, so it’s still too early for me to comment on what kind of instruction will go out at this point.”

Mike Hassinger, a public information officer for the secretary of state’s office, said in a statement that it falls to the State Election Board to review laws and come up with rules. “Once the board moves forward with that process we are more than happy to extend help to rule making,” Hassinger said.

Conservative organizations have been vocal about their plans to file numerous challenges to voter registrations this year, providing training and other resources to help Georgians do so. Activists and Georgia Republican Party leadership publicly celebrated the passage of SB 189, with the GOP chair telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that this year’s legislative session was “a home run for those of us concerned about election integrity.”

But what has not gotten as much attention is how individuals who were involved in producing massive numbers of voter challenges managed to shape SB 189.

Courtney Kramer, the former executive director of True the Vote, a conservative organization that announced it was filing over 360,000 challenges in Georgia after the 2020 presidential election, played an instrumental role in getting the bill passed. She was the co-chair of the Election Confidence Task Force, a committee of the Georgia Republican Party that provided sample language to legislators crafting SB 189. An internal party email reviewed by ProPublica thanked Kramer for her dedication in helping bring “us to the final stages of pushing essential election integrity reform through the legislature.” Kramer said in a statement that “my goal was to restore confidence in Georgia’s elections process” and to “make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

Jason Frazier, who ProPublica previously found was one of the state’s six most prolific challengers, served on the Election Confidence Task Force. Frazier did not respond to requests for comment.

In late July, William Duffey, who was then the chair of Georgia’s State Election Board, was working on a paper to update county election officials on how to handle voter challenges. But when the board met in August 2023, a large crowd of right-wing activists packed the room, and dozens of people castigated the board for defending the legitimacy of the 2020 election. One mocked a multicultural invocation with which Duffey had started the meeting, declaring, “The only thing you left out was satanism!” A right-wing news outlet accused “the not so honorable Judge Duffey” of hiding “dirt” on the corruption of the 2020 election.

Less than a month later, Duffey stepped down. He denied that activists had driven him out, telling ProPublica that pressure from such activists “comes with the job.” But, he explained, the volunteer position had been taking “70% of my waking hours,” and “I wanted to get back to things for which I had scoped out my retirement.”

According to two sources knowledgeable about the board’s workings, who asked for anonymity to discuss confidential board matters, Duffey had been the primary force behind updating the rules about voter challenges, and without him, the effort stalled. One source also said that the board had realized that Republican legislators planned to rewrite voter-challenge laws, and members wanted to see what they would do.

In January 2024, Republican legislators began working on those bills. The one that succeeded, SB 189, introduces two especially important changes that would help challengers, according to voting rights activists.

First, it says a dataset kept by the U.S. Postal Service to track address changes provides sufficient grounds for election officials to approve challenges, if that data is backed up by secondary evidence from governmental sources. Researchers have found the National Change of Address dataset to be unreliable in establishing a person’s residence, as there are many reasons a person could be listed as living outside of Georgia but could still legally vote there. ProPublica found in 2023 that counties frequently dismissed challenges because of that unreliability. And voting rights activists claim that the secondary sources SB 189 specifies include swaths of unreliable data.

“My worry is” that the bill “will cause a higher success rate for the challenges,” said Anne Gray Herring, a policy analyst for nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause Georgia.

The new bill also states that starting 45 days before an election, county election boards cannot make a determination on a challenge. Advocates have expressed concerns that counties will interpret the law to mean that they can approve mass, or systematic, challenges up until 45 days before an election. The NVRA prohibits systematic removal of voters within 90 days of an election, and election boards commonly dismissed challenges that likely constituted systematic removal within the 90-day window, ProPublica previously found.

When True the Vote was challenging voters in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a judge issued a restraining order against the challenges for violating the 90-day window.

Whether SB 189 violates the NVRA could be settled in court, according to voting rights advocates and officials. On Tuesday, after SB 189 was signed, Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state, disputed on social media that the new law would make voter challenges easier. But months earlier, he said that imprecision in the voter challenges process could lead to legal problems.

“When you do loose data matching, you get a lot of false positives,” Sterling said, testifying about voter list maintenance before the Senate committee that would pass a precursor to SB 189. “And when you get a lot of false positives and then move on them inside the NVRA environment, that’s when you get sued.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Doug Bock Clark.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Idaho Statesman. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The blue and orange leaflets that arrived in Idaho Falls mailboxes ahead of the school bond election in November 2022 looked like the usual fare that voters across the country get. Sent out by the school district, the mailers encouraged people in the eastern Idaho city to register to vote and listed bullet points highlighting what the bond would pay for.

But the mailers, along with other materials the district distributed, would lead the county prosecutor’s office to fine the superintendent and the district’s spokesperson, accusing them of violating election law by using taxpayer money to advocate for the bond measure. According to the prosecutor, it was illegal for district officials to describe the schools as “overcrowded” and “aged” or to say that students “need modern, safe, and secure schools.”

Such penalties were made possible by a 2018 state law originally pushed by the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a conservative lobbying group that has become a big player in Idaho Republican politics. The foundation has stoked hostility toward public education across the state, pushing book bans in school libraries and accusing districts of indoctrinating students with “woke” ideas like critical race theory.

But unlike groups in other states, the Freedom Foundation has extended its reach by targeting school bond and levy elections, which have traditionally been local issues and are the main ways districts build and repair schools.

Over the past year, the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica have reported on how many Idaho students learn in poor conditions, in part, because the state has one of the most restrictive policies in the nation: It is one of two states that require two-thirds of voters to approve a bond. Lawmakers recently passed legislation to invest $1.5 billion in new funding for school facilities and proposed a ballot initiative to lower the voting threshold during elections that typically have high turnout. But those measures wouldn’t change the 2018 election integrity law.

School bond supporters said they agree taxpayer money shouldn’t be used to campaign for ballot measures, but they said the interpretation of the law has restricted the ability of school district officials to explain to their communities why the measures are needed, making passing bonds more difficult. Since the law was passed, the Freedom Foundation and those with similar positions have publicly accused at least four school districts of improperly advocating for bonds and levies. In the other cases, prosecutors have not moved forward with fines.

Many states prohibit school districts from taking sides in bond elections to prevent public agencies from using taxpayer dollars to influence elections, and some laws include fines. A similar situation is playing out in Texas, where the attorney general sued several school districts over concerns that administrations were electioneering for candidates, measures or political parties. Generally, however, the laws allow school districts to educate voters. Idaho’s, for example, specifically permits providing information about the cost, purpose and property conditions in a “factually neutral manner.” But there is a lot of gray area between educating and advocating.

Don Lifto, a former Minnesota superintendent who consults for school districts running tax elections, said it’s rare for school administrators to be fined. “I think this was a pretty strict and conservative interpretation of the statute,” he said. Under most state laws, he said, it would be hard to argue that saying students “need modern, safe, and secure schools” is a violation.

A conservative anti-tax tilt has long defined Idaho, well before the Freedom Foundation launched in 2009. Since then, it has become the leading voice against public education in Idaho. Its lobbying arm, Idaho Freedom Action, was the top spender on Facebook ads before the last statewide primary election in 2022.

“They monitor every single vote, and then they really go after people that don’t vote in alignment with them. And I can tell you just from being around the Legislature that a lot of legislators are afraid of them,” said Rod Gramer, the president and CEO of Idaho Business for Education, a group of business leaders focused on improving public schools. “They’ve made it very clear that they want to defund education and privatize education.” (The Statesman is a member of Idaho Business for Education.)

Superintendents, school board trustees and community members in at least half a dozen school districts said in interviews that the Freedom Foundation’s arguments have spread across the state, with local advocates frequently parroting its talking points during board and bond elections.

At the Capitol, the Freedom Foundation’s legislative index has become the authority for some lawmakers when deciding how to vote on bills. Unlike typical lobbying report cards, the group’s elaborate ranking system assigns positive or negative points to each bill, serving as a regular reminder for lawmakers that any step outside the group’s platform could cost them.

“There’s some legislators who follow that religiously and just look at those notes and see how to vote,” said Sen. Rod Furniss, a Republican from Rigby in East Idaho.

Late last year, the local Republican committees in Idaho Falls cited the group’s scores when it decided to investigate six Republican lawmakers because of their votes on certain bills, including education spending bills. Some lawmakers were censured, although they defended their voting records.

Ron Nate, the president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, declined to comment and did not answer written questions. The Freedom Foundation has called the index an “objective measure” of how legislators vote on the “principles of freedom and limited government.” “Score well, and your political profile is good; score low, and you have some explaining to do,” Nate wrote in 2023. It also said that the Idaho Falls case deserved “significantly worse consequences” but that the election integrity bill had been watered down by education groups before passing.

They’ve made it very clear that they want to defund education and privatize education.

The high bond threshold and low voter turnout can allow well-funded interest groups like the Freedom Foundation to have significant influence, said John Rumel, a University of Idaho law professor. “There’s a relatively small number of people that they need to convince to change the outcome in those elections,” he said.

Even with a high turnout in a general election year, the 2022 bond measure in Idaho Falls failed despite getting 58% of the vote.

The fallout for the district didn’t end with the election. A week before, a complaint was filed with the Bonneville County Sheriff’s office, and three days later, the Freedom Foundation called for the district to be “held accountable for electioneering.”

In the end, the district said, the case cost $54,000 in legal fees.

The Freedom Foundation’s mission is to “defeat Marxism and socialism” with principles of “limited government, free markets and self-reliance,” according to its website.

As broad as that sounds, early on, the group set its sights on bond and levy elections, which intersected with two of the group’s focus areas, taxes and public schools. In 2010, its founder, Wayne Hoffman, wrote an editorial in the Statesman decrying the city of Boise for spending money to educate voters on a ballot measure and warned of what he thought could happen next.

“What happens if Idaho’s 115 school districts decide that it is their job to help ‘educate’ Idahoans on the two-thirds majority needed to pass a school bond?” Hoffman wrote. “If government agencies across Idaho start to follow Boise’s lead, taxpayers — and freedom — don’t stand a chance.”

In 2014, the Freedom Foundation argued on its website that school districts had too many chances to hold bond and levy elections and called for the Legislature to limit them to once every two years. Since then, the Legislature has eliminated two election dates school districts could use each year.

Hoffman declined to comment and referred the Statesman to Nate.

In 2017, the foundation pushed for a strict election integrity law.

That version would have banned any mass communication or mailers leading up to the election, only allowing notices to be posted online or in the newspaper stating the election date, the bond’s impact on residents’ taxes and a “neutral and concise explanation” of what it would do. A public official who violated the law could be charged with a misdemeanor, fined up to $1,000 and sentenced to up to six months in jail. And the election result could be voided.

In part, the legislation grew out of a state Supreme Court case that barred public entities from promoting bonds but provided few guidelines.

Several key education groups sent a letter to Rep. Jason Monks, R-Meridian, who sponsored the legislation, with concerns that it would create a “heckler’s veto” to invalidate elections and have “a serious, chilling effect for anyone working in the public sphere to speak out on relative policy issues.”

A compromise bill in 2018 still banned advocating but specifically allowed districts and local governments to provide information in a “factually neutral manner.” It removed criminal charges, and the penalties were lowered to a $250 fine, though they rose if someone knowingly violated the law.

While some lawmakers raised concerns that the law’s language would inhibit school officials from knowing what they could say, education stakeholders thought the bill provided more clarity, and it passed in the Legislature overwhelmingly.

In the years since, as the education culture wars have heated up, the Freedom Foundation has again positioned itself at the center. The group started publishing a map that promises to reveal “if your school district is indoctrinating students with leftist nonsense,” like having gay-straight alliance clubs or asking students their pronouns. The map also includes diversity, equity and inclusion personnel; test scores; and superintendent salaries.

We were passive about the elections. And it came back to bite us.

Last year, exhibiting the reach of the group’s influence, Branden Durst, a former Freedom Foundation analyst, was picked to be the superintendent of the West Bonner School District in North Idaho. Durst did not have the required experience in the classroom for the job, according to the State Board of Education. The trustees who hired him worried about a curriculum that included “social emotional learning.” The appointment and the board’s decision to toss the educational program led two trustees to be recalled. And after the public outcry, Durst submitted a letter that said he’d decided to step aside, and the board accepted it as his resignation. Durst declined to comment.

Organizers of the recall effort said that low voter turnout and a lack of involvement in recent years had fostered an environment that allowed the Freedom Foundation to take hold.

“We were passive about the elections,” said Candy Turner, one of the organizers. “And it came back to bite us.”

In May 2023, when Idaho Falls administrators learned the prosecutor was fining two district officials under the election law, the board felt the district had done nothing wrong. It had educated the public on the $250 million bond to build a new high school and two elementary schools, along with other repairs — and it had ultimately failed. Superintendent Karla LaOrange, who joined the district after the complaint was filed, said the district thought if it paid the fines, which came to $375 in total, it would signal to the community that it was admitting guilt. So the district, known as D91, spent the money to fight.

Lisa Keller of D91 Taxpayers, a group that opposed the bond effort, said the group was not responsible for filing the complaint, though she and its members had concerns about the materials. She said community members worried about losing their homes due to the increase in taxes from the bond, which was the largest the district had ever run. She described the district’s plan for a new school as wanting to construct a Taj Mahal.

The formal allegation, however, came from Larry Lyon, a local resident who helped fund the political action committee behind D91 Taxpayers, with the help of Brian Stutzman, another nearby resident who has been involved in tax issues statewide, according to campaign finance records and the complaint obtained through a public records request. The Freedom Foundation had alleged the district violated the law in a website post days before the election, and D91 Taxpayers shared the post on its Facebook page.

Lyon said in a message he filed the complaint because he was “sincerely concerned” the district “crossed the line from simply presenting facts to advocating for higher taxes with public funds.” He said he was confident the prosecutor’s office would “be fair to everyone involved.” Stutzman declined to comment.

Bonneville County Prosecutor Randy Neal said he had no choice but to move forward with the complaint because he thought it was a clear violation. In an interview, he went through the district’s mailers to explain the problematic language. Instead of saying “overcrowded,” the district could have said the school was built for a certain number of students and that it now served more. “What I can’t do is say, ‘We need to replace the school because it’s overcrowded.’ That’s advocating for the bond,” he said.

Neal said the district ignored its own legal advice, citing a memo from Idaho law firm Hawley Troxell that warned the “most questionable actions” happen when districts explain the “‘need’ for the new facilities” and said “crowding issues or age of facilities” may be better for others to talk about. Hawley Troxell and the school district didn’t respond to requests for comment about the memo.

Erin Bingham, one of the leading supporters of the bond effort, said she felt like Neal was associated with D91 Taxpayers and the Freedom Foundation. She called the complaint “frivolous” and a “waste of time and taxpayers’ money.”

“I feel like it creates a precedent that if they don’t fight it,” these groups will continue to file complaints against the school district during bond elections, she said.

Neal denied taking action for political reasons or being affiliated with any advocacy groups. “I have no dog in the fight,” he said. “I don’t have children. This isn’t the school district I live in. I don’t know any of these people.”

The district’s decision to fight the fines bred even more distrust with D91 Taxpayers, which said the district was wasting money on legal bills.

“What a breach of public trust, to fight the county prosecutor with my money, paying their lawyers with my money,” Keller told the Statesman and ProPublica. “This is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous.”

The district eventually settled the complaint. The total fine was lowered to $250, and the case was dismissed.

What I can’t do is say, ‘We need to replace the school because it’s overcrowded.’ That’s advocating for the bond.

The prosecutor’s action, though, has had a chilling effect across the community and state, education stakeholders say.

“It’s panic I’ve heard for sure,” said Quinn Perry of the Idaho School Boards Association. ISBA, along with two other education groups, wrote an opinion piece last year noting that the Legislature has been making it increasingly difficult for school districts and local governments to run measures that raise taxes. If simply communicating a need is interpreted as advocacy, “we are not sure that school districts can sustain their operations or ever build a new school,” the groups wrote. “Perhaps that is the point.”

Idaho Falls board chair Hillary Radcliffe said district officials may feel they can’t speak as “frankly” about what’s going on because it could be construed as advocacy. “They have to be very, very limited in what they’re saying,” she said. “It makes it hard sometimes for our community to fully grasp some of the issues we have going on in our schools.”

Republican Sen. Dave Lent, who represents Idaho Falls and chairs the Senate Education Committee, said Neal took the law too far. “It’s an aggressive interpretation by our prosecuting attorney,” said Lent, a former Idaho Falls school board member. “You have to educate people as to the why. And if you’re not allowed to tell them the why, your hands are tied.”

The district has been grappling with how to fix its schools, with narrowing options and intense opposition and distrust from community members and groups like the Freedom Foundation.

The hallways of Idaho Falls schools are still overcrowded, and administrators worry about projected growth. The bathrooms regularly have to be closed at the district’s Skyline High School because the plumbing is failing, administrators said. Students with disabilities are crammed into small classrooms with doorways that barely fit wheelchairs.

Idaho Falls High School was built for 900 students but now serves about 1,250, administrators said. Between periods, hundreds of students rush out of their classrooms, walk down narrow staircases and push to get to their classes on time. Students eat lunch on the floor because the cafeteria accommodates only about 200 students, fewer than even the number of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch.

Classrooms flood, as does the athletic field.

After heavy rains last spring, Bingham said, “the kids were skipping rocks across it.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Becca Savransky, Idaho Statesman.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

As New York lawmakers hammer out a more than $200 billion budget this week, they may include $5 million to improve the state’s troubled guardianship system, which oversees the physical and financial welfare of tens of thousands of New Yorkers who the courts have said cannot care for themselves.

The modest allotment, which was advanced by the state Senate, would continue to fund a statewide hotline that launched last June and has advised hundreds of people considering guardianship for their relatives or friends. And it would give new support to nonprofits that provide services to poor adults who have nobody else to help them — known in the industry as “the unbefriended.”

“It’s not going to fix the whole problem, but it’s a step in the right direction,” said Kimberly George, a leader of Guardianship Access New York, which lobbied for the additional money.

The relatively small price tag doesn’t mean the Senate’s proposal will make the final cut in this week’s budget talks; the assembly and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, have proposed even less in their spending plans: just $1 million to continue the guardianship hotline. Neither the governor’s office nor Speaker Carl Heastie responded to requests for comment on the gap. The three parties must now reach an agreement on the issue — and the overall budget — by Thursday.

The effort to secure more public funding for guardianship follows a series of stories by ProPublica last month highlighting how New York’s overtaxed and loosely regulated guardianship system is failing thousands of vulnerable people. Part of the problem, the reporting showed, is a dearth of guardians for poor New Yorkers — something the Senate proposal would help address. New York City, for instance, relies on private attorneys who work the cases for free, along with a small network of nonprofits. In recent years, two such groups abruptly shut down due to financial strains.

But the legislative proposal does not address the system’s lax oversight of those guardians.

In New York City, there are 17,411 people in guardianships — 60% of the statewide total — and only 157 examiners to scrutinize how guardians handle their wards’ finances and care, according to data from the courts. In some cases, ProPublica found, abuse, neglect or fraud went on for years before it was noticed by authorities — if it was noticed at all.

Advocates have long pushed for a comprehensive overhaul but said any additional resources in the budget would improve the existing system, which is stretched beyond capacity. “The problem is so big, and the population is continuing to age and the need is growing so rapidly, that if we wait for a whole solution, nothing is going to be fixed and it’s just going to get worse,” said George, who also heads Project Guardianship, a nonprofit group that serves as guardian to about 160 New York City wards.

She and others hope the Senate’s proposal is just the first step in a series of legislative actions. Legislators remain in session until June.

Sen. Kevin Thomas, a Long Island Democrat who last year secured the initial $1 million to launch the statewide guardianship hotline, is leading the campaign for the additional funding. In February, he sent a letter — signed by 14 of his colleagues — to Democratic Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins asking her to back the $5 million appropriation, which would “stand to benefit thousands of aging and incapacitated New Yorkers.”

“New York State is fortunate to have strong legal protections that entitle individuals access to guardianship services when necessary,” the lawmakers wrote. “However, this mandate is underfunded and there is currently no direct funding stream to ensure statutory compliance.”

Among the signatories were the chairs of the Aging, Health and Judiciary committees in the Senate. Assembly Member Charles Lavine, another Long Island Democrat and the chair of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, sent a similar letter to the assembly speaker in support of the $5 million proposal.

In addition to the budget deal, there are indications that Albany is considering more sweeping reforms.

Lavine said in a statement that he was “discussing” the problems highlighted by ProPublica with judicial officials “with a view towards enacting responsive legislation.” Assembly Member Amy Paulin, a Democrat who chairs the chamber’s Health Committee, called ProPublica’s reporting “concerning, if not distressing,” and said she planned on “looking more into this” after the budget is complete. And Gustavo Rivera, a fellow Democrat and Paulin’s counterpart in the Senate, said he was “open to reviewing” reforms to guardianship after the budget is approved so that lawmakers “can adequately improve a failing system that is exploiting too many vulnerable New Yorkers while enriching the pockets of a few.”

In addition to providing more money for guardians and examiners, experts say lawmakers could strengthen the examination process, mandate more stringent training for guardians and implement maximum staff-to-ward ratios that keep caseloads manageably low.

Lawmakers have known for decades that the guardianship system is in dire need of an upgrade to meet the needs of those it serves. Indeed, shortly after they passed the law that governs adult guardianships 30 years ago, judges pleaded with Albany to provide critical funding for the indigent and to institute other reforms. Those efforts were unsuccessful, and in the decades since, others have made similar trips to the capitol, producing reports and holding roundtables highlighting the system’s failures. Yet these efforts have had little effect.

Advocates hope that will change given the state’s aging population — an estimated 5.6 million New Yorkers will be 60 or older by 2030 — and Hochul’s plan to help meet its needs. Judges have said the elderly make up a significant segment of those in guardianship since many who suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease need help caring for themselves.

Arthur Diamond, a former supervising guardianship judge on Long Island who has long called for reforms, said he was cautiously optimistic that state legislators and judicial leaders were finally serious about rectifying the system’s deep-seated problems.

“I think that if a year from now, we’re in the same spot, I’m going to give up,” he said of his advocacy. “But these people told me in good faith that they were interested and wanted to help, they told me they are working on remedies, and I take them at their word.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jake Pearson.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

A bill moving through the Michigan House of Representatives would fix flaws in a 7-year-old compensation fund that the state set up to help wrongfully convicted people rebuild their lives.

Sponsored by Rep. Joey Andrews, a Democrat, along with 14 other Democrats, the bill would be the first substantive reform of the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act’s eligibility requirements. If it becomes law, many people who would otherwise be denied compensation would become eligible for relief.

“This is going to be huge for a lot of people,” said Kenneth Nixon, co-founder and president of the nonprofit Organization of Exonerees. He spent nearly 16 years in prison before his conviction was vacated.

WICA, passed in 2016, was intended as a lifeline for people who experienced extreme injustice by offering $50,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment. But, as a ProPublica investigation detailed in January, the bipartisan law’s narrow requirements have resulted in delays in compensation, partial settlements or even complete denials. Only people whose cases are overturned based on “clear and convincing” new evidence that they weren’t a perpetrator or an accomplice have been eligible for WICA compensation, a higher standard of proof than for other civil claims. This has meant that some former prisoners — for instance, those whose convictions were overturned for insufficient evidence — can be left out.

In Charles Perry’s case, which ProPublica highlighted, judges acknowledged that there was new evidence of innocence, but because his conviction was officially overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective counsel, he got nothing.

Michigan has had 173 wrongful convictions in state courts since 1989, the fifth-most in the country, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. After an average of nearly 11 years in prison, many of these individuals are released with no home, no job prospects, no transportation and no resources to navigate trauma.

For years, advocates, a state commission and even some state Supreme Court justices have urged the Legislature to revisit the law. “I don’t like administering legal rules that I can’t explain to the people they impact,” wrote one justice in a concurring statement in Perry’s case. “Please fix it, legislators.”

On several key matters, the new bill proposes doing so. Significantly, it would change the standard of proof for former inmates to a “preponderance” of evidence showing they were not the perpetrator or an accomplice, instead of “clear and convincing” evidence, which is considered more daunting. In testimony to the House Criminal Justice Committee in March, where he serves as majority vice chair, Andrews said the higher standard is usually reserved for when the government takes away a person’s rights.

It’s “a very unusual burden of proof to be using in a civil matter,” he said, and it works against “the purpose of compensating the innocent,” especially in old cases when evidence has deteriorated and witnesses are no longer available.

The bill would also allow certain exceptions to the new evidence requirement. An individual would also qualify for relief if there was insufficient evidence to support their conviction, or if new evidence was available but the court reversed or vacated their conviction for other reasons.

Wolf Mueller, an attorney who said he represented at least 20 WICA claims, said the changes would make a big difference to a law he described as poorly written.

“If you shouldn’t have been tried in the first place, because there was insufficient existing evidence to convict you, then you should be compensated,” Mueller said. “You are just as much wrongfully convicted as somebody else who was lucky enough to find new evidence.”

At the committee hearing, Robyn Frankel, an assistant attorney general who directs the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit and heads the section responding to WICA claims, testified for the bill. The proposed changes, she said, would “remedy a number of difficulties that we were experiencing in the application of the law.”

For example, Frankel said, “removing the requirement that new evidence be the reason for the dismissal was prompted by our realization that more often than not, specific explanations are not provided at the time a case is dismissed.”

The bill would also make a number of other reforms. Among them: Pretrial detention would count as time spent wrongfully imprisoned, and people pardoned by the governor would be eligible to file a claim.

An analysis by the House Fiscal Agency said the bill would result in “an indeterminate, but likely marginal annual increase in claims and awards” for compensation. Average yearly compensation under WICA over the last four fiscal years has totaled about $9.8 million, it said.

Two weeks ago, the House Criminal Justice Committee voted to favorably report a substitute version of the bill, tweaking it to account for the pardon process. Eight members supported the recommendation, three opposed and two abstained.

Rep. Graham Filler, the committee’s minority vice chair, abstained after asking at the hearing about why there’d be a different standard of proof for a WICA claim than for a conviction.

To that, Marla Mitchell-Cichon, counsel to the Innocence Project at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, said the difference is that a WICA claim is not a criminal matter. A full House vote is anticipated in April or May, a legislative aide to Andrews said in an email.

As the bill moves forward, Andrews said in an interview with ProPublica that he hopes more colleagues sign on, including Republicans. Next step after the House would be the state Senate, which also is led by Democrats.

If the bill becomes law, wrongfully convicted people whose cases were overturned based on insufficient evidence would have an 18-month window to show they are eligible for compensation under the new reforms. However, people who were ineligible for reasons other than insufficient evidence would still not qualify, and people whose claims were already denied, or ended in settlements, would not be eligible to file again.

Nixon, on behalf of the Organization of Exonerees, is pushing for the bill to go still further. In a March 11 letter to the committee, he argued that past claimants should be allowed to benefit from the reforms. “Fairness requires that the positive changes to WICA benefit all exonerees, not just those with claims in the future,” he wrote. In 2022, Nixon received a settlement for less than he anticipated from WICA.

In the letter, Nixon also expressed concern that innocent people whose cases were overturned for reasons other than insufficient or new evidence — such as improper jury instruction or ineffective counsel — could still be excluded. And, he said, the compensation amount should be adjusted yearly for inflation, as the $50,000 allotted when WICA passed in 2016 is worth less in 2024. (Had the original amount kept up with inflation, it would now be about $64,700 per year.)

It’s important to get WICA right, Mueller said. The compensation “is not just life-changing from a monetary standpoint; it’s a dignity standpoint,” he said. “Somebody recognized that they had been wronged and wanted to make it right.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Anna Clark.

Janine Jackson interviewed the Repair Association’s Gay Gordon-Byrne about the right to repair for the March 15, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Dayton Daily News (2/15/24)

Janine Jackson: The president of the Ohio Farmers Union wrote an op-ed—I saw it in the Dayton Daily News—lamenting that “the needs and interests of family farmers have been ignored time after time by state and federal office holders.” A key complaint: manufacturers’ refusal to share the software needed to fix their products, forcing people to deal with a limited number of “authorized” shops, or to just throw away the broken thing and buy a new one.

Joe Logan wrote:

Frustrating enough for ordinary consumers, but for a farmer in the short window of harvest time, dealing with a breakdown of a half-million-dollar piece of equipment like a tractor or combine, it can be devastating.

Farmers versus faceless corporations—sounds like a ready-made storyline. So why don’t we hear it? Why is the right to repair controversial?

Gay Gordon-Byrne is executive director of the Repair Association, online at repair.org. She joins us now by phone from upstate New York. Welcome to CounterSpin, Gay Gordon-Byrne.

Gay Gordon-Byrne: Thank you very much for having me!

JJ: I think the right to repair is a keystone issue, affecting and reflecting a lot of other ideas, rights and relationships. But first, we’re talking with you now because the terrain is changing, in terms of the law around people’s ability to access the data and tools they need to fix, instead of replace, machines like tractors, like washing machines and, yes, like phones. The meaningful action seems to be at the state level. Can you bring us up to date on what’s happening legislatively, statewise?

Gothamist (12/29/23)

GG: Sure. We’ve been working with state legislatures since January of 2014, so we’ve now got a full 10 years under our belts. And over that time—I didn’t get a completely accurate count, because it does keep changing—we’ve actually been able to introduce bills in 48 out of 50 states, and over the years, that’s coming up to about 270+ pieces of legislation. So we’re pretty mature now, in terms of what we know needs to be done and can be done by states, and what that wording looks like.

So we’re pretty experienced at this point. We’ve had some good success lately. We got our first couple of bills through to the end and signed by the governor, starting in the end of 2022, in New York. Three more states—I think I could be miscounting, because my brain’s a little fried—but three more states in 2023, and we’ve got a bill in front of the governor in Oregon. So things are looking good.

JJ: So when you go in at a state legislative level, what do you concretely ask for? What is that language in the bills that you put forward?

GG: It’s actually pretty much consistent. There’s really only one active sentence, and it says that, “Hey, Mr. Manufacturer, if you want to do business in our state, you must provide all the same materials for purposes of repair that you’ve already created for your own repair services.” That’s pretty much it.

JJ: Right. So it means that you don’t have to only go to the Apple store to fix your Apple tech. But that, though, leads me to another question, which I know you’ve worked on, which is some companies are kind of saying they support this, but they have important compromises involved in their compliance.

GG: Yeah, some compliance is slightly malicious. And we keep trying, every time we file a new bill, we try to basically kick that malicious idea down, and make sure that the bills, as they go forward, are more and more explicit, and eliminate some of the loopholes that have been stuffed into bills, because legislators are really not necessarily technologists. We don’t expect them to be, but when a company like the big fruit company says, “Hey, I want to support right to repair in California,” they’re kind of helpless. They’ll take the support, and they’ll give away what they have to give away to get the bill done.

Verge (2/9/24)

JJ: So what does that malicious compliance look like? It’s a rhetorical support for the right to repair, but when it actually pans out, it doesn’t look like what you’re actually calling for.

GG: Yeah, the best example right now is what we call “parts pairing.” That’s been a problem all along, and we thought we had it nailed down in our template legislation, which we wrote back in 2015, that you can’t require specifically that you buy a part only from the manufacturer, and only new. And Apple got around it. They just said, “Well, we’re going to make sure that if you order a part from us, it’ll only work if you give us the serial number of your phone, and we preload that serial number into the part that we ship you, and that’ll work, but nothing else will.”

Which is really malicious, because it eliminates the ability to even use a part that might be brand new out of a phone that’s busted, and it eliminates the opportunity for a repair shop to stock any kind of inventory. It ruins the opportunity of restoring donated devices so that they can be reused, because who’s going to spend $300 to buy a brand-new part when the phone is only worth $200?

JJ: The right to fix things that we’ve bought and paid for—it shows up a kind of conflict between one narrative that Americans are told and tell ourselves, about Americans as scrappy, as individuals who rely on themselves, and then this other, different, unspelled-out story about how, no, you’re stupid, you’ll probably only hurt yourself; the only responsible thing to do is to pay the company whatever they want to charge you. And you know what, why don’t you just buy the latest version? Wouldn’t that be easier?

Not everyone can or wants to fix their own stuff, but the idea that, even though you bought it, you don’t ever really own it, it just seems like it should be a hard sell to people. So how did we get here?

Gay Gordon-Byrne: “States have the ability to simply say, ‘You can’t sell this stuff…and then unsell it using an unfair and deceptive contract.'”

GG: Companies have had basically a full generation, like 20 years, to perfect their marketing. And what they’re marketing to us is exactly what you said, that we’re too stupid to be able to fix our stuff, concurrently with the stuff that’s “too complicated to repair”—which is also baloney, because they create the repair materials that can be used by the least technologically expensive person to make repairs for them. We’re not paying people $300 an hour to repair cell phones. They’re getting paid 20 bucks, if that.

So the tools that are there are made to make repairs easy and efficient and less costly for the manufacturer, but we’ve been told we can’t do them. We’ve been told it’s too sophisticated, it’s too complicated.

And the emperor really has no clothes. And the fun part about doing this legislation is seeing the eyes light up when we talk with legislators, saying, this is actually not right. It’s not legal. There are supposed to be protections and antitrust law that prevent this behavior. But the Department of Justice has had about a 40- or 50-year hiatus on antitrust. It’s coming back, but it’s very, very cumbersome to go that way.

So the states have the ability to simply say, “You can’t sell this stuff, on the one hand, and then unsell it using an unfair and deceptive contract,” which is typically an end-user license agreement. Those agreements are of no value to anybody, except to remove your rights to fix your stuff.

JJ: Right, and they’re in the tiniest print you could ever imagine. And I just, finally, for anyone who’s missing it, this isn’t just a consumer rights failure, which is big enough, but it’s also an environmental disaster, to have industries based on buy it, throw it out, buy the new one. That’s a lose/lose.

GG: It’s pervasive. When we’ve taken a look at it and evaluated a lot of the contracts, we come to the conclusion that something more than 90% of the equipment on the market today literally cannot be repaired by anybody other than the manufacturer, if it’s repairable at all. And this is an environmental catastrophe. And it applies to everything that has a chip in it, which is now including toasters and blenders and coffee grinders, and all sorts of little stuff that, really, why do you have to throw it away? First of all, it’s made like garbage, but second of all, you can’t fix it.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association. They’re online at repair.org. Thank you so much, Gay Gordon-Byrne, for speaking with us today on CounterSpin.

GG: Oh, my pleasure. Anytime.

The post ‘They’re Marketing to Us That We’re Too Stupid to Fix Our Stuff’ <br></em><span class='not-on-index' style='color:#000000; font-size: 23px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 25px; font-family: 'Open Sans','sans-serif'; padding-bottom: -10px;'>CounterSpin interview with Gay Gordon-Byrne on right to repair appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Three decades ago, New York’s guardianship system was in desperate need of an overhaul.

Investigators had found that the legal arrangements, which were supposed to protect people who could not care for themselves, had actually deprived individuals of their rights and were poorly monitored, enabling guardians to abuse, neglect and defraud those under their care. In response, state lawmakers passed progressive legislation to codify wards’ civil liberties and safeguard their welfare.

But just five years into the new statute, known as Article 81 of the Mental Hygiene Law, the judges overseeing the system noticed it was insufficient to protect the “unbefriended,” those who have nobody else to help them and little or no money to their name. For them, the state relied on a patchwork system of loosely regulated nonprofits and private attorneys who take the cases pro bono. The setup, judges found, was straining to meet the crushing demand for services.

Charles Devlin, at the time a judge overseeing guardianship cases in Westchester County, traveled to the state capital to lobby for the members of this largely invisible constituency, who are often tucked away in nursing homes and other facilities, far from public view. Specifically, he advocated for the creation of a role of public guardian, a state-funded entity to care for New York’s most vulnerable.

The meetings didn’t go well. “New York state was not interested,” Devlin recalled in an interview. “They said, ‘Nope, sorry, goodbye.’”

In the years since, others have made similar trips, sounding alarms about New York’s overtaxed guardianship system, which now covers 28,600 people statewide — 60% of whom live in New York City. But state lawmakers have done little in response.

Today the system is in shambles, a ProPublica investigation published earlier this month found. There are not enough guardians to serve the needs of the “unbefriended,” nor are there enough overseers to check guardians’ work. And the quality of the care provided by the groups that do cater to this vulnerable population can be shockingly poor.

For example, the organization featured in the ProPublica report, New York Guardianship Services, placed one of its wards in a dilapidated, rat-infested Queens home for years, often without heat, taking $450 a month from her meager income as compensation while ignoring her complaints, according to interviews and internal records. She was one of about 400 wards who relied on the company to manage their financial and personal affairs. A company executive said he couldn’t answer questions about any specific ward, adding in a statement that NYGS is “accountable to the Court and our annual accounts and reports are scrutinized by Court appointed examiners and any issues would be addressed.” He also said our story was inaccurate but provided no details.

Experts say there are fixes policymakers can and should make to close the gap between Article 81’s promise and its practice. Here are six.

As Arthur Diamond, then the supervising guardianship judge in Nassau County, bluntly put it to lawmakers in 2018: “It’s very, very sad that the state of New York has not been able to find a way to take care of this population.”

Following the roundtable where Diamond spoke, the state Legislature awarded Nassau and Suffolk counties $250,000 each to run pilot programs to find guardians for those without the means to pay for them. But the funding wasn’t renewed, and the state has not established a dedicated financing stream to cover the costs of guardianships for thousands of poor New Yorkers. Meanwhile, two of the organizations in the small nonprofit network that serves as the backbone of the system abruptly shuttered due to financial hardship.

Guardianship Access New York, a coalition of nonprofits that’s seeking to improve guardianships, has proposed that the Legislature secure $15 million annually “in sustained funding that would comprehensively support guardianship services statewide.” Advocates say those guardians don’t have to be lawyers, as traditionally has been the case, and should include social workers and other specialists familiar with the needs of the elderly and infirm.

Others have argued for the creation and funding of a separate public entity tasked with serving wards who have little or no money and nobody else to look after them. Some states, including Illinois and Delaware, have such an office, though experts warn they’re no panacea and without proper support and oversight can fail wards as easily as any other guardian can.

Prior to a small bump in 2019, examiner pay hadn’t been increased in 14 years, resulting in thin ranks of reviewers to ensure proper oversight of guardians. Lawyers make just a few hundred dollars per case annually — a feeble payday that they say isn’t worth the effort.

A recent judicial guardianship task force report has recommended a pay raise for examiners so that the courts can recruit an adequate bench. Today New York City has only 157 examiners to monitor the care and finances of more than 17,000 wards.

Experts say the system needs more court clerks too. These workers play a key role in the oversight process, reviewing examiners’ reports before passing them up to judges, who ultimately sign off on the paperwork. But Diamond and others have said that deep budget cuts to the courts from more than a decade ago drastically reduced the ranks of these employees. More than 400 people — including clerks — were laid off following state budget cuts in 2011. This funding, they said, should be restored.

Finally, Diamond said, judges could be more proactive about monitoring case activity, scheduling regular compliance conferences so that guardians and examiners are forced to explain to the court what accounts for delays in completing their reports.

Though Article 81 requires guardians to file wards’ annual financial accounts by May of the following year, there is no such deadline for examiners. In practice, that means that accounts of wards can — and do — go years without any kind of examination. In the case we featured in our investigation, we found the ward’s file was missing reviews for four whole years, during which time she faced horrendous living conditions and the threat of eviction. The examiner did not respond to questions about the missing reports for that period.

Our review also found that examiners tend to focus almost exclusively on financial paperwork when determining the care and condition of wards. They rarely, if ever, see wards in person.

Experts say that requiring face-to-face check-ins can prevent guardians from hiding horrific situations and that judicial leaders tasked with appointing and overseeing examiners should require such visits. That’s what happens in Davidson County, Tennessee, which includes Nashville: Social services workers there visit wards, review their medical records and interview guardians and their doctors.

Only ten states nationwide require professional guardians to be certified by the Center for Guardianship Certification, the only national group of its kind. A handful of other states require guardians to be licensed by state agencies, in the same way as plumbers, barbers and other skilled professions.

New York requires neither. Under Article 81, prospective guardians need only take a daylong course to get certified.

Advocates say the state should mandate more stringent training. Guardians should also be required to take regular refresher courses, just as lawyers are, experts say.

Once certified, private guardians are required to attest that they haven’t been found to have violated any criminal, civil or professional rules. Nonprofits, however, undergo no such vetting. In fact, they are not even required to provide proof of their charitable status.

That’s a critical gap in oversight given the outsized role nonprofit organizations currently play in caring for the unbefriended.

In our investigation, we found that NYGS repeatedly represented itself as a nonprofit in its court filings and promotional material as it took on more and more cases. Yet authorities told us that the organization is not registered as a charity with the state attorney general’s office nor does it have tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service.

Sam Blau, NYGS’ chief financial officer, declined to answer questions about the company’s tax status, but said in a statement that “a large percentage of our cases are done completely Pro Bono,” which “is certainly in line with our mission to help people of minimal financial means.”

Policing the nonprofit sector is critical, experts say, especially since charitable organizations are exempt from court rules that cap the number of cases and the amount of compensation guardians can receive annually.

One of the key indicators of a failing guardianship system involves caseloads that are higher than a 20:1 ratio of wards to staffers, according to a recent report by the country’s premier guardianship researchers. Some states, like Colorado and Virginia, recommend such a cap. But New York offers no guidance.

At New York Guardianship Services, the group ProPublica featured in its report this month, the ward-to-staff ratio has topped 83:1. One worker who was responsible for dozens of wards every day said she quit after six months because she couldn’t keep up with the unrelenting needs of the company’s clients. NYGS did not respond to questions about its caseloads.

Caseload caps, experts say, would improve services and help states more easily identify potential guardianship abuse.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jake Pearson.

Terrell Starr of the essential Black Diplomats Podcast and Substack joins Andrea to roast Katie Britt and her antiChrist diamond cross and what it says about the GOP’s Christofascist war against our democracy. The conversation includes the history of white women like Britt enforcing the genocide of slavery, and Andrea and Terrell accidently calling Steve McQueen’s masterpiece film Seven Years a Slave! (Yes, we now recall it’s 12 Years a Slave!) Andrea shares the story of how she once went undercover as a self-hating Republican woman at a GOP fundraiser and almost got caught by being the only woman who dared to eat food! 

Our bonus this week, for subscribers at the Truth-teller level and higher, exposes the Kremlin Caucus and their financial backers. That episode will feature Olga Lautman and Monique Camarra of the Kremlin File podcast. To our supporters at the Democracy Defender level and higher, submit your questions for our upcoming Q&A! We always love hearing from you! Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you! 

Fight for your mind! To get inspired to make art and bring your projects across the finish line, join us for the Gaslit Nation LIVE Make Art Workshop on April 11 at 7pm EST – be sure to be subscribed at the Truth-teller level or higher to get your ticket to the event! 

Join the conversation with a community of listeners at Patreon.com/Gaslit and get bonus shows, all episodes ad free, submit questions to our regular Q&As, get exclusive invites to live events, and more! 

Check out our new merch! Get your “F*ck Putin” t-shirt or mug today! https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/57796740-f-ck-putin?store_id=3129329

Thank you to the sponsor of this week’s episode! Andrea got to try Factor, and now her listeners can, too, with this special deal! Head to FACTORMEALS.com/gaslit50 and use code “gaslit50” to get 50% off. That’s code “gaslit50” at FACTORMEALS.com/gaslit50 to get 50% off! 

Listen to and support the Black Diplomats Podcast: https://www.blackdiplomats.net/

Listen to and support the Black Diplomats Substack: https://terrellstarr.substack.com/about

Watch 20 Days in Mariupol (full documentary) | Academy Award® Winner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvAyykRvPBo

Why Haiti Collapsed: Demanding Reparations,and Ending Up in Exile

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-aristide-reparations-france.html

President Biden on hot mic says he needs a 'come to Jesus' meeting with Netanyahu

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/08/biden-hot-mic-moment-underscores-growing-frustration-with-netanyahu/72899225007/

Journalist catches Sen. Katie Britt in an 'out and out lie' in her State of Union response

https://www.rawstory.com/katie-britt-out-and-out-lie/

Pope Francis: questions remain over his role during Argentina's dictatorship

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/14/pope-francis-argentina-military-junta

With Haiti on the Brink of Collapse, a Reckoning for US Policy on Haiti

https://www.justsecurity.org/93193/with-haiti-on-the-brink-of-collapse-a-reckoning-for-us-policy-on-haiti/

Biden’s State of the Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq9vmRd67lc

Clip: Jonathan Glazer acceptance speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMc1khOqEFE 

Clip: Suge Knight at The Source Awards https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=QHg1JImJqIZ7xkB5&v=mv2OMXngkEs&feature=youtu.be

We didn’t end up including this clip in this week’s episode, but it’s worth watching: Katie Britt Appears on ‘Inside the Actors Studio’ in Edited Version of Her Scorned GOP Response https://www.thewrap.com/katie-britt-inside-the-actors-studio-video/

Pope Francis: questions remain over his role during Argentina's dictatorship

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/14/pope-francis-argentina-military-junta#:~:text=The%20Catholic%20church%20and%20Pope,evidence%20is%20sketchy%20and%20contested.

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

"There are people that are still digging through the rubble, for their loved ones, for their babies."

"Why is it urgent that we pass this resolution? Over 26,000 Palestinians now have been killed. The majority of them are women and children," said resolution sponsor Ald. Rossana Rodríguez Sanchez of the 33rd Ward, according to the Chicago Tribune. "There are people that are still digging through the rubble, for their loved ones, for their babies. Weeks of digging through the rubble."

Also sponsored by Ald. Daniel La Spata of the 1st Ward, the resolution calls for "a permanent cease-fire to end the ongoing violence in Gaza" as well as "humanitarian assistance including medicine, food, and water to be sent into the impacted region, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.

The measure—which will be sent to the Illinois congressional delegation and White House—also advocates for "plans to protect civilian population in the region in particular to support the needs of women, children, persons with disabilities, and the elderly."

Wednesday's 24-23 vote came after Johnson cleared the chambers due to disruptions during the debate over the symbolic resolution. The council previously planned to vote last week but was delayed after a request led by Ald. Debra Silverstein of the 50th Ward, the only Jewish member, related to an International Holocaust Remembrance Day resolution.

Observers interrupted Silverstein on Wednesday when she attempted to express her "disappointment and frustration" that the council was voting on what she called a "one-sided, lopsided resolution" rather than crafting one that "could have gained unanimous support."

As the Chicago Sun-Times reported:

As Silverstein spoke about the October 7 attack, a man in the audience yelled "Wadea was murdered because of your lies." The man then exited the council chambers on his own to applause and high-fives.

He was referring to Wadea Al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old boy who was stabbed to death in Plainfield a week after the Hamas attack. The boy's mother, who was wounded, had called 911 to say her landlord was attacking her. Police said they were targeted because of their Muslim faith.

The Tribune noted that "the final push to pass the resolution included an endorsement Monday from powerful unions like the Chicago Teachers Union and a widespread school walkout Tuesday that included cease-fire calls from hundreds of high school students. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who attended the start of the meeting, also threw his support behind the resolution."

The city's progressive mayor personally lobbied for the resolution and called for a cease-fire at a press conference last week.

In These Timesshared some remarks from the public comment period preceding the vote in Chicago on Wednesday:

Cease-fire advocate Marty Levine, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, said, "I do this because I believe it is what I, as a Jew, must do." He continued: "The lessons we are required to learn from the Holocaust are that it can never happen again and we can never allow it to happen again. 'Never again' is not for some people, it is for all. We are taught that to save one life is to save all of humanity."

40th Ward resident Jennifer Husbands said, "We have bore witness to the mass murder of Palestinians." Noting that a majority of likely voters and three-quarters of Democrats support a cease-fire, she argued that "our tax dollars are being used to carpet bomb Palestinians" rather than fund services like housing, education, and gun violence prevention. "As Tupac said, 'They got money for war but they can't feed the poor.'"

The United States gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid and since the war started, U.S. President Joe Biden has sought a new $14.3 billion package for the country while also bypassing congressional oversight to arm Israeli forces who have been accused of genocide in a South African-led case now before the International Court of Justice.

Reutersreported Wednesday that when asked for comment on Chicago's resolution, "the White House, which has said it is pressing Israel to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, referred to previous statements that a cease-fire would only benefit Hamas." Still, peace advocates welcomed the vote in the county with the country's largest Palestinian population.

"Today was a test for our city and we passed," declared CodePink co-director Danaka Katovich. "Our city took a stance firmly against genocide and in support of a cease-fire... This is just the start of what the movement for Palestine can accomplish together."

The Chicago arms of IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace said in a statement: "We are proud that Chicago City Council heeded the calls of Palestinians and over a thousand Chicago Jews to support the growing movement demanding an end to the genocide in Palestine. In the wake of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we affirm that never again means never again for anyone and will continue to organize until there is a cease-fire and the liberation of Palestinians."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

A group of senators are set to introduce legislation Tuesday that would make it illegal for landlords to use algorithms to artificially inflate the price of rent or reduce the supply of housing.

The proposed law follows a ProPublica investigation that found software sold by Texas-based RealPage was collecting proprietary data from landlords and feeding it into an algorithm that recommended what rents they should charge. Legal experts said the arrangement could help landlords engage in cartel-like behavior if they used it to coordinate pricing.

The software is widely used by competing landlords. In Seattle, for example, ProPublica found that 10 property managers oversaw 70% of all multifamily apartments in one neighborhood — and every single one used pricing software sold by RealPage.

“Setting prices with an algorithm is no different from doing it over cigars and whiskey in a private club,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., one of the leading sponsors of the new bill. “Although it’s my view that these cartels are already violating existing antitrust laws, I want the law to be painfully clear that algorithmic price fixing of rents is a crime.”

Lawyers for RealPage and other defendants have called the idea that the company and landlords formed a conspiracy “implausible.” In legal filings, they pointed to a company FAQ that said the recommendations from the software “may be followed, modified, or ignored by an apartment provider.”

After ProPublica’s investigation ran in 2022, tenants filed dozens of federal lawsuits against scores of the nation’s biggest landlords alleging violations of antitrust law. Congressional lawmakers called for an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which later backed the tenants’ lawsuits. At a Senate hearing in October 2023, a former federal prosecutor encouraged lawmakers to consider antitrust enforcement reforms to close gaps that have occurred as technology has evolved.

The bill set to be proposed Tuesday, sponsored by Democrats including Wyden, Peter Welch of Vermont and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, would make it illegal for property owners to contract with companies that coordinate rent prices and housing supply information. The legislation would also bar two or more rental owners from coordinating on such information. Mergers between two information-coordinating companies that reduced competition would also be banned.

A statement released by Wyden’s office called out RealPage and a second property management technology company, Yardi, by name.

“Companies like RealPage and Yardi brand themselves as providing ‘property management software,’ but in reality they facilitate collusion by landlords to charge above-market rent,” the statement said. “This is exactly how a price-fixing cartel operates, but instead of using code names and secret meetings, the price-fixing is offered as a service.”

Algorithms are helping housing providers collude in the midst of “a crisis of housing availability and affordability” in which rents have risen by double digits since 2020 and homelessness is up, according to the statement. It said the proposed law — dubbed the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act — would strengthen future legal cases, as well as prevent mergers that could push rents higher.

RealPage and Yardi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The tenant lawsuits have been consolidated in federal court in Nashville, Tennessee, into a case that involves nearly 50 large landlords. RealPage and the other defendants have said that the complaint doesn’t show direct evidence of a conspiracy, such as “smoking gun” documents or recorded phone calls. “In sum, Plaintiffs have not alleged a plausible horizontal price-fixing conspiracy,” their legal filing said.

RealPage and the other defendants sought to have the cases dismissed. The court in December agreed to allow the main case involving rental apartments to proceed, but dismissed a related complaint involving student housing.

Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said in a statement that if enacted the proposed law would “provide an important tool to stop predatory landlords from colluding with one another by using rent-setting software and algorithms to further inflate rents.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Heather Vogell.

Realizing that the old tricks— war hysteria, culture war distractions, and hypocritical twaddle about human rights, aren’t driving the flock back into the fold, American power is taking an authoritarian turn. In evidence is that two-plus centuries of ‘rights,’ to life and liberty, speech, and self-determination, are under attack. From the minute that speech, in the form of challenges to official power, was perceived to be a threat, it was censored, misrepresented, and / or silenced. Implied is that ‘rights’ were always considered a gift— that could be rescinded at their discretion, by our betters in the oligarchy.

Graph: mass incarceration presents a conundrum for American Liberals. The US imprisons a much larger percentage of its population than so-called ‘authoritarian’ nations. What is this high rate of imprisonment if not authoritarian? It has a particular explanation— Richard Nixon’s war on drugs launched mass incarceration. But Nixon’s goal was to repress his political opposition, not to solve a public health emergency. What logic then led Liberals Bill Clinton and Joe Biden to double down on Nixon’s political repression with their 1994 Crime Bill? Source: worldpopulationreview.com.

This seeming American obsession with ideology rather than coalition politics emerges from the detachment from actual governance that the demos in the US faces. Over the last half-century, the political parties have consolidated their control over the electoral system. Through onerous registration procedures that require substantial and well-funded campaign infrastructure to get past, the US has a de facto duopoly electoral system in which Party leaderships, in consultation with their donors, decide who the candidates will be. This is why widely despised candidates end up as the only available choices in American elections.

Assertions from abroad, and occasionally from within the US, that Americans are politically, legally, and morally culpable for US foreign policy ignore that the electoral system is structured to assure that we, the people, not only don’t have a say, but that Federal censorship and propaganda efforts mean that most Americans are only fed lies regarding US actions in the world. The internal ‘debate’ within the US consists of CNN talking points versus MSNBC talking points, meaning that they are all State Department / CIA talking points.

Reflected in this dearth of national candor is an uninformed arrogance amongst individualists and collectivists alike with respect to world affairs. ‘We’ have strong views regarding events that this same we have little to no control over. The US proxy war in Ukraine and the genocide currently underway in Gaza have been underway is less visible forms for decades. And the bi-partisan gerontocracy in Washington is doing what it has always done. It is lying to we, the people, regarding its service to capital in the form of the MIC (military-industrial complex).

Graph: anyone who follows US foreign policy will recognize the names on this ranking of proved oil reserves by nation. The US has been trying to control Venezuela militarily since the start of the 20^th century. Iran was a client state of the US until the Iranian Revolution (1979). It has been an enemy since. Iraq was substantially destroyed in George W. Bush’s misbegotten war begun in 2003. Russia is the object of the current US proxy war in Ukraine. And Libya was completely destroyed by Obama Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the early 2010s. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com.

The reigning ethos of Liberalism, enshrined in the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights, has long represented one of the only true ‘isms,’ or political belief systems, by having so few of its expressions or corollaries found naturally in the world. For instance, ‘individuals’ rarely prosper outside of human societies. But Liberalism is hegemonic in Gramsci’s sense of a governing ideology that is so entrenched that it is invisible to those who embody it. This latter point is what makes Liberalism so easy to use as a demagogic battering ram. Appealing to received wisdom, whether correct or not, is much less onerous than challenging it.

However, knowingly reinforcing dubious received wisdom is a recipe for social catastrophe, witness the current situation. By withholding true information while promoting false information regarding US foreign policy, the US is currently engaged in two potentially-world-ending conflicts with only moronic delusion to guide it. After killing or permanently maiming 400,000 Ukrainians from some grotesque, geostrategic, brain-fart, the political leadership in the US is supporting and funding a WWII-like genocide in Gaza. These are Liberalism’s facts in 2023.

From a Marxist perspective, Liberalism is the ethos of capitalism with individuals as its alleged heroes. In this way, challenges to Liberalism have been easy to portray as threats to individuals and ‘rights.’ Question: if rights are given, why must they be fought for? The Civil Rights movement in the US didn’t claim pre-existing ‘rights,’ it was a power struggle against repressive forces. Had these rights pre-existed (e.g. speech), the Federal government would have been the arbiter. Instead, people died and got their heads cracked when forcing both the Federal government and states to honor what were claimed to be rights.

An important difference between Liberalism and Marxist analysis with respect to ‘individuals’ centers on the social conditions necessary for self-realization, and not on individualism versus collectivism per se. Ironically, American Liberals are fine with employers telling people when to wake and when to sleep, where to go and what to do with their time, what to wear, the range of acceptable discourse, and which expressions of who we ‘really’ are are acceptable, and which aren’t. Why having an employer decide your life is ‘freedom,’ while having the Federal government do so is ‘authoritarian,’ isn’t precisely clear.

In the present, serial deception has divided the US into those who believe official lies and those who don’t. While much of this difference is Party partisans mindlessly believing whatever ‘their’ party puts forward, with it being changeable with their party’s fortunes, the widespread loathing of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump suggests underlying political currents that defy partisan explanations. It seems that the people who have benefitted economically from the established order and their ‘explainers’ in academia and the press by-and-large support the established order. Those on the outside, not so much.

American politics has long had a quasi-religious character through the distinction between what people believe and what they do, between faith and acts. So and so candidate believes what you believe, so you vote for them. But the electoral system— and with it ballot access, is controlled by the duopoly parties for the benefit of corporate executives and ‘investors.’ What the candidate believes has little bearing on how they legislate. For instance, Joe Biden ‘believes’ that the minimum wage should be higher. But he isn’t willing to favor the will of the people over the economic interests of his donors to raise it.

Along these lines, a recent editorial in the New York Times entitled ‘Why I am a Liberal,’ written by Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein, lays out a theoretical case for Liberalism, and in-so-doing, implies that the historical case is unsupportive by default. Despite having several centuries of history to draw from, Sunstein begins his piece with ‘this is what Liberals believe,’ signaling that he will define Liberalism aspirationally. Doing so is a good trick when it works. It keeps critics fantasizing in the realm of hypotheticals, and well away from the substance of history.

“Liberals believe in six things: freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, the rule of law and democracy. They believe not only in democracy, understood to require accountability to the people, but also in deliberative democracy, an approach that combines a commitment to reason giving in the public sphere with the commitment to accountability.” Cass Sunstein, New York Times.

In fact, few in the West would take issue with this list, most particularly ‘Left’ critics of Liberalism. That critique is 1) this is vague, virtue signaling, bullshit being used to cast the established order in a favorable light, not a political program, 2) that implies that a few simple reforms would align Liberal fantasies with the facts of actually existing capitalist democracy when over two hundred years of history have failed to do so, and 3) assumes no responsibility for the acts and policies of American Liberals who claim their actions are based in Liberal theory. A current favorite is the rehabilitation of Ukrainian Nazis by people who describe themselves as anti-fascists. What’s next, an ‘approved Nazis’ list?

The Times’ piece claims that Liberals value ‘freedom.’ The question then arises as to why the ‘free’ US has the largest proportion of its people in prison amongst peer, as well as ‘authoritarian,’ nations (chart above)? At least part of the answer lies with former US President Richard Nixon’s decision to launch the ‘war on drugs’ as a pretext for repressing domestic political opposition to his policies. That ‘Liberals’ Bill Clinton and Joe Biden followed Nixon’s political repression gambit with their 1994 Crime Bill illustrates the bi-partisan, and systematic, nature of domestic political repression.

For context, the US has about five times the proportion of its citizens in prison as ‘authoritarian’ China (chart above). It also holds multiples greater than Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. Through so-called plea bargains— which are legalized extortion in most cases, those who can’t afford full-blown legal representation are given a choice between extortionate jury trial sentences and fractional plea bargain sentences. This has turned US prisons into warehouses for those for whom capitalism can’t create enough jobs, aka ‘the poor.’

Americans are repeatedly told that serial military mal-adventures are intended to liberate oppressed people from malevolent tyrants. If so, with 195 nations in the world today, why are the same half-dozen or so nations with the largest proved oil reserves (chart above) the main targets of US regime-change operations? A half-dozen is roughly three percent of 195 nations. And if fossil fuel reserves attract tyrants, what does this say about the most fossil-fuel obsessed nation on the planet, the US? In fact, it is American imperial interests that motivate US foreign policy.

From a different angle, at fifty-eight pages, this list of US military operations finds many of the same states and political actors being invaded and re-invaded by the US over this history, with a notable focus on those resource rich nations that the US political leadership used to loudly proclaim (see Eisenhower’s comments at opening of film) hold resources important to American oligarchs and corporations. From Teddie Roosevelt through Joe Biden, ‘kick their ass and steal their gas’ has been the operating ethos of the US military.

Chart: through the US MIC (Military Industrial Complex), the rich benefit economically from wars that are generally fought by the not-rich. This bifurcation, where one group reaps the benefits while another pays the costs, goes far in explaining the otherwise lunatic militarism of the US since WWII ended. Notably, the US never ‘wins’ these wars, whatever winning a war might look like. They feature twenty years of bombing wedding parties and Mosques before troops are withdrawn to be redeployed to the next manufactured catastrophe. Source: CFR.org.

But it isn’t the likes of the PMC who ‘kick their ass,’ a grotesque metaphor for wildly homicidal militarism. Despite Mr. Sunstein being a few years older than yours truly, there is no record of his military service during the Vietnam War. In the self-serving parlance of American political discourse, Liberals value ‘freedom,’ but leave it up to ‘the little people’ to secure it. Never mind that US foreign policy has always been imperialist slaughter for the benefit of capital, American Liberals so lack historical knowledge that they recently deemed all inconvenient history ‘whataboutism.’

“Liberals connect their opposition to censorship to their commitment to free and fair elections, which cannot exist if people are unable to speak as they wish. They cherish the right to vote.” Cass Sunstein, New York Times.

Using language intended to assuage Liberal sensibilities rather than to engage in critical analysis, Mr. Sunstein is apparently unaware that Liberal institutions in the US have engaged in full-throated censorship of political discourse and created and distributed state propaganda for most of the last century. From Operation Mockingbird through Carl Bernstein’s too-carefully-worded expose of CIA media manipulation to the revelations of the ‘Twitter Files,’ major American institutions (CIA, FBI, DNC) have not only censored inconvenient political analysis for decades, they have lied about doing so, occasionally under oath.

Picture: before Ukraine’s Azov Battalion were ‘freedom fighters’ they were Nazis. They weren’t ‘far-Right’ and they certainly weren’t ‘Liberal’ in the sense offered up by the New York Times. And then in Orwellian ‘Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia’ fashion, Adolf Hitler loving, Holocaust denying,’ Nazis’ were the best friends of American Liberals. The criticism isn’t just hypocrisy. Left critics of Liberalism actually do not support Nazis, be they Ukrainians or the American Liberals who support them. Source: wsws.org.

The methods of skirting domestic restrictions on censorship and propaganda are twofold: first, by getting so-called private institutions— corporations and NGOs, to carry out acts that would be illegal if the CIA were conducting them directly. And secondly, through institutional alliances like the Five Eyes, whereby foreign intelligence services can carry out acts that would be illegal if done domestically. With MI6 (Brits) maintaining the relationship with Ukrainian Nazis for the CIA after WWII, the CIA could deny that it ‘worked with Nazis’ while it worked with Nazis.

This ’wink and nod’ that has long facilitated CIA propaganda inside the US has also been insinuated into the cultural belief system through popular entertainment. The myth of ‘Liberal’ Hollywood, even through militaristic twaddle like Top Gun and American Sniper, has turned self-described Liberals into willing propagandists much like Leni Riefenstahl was for the Third Reich. The myth of ‘good’ Nazis’ in Ukraine is a classic of the genre. Another is ‘just retribution,’ and another still is the exaggeration of US capabilities. For instance, pandemic films present intelligent and capable public health officials long after public health in the US had been abandoned.

With respect to ‘free and fair’ elections, by controlling ballot access, the duopoly parties control the choice of candidates. In the run-up to the 2016 election, the DNC not only openly cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination, it argued that it had no legal obligation to hold ‘free and fair’ Democratic Party primaries. This would mean one thing if the duopoly parties hadn’t spent decades creating the infrastructure needed to effectively exclude third parties from competing in US elections, and another given that they now have effective control of the electoral process.

The obvious push-back to rigged primaries is that primaries aren’t national elections. But again, duopoly party control over ballot access limits the range of political views / interests represented in ‘official’ politics to those favored by the power behind the duopoly parties. This is to write that while Donald Trump isn’t Joe Biden— they are separate and distinct people, they both represent the views and interests of the power behind the duopoly parties. Conversely, implied in the fact of duopoly party control of ballot access is that political decision making must not be left to the demos.

As the saying goes, ‘if voting changed anything, they would make it illegal.’ In fact, as the duopoly parties have learned, by constraining the choice of candidates through control of ballot access, the duopoly parties have maintained the illusion of democratic choice while assuring that doing so poses no danger to entrenched political and economic power. The result: voters have been fleeing the duopoly parties for three decades now. But with nowhere to go when it’s time to vote, widely detested establishment candidates continue to be the public face of this fake democracy.

His being a law professor suggests that Mr. Sunstein should know this history. And his being a law professor suggests that Mr. Sunstein shouldn’t know this history. By analogy, here The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal interviews a representative of CIA cutout NED (National Endowment for Democracy), Leslie Aun, who appears to know absolutely nothing about the agency she is defending. What Aun does do well is put up theoretical defenses of NED in place of defending its history. The point: theoretical defenses loaded with emotive drivel about ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are intended to hide their subjects, not to illuminate them.

Ironically, Liberal critiques of other purported ideologies such as Socialism and Communism tend to be based on divergences between theory and realized fact. Noam Chomsky’s Liberal critique of Lenin and the Russian Revolution amount to the complaint that actual history failed to comport with explanations of how Socialism should work in theory. While actual Socialists and Communists have long grappled with this distance between their political aspirations and the burden of history, the tendency of Western Liberals has been to restate their own moral superiority through what they believe, rather than how they act.

Why this matters, with a superficial irony alert, is that Socialist and Communist critiques of Liberalism tend towards its facts as the ethos of capitalism, and not a rejection of the concept of self-determination as Liberals generally claim. To pull these obvious but necessary abstractions together, much of the ‘Left’ quarrel with Liberalism is that it doesn’t do what its proponents claim that it does. If it did, Mr. Sunstein would be deferring to this supporting history. But actual American history looks almost nothing like what its Liberal apologists claim.

In terms of ‘principles,’ American Liberals invested tremendous energy into politically hobbling and then ousting Donald Trump, the man who unambiguously won an election in what they (Liberals) regularly proclaim to a free and fair electoral system. Where was the principle that Trump was the duly elected President of the United States to be found? Half the country voted for the guy. What of their ‘right’ to be represented by the person they voted for? While my take is that Trump is at least 10% as evil as Joe Biden, I’ve never voted for either of them. And I have no intention of doing so in the future. But the problem is the system, not the candidates.

Question: who spends four years denying the validity of an election because they don’t like the outcome? If the problem is the electoral system, that is what needs to be addressed. But the Liberal argument was / is that the system is fine. Likewise, the CIA and FBI don’t have standing to opine on domestic politics unless a ‘process’ charge that an election wasn’t on the up-and-up has been raised. But the only process charge that was raised regarding the 2016 election, Russiagate, was a fraud invented by the losing candidate to take the focus off of her venality, incompetence, and widespread unpopularity.

Luckily for readers, Hollywood has already provided comic relief with the (Klaus) Barbie Museum. In real life, Mr. Barbie (aka the ‘Butcher of Lyon’) lived out his post-WWII years as a ‘torture consultant’ to the CIA. His contributions included murder, torture, and managing local and regional Black Ops, including the murder of Che Guevara, for the CIA. This is a fact of Liberalism that its theorists choose not to explain. Why? Because there is no gain to be made from doing so. Spouting platitudes is easier, causes less consternation, and garners pats on the back from the War Crimes R Us crowd.

The post Elections Won’t Fix What Ails the West appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rob Urie.

This article was produced for Verite News by Richard A. Webster, who covered Jefferson Parish as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2021-22. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In September, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued a ruling that appeared to be a major blow to criminal justice reformers seeking to shrink the state’s bloated prison population.

The 4-3 ruling struck down a law that empowered prosecutors to revisit and reduce excessive sentences through post-conviction plea agreements with defense attorneys. The law, which passed the state Legislature unanimously in 2021 and had the backing of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, was meant to create a formal process to release prisoners serving decadeslong sentences, in many cases for relatively minor crimes, handed down under the state’s habitual offender, or “three strikes,” law.

Verite News and ProPublica recently featured the story of Markus Lanieux, who might have been helped by that law. Lanieux was convicted in 2009 of aggravated flight from an officer, a crime that typically carried a two-year sentence. But two previous drug felonies allowed the Jefferson Parish district attorney to try Lanieux as a habitual offender, which resulted in a sentence of life without parole. If Lanieux had been originally convicted under current habitual offender sentencing laws, the most he could have gotten was four years.

The Supreme Court’s ruling came as the result of a legal challenge filed last year by Louisiana’s conservative attorney general, Jeff Landry, who claimed the law encroached on and usurped the exclusive power of the governor to grant clemency or pardons. Landry intervened in the case of William Lee, whose life sentence had been reduced using the now-overturned law.

His legal challenge was seen as part of a growing backlash across the country against prosecutors who have pushed to end mass incarceration, and it caused many district attorneys in Louisiana to temporarily drop negotiations to reduce excessive sentences while the case was pending.

Immediately after the court announced its decision, Landry, who is running for governor on a tough-on-crime platform, hailed it as a victory for public safety.

“This unconstitutional legislation resulted in some rapists and murderers receiving ‘get out of jail free’ cards,” Landry said. “That recklessness ends now.”

In a dissenting opinion, state Supreme Court Chief Justice John Weimer criticized Landry’s challenge and warned that the majority’s decision could “have the disastrous effect of undermining, and further limiting, the post-conviction relief procedure that has operated to correct the evils of the past.”

“The post-conviction legislation at issue here was unanimously enacted by the legislature, the people’s representatives, and signed into law by the governor,” Weimer wrote. “Its obvious purpose is to insure justice is done and to act as a counter balance or check on the renegade practices and prejudices of the past.”

News of the ruling quickly spread throughout the state’s prisons, said attorney Nick Trenticosta, who argued on behalf of the law before the Supreme Court and visited several inmates at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel the following week.

“It’s on every prisoner’s mind,” he said. “My clients are now in distress.”

Trenticosta, however, was in the prison to tell them not to worry, that far from dealing a death blow to post-conviction resentencing efforts, the attorney general might have inadvertently given them new life.

In their decision, the justices said the new law was unconstitutional because it didn’t require prosecutors or judges to identify a specific legal problem with a prisoner’s sentence before granting relief. The ability to adjust a sentence without a specific legal basis, they said, amounted to an “act of grace,” like a pardon, which is considered the domain of the governor.

If the decision had stopped there, it could have been extremely damaging, Trenticosta said. But the justices went on to uphold the “absolute discretion” of prosecutors to provide such post-conviction relief, emphasizing it was the duty of prosecutors to “see that no innocent man suffers.”

According to Trenticosta, the decision affirmed, for the first time explicitly, the right of prosecutors and defense attorneys to cooperatively reach post-conviction deals. Three other defense attorneys with extensive experience in post-conviction deals generally agreed with Trenticosta’s analysis of the ruling’s language, though one of them was concerned about its real-world consequences.

Before the passage of the 2021 reform law, it was common practice for defense attorneys and prosecutors to meet informally to discuss the reduction of someone’s sentence. If both sides came to an agreement, they would take the plea deal to a judge to authorize, which avoided costly and timely litigation. There wasn’t, however, a court- or Legislature-approved structure to this process, which caused concern among some judges, Colin Reingold with a New Orleans-based criminal justice reform group called the Promise of Justice Initiative and three other defense attorneys told Verite News.

While one court where these deals happened frequently might have been comfortable authorizing them, others in places where such deals were rare might have balked. This resulted in an unequal administration of justice across the state, said the defense attorneys.

In its ruling, the court spelled out the eight grounds on which district attorneys could reduce someone’s sentence through post-conviction plea agreements. Some of those are fairly narrow, including whether the sentence amounted to double jeopardy or the requirement that DNA testing provides “clear and convincing evidence” of innocence. Others are more general and create a wider lane through which an attorney could argue for someone’s freedom, such as proof that “the conviction was obtained in violation of the constitution of the United States or the state of Louisiana.”

Importantly, the justices added, when defense attorneys assert one of those grounds in seeking a sentence reduction, prosecutors have no obligation to demand evidence.

“If a defendant seeks post-conviction relief pursuant to one of these grounds, a district attorney is not required by this decision to oppose the application.”

Jee Park, executive director of the Innocence Project New Orleans, said she worries that the ruling could create obstacles to negotiating lesser terms, possibly driving judges to demand more evidence than previously required to prove a reduction in sentence is legally necessary.

But she agreed that it wasn’t the end of post-conviction relief. “It’s not fine, but it will be OK,” Park said. “There are definitely still claims available to attack unjust and excessive sentences.”

For people like Lanieux, this comes as welcome news. Lanieux’s attorney, Amy Myers, was in negotiations with the Jefferson Parish district attorney to reduce his sentence under the now-overturned law when Landry filed his challenge. The district attorney, like many prosecutors across the state, temporarily halted those negotiations pending a decision.

Myers said the ruling reaffirmed arguments she had previously been making: that Lanieux’s sentence is unconstitutional because he had an ineffective lawyer, and that his sentence is cruel and unusual. Both are included in the eight grounds listed by the court.

“Markus has always had good legal issues,” Myers said. “If we have a district attorney who is willing to consider the merits of those legal issues, we can resolve Markus’ case.”

In an emailed statement, the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Lanieux, said it was “not inclined to further comment as to Mr. Lanieux’s case at this time.”

During his 14 years of incarceration, the Iberville Parish native lost his mother in 2020 to COVID-19 and his sister last year to unknown causes. And on Sept. 7, the day before the news organizations published a story on his life sentence, Lanieux’s son was found dead in his cell at the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport. Evidence relating to his death was inadvertently given to a funeral home, Verite News reported.

Lee, the prisoner whose case was the subject of Landry’s challenge, also maintains hope following the court’s decision, said his attorney, Trenticosta. When the Supreme Court ruled in the attorney general’s favor, St. Tammany Parish prosecutors reinstated Lee’s life sentence. Warren Montgomery, the district attorney for St. Tammany and Washington parishes, was not available to comment because of medical reasons, according to his office.

Despite the setback, Trenticosta expects to restart negotiations with the district attorney under the parameters established by the court. He said Lee’s case could fit under a number of them, including ineffective counsel, the unconstitutional withholding of evidence or a claim of innocence based on new evidence.

“Warren Montgomery believed that the new evidence shook the integrity of the conviction, and I don’t think anything has changed,” he said. “I fully predict that Mr. Lee will come home in the near future.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

The post How to Fix Our Food System appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Reynard Loki.

The move could be especially important for those island communities as climate change exacerbates coral bleaching, sea level rise, worsening storms, and other environmental threats that require federal support to address.

“The standards that work at a national level just often don’t make as much sense in each of the territories, and so there can be different impacts that are negative, even if well-intentioned,” said Neil Weare, co-founder of the organization Right to Democracy that advocates for the rights of people in U.S. territories. “Having some sensitivity to addressing those unique needs, I think will be better for the people in the territories, but also then better for the goal of environmental protection.” 

More than 3.5 million residents live in U.S. territories – Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands – but lack voting power either for president or for voting members of Congress. Each territory has a seat in the House of Representatives but can’t vote on legislation, and don’t have any voice or seat in the Senate. They’re also home to thousands of Indigenous peoples, such as Samoans and Carolinians. 

The bill also includes the independent Pacific nations of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands who rely on U.S. funding in exchange for lending their land, airspace and surrounding waters to the U.S. military. The Marshall Islands in particular are grappling with the effects of sea-level rise on low-lying atolls as well as the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing.

But a lack of awareness at the federal level about each territory and country’s unique history often leads to confusion, frustration and inconsistencies. H.R. 5001 aims to address that.

“The unique circumstances of the Marianas and other Insular Areas are too easily overlooked when federal agencies set national policies,” said Rep. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan from Northern Mariana Islands, who co-sponsored the measure, adding the bill would lead to better community input and communication. 

On Guam, the U.S. Marine Corps is building a new live-fire training range while the Biden administration has been pushing to expand a national marine monument in the Pacific despite concerns from local fisheries. Federal emergency officials have been grappling with the after-effects of major hurricanes and typhoons like Hurricane Maria and Super Typhoon Yutu, including currently Typhoon Mawar on Guam. 

Esther Kiaʻāina, former Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Insular Areas under the Obama administration, says H.R. 5001 is a good idea but thinks the new positions would need to be placed at a high level within each department to be effective.

She also thinks many of the problems could be avoided if the Office of Management and Budget were required to analyze all legislation for its impact on U.S. territories prior to the bills becoming law. Such analysis could have long-lasting impacts. In 1996, for example, migrants from the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau lost their access to programs like federal disaster aid after eligibility definitions were changed that inadvertently left them out. 

Weare from Right to Democracy said the conversation about the government’s role in the territories is particularly relevant this year, which marks 125 years since the U.S. acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and other territories through the Spanish-American War. 

“The United States needs to grapple with the reality that it has an undemocratic colonial framework governing 3.6 million people in the five U.S. territories,” he said. “So while this is a positive step forward, there really needs to be a recognition from the president, from Congress, that the United States has a colonial problem that is urgent to address.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Federal agencies often neglect U.S. territories. New legislation aims to fix that. on Aug 4, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.

The move could be especially important for those island communities as climate change exacerbates coral bleaching, sea level rise, worsening storms, and other environmental threats that require federal support to address.

“The standards that work at a national level just often don’t make as much sense in each of the territories, and so there can be different impacts that are negative, even if well-intentioned,” said Neil Weare, co-founder of the organization Right to Democracy that advocates for the rights of people in U.S. territories. “Having some sensitivity to addressing those unique needs, I think will be better for the people in the territories, but also then better for the goal of environmental protection.” 

More than 3.5 million residents live in U.S. territories – Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands – but lack voting power either for president or for voting members of Congress. Each territory has a seat in the House of Representatives but can’t vote on legislation, and don’t have any voice or seat in the Senate. They’re also home to thousands of Indigenous peoples, such as Samoans and Carolinians. 

The bill also includes the independent Pacific nations of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands who rely on U.S. funding in exchange for lending their land, airspace and surrounding waters to the U.S. military. The Marshall Islands in particular are grappling with the effects of sea-level rise on low-lying atolls as well as the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing.

But a lack of awareness at the federal level about each territory and country’s unique history often leads to confusion, frustration and inconsistencies. H.R. 5001 aims to address that.

“The unique circumstances of the Marianas and other Insular Areas are too easily overlooked when federal agencies set national policies,” said Rep. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan from Northern Mariana Islands, who co-sponsored the measure, adding the bill would lead to better community input and communication. 

On Guam, the U.S. Marine Corps is building a new live-fire training range while the Biden administration has been pushing to expand a national marine monument in the Pacific despite concerns from local fisheries. Federal emergency officials have been grappling with the after-effects of major hurricanes and typhoons like Hurricane Maria and Super Typhoon Yutu, including currently Typhoon Mawar on Guam. 

Esther Kiaʻāina, former Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Insular Areas under the Obama administration, says H.R. 5001 is a good idea but thinks the new positions would need to be placed at a high level within each department to be effective.

She also thinks many of the problems could be avoided if the Office of Management and Budget were required to analyze all legislation for its impact on U.S. territories prior to the bills becoming law. Such analysis could have long-lasting impacts. In 1996, for example, migrants from the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau lost their access to programs like federal disaster aid after eligibility definitions were changed that inadvertently left them out. 

Weare from Right to Democracy said the conversation about the government’s role in the territories is particularly relevant this year, which marks 125 years since the U.S. acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and other territories through the Spanish-American War. 

“The United States needs to grapple with the reality that it has an undemocratic colonial framework governing 3.6 million people in the five U.S. territories,” he said. “So while this is a positive step forward, there really needs to be a recognition from the president, from Congress, that the United States has a colonial problem that is urgent to address.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Federal agencies often neglect U.S. territories. New legislation aims to fix that. on Aug 4, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.

In reality, however, the market for these offsets is “riddled with fraud,” with offset projects too often failing to deliver their promised emission reductions. Common issues include nonpermanence, in which carbon removed from the atmosphere can’t be proven or expected to stay removed; nonadditionality, in which offsets don’t result in greater emission reductions than would have been expected without the offset project; and double-counting, in which the same offset is counted toward the emission reduction targets of two separate entities. Over the past couple of years, these problems have become so pervasive that they’re scaring buyers away: According to a BloombergNEF analysis, concerns around integrity and transparency were “the biggest reason” that demand for carbon credits contracted between 2021 and 2022, even as supply continued to grow.

To restore trust, many buyers, sellers, and brokers have looked to the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets, or ICVCM, an independent, nongovernmental oversight body. In the absence of supervision from countries or intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations, the widely-respected ICVCM is the closest thing to a regulator that the industry for voluntary carbon credits has. Since last year, the ICVCM has been working on a set of guidelines to create a “definitive global threshold standard for high-quality carbon credits,” with rules on everything from permanence to monitoring and consultation with Indigenous peoples, plus specifications for different types of carbon credits. It finalized the last parts of the guidelines last week and invited carbon crediting programs to apply for special labels showing their credits are compliant with the new criteria.

Now that the rules are out, however, it’s not clear that they go far enough to address the industry’s pervasive reliability issues. While some carbon registries and brokers have applauded them for setting up additional safeguards against double-counting and requiring more documentation on how offset projects advance sustainable development, the voluntary carbon markets’ problems run very deep, and, according to some, require a greater overhaul. Carbon Market Watch, a European nonprofit, said the ICVCM’s guidelines “provide a set of much needed incremental improvements, but fail to raise the quality of carbon credits sufficiently and leave too much wiggle room to truly tackle the climate crisis.”

Permanence, or whether a carbon credit represents long-lasting carbon sequestration, is likely the most contentious issue, especially for carbon offset projects based on biological systems, such as forests, soil, wetlands, and oceans. These types of nature-based projects can be highly risky, since unforeseen natural disasters or human activity — a wildfire, for example, or illegal logging — can wipe out their carbon-sequestering capabilities. While the ICVCM recognizes that there is a “material risk of reversal” for these activities — meaning there’s a chance the carbon they lock up could be released — they’re still allowed in the new framework, as long as carbon-crediting programs agree to monitor them for at least 40 years. If any of the sequestered carbon does get released in that timeframe, the credit issuer has to cancel the original credits and issue new ones drawn from a “buffer reserve.”

Carbon Market Watch says that’s not enough. It objects to the very idea that parking carbon in nonpermanent sinks like forests can balance out carbon emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels. “There is no scientific equivalence between the two,” said Gilles Dufrasne, Carbon Market Watch’s lead on global carbon markets. While fossil fuel-based carbon emissions last in the atmosphere for centuries to millennia, that’s just not the case with most biological systems, which can unexpectedly go up in flames or be destroyed by disease. Even if you monitor a project for 40 years, a reversal could still occur in year 41 — or 401, for that matter.

“The logic of offsetting itself when it comes to nature-based solutions is inadequate,” Dufrasne added. 

Given that nature-based solutions accounted for two-thirds of voluntary carbon markets’ transaction value in 2021, it would be a major change for the ICVCM to disallow them. Gabriel Labbate, a member of the core expert panel that advises other ICVCM committees on technical matters, acknowledged concerns about permanence but said the council’s new guidelines are just “a first step.” 

“This is not the last thing the ICVCM will do in regard to the permanence of nature-based solution credits,” he told Grist, adding that future iterations of the organization’s guidelines could increase the monitoring requirement to 100 years. He said the council’s rules were “sufficiently stringent and their stringency will improve over time.”

Carbon Market Watch also takes issue with wording in the guidelines that makes it unclear what kind of offsetting activities will be eligible for the ICVCM stamp of approval. At least six times throughout its new documents, the ICVCM says participating carbon crediting programs can follow their own rules for demonstrating additionality or quantifying the emission reduction from a given type of carbon credit, so long as they submit an “explanation” stating why their approach is as good as the ICVCM’s.

This doesn’t necessarily create a loophole for bogus offsets, but it could open the door to abuse. When programs submit an explanation to the ICVCM, “you get into the black box on who’s deciding whether the explanation is satisfactory or not,” Dufrasne said. “You get out of the more objective framework, which is kind of what the whole exercise has been about.”

Andrew Howard, senior director of climate policy and strategy for Verra, the voluntary carbon markets’ largest issuer of carbon credits, resisted that characterization. He said the open-endedness in the ICVCM’s guidelines reflect the “complexity” of voluntary carbon markets. “There are many roads” to a high-quality carbon credit, Howard said, and “by not locking down prescriptive methods of how accrediting programs work, the ICVCM is allowing space for new innovation to occur.”

The ICVCM agreed. Daniel Ortega-Pacheco, director of the sustainability consulting company Biochar and a co-chair of the ICVCM’s expert panel, said flexibility could help the ICVCM “learn from current practices in the market.” The explanations will still be subject to scrutiny from an independent body of experts, he told Grist, and are not intended to be a “free pass” for carbon credit issuers.

Over the next several years, the ICVCM is planning further updates to its guidelines for voluntary carbon markets, as conditions change and as new science comes out on offsets and their efficacy. The next iteration is due in 2025. Dufrasne said the council’s rulemaking efforts have “potential,” although he’d like to see regulators — actual government agencies, with enforcement power — step in to boost transparency, prevent fraud, and protect consumers from misleading claims and advertising. That may be beginning to happen in the U.S., where the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal regulator charged with ensuring the stability of the country’s derivatives markets, has recently demonstrated a heightened interest in fighting fraud in voluntary carbon markets. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Carbon offsets are ‘riddled with fraud.’ Can new voluntary guidelines fix that? on Aug 2, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

The post Term Limits Wouldn’t Fix the Supreme Court appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

The collapses of three large US banks (Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank) so far this year has certainly caught the attention of  Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. On June 29, Fed chair  said at a conference (without going into detail) that the failures “suggest a need to strengthen our supervision and regulation of institutions of the size of SVB.”

In reality, “supervision and regulation” — including the FDIC’s guarantee to make depositors whole should a bank fail — have proven themselves part of, not a solution to, the problem. As regulators jigger with the rules (and break those rules, as FDIC did in paying out more than the insured limits to SVB’s depositors),  creative bankers work the angles in what amounts to an outrageously large casino operation.

The problem is something called “fractional reserve banking.”

When you deposit, say, $100 in a bank, the understanding is that you can withdraw the full $100 at any time.

But your bank doesn’t stick the $100 in a vault so that that it can hand it back to you on demand. Under the Fed’s “capital requirement” rules, somewhere between 90% and 93% of that money (depending on the bank’s size) gets loaned out, invested in bonds, etc. so that the bank makes money from your money.

Suppose some of those investments go underwater — borrowers default, bond interest rates fall. Or maybe the investments just aren’t very liquid — they can be turned into ready cash, but not quickly.

Now suppose you show up at the bank to collect your $100, and all the bank’s other customers are there too, queuing up to close out their accounts (maybe all of you heard the bank wasn’t doing well).

There are a thousand of you standing in line, with an average balance of $100, to make a nice even $100,000 being withdrawn. This is called a “bank run.”

But the bank only has $10,000 on hand and can’t readily lay hands on the other $90,000 it owes all of you.

At some point, the bank closes its doors and goes bankrupt (or sells itself to an institution with deeper pockets for a fraction of its assets’ prospective value). The bank has failed.

Sure, the FDIC will give you your $100 back, taking it out of “insurance premiums” paid by all banks (which is to say, by all banks’ customers).

But what if instead of three banks, it’s 300 banks or even 3,000 banks. Things could get very bad very quickly. Widespread panic at least, and maybe even full-on economic collapse.

Instead of “capital requirement” rules and “insurance” schemes to make fractional reserve banking “work,” we need banks that keep 100% of their deposits on hand instead of loaning or investing those deposits, taking their profits in fees for processing checks and debit card transactions.

Six states already provide for the chartering of “100% reserve” banks, but the Fed is resistant to the idea. And no wonder — in this casino operation, they’re ultimately the house, which always wins. The banks are the gamblers … and they’re gambling with your money.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

The post Led by China and India: On the Global South Efforts to Fix the UN appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

Amid rising fears that Republican lawmakers could soon force a catastrophic U.S. default, Fix Our House on Wednesday released a report arguing that "Congress lacks the incentive structure necessary to responsibly handle crucial tasks like raising the debt limit."

The release comes between a pair of meetings at the White House. After sitting down with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday, President Joe Biden told reporters they plan to come together again on Friday.

Biden and congressional Democrats are calling for a clean bill and stressing that GOP lawmakers took action on the debt ceiling three times under former President Donald Trump. However, House Republicans continue to hold the global economy hostage, demanding massive spending cuts that would affect working families—as demonstrated by their recent passage of the so-called Limit, Save, Grow Act, which would increase the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024, whichever comes first.

Some fearful of a default—or even coming precariously close to one, given warnings that the deadline could be as soon as June 1—have pushed the president to take unilateral action, but Biden on Tuesday downplayed perhaps the most popular option: invoking part of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to keep paying the nation's bills.

"Just like in 2011 and 2013, Washington will hopefully find a way to avoid disaster. Whatever happens, one thing is certain: Brinkmanship and crises aren't random accidents in our democracy—they are inevitable outcomes of an electoral system that incentivizes and rewards them," states the report from Fix Our House, which advocates for proportional representation.

The report—Debt Limit Chicken: Why Washington Plays Games With Disaster—criticizes "the winner-take-all election rules that make performative conflict easy and compromise difficult" along with calling for the creation of "a more functional electoral system that would disincentivize Congress from playing death-defying stunts with the full faith and credit of the U.S."

"The overwhelming majority of congressional districts are not competitive between the two parties," the report explains.

Citing another recently released Fix Our House publication, the document details that "90% of House elections last fall were decided by a margin greater than five percentage points. About 83% had a margin greater than 10 points. Landslides are normal; the average margin of victory in 2022 was 27.7% for Democrats and 30.2% for Republicans."

Although both parties have been accused of gerrymandering, since Republicans won narrow control of the House in the wake of redistricting last November—leading to a 222-213 divide in the lower chamber—experts have highlighted how current political maps served the GOP, and may continue to do so if they are not challenged in court.

The new report includes a section dedicated to the "five families" of the fractured House GOP: the Republican Study Committee, Republican Main Street Caucus, Republican Governance Group, Freedom Caucus, and Problem Solvers Caucus.

"As with the rest of the House, the overwhelming majority of the members of the five families don't face competitive general elections," the publication points out. "The average margin of victory for the members of each major caucus was a blowout election."

"In uncompetitive districts, the potential to be primaried is a much greater concern than a general election challenge," Fix Our House Co-Founder Lee Drutman said in a statement Wednesday. "That motivates representatives to focus on pleasing their voting base and disincentivizes compromise for fear of appearing too weak on 'the enemy."

"This problem is unique to America's outmoded system of single-member districts," Drutman added, "and it's only getting worse as urban-rural polarization makes it even harder to draw competitive districts."

As the report puts it, "gerrymandering is a huge problem," but it is not the only barrier to having 435 competitive districts.

"Rural voters are increasingly trending more to the right, and urban voters more to the left," the document says. "Voters are increasingly moving to places that better reflect their ideology. Red areas are getting redder, and blue areas are getting bluer."

"Even if the most fair-minded saints were drawing our congressional district maps, we would still have mostly uncompetitive districts," the report stresses. "And within the current system that we use to elect Congress, nothing can be done about it."

The report also emphasizes that "winner-take-all single-winner districts are not inevitable, and they are not in the Constitution."

In fact, "the Constitution specifically empowers Congress with the ability to change how its elections work, something Congress has done many times," the publication continues, urging federal lawmakers to pursue proportional representation.

Used by 80% of the world's democracies, proportional representation "disincentivizes binary conflict and showmanship and instead incentivizes coalition-building and compromise," the report states.

As the document explains:

Put simply, proportional representation is a system where a political party's share of votes in an election determines how many seats it holds in the legislature. Instead of each district electing one representative, a state divides into larger regions that each elect several representatives. The size of Congress—435 members—can be increased, or it can remain the same.

In a proportional system, voters can support multiple candidates, and each party wins seats in proportion to its share of the votes cast. For instance, if a region elects three representatives and the vote is 65% for Republicans and 35% for Democrats, it would elect two Republicans and one Democrat.

The existing U.S. system incentivizes "the us-vs-them conflict at the heart of the debt limit issue," the report concludes. "Thanks to the ever-escalating doom loop of polarization and dysfunction, the problem is worse than ever and will only grow more intractable. If we want to address this systemic problem, we need to look at systemic solutions."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

CT Mirror (2/2/23)

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont proposed on February 2 to purchase and forgive roughly $2 billion in medical debt owed by state residents. Along with similar proposals in other jurisdictions, the plan offers desperately needed relief from stress and fear to thousands of people who are struggling to pay their current outstanding medical bills. Unfortunately, these programs will do nothing to prevent millions more Americans from falling into the country’s healthcare financial meat grinder.

Meanwhile, three major credit reporting agencies have decided to expunge paid-off medical debts and outstanding debt less than $500 from credit reports, and provide people a year’s grace period before adding new medical debt to credit reports.

Like the debt forgiveness proposals, these credit decisions follow a wave of national publicity about the horrors of healthcare debt. In recent years, major news outlets, including the New York Times (e.g., 11/8/19, 9/24/22), Guardian (6/27/19), ProPublica (e.g., 6/14/21), National Public Radio (13/21/22), Kaiser Health News (9/10/19, 12/21/22) and CBS (4/28/21) have dug into the nightmares faced by tens of millions of Americans—both uninsured and with insurance—as they try to pay for the treatments and medicines they need to lead healthy lives.

Compelling and consistent

This New York Times headline (11/8/19) could have just as easily run in 2003 as in 2019.

The stories are heartrending. Families’ lives wrecked financially by bill collectors and lawyers. Sick and injured patients’ health deteriorating due to mountains of debt and stress, with some providers even refusing follow up care until bills are paid. They highlight a set of corporate billing and collections policies and practices that turn a visit to a doctor or hospital into a years-long hell.

Such investigations touch on common themes, including hospitals suing patients en masse:

• “Ballad, which operates the only hospital in Wise County and 20 others in Virginia and Tennessee, filed more than 6,700 medical debt lawsuits against patients last year.” (New York Times, 11/8/19)
• “The hospital that pursued Mr. Bushman, a 295-bed not-for-profit facility called Carle Foundation Hospital, is one of several that has at times employed debt collection tactics that are shunned by many other creditors. It has filed hundreds of lawsuits.” (Wall Street Journal, 10/30/03)

Hospitals layering large interest payments on top of already crushing debt, and collecting through tactics like garnishing wages and seizing bank accounts:

• “Barrett, who has never made more than $12 an hour, doesn’t remember getting any notices to pay from the hospital. But…Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare sued her for the unpaid medical bills, plus attorney’s fees and court costs.
  “Since then, the nonprofit hospital system affiliated with the United Methodist Church has doggedly pursued her, adding interest to the debt seven times and garnishing money from her paycheck on 15 occasions.”Barrett, 63, now owes about $33,000, more than twice what she earned last year.” (Guardian, 6/27/19)
• “Tolson said she went to Yale-New Haven…to be treated for a staph infection. She had to stay at the hospital for eight days and got a bill for $9,000. She told the hospital she didn’t have a job or insurance and was told to seek welfare assistance. Because her husband had a small income, she didn’t qualify for state or federal assistance, she said.”She tried on several occasions to set up payment plans, but even with a job she wasn’t able to meet the payment schedule, she said. Her bank account was frozen, and when she called to discuss the problem the hospital’s agents were unwilling to budge on the issue, she claims.”‘I told them “I’m not working,” and they said “you should have thought about that then,”’ Tolson said. “Her bill is now $14,000.” (Connecticut Post, 12/17/03)

Hospitals threatening and taking patients’ homes through liens and foreclosures:

• “Heather Waldron and John Hawley are losing their four-bedroom house in the hills above Blacksburg, Va. A teenage daughter, one of their five children, sold her clothes for spending money. They worried about paying the electric bill. Financial disaster, they say, contributed to their divorce, finalized in April.”Their money problems began when the University of Virginia Health System pursued the couple with a lawsuit and a lien on their home to recoup $164,000 in charges for Waldron’s emergency surgery.” (KHN, 9/10/19)
• “Still, the hospital administers strong legal medicine for cases of minor financial wounds. It presses for foreclosure for debts a fraction of a house’s worth. It pursued a $2,889.12 debt against a couple in Westville all the way to foreclosure, by which time fees and interest pushed the debt to $6,517.64.” (New Haven Advocate, 4/17/03).

Nonprofit hospitals failing to offer patients charity care, sometimes in violation of state law or the hospital’s own internal charity care policies:

• “Harriet Haffner-Ratliffe, 20, gave birth to twins at a Providence hospital in Olympia, Wash…. She was eligible under state law for charity care.”Providence did not inform her. Instead it billed her almost $2,300. The hospital put her on a roughly $100-a-month payment plan.” (New York Times, 9/24/22)
• “The lawsuit also accused the hospital of failing to inform needy patients that the financial assistance was available and hiring aggressive collection agencies to go after patients who had not paid their bills.” (New Haven Register, 2/19/03)

Patients skipping care or having providers refuse care due to debt:

• “After a year of chemo and radiation…Penelope Wingard finally heard the news she’d been praying for: Her breast cancer was in remission. But with relief immediately came worry about her finances.”Wingard had received Medicaid coverage through a temporary program for breast cancer patients. When her treatment ended, she became uninsured.”Bills for follow-up appointments, blood tests and scans quickly piled up. Soon, her oncologist said he wouldn’t see her until she paid down the debt.” (KHN, 12/21/22)
• “During Michael’s past admissions to the hospital, Margaret says, she asked staff members if there was some way to discount or waive the charges—figuring that Christ Medical, a nonprofit institution sponsored by religious organizations, might be inclined to help. But the answer, she says, was always no. So, as the hospital bills piled up on the dining table, Margaret lay awake at night, wondering how the family would crawl out from under the debt. On that April morning, as Michael kept insisting that it was ‘just the flu,’ she suspected that it was something more serious. But Michael wouldn’t let her take him to the ER, and eventually Margaret headed to work. When she returned that night, she found him on the floor, dead.” (New York Times, 12/19/04)

The stories are compelling, consistent and comprehensive, exposing in detail the devastating consequences of a healthcare system that forces patients—some uninsured, others with inadequate health insurance—to assume unmanageable financial burdens for needed medical treatment. Based on analysis of large volumes of public records and interviews with dozens of victims, they include follow-up reporting on actions taken by hospitals in response to publicity, and legislative and legal actions in support of debtors. In short, everything good investigative journalism should be.

Except for one problem: The second example in each pair above is 20 years old.

An evergreen problem

The first examples are drawn from work by the New York Times, Guardian and Kaiser Health News (KHN, recently rebranded as KFF Health News), which recently teamed up with National Public Radio for a series called “Diagnosis: Debt.” Along with the 2019–20 “Profiting from the Poor” investigative series published jointly by ProPublica and MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, these stories are part of a wave of recent medical debt coverage.

Wall Street Journal (3/13/03)

The second quotes, indistinguishable in the suffering of the profiled patients and the issues addressed, are from 2003–04, including a Wall Street Journal series by reporter Lucette Lagnado (3/13/03, 3/17/03, 4/1/03, 6/10/03). Lagnado’s work began in Connecticut, where Paul Bass, editor of the weekly New Haven Advocate, had dug into court records to reveal aggressive legal practices by Yale-New Haven Hospital in 2001. Lagnado spent months tracking down debtors and examining the same public records that form the basis for the latter-day stories.

Then as now, follow-up stories show embarrassed individual hospital systems forgiving the debts of people named in the stories and many other current debtors, then usually promising to reduce the ferocity of their collection tactics (Wall Street Journal, 4/1/03; New Haven Register, 3/19/04; ProPublica, 7/30/19; KHN, 9/10/19; ProPublica, 9/24/19).

MLK50 (4/28/20)

Lagnado’s work in 2003 was recognized at the time by the Annenberg School of Journalism at USC as one of three finalists for the 2004 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting.

Sixteen years later, MLK50 founding editor Wendi C. Thomas won the Selden Ring Prize for her series jointly published with ProPublica. The two organizations shared a 2020 Loeb award for local reporting and a bronze medal from the Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Journalism, given by the Walter Cronkite School at Arizona State University. The same year, Kaiser Health News’ Jay Hancock and Elizabeth Lucas were Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative reporting for their healthcare debt work.

Medical debt, it turns out, is an evergreen problem, a perpetual source of torment for patients, prizes for reporters, and controversy over incremental, poll-tested policy changes that for two decades have failed to stem the flood tide of medical debt that is drowning millions of people. These gradualist approaches have, however, succeeded in deflecting attention from the only real solution to the problem—a national health insurance system like Medicare for All that would cover everyone, all the time, without holes in coverage that lead to catastrophic personal debt.

Community outrage

Quinton White (Wall Street Journal, 4/1/03)

Lagnado’s 2003 series appeared during campaigns against abusive medical debt collection in several states, including Illinois, California, Washington and Connecticut, where Lagnado’s initial iconic profile of Quinton White (Wall Street Journal, 3/13/03) chronicled his 20-year struggle with debt from his wife’s treatment at Bridgeport Hospital.

White suffered nearly all the indignities hospitals impose on indebted patients. By the time Lagnado found him, White had seen the hospital attach a lien to his house and drain most of his bank account. Interest ballooned the debt; White had paid $16,000 of the original $18,740 over the years, but the Yale New Haven Health System, which had acquired Bridgeport Hospital in 1996, was pursuing him for an additional $39,000 in remaining principal, interest and fees.

Prompted by community outrage at the tactics described by Lagnado, and in a series of reports from the nonprofit Connecticut Center for a New Economy (CCNE), local labor unions, a church-based grassroots movement, Yale University public interest lawyers and hospital patients built a campaign to take on Yale-New Haven and the statewide hospital industry.*

Four lawsuits, a series of demonstrations with hundreds of people, a grassroots lobbying campaign and ongoing media coverage yielded progress. The Connecticut General Assembly passed a law cutting interest on medical debt to 5% and requiring hospitals to inform patients of available financial assistance and to stop collections against eligible patients. The law limited billing of uninsured patients to the actual cost of their care, and required hospitals to report on their collection activity. Under intense local pressure, Yale-New Haven Health went further than the new state law, settling lawsuits by removing thousands of property liens and forgiving more than 20,000 accounts worth millions of dollars in outstanding debt.

The final lawsuit against Yale-New Haven was a class action focused on the practice of billing uninsured patients at wildly inflated “sticker prices”. Filed a year and a half after Lagnado’s first article, it was one of dozens brought against nonprofit hospital systems nationwide in 2004 by members of the Not-for-Profit Litigation Group, led by trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, one of the lead attorneys in the 1990s tobacco litigation. From the middle of 2004 through 2005, Scruggs’ firm drew blanket coverage across the US, with more than 200 local stories in more than 30 states, according to a search of the Nexis database.

Historical amnesia

New York Times (2/16/23): Medical debt “began emerging as a much more striking issue last year.”

However, by the spring of 2006, Scruggs’ suits had largely failed, and he would soon find himself in prison for bribing a judge in an unrelated case. With local hospitals agreeing to policy changes in Illinois and Connecticut, medical debt coverage shrank.

The issue didn’t go away, of course; it simply attracted less media attention. However, according to veteran New York Times healthcare reporter Reed Abelson (2/16/23), concern about medical debt appeared mysteriously in 2022: “The inability to afford medical tests and treatment, a perennial concern in the United States, began emerging as a much more striking issue last year.” Perhaps Abelson, who has covered healthcare since 2002, forgot Jonathan Cohn’s 5,000-word New York Times Magazine essay (12/19/04) from 2004, prompted in part by the Scruggs class action cases.

Telling the stories of millions of Americans whose lives have been ruined and even shortened by medical debt is an honorable exercise, and the spate of recent reporting does include a few new details. In particular, MLK50’s Wendi Thomas (6/27/19) interviewed judges who decide debt cases, giving readers a new level of detailed, often chilling insight into the attitudes of people who sometimes casually help attorneys for hospitals and collection agencies destroy patients’ families.

Judge Betty Thomas Moore ordered a woman whose 11-year-old nonverbal autistic son wears diapers and eats only pureed foods to pay $130 a month instead of $30. The judge reasoned that her son and his two older brothers “could sacrifice so that their mother could pay more.”

History of failure

Beyond painful details and inspiring victories, most articles that offer a broader frame for the issue are plagued by bad habits common to corporate journalism: historical amnesia, a bias for treating individuals as “consumers” with primary responsibility for their own problems, and ideological blinders.

NPR (4/14/22): “There’s still the issue of consumers being able to afford to pay for healthcare. “

As they have for 20 years, most policy-focused stories about medical debt lean heavily toward regulatory initiatives or legislative actions to take the sharp edges off of debt collection, or offer advice on how to avoid or manage medical debt (NPR, 4/14/22; KHN, 10/17/19; KRWG, 4/6/21). To the extent that wrap-up stories acknowledge the need for Americans to be covered by health insurance, reporters assume the only way forward is to build on the supposed successes of the Affordable Care Act through tiny increments of change. They treat Medicare for All, or any other credible scheme to cover all Americans with comprehensive health insurance, as an impossibility for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, regulating medical debt collection tactics has an easily documented history of failure as healthcare policy. The 2003 Connecticut law, described by Lagnado (6/10/03) as “a breakthrough patient-protection bill,” addressed several of the key issues highlighted in reporting on healthcare debt. Yet the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) reported that as of December 2020, 10% of Connecticut adults whose accounts the agency tracks had medical debt on their credit reports, with an average balance of $1,407 and a median of $508.

The CFPB acknowledges that its data significantly understates the scale of the issue, because a lot of medical debt either never appears on credit reports, or is reported as general credit card debt. An analysis of the CFPB data shows that an average of 14% of American credit reports have medical debt on them. The Kaiser Health News/NPR collaboration kicked off with the publication of a Kaiser Family Foundation poll showing that 41% of adults in the US, or 100 million Americans, have medical debt.

Burdened despite ‘breakthrough’

So despite “breakthrough” legislation and additional internal policy changes at the state’s largest health system, people in Connecticut remain so burdened with medical debt two decades after a “breakthrough” that public officials feel the need to publicize the problem and take action.

Meriden, Conn., Record Journal (12/10/22)

In December 2022, US Sen. Chris Murphy (D.-Conn.), who was the Senate co-chair of the state’s Public Health Committee when the 2003 law passed, held a listening session on medical debt to allow people to air their suffering. Two months later, Connecticut’s governor promised to spend public money to retire as much as $2 billion in residents’ debts.

Murphy and his Senate colleague Chris Van Hollen (D.–Md.) have introduced the Strengthening Consumer Protections and Medical Debt Transparency Act, to “protect consumers from medical debt.” Most of the proposal is lifted from 20-year-old laws in Connecticut and other states: capping interest at 5%, reporting on collection activity, determining the patient’s insurance status before collecting, requiring itemized bills. The bill would also give patients an additional six months after providers have determined their insurance and charity care eligibility before facing aggressive collections tactics.

Similar laws in other states simply have not stopped medical debt from gnawing at the economic security and health of millions of families. In the CFPB analysis, Connecticut has only the 16th lowest percentage of credit reports with medical debt. The report includes a table of states that have policies to require hospital charity care or restrain aggressive collection tactics. Some of those states are among those with the lowest percentage of indebted patients; others, like New Jersey, Illinois, Maine and New Mexico, are not. Of course, what does line up with low levels of medical debt is health insurance. The CFPB study (3/1/22) notes that “medical debt is also more common in the Southeastern and Southwestern US, in part because states in those regions did not expand Medicaid coverage.” Indeed, 29 of the 30 states with the lowest percentage of credit reports with medical debt have adopted some form of Medicaid expansion.

These laws do ease some existing patients’ terror and stress, by banning or reducing the use of horrifying tactics like wage garnishment, bank executions, foreclosure and even actual arrests for missing court dates. In the end, they don’t eliminate that stress, and won’t address the core failure of the US healthcare system to cover everyone with guaranteed health insurance.

Here’s a simple sentence you’ll rarely read in corporate media: The Affordable Care Act has failed. Its only measurable effect has been to shift a small percentage of the population from being uninsured to the ranks of the underinsured.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, when the ACA passed in 2010, 56% of American adults age 19–64 were covered for the entire year with insurance good enough not to consider them underinsured. In 2022, 57% of Americans were similarly covered. After 12 years, millions of column inches and endless television news hours, there is little discernible difference in the core protections available to Americans against illness, injury, early death and, yes, medical debt.

The Commonwealth Fund underestimates the scale of underinsurance: 32% of adults who were “insured all year, not underinsured” in 2022 reported problems getting access to healthcare because of cost. However, taking Commonwealth’s definitions at face value, at the current rate of progress, every single American adult can expect to be “insured all year, not underinsured” in about 515 years.

How to cope with the Kafkaesque

Fox Business (3/3/21) notes that its advice to medical debtors is “sponsored by Credible—which is majority owned by our parent, Fox Corporation.” Credible is a “leading consumer finance marketplace” that “delivers a differentiated and personalized experience that enables consumers to compare instant, accurate pre-qualified rates from multiple financial institutions.”

Not to worry. Major media outlets have us covered for the next five-plus centuries. Most US news sources, medical self-help websites, and even credit-reporting agencies Experian and Equifax have an article or two filled with advice for patients on fighting back against medical debt.

If medical debt has crimped your reading budget, look for former ProPublica reporter Marshall Allen’s Never Pay the First Bill: And Other Ways to Fight the Healthcare System and Win in your local public library. Or you can head over to his Allen Health Academy website, featuring a self-help curriculum called “The Never Pay Pathway.” For $3 a month, you get 16 videos on-demand, a certificate of completion and monthly newsletter. Coming soon, for $5 a month, you can get an app and a checklist for tracking your progress negotiating with your creditors, and for $7, companies get access to an employer-support forum, and workers who have debt (presumably because of the company’s lousy health insurance) can join a Facebook support group.

The guidance has changed little in two decades: Study your insurance plan if you have one, to understand your deductibles and copays. Review your bills for inaccuracies. If you’re uninsured, apply for Medicaid or other public insurance programs, and ask your hospital for financial help. Fight your insurer if they don’t pay what they’re supposed to. Negotiate your total hospital debt down, bargain a lower interest rate, and set up a payment plan that you can afford. If you get sued, show up in court, prepared with a proposed payment plan. And so on.

If it works, this is good advice. Most hospitals still bill uninsured patients at inflated prices. The vast majority of medical bills do contain errors. Patients frequently can negotiate to lower their total debt and interest rates dramatically and get on a payment plan. Hospitals do have charity care policies, however stingy or generous.

The limits of consumer empowerment

But consumer empowerment only goes so far. A study by Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer found that US adult workers already spend more than 13.7 million hours a week on the phone with their health insurance administrators. Some of that time is spent dealing with health insurance problems involving medical debt. However, most medical debt empowerment articles urge patients to research, review and negotiate discounted debt with hospitals, doctors and other providers.

KFF Health News (7/1/22): ” Do not expect this to be an easy process.”

So, to “get rid of medical debt—or avoid it in the first place,” according to the headline on a widely circulated story by NPR reporter Yuki Noguchi (KHN, 7/1/22), patients must expect to spend even more time on the phone, studying bills, reading laws, regulations and policies, writing letters and going to court. In a nation where people have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, it’s not clear when they are supposed to find the time to read (assuming they’re fluent in English), make phone calls, gather their personal information and trudge off to the hospital to prove they’re worthily poor enough not to deserve torture.

For the story, KHN and NPR “spoke with patients, consumer advocates, and researchers to glean their hard-won insights on how to avoid or manage medical debt.” Noguchi walked patients through the US healthcare nightmare step by step, from subscribing to an insurance plan through fending off collections lawyers, with empowering advice for each step.

In real life, patients often can’t shop for hospitals like groceries or a new appliance. Patients go where their doctors have admitting privileges, get treated in facilities that are in their insurance network, or wind up in whichever emergency room an ambulance takes them to. If, after shopping, their discounted bills still far exceed their ability to pay, then what? Without real wealth or a high income, uninsured and underinsured people have relatively few choices that actually protect them from healthcare debt.

Neither NPR nor any other outlet offers data on the efficacy of consumer empowerment as policy. If every single “consumer” dutifully followed every bit of advice, would the number of debtors shrink from 100 million to 10 million? 50 million? 95 million?

And when these tactics do “work,” it’s not clear how much help they provide. KFF’s own survey (6/16/22) found that half of American adults couldn’t pay a $500 medical expense right away, and 19% would never be able to pay it off. In the end, if you can’t afford $500, how valuable is bargaining a $30,000 debt down to $10,000?

Without comprehensive health insurance coverage, patients will wind up back in debt, or sicker and in more pain because they avoid care. MLK50’s Thomas (ProPublica, 6/27/19) framed her interviews with Memphis judges in part through the story of Raquel Nelson, who received treatment from the United Methodist Church-affiliated Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare system. Methodist’s lawsuit was Nelson’s third time as a medical debt defendant.

Limiting future torture

“Is Your Town Next?” the New York Times headline (12/29/22) gushes. But the subhead acknowledges it’s just “a short-term solution.”

This issue haunts reporting on what the New York Times (12/29/22) calls “a new strategy to address the high cost of healthcare.” RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit organization founded by former debt collections executives, is working with public and private institutions like churches, state and local governments, and even a local ABC affiliate, using their own money to purchase outstanding debt and retire it.

Most of this debt has already been written off as uncollectible by providers and sold to third party collectors, allowing RIP to buy it at a few cents on the dollar. In Connecticut, Governor Lamont proposes to give RIP Medical Debt $20 million in federal American Rescue Plan funds to retire up to $2 billion in debt.

Ohio State Rep. Michele Grim, quoted in the Times story as a Toledo city councilor who helped organize a partnership between the city and RIP Medical Debt to cancel medical debts, told FAIR in a Zoom interview:

This is the only country in the world that lets its citizens go bankrupt because of medical debt. States and locals see this as the simplest thing we can do, because we can’t fix our broken healthcare system.

Toledo internist John Ross, a Franklin County Board of Health commissioner and past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, strongly supports the Ohio initiative, but also noted that ARP funding is a one-off. Without continued sources of financing, many of the current debtors whose debt will be forgiven, and thousands of others who lack adequate health insurance, will soon be burdened again by debt: “The next wave of debt is building as we speak.”

RIP Medical Debt typically doesn’t buy debt until patients, providers and insurers have had a chance to pursue other sources of payment. That process usually takes about 18 months, according to RIP Medical Debt CEO Allison Sesso. Thus, at its very best, the Times “strategy to address high healthcare costs” boils down to this: If a local government scrapes together some money, and if your local hospital is willing to work with RIP medical debt, indebted patients may only need to spend 18 months struggling with medical bills—although once their current debts are paid, the next time they get sick, the cycle starts over. When the bar is low enough, even an unfunded possibility of limiting future torture to a year and a half looks like a victory.

RIP Medical Debt leaders understand the limitations of their model. In an email exchange with FAIR, CEO Allison Sesso wrote:

We know that RIP Medical Debt is not a holistic solution, but a stopgap that nonetheless provides a financial and emotional respite to our constituents. We understand both that debt relief matters to the individuals we help and that what we are doing is not fundamentally solving the problem.

Distorted landscape

New York Times (2/20/20): “It actually isn’t much of a surprise that nonprofit hospitals are often more profitable than for-profit hospitals.”

In reality, local residents have already paid these debts many times over. Nearly 60% of acute care hospitals in the US are private tax exempt “charitable” organizations, whose mission statements typically include a commitment to caring for the poor, sick and injured. The “mission” entitles them not to pay federal, state and local property, income or sales taxes.

In 2006, the Cook County assessor estimated that nonprofit hospitals owned between $4.3 and $4.5 billion worth of exempt commercial real estate in the county, representing up to $241 million in local property tax revenues, likely much higher today. Yet cash-strapped city governments are now spending public money to pay for debts incurred in these already heavily subsidized hospitals.

Speaking from personal experience, it’s hard to imagine a more gratifying reporting outcome than seeing a powerful hospital corporation forgive suffering patients’ debts, or announce changes in policies toward all patients who can’t afford care. In 2019, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and the president of the University of Virginia publicly committed to changing UVA Health’s policies, the day after KHN’s expose (9/10/19) on the hospital system’s lawsuits and collections tactics.

However, by ignoring the history of failed, narrowly targeted reforms; covering gimmicky strategies and pouring effort into the kind of consumer self-help that NGOs have been publishing how-to guides about for decades (e.g., Hospital Debt Justice Project, 2003); and indulging in ritual defenses of the Affordable Care Act, news organizations leave their audiences with distorted impressions of the policy landscape, undermining the power of their own high-impact reporting.

Giving politicians cover

Jennifer Bosco, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, told NPR (4/14/22):

Ultimately, I think the problem of medical debt isn’t going to go away unless at some point in our country’s future, we adopt some sort of single payer or Medicare-for-All system. But I think that’s very much a blue-sky idea at this point.

Apparently it’s a popular blue sky idea. In its story on RIP Medical Debt, the Times (12/29/22) noted that polling by Tulchin Research, the American Association of Political Consultants’ 2022 Democratic Pollster of the Year, found that “65% supported ‘Medicare for all’ and 68% supported expanding Medicaid.”

It will remain a blue-sky idea as long as media keep giving politicians cover with the idea that urgently addressing the incremental Next Bad Thing will make a difference. Three years ago, the bad thing du jour was “surprise billing.” Surprise bills happen when an empowered consumer carefully studies the rules of their health plan and goes to a hospital in their insurance network, but unknowingly gets treated by a doctor that isn’t in their network, then gets socked with a huge bill that their insurer doesn’t want to pay.

Consumer Reports (2/10/22)

KFF polled the issue and found that 65% of people were concerned about surprise bills. Surprise bills affect insurers as much as individuals, so Congress passed the No Surprises Act, spawning a round of updates to consumer empowerment websites, and warnings about how the Act didn’t quite get rid of all surprise bills.

People don’t get surprise medical bills because doctors are greedy, or because private equity firms bought some emergency physician practices, or because empowered consumers didn’t check their network carefully enough. Americans get surprise bills because they have insurance networks. They have to go to “in-network” providers because, unlike other wealthy nations, Americans don’t have a right to healthcare, providers don’t have an obligation to treat people who need it except in emergencies, and US healthcare prices are set in secret negotiations between powerful private actors.

Insurers, doctors and hospitals wield network membership and rates as weapons in a high-stakes battle over market power. For empowered consumers covered through their jobs, this means that every year during open enrollment—assuming their health plan is even still offered by their boss—they get to “choose” whether to keep it, by poring over long lists of doctors and hospitals to see if they can still avoid bankruptcy while visiting the people who have healed and comforted them for years.

They often can’t. In 2017, Morning Consult found that 15% of Americans had a doctor leave their network in just the previous 12 months, meaning they’d have to pay more—often much more—to continue their care with that doctor (Fierce Healthcare, 3/17/17).

The new Next Bad Thing

None of KHN/NPR ‘s takeaways (6/16/22) are new, or required a year to unearth.

Medical debt coverage now frames deductibles as the Next Bad Thing. NPR and KHN (6/16/22) gave readers of their Diagnosis Debt series “Five Quick Takeaways from a Yearlong Investigation of Medical Debt in America.” There really are only four takeaways, as the first two basically say it’s a big problem. Two others are that medical debt is hard to pay off, and that “debt and illness are linked.” The final takeaway glances off the core issue:

The KHN/NPR investigation finds that despite more people having health insurance—as a result of the Affordable Care Act—medical debt is pervasive. There is a reason: Over the past two decades, health insurers have shifted costs onto patients through higher deductibles, at the same time that the medical industry has steadily raised the prices of drugs, procedures and treatments. The 2010 healthcare law didn’t curb that.

Nothing in the five takeaways is new, or required a year to unearth. Deductibles have grown much faster than inflation over the past two decades, which KHN’s reporters presumably know, since the primary source for the information is KHN’s own parent organization, the annual employer surveys done by the Kaiser Family Foundation—as FAIR (9/8/17) reported six years ago . More than a third of American adults have been telling the Commonwealth Fund (2003–18, 2020, 2022) that they skipped or delayed needed medical care in the past year due to costs since Lucette Lagnado first knocked on Quenton White’s door in 2003.

By itself, limiting or eliminating deductibles is meaningless unless all of the tools for patient abuse are taken out of the industry’s hands. If deductibles are limited or disappear, patients can expect higher premiums, higher copays and heavier coinsurance. They will likely face even more intense shifts in their lists of “in-network” providers, as insurers try to wring profits from the market to make up for any minor losses.

Timid sources, compromised coverage

Bernie Sanders (KFF Health News, 2/8/23): “What I ultimately would like to accomplish is not going to happen right now.”

To some extent, corporate media debt reporting is constrained by its chosen sources. Democratic politicians don’t want to talk about universal coverage schemes; even Sen. Bernie Sanders says “we ain’t gonna get” Medicare for All (KHN, 2/8/23). NGOs like the National Consumer Law Center accept and repeat the “blue sky” expectation, even though Medicare for All and Medicaid expansion poll as well as limiting surprise bills, and very close to debt relief (KFF, 2/28/20; New York Times, 12/29/22).

The NGOs that track medical debt and related trends reflect the conventional wisdom of what is politically possible. The Kaiser Family Foundation is a respected agenda-setting organization. When the authors of KFF’s Issue Brief (11/3/22) headlined “Hospital Charity Care: How It Works and Why It Matters” get to “Looking Ahead” at policy options, they offer a parody of Washington policy wonkery, with ideas appearing passively out of the ether:

In the context of ongoing concerns about the affordability of hospital care and the growing burden of medical debt, several policy ideas have been floated at the federal and state level to strengthen hospital charity care programs.

Evidently whoever “floats” ideas in Washington—apparently not KFF—is under the impression that universal, comprehensive health insurance doesn’t apply as a solution to medical debt.

However, there are plenty of suggestions for encouraging or even requiring more hospital “charity.” The link-heavy two paragraphs include all the usual ideas, like reporting requirements and higher poverty thresholds for mandated charity care. There’s even a clever “floor and trade” suggestion, “where hospitals would be required to either provide a minimum amount of charity care or subsidize other hospitals that do so.”

The closest thing to actual solutions are vague hints:

State and federal policymakers have also considered several other options to reduce medical debt or increase affordability more generally, such as by expanding Medicaid in states that have not already done so, reducing healthcare prices through direct regulation or other means, and increasing consumer protections against medical debt.

Direct price regulation, a standard feature of national healthcare systems around the world, triggers furious industry opposition. If KFF can find such a politically controversial idea “floating” somewhere, why can’t an idea with 65% polling support, and 120 voting cosponsors in the US House of Representatives at the time the piece was written (H.R. 1976), float past the authors? Like so many other sources, KFF seems firmly committed to achieving universal coverage—sometime in the next five centuries.

Assumed political impotence

What if in addition to not suing their patients for debts, as ProPublica (6/30/19) suggests, nonprofit hospitals directed their efforts toward creating a healthcare system that covers everybody?

The most extraordinary aspects of the current wave of medical debt coverage are the assumed political impotence of the public, and the low expectations of reporters and NGO sources. Hospitals spend massive amounts of money lobbying against their own patients’ interests. When a major investigation is published, nonprofit systems are vulnerable, and NGOs and local community leaders can often shape the terms of the response.

An embarrassed Methodist Le Bonheur system in Memphis announced a 30-day review of its charity care policies, prompting a ProPublica/MLK50 article (6/30/19) headlined “Stop Suing Patients, Advocates Advise Memphis Nonprofit Hospital System”:

During the past month, MLK50 consulted with consumer advocates and legal experts around the country about how Methodist could reform its policies. For many, the top priority was to stop the lawsuits. Close behind, they said, was for the hospital to expand its financial assistance policy to include poor people who have health insurance but can’t afford their deductibles or co-pays.

Not a single quoted expert said anything like:

Of course they should stop suing people. But the very best thing Methodist Le Bonheur could do for its patients is withdraw from the American Hospital Association and spend what they were paying in dues to lobby for Medicare for All, or some other form of genuine national health insurance. Not only is it disgraceful that a supposed charitable hospital is suing patients and garnishing their wages, but they’re using money brutally extracted from impoverished patients to stop the government from guaranteeing those patients actual health insurance that would keep them out of debt forever.

Similarly, if just a small percentage of the 100 million Americans with medical debt emailed their most recent collections letter to their senators and representatives once a month, with the simple message “National health insurance now,” that’s millions of messages. It takes less time than suing your hospital, and would certainly get congressional attention—it might even crash congressional servers. Five minutes. Once a month. Yet the only advice given to readers is “empowerment” to negotiate on their own with a multi-billion dollar corporation.

A simple story

Americans pay much more for healthcare and yet die much sooner than citizens of other wealthy countries (Wikimedia Commons, 3/11/22).

One of the few reporters who took the time to look at the history of medical debt in the US is KHN’s Dan Weissmann, who runs the Arm and a Leg podcast. Weissmann did a multipart series on the history of medical debt, pegged to an interview with former attorney Dickie Scruggs. The series offers a good look at the history of medical debt campaigns, but again the framing is absurdly narrow. Weissmann introduces Scruggs as the lawyer “Who Helped Start the Fight for Charity Care,” as if hospital charity is a goal that listeners should be satisfied with.

In 2005, after local patients filed lawsuits against hospitals, the Bergen (New Jersey) Record editorial board (6/13/05) described the actual “fight”:

America’s healthcare system is broken. The only way to completely fix it is a single-payer system, one that would end the inequities that cause people like Mr. Osso to be charged three and four times the rates that insurance companies or Medicare and Medicaid are charged.

Two decades of failed reforms later, the idea of actually covering everyone in the US stimulates talk of a policy Long March in elite media. RIP Medical Debt CEO Allison Sesso told FAIR “that no one entity can change such a complex and opaque system as US healthcare…. RIP’s help is immediate—this matters because policy and systems change can take years.”

US health care may be nightmarishly complex for patients and the people who heal and comfort them, but US healthcare policy is quite simple. There are two “entities,” comprising exactly 536 people, who could eliminate current and future medical debt tomorrow. Functioning models all over the world cover the conditions described in the stories above without turning patients into debt peons, at a fraction of what is spent in the US. The people with the power to do it just refuse to. End of story.

*Disclosure: I was a source for reporting on debt in Connecticut. At the time, I was a researcher for the hospitality workers’ union now known as UNITE HERE, collaborating with staff of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). As noted in many stories, a member of our team, SEIU researcher Grace Rollins, researched and wrote the CCNE reports, and shared our materials with Lagnado and other reporters. I participated in planning for the rallies, and assisted with lobbying for the legislation that passed in 2003.

The post The Healthcare Long March: Why Exposing Evils of Medical Debt Doesn’t Fix the Problem appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by John Canham-Clyne.

In recent months, stories of rideshare drivers and delivery workers carjacked, robbed, or even killed on the job have made headlines around the country. Now, growing research shows that there is an all-out, racialized safety crisis in app-based work.

On May 1—May Day—Gig Workers Rising, PowerSwitch Action, and ACRE released new research that suggests the safety crisis among app workers—especially app workers of color—is escalating. The organizations found that in 2022, at least 31 app workers —77 percent of whom were people of color—were murdered while working. That’s more app workers murdered than we have been able to identify in any prior year. Last year, when Gig Workers Rising first raised the alarm about this crisis, they found that just over 50 app workers were murdered on the job over the five years prior. Now, after just one more year, the total is more than 80.

It’s heartbreaking, it’s unacceptable—and it can be fixed.

Murdered Behind the Wheel: An Escalating Crisis for App Drivers Published by Gig Workers Rising, PowerSwitch Action, and ACRE, May 1, 202

What makes app work so dangerous? App-based corporations like Uber and Lyft rely on a business model that shifts responsibility for safety on the job to drivers and pushes them into dangerous situations. Here’s how the model puts drivers at risk.

App worker pay is often low and unpredictable. In a 2022 national survey, 64 percent of respondents reported earning less than $15 per hour, and many drivers make less than minimum wage. To make ends meet, many workers rely on incentives, such as bonuses and surge pay, which require completing a specific number of rides or orders within a set timeframe, putting pressure on them to work at any cost.

Further, Uber and Lyft can “deactivate”—essentially terminate—workers for any reason, leaving them suddenly unemployed and without income, often without meaningful recourse. Recent surveys show that temporary and permanent deactivation are a regular occurrence for many app workers. This model fuels the pressure on workers to keep working even when they feel unsafe and not rock the boat with customers who could get them deactivated with a complaint.

This pressure to keep working, even when feeling unsafe, disproportionately affects drivers of color. In a recent national survey, 56 percent of drivers of color reported continuing a ride that made them feel unsafe because they were concerned an increased cancellation rate could lead to deactivation; 70 percent reported they had done the same out of concern that a negative customer review would lead to the same consequence. The sense of apprehension is justified, as 69 percent of drivers of color in a recent California survey reported experiencing some form of deactivation, and workers can be deactivated for low acceptance or high cancellation rates.

As the largest app corporation in the world, Uber has both a responsibility and an opportunity to make meaningful changes to address the safety crisis drivers face. Not only is the corporation not rising to the occasion, but in 2022 Uber paid CEO Dara Khosrowshahi more than $1 million and four other executives another $1.3 million for “safety improvements.” Uber did this even though the corporation failed to meet even its own narrow safety metrics, which did not encompass the broad range of widespread violence many drivers face.

The solutions to the safety crisis won’t be found in executive bonuses. Instead, Uber must address the risks created by low pay, unfair termination, and other elements of their model. And the company has the resources to do so, as it marked a record $31.8 billion in revenue in 2022—it just needs to find the will.

Drivers know what will keep them safe: fair pay, job security, and solidarity. On May 4, thousands of rideshare drivers across the country—in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, and New York—are coming together to take action to demand that Uber improve safety by ending unfair driver terminations and paying drivers fairly for their work. All Uber has to do is follow their lead.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Veronica Avila.

Typically, when consumer tech companies reach out to lawmakers concerning right-to-repair bills — which seek to make it easier for people to fix their devices, thus saving money and reducing electronic waste — it’s because they want them killed. Plenefisch, however, wanted the committee to know that Microsoft, which is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, was on board with this one, which had already passed the Washington House.

“I am writing to state Microsoft’s support for E2SHB 1392,” also known as the Fair Repair Act, Plenefisch wrote in an email to the committee. “This bill fairly balances the interests of manufacturers, customers, and independent repair shops and in doing so will provide more options for consumer device repair.”

The Fair Repair Act stalled out a week later due to opposition from all three Republicans on the committee and Senator Lisa Wellman, a Democrat and former Apple executive. (Apple frequently lobbies against right-to-repair bills, and during a hearing, Wellman defended the iPhone maker’s position that it is already doing enough on repair.) But despite the bill’s failure to launch this year, repair advocates say Microsoft’s support — a notable first for a major U.S. tech company — is bringing other manufacturers to the table to negotiate the details of other right-to-repair bills for the first time. 

“We are in the middle of more conversations with manufacturers being way more cooperative than before,” Nathan Proctor, who heads the U.S. Public Research Interest Group’s right-to-repair campaign, told Grist. “And I think Microsoft’s leadership and willingness to be first created that opportunity.”

Across a wide range of sectors, from consumer electronics to farm equipment, manufacturers attempt to monopolize repair of their devices by restricting access to spare parts, repair tools, and technical documentation. While manufacturers often claim that controlling the repair process limits cybersecurity and safety risks, they also financially benefit when consumers are forced to take their devices back to the manufacturer or upgrade due to limited repair options.

Right-to-repair bills would compel manufactures to make spare parts and information available to everyone. Proponents argue that making repair more accessible will allow consumers to use older products for longer, saving them money and reducing the environmental impact of technology, including both electronic waste and the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing new products. 

But despite dozens of state legislatures taking up right-to-repair bills in recent years, very few of those bills have passed due to staunch opposition from device makers and the trade associations representing them. New York state passed the first electronics right-to-repair law in the country last year, but before the governor signed it, tech lobbyists convinced her to water it down through a series of revisions.

Like other consumer tech giants, Microsoft has historically fought right-to-repair bills while restricting access to spare parts, tools, and repair documentation to its network of “authorized” repair partners. In 2019, the company even helped kill a repair bill in Washington state. But in recent years the company has started changing its tune on the issue. In 2021, following pressure from shareholders, Microsoft agreed to take steps to facilitate the repair of its devices — a first for a U.S. company. Microsoft followed through on the agreement by expanding access to spare parts and service tools, including through a partnership with the repair guide site iFixit. The tech giant also commissioned a study that found repairing Microsoft products instead of replacing them can dramatically reduce both waste and carbon emissions.

Microsoft has also started engaging more cooperatively with lawmakers over right-to-repair bills. In late 2021 and 2022, the company met with legislators in both Washington state and New York to discuss each state’s respective right-to-repair bill. In both cases, lawmakers and advocates involved in the bill negotiations described the meetings as productive. When the Washington state House introduced an electronics right-to-repair bill in January 2022, Microsoft’s official position on it was neutral — something that state representative and bill sponsor Mia Gregerson, a Democrat, called “a really big step forward” at a committee hearing. 

Despite Microsoft’s neutrality, last year’s right-to-repair bill failed to pass the House amid opposition from groups like the Consumer Technology Association, a trade association representing numerous electronics manufacturers. Later that year, though, the right-to-repair movement scored some big wins. In June 2022, Colorado’s governor signed the nation’s first right-to-repair law, focused on wheelchairs. The very next day, New York’s legislature passed the bill that would later become the nation’s first electronics right-to-repair law.

When Washington state lawmakers revived their right-to-repair bill for the 2023 legislative cycle, Microsoft once again came to the negotiating table. From state senator and bill sponsor Joe Nguyen’s perspective, Microsoft’s view was, “We see this coming, we’d rather be part of the conversation than outside. And we want to make sure it is done in a thoughtful way.”

Proctor, whose organization was also involved in negotiating the Washington state bill, said that Microsoft had a few specific requests, including that the bill require repair shops to possess a third-party technical certification and carry insurance. It was also important to Microsoft that the bill only cover products manufactured after the bill’s implementation date, and that manufacturers be required to provide the public only the same parts and documents that their authorized repair providers already receive. Some of the company’s requests, Proctor said, were “tough” for advocates to concede on. “But we did, because we thought what they were doing was in good faith.”

In early March, just before the Fair Repair Act was put to a vote in the House, Microsoft decided to support it. 

“Microsoft has consistently supported expanding safe, reliable, and sustainable options for consumer device repair,” Plenefisch told Grist in an emailed statement. “We have, in the past, opposed specific pieces of legislation that did not fairly balance the interests of manufacturers, customers, and independent repair shops in achieving this goal. HB 1392, as considered on the House floor, achieved this balance.”

While the bill cleared the House by a vote of 58 to 38, it faced an uphill battle in the Senate, where either Wellman or one of the bill’s Republican opponents on the Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee would have had to change their mind for the Fair Repair Act to move forward. Microsoft representatives held meetings with “several legislators,” Plenefisch said, “to urge support for HB 1392.” 

“That’s probably the first time any major company has been like, ‘This is not bad,’” Nguyen said. “It certainly helped shift the tone.”

Microsoft’s engagement appears to have shifted the tone beyond Washington state as well. As other manufacturers became aware that the company was sitting down with lawmakers and repair advocates, “they realized they couldn’t just ignore us,” Proctor said. His organization has since held meetings about proposed right-to-repair legislation in Minnesota with the Consumer Technology Association and TechNet, two large trade associations that frequently lobby against right-to-repair bills and rarely sit down with advocates. 

“A lot of conversations have been quite productive” around the Minnesota bill, Proctor said. TechNet declined to comment on negotiations regarding the Minnesota right-to-repair bill, or whether Microsoft’s support for a bill in Washington has impacted its engagement strategy. The Consumer Technology Association shared letters it sent to legislators outlining its reasons for opposing the bills in Washington state and Minnesota, but it also declined to comment on specific meetings or on Microsoft.

While Minnesota’s right-to-repair bill is still making its way through committees in the House and Senate, in Washington state, the Fair Repair Act’s opponents were ultimately unmoved by Microsoft’s support. Senator Drew MacEwen, one of the Republicans on the Energy, Environment, and Technology Committee who opposed the bill, said that Microsoft called his office to tell him the company supported the Fair Repair Act.

“I asked why after years of opposition, and they said it was based on customer feedback,” MacEwen told Grist. But that wasn’t enough to convince MacEwen, who sees device repairability as a “business choice,” to vote yes.

“Ultimately, I do believe there is a compromise path that can be reached but will take a lot more work,” MacEwen said.

Washington state representative and bill sponsor Mia Gregerson wonders if Microsoft could have had a greater impact by testifying publicly in support of the bill. While Gregerson credits the company with helping right to repair get further than ever in her state this year, Microsoft’s support was entirely behind the scenes. 

“They did a lot of meetings,” Gregerson said. “But if you’re going to be first in the nation on this, you’ve got to do more.”

Microsoft declined to say why it didn’t testify in support of the Fair Repair Act, or whether that was a mistake. The company also didn’t say whether it would support future iterations of the Washington state bill, or other state right-to-repair bills.

But it signaled to Grist that it might. And in doing so, Microsoft appears to have taken its next small step out of the shadows.

“We encourage all lawmakers considering right to repair legislation to look at HB 1392 as a model going forward due to its balanced approach,” Plenefisch said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Microsoft quietly supported legislation to make it easier to fix devices. Here’s why that’s a big deal. on Apr 28, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Maddie Stone.

U.S. Congressman Tim Burchett was accused of saying "the quiet part out loud" after the Tennessee Republican responded to the massacre in Nashville on Monday by arguing there's not much Congress can do to prevent mass shootings.

Speaking to reporters outside the U.S. Capitol Monday afternoon following the murder of three 9-year-old children and three staff at the Covenant School in Nashville, Burchett lamented the deaths and said "it's a horrible, horrible situation."

But "we're not gonna fix it," he added, referring to U.S. mass shootings. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have already been 130 such shootings this year.

"Criminals are gonna be criminals," Burchett continued. "My daddy fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said buddy... if somebody wants to take you out and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a heck of a lot you can do about it."

When asked if there is anything Congress can do to curb gun violence, Burchett replied: "I don't see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly... I don't think you're gonna stop the gun violence. I think we've got to change people's hearts."

"As a Christian, as we talk about in the church, and I've said this many times, I think we really need a revival in this country," he argued.

Asked what could be done "to protect people like your little girl," Burchett said, "Well, we homeschool her."

Burchett's nihilistic stance on gun violence stands in stark contrast to his ardent support for banning public drag shows—which Tennessee did, with a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee earlier this month.

"A grown man dressed up like a woman... dadgummit, we don't put up with that crap in Tennessee, and we shouldn't," Burchett said during an appearance on Newsmax earlier this month. "And the rest of the country should follow suit."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ decision to “reprioritise” future transport budgets — away from walking, cycling and public transport — in order to pay for Cyclone Gabrielle road reconstruction is short-sighted amid the climate crisis, says Greenpeace.

However, Hipkins told RNZ Morning Report today the decision to refocus transport spending would not compromise action on climate change.

“Robbing money from climate mitigation initiatives like walking and cycling, which reduce emissions, in order to fix up climate-related storm damage makes no sense,” said Greenpeace campaigner Christine Rose in a statement.

• READ MORE: Other NZ transport and climate reports

“This shouldn’t be an either-or situation. Yes, we need to get access back for cyclone-hit areas.

“But why would you finance that by cancelling plans for a transport system that cuts climate emissions that otherwise intensify the storms?”

Transport Minister Michael Wood had announced plans to prioritise climate change in the Government Policy Statement review, which sets the high level direction for spending over the next five years.

However, less than a day later, after Monday’s Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Hipkins stepped away from this commitment.

Transport pollution
Hipkins argued that the response to Cyclone Gabrielle required reprioritisation to repair bridges and roads rather than to support public transport, walking and cycling.

Transport is New Zealand’s second biggest climate polluter after the agriculture industry.

“Cyclone Gabrielle was a tragic reminder that the climate crisis is here,” Rose said.

“The government must pull all the stops to prevent storms like this from getting worse in future. And that means putting a brake on climate pollution.

“This is the time the government should instead be accelerating climate solutions like clean transport options. By distancing himself from [former Prime Minister] Jacinda Ardern’s commitment to climate change, Hipkins is aligning himself with reactionary pro-road lobbies.”

The Greenpeace statement said damage to roads, bridges and infrastructure showed how vulnerable the transport network was to climate change. Building more roads was not a long-term solution.

“It’s time to reinvent our transport system so it prioritises people and freight, not cars, and mitigates climate change as well as adapting to the new climate reality,” Rose said.

She said that if Hipkins claimed there was no money to pay for reconstruction — perhaps he should consider the fact that the biggest climate polluter, Fonterra — was paying nothing for its methane emissions.

“If the government doesn’t take the lead during the climate crisis, to allocate spending for climate solutions, then it’s the wrong government for our times.”

Emissions still in the mix, says Hipkins
RNZ News reports that Prime Minister Hipkins said the decision to refocus transport spending would not compromise action on climate change.

Hipkins said that while Cabinet had not considered a final transport policy statement yet, with weather having so much adverse impact on the country over the last month it was essential there needed to be “a weighting” on what the transport priorities needed to be.

He disagreed there was an irony to changing the policy at this time in response to weather disasters that were being blamed on climate change.

The government has hit the brakes on making emissions reductions its top transport priority, saying Cyclone Gabrielle has changed everything.

Under a policy to make emissions reduction the “overarching focus” of its next three-yearly transport plan, the government wanted to reallocate some of the money normally spent on road maintenance — that tallies nearly $2 billion a year — towards bus and bike lanes.

But now the focus has switched to an emergency style plan to repair roads devastated in Cyclone Gabrielle and other recent storms.

Both National and the Greens have criticised the government’s reversal.

National has called it a “chaotic backpedal” while the Green Party has urged the government not to defer climate change spending.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

This story discusses sexual assault.

Ninety-four women whose sexual abuse lawsuit against a Utah OB-GYN was thrown out of court last year are celebrating a victory this month. But it’s a victory tinged with irony.

Last week, the Utah Legislature passed a bill that will — if signed by Gov. Spencer Cox — put their rallying cry into law: Sexual assault is not health care.

The change, however, will not help the women, whose case was dismissed because Utah judges and appellate courts have interpreted the state’s current law to mean sexual assaults by health care providers are considered part of medical treatment. That meant their allegations had to be filed under the more restrictive rules of the state medical malpractice act.

The new law would reform medical malpractice law to exclude sexual assault. It would not be retroactive, which leaves the women hoping that the Utah Supreme Court will reverse the dismissal of their case on appeal.

Still, Brooke, one of the women suing the OB-GYN, Dr. David Broadbent, said it felt like a victory that their case will change how future victims will be treated if they decide to sue their abuser in court. Brooke is using only her first name to protect her privacy.

“It just felt like we were really a part of this,” Brooke said. “I’m so glad that the legislative side of the law corrected this huge problem, fixing that gap in our legal system that 94 women essentially fell through. We’ll fill it in for future people in this situation.”

The bill’s passage follows a recent investigation by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica, which detailed how survivors who had been sexually abused by health care workers were treated more harshly in Utah’s civil courts than those harmed in other settings. Their cases had to be filed within two years, and they faced a $450,000 cap on damages for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases. Both those restrictions are now likely to be lifted, and those who allege sexual assault in medical settings have the same legal standing as those who allege abuse in other settings: no damages cap and a four-year filing deadline.

Limits on medical malpractice awards are routine around the country, initially in response to concerns — largely driven by insurance companies — that the cost of health care was rising in the 1970s because of frivolous lawsuits and “runaway juries” doling out multimillion-dollar payouts. But Utah’s insistence that victims of intentional assaults like sexual abuse face the same caps is far less common.

The women who sued Broadbent alleged that he inappropriately touched their breasts, vaginas and rectums, hurting them, without warning or explanation. Some said he used his bare hand, instead of a speculum or gloves, during exams; one woman alleged that she saw he had an erection while he was touching her. His actions were not medically necessary, the women allege, and were instead “performed for no other reason than his own sexual gratification.”

The OB-GYN’s attorney, Chris Nelson, has said they believe the allegations against Broadbent are without merit. He declined to comment further, saying they will present their case in court.

The new law doesn’t open an avenue for these women to refile their case. Their hope remains with the Utah Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear their appeal of District Judge Robert Lunnen’s ruling dismissing their case.

In arguing for the new law in the House, bill co-sponsor Rep. Nelson Abbott said the shorter, two-year filing deadline for medical malpractice can be particularly difficult for those who have been sexually assaulted. An abuser may try to assure them that the inappropriate behavior was part of a medical treatment, he explained, and it can take time for the victim to understand they were sexually assaulted.

“I think we can all agree that sexual abuse is not health care,” Abbott said on the House floor. “To create extra burdens or difficulties is really not fair to the patient. I think that’s why we’re carving out those exceptions to try to help those patients in those difficult situations.”

Fixing the law was particularly urgent in Utah because of the broad way its medical malpractice law is written and how it has been interpreted by judges, said state Sen. Mike McKell, who co-sponsored the bill.

Any acts “arising” out of health care are considered part of a practitioner’s treatment under Utah law, which means any related claims must be filed under the medical malpractice act. Judges and appellate courts have ruled, for example, that a teenage boy was receiving health care when he broke his leg while hiking in a wilderness therapy program, as was a woman who was allegedly groped during a chiropractic exam.

Both of those plaintiffs’ lawsuits were dismissed because they were not filed as medical malpractice claims.

McKell said he thinks Utah judges have interpreted the malpractice act incorrectly.

“We need to be careful when we draft legislation. Words like ‘arises out of’ create a broad interpretation,” he said. “I think it's tragic the way it happened.”

Patients sexually assaulted by health care providers face different challenges in other states. In Wisconsin, for example, an appellate court ruled that a physician groping a patient and having an erection was not medical malpractice. But there, the distinction hurt the victim’s case, because Wisconsin’s filing deadline for medical malpractice is longer than an intentional injury lawsuit. She lost her ability to sue.

Utah’s bill sailed through the state Legislature with little opposition. It received a unanimous vote in the Senate and only three nay votes in the House. The legislation had the support of the Utah Medical Association, which lobbies on behalf of state physicians, as well as an association of trial lawyers called the Utah Association for Justice.

Beau Burbidge, with the Utah Association of Justice, said he believed the legal challenges these women faced was an unintended consequence when the medical malpractice law was put into place decades ago.

“Nobody contemplated that a health care provider who sexually assaults a patient should be protected in some way by that act,” he said during a committee hearing. “The act is meant to protect health care providers providing good-for-the-community health care. Not rape. Not sexual assault.”

Broadbent’s accusers filed their lawsuit last year after one former patient, Stephanie Mateer, spoke out publicly about feeling violated during an examination more than a decade prior. She said Thursday that she “couldn’t be happier” that legislators took action in response to their lawsuit’s dismissal. The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not identify alleged sexual assault victims, but Mateer agreed to the use of her name.

“When I first spoke out about what happened to me, I had no idea that it would have such a massive and far-reaching impact,” Mateer said. “I never imagined that it would lead to the passing of this law, which increases the rights and safety of everyone receiving medical care in the state of Utah.”

Brooke said she and the other women knew that the law change wouldn’t benefit them personally, but they wanted to advocate for it in hopes it could help prevent future abuse.

“It’s not about taking anyone down. It’s not about trying to win settlements,” she said. “It’s about trying to right a wrong that happened, whether that’s changing the law or through getting our justice in the courtroom. But that’s the goal that everyone is seeking.”

Although he recognized that the plaintiffs suing Broadbent wouldn’t benefit from the new law, McKell, the Senate sponsor, said he did not write the bill to be retroactive because he worried the law could be found unconstitutional if it allowed older cases to be reopened.

The Utah Supreme Court in 2020 struck down a similar law that reopened a window of time where survivors of childhood sexual abuse could sue their abuser in civil court. Those victims previously had until they were 22 years old to sue.

The law, passed in 2016, was a recognition by state lawmakers that childhood sexual assault has long-lasting effects on victims and that it could take decades of healing before someone is ready to sue their abuser. But Utah's high court found it unconstitutional, saying that a filing deadline, called a statute of limitations, was a “vested right” of a defendant that state legislators could not take away.

The 94 women who sued Broadbent are now hoping that the Utah Supreme Court will reverse Lunnen’s ruling and allow them to continue their lawsuit against Broadbent and two hospitals where he had delivered babies and where some of the women say they were abused.

Adam Sorenson, the women’s attorney, argued in an appeal filed Thursday that Utah’s existing medical malpractice law was “not meant to advantage sexual predators hiding under white coats and specialty titles.”

“To think this is even a question, that is an issue being heavily debated, is shocking,” he wrote.

Sorenson further argued that medical malpractice insurance policies often expressly exclude acts like sexual assault from its coverage, noting that Broadbent’s insurance carrier has also filed a lawsuit asking a judge to declare that his alleged actions are not covered by their insurance policy. It’s “nonsensical,” he wrote, to apply medical malpractice limitations to his clients simply because their alleged abuser is a health care provider.

Attorneys for Broadbent and the hospitals being sued now have a month to file their response. Sorenson estimates a Supreme Court decision won’t come until late fall.

Brooke said she lost hope in the legal system after the judge dismissed their case. Seeing the Legislature’s swift and nearly unanimous support to change the law because of their lawsuit has renewed her hope that the Utah Supreme Court will also take action and let their case move forward.

“I just never thought it would be questioned,” she said. “I never thought this would ever be the situation when I signed the paperwork and decided that this was something that I felt strongly that I needed to be involved in.”

Help ProPublica and The Salt Lake Tribune Investigate Sexual Assault in Utah

If you need to report or discuss a sexual assault in Utah, you can call the Rape and Sexual Assault Crisis Line at 801-736-4356. Those who live outside of Utah can reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673.

Mollie Simon of ProPublica contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Linda Benesch.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Allen Kiconco, Wendy Asquith, Alex Balch.

The rejections were rare for the industry — in the case of the Pebble Mine, it was the first time that the Clean Water Act was used to stop a hardrock mine. While tribes and environmental organizations welcomed the news, mining companies and their allies in Congress criticized the Biden administration for standing in the way of its own clean energy goals. 

Metals like copper, nickel, and lithium are all used in electric vehicle batteries as well as for wind and solar energy storage; as such, they’ve been dubbed “critical” to getting the United States off fossil fuels. The landmark Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed into law last summer aims to bolster domestic production of these minerals, with billions for mine development and tax credits for cars that use materials mined in the United States (or supplies from free-trade agreement partners). At the moment, there’s only one lithium mine in the country. 

“If Democrats were serious about developing renewable energy sources and breaking China’s stranglehold on the global market, they would be flinging open the doors to responsible mineral development here in the U.S.,” said Bruce Westerman, a Republican representative from Arkansas and the new chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, in a statement following the news about Boundary Waters.

Metals mining is the country’s largest source of toxic waste. But there are ways to get more of these critical metals that would minimize the damage to ecosystems and local communities. The problem, according to experts, is that the country’s outdated mining laws are blocking the path forward. 

Mining in the U.S. is largely governed by a Gold Rush-era law that hasn’t been significantly changed since Ulysses S. Grant was president; it includes no guidelines on tribal consultation, reclamation, or environmental protection. And it covers more than 90 percent of hardrock mines in the country. Environmental groups say the law makes it too easy for mining companies to pursue projects in places that put people and the environment most at risk.  

“You put a stake in the ground, go to the local Bureau of Land Management office, and file a fee and some paperwork,” said Aaron Mintzes, senior policy counsel for Earthworks, a nonprofit focused on preventing the destructive impacts of extraction. “As long as you discover minerals there, you have a valid mine play.” 

Unlike with oil and gas drilling and coal mining, hardrock mining on public lands doesn’t require companies to secure a lease from the federal government or pay royalties to develop minerals under the General Mining Law of 1872. 

According to Roger Flynn, founding director of the nonprofit law center Western Mining Action Project, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service treat a mining claim as a right to mine and interpret the law as giving them little authority to deny a proposal. “The BLM and the Forest Service, with a few minor exceptions, have never said no to a major mine,” said Flynn.

Laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act also govern mines; federal agencies are required to study and disclose the possible harm from mining, receive public input, and present alternatives. But Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a senior legislative representative with Earthjustice, says that because of how mining is regulated, adherence to these federal standards effectively becomes “a box-checking exercise” for companies. The level of pollution allowed is also so high, he said, that it’s hard to enforce any type of cleanup when a mine closes.

Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, says the lack of planning and guidance for where mines should be approved sets companies up for protracted legal battles. “We just give out mining permits to anybody, for any mining proposal, wherever it is,” Donnelly said. “If the mining industry [wasn’t allowed to] propose such terrible mines, maybe they wouldn’t get fought so much.” 

Read Next

A zero emissions future without the mining boom

Blanca Begert & Lylla Younes

For their part, Republicans have taken aim at the environmental review and public participation processes required by the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA, in order to speed up permitting. In a congressional hearing on energy and mining on Wednesday, they called for shortening the NEPA process and other reforms that conservationists say would weaken agencies’ ability to assess the environmental impacts of proposals and restrict the window of time in which communities have a say. 

Earlier in January, Representative Pete Stauber, a Republican who represents the Minnesota district that would have been home to the Twin Metals mine, introduced the Permitting for Mining Needs Act. The bill would set time limits on environmental reviews under NEPA and limit lawsuits to 120 days after a permitting decision. Stauber’s proposed legislation could become part of the larger permitting reform package that Westerman is trying to pass this spring. Last year, Westerman’s own bill, the Strengthening American Minerals Supply Chains Act, would have similarly streamlined the review process, while also prohibiting federal agencies from withdrawing permits and allowing companies to get waivers for certain types of pollution.

“Opening a mine in the U.S. typically involves multiple agencies and the navigation of tens or even hundreds of permitting processes,” wrote Ashley Burke, a spokesperson for the National Mining Association, in a statement to Grist. She said a lack of transparency, fuzzy timelines for environmental assessments, and little coordination between various agencies were reasons why the mining industry supported Westerman’s bill. “Ours is one of the longest permitting processes in the world for mining projects,” she said. 

Environmental lawyers contest that claim, pointing to a Government Accountability Office report from 2016 showing that permitting times ranged from 1 month to 11 years, but lasted 2 years on average. To Miller-McFeeley, that’s reasonable when compared with other countries where hardrock mining occurs, like Canada and Australia. The outlier mines that take longer to permit “are often the ones that are the most impactful or the most problematic,” he said.

The GAO report cited incomplete paperwork from mining companies and understaffed federal agencies as the two main reasons why the process can get bogged down. With the IRA’s infusion of $1 billion toward environmental analysis and permitting, environmental advocates say the process should speed up, allowing the BLM to get through the backlog of applications under review without truncating the NEPA timeline. They also agree with efforts by Republican lawmakers to promote better coordination between the permitting agencies, but are critical of proposals to let one agency oversee the process. 

House Democrats are pulling together their own proposal for mining law reform, which they say would make the process more efficient while strengthening environmental standards and community protections. It would also set up federal guidelines for tribal consultation since the vast majority of “critical” metals are located on or near Native American reservations.  

“Right now, there really is no federal guidance [on tribal consultation],” said a policy staffer for the Democrats’ House Natural Resources Committee Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee. “It’s one of the places where we might be able to see bipartisan compromise because it’s hard for mining companies to operate without social license.”  

The House Democrats’ proposal is expected to build on the Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act, introduced last session by Representative Raúl Grijalva from Arizona, which would have created a leasing system for mines and required companies to pay royalties. 

Meanwhile, an interagency working group led by the Department of the Interior is working on recommendations to Congress for updating the 1872 mining law. The group is also drafting new rules that environmental advocates hope will give the BLM and the Forest Service more teeth in reviewing and deciding to approve new mines. A coalition of tribes, Indigenous groups, and conservation organizations has outlined their proposed revisions, which include clarifying the BLM’s authority to protect tribal resources and closing loopholes that allow the mining industry to avoid consultation with local communities near proposed mines. 

Take the Lithium Americas mine at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada. The company received its permits in February 2021, less than a year after it started its environmental review. But the project has been in court since then after conservation groups, a rancher, and two local tribes sued the BLM for failing to consider the project’s environmental impacts and failing to properly consult the tribes. On Monday, a federal judge upheld the mine’s approval but sent it back to the BLM for additional review of the mine’s right to dump its waste in the area.

“Thacker Pass used a fast-tracking process which overlooked key points about water reclamation at the end of the project,” said Gary McKinney, a member of the Duck Valley Shoshone Paiute Tribe and the People of Red Mountain, who is fighting the controversial mine. “The general public was kept from understanding the true negative impacts of lithium mining.”

If the mine goes through, McKinney said he would be concerned that lithium mining will destroy ancestral land in North America just as it has in South America. 

While the mining industry and Republican representatives emphasize the human rights abuses connected to the production of critical minerals abroad as a reason to expand mining at home, Mintzes from Earthworks says that doesn’t mean the U.S. should lower the bar and encourage more mining by weakening federal regulations. 

“The message from the GOP is, ‘Why have slave labor in the Congo source your cobalt when you can find it in the Boundary Waters?’” Mintzes said. “The message from our community is that the State Department should use due diligence to root out slave labor everywhere, raising standards abroad and here, including through mining law reform.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Mining law has barely changed since 1872. Can Congress agree on a fix? on Feb 9, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Blanca Begert.

Coincidentally, on the heels of the resetting of the world-famous clock this year, Julian Cribb, who is one of the world’s most erudite science writers, is releasing a new book: How To Fix A Broken Planet, Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Cribb’s book has entire chapters that deal with every major concern of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He describes in detail the very issues that disturb the Science and Security Board members, and he offers solutions to those same issues that served to nudge the iconic clock to its most intimidating, most threatening, most unnerving level in over 75 years: 90 Seconds to Midnight.

According to the Board, as of January 24, 2023, the new setting: “A Time of Unprecedented Danger. It is 90 Seconds to Midnight.”

This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. (Source: Bulletin Statement…Link to full statement)

As of today, the iconic clock has traveled far from its courageous beginnings when it first registered the dangers of nuclear annihilation in the 1940s. Today’s modern version of the enduring clock includes worldwide concerns: (1) climate change (2) bioterrorism (3) artificial intelligence and (4) damage inflicted by mis/disinformation. These elements fuse together as a potential cataclysmic event registered by the clock’s setting vis a vis a midnight hour imagery of apocalypse.

In a fascinating coincidence of mutual awareness of missteps and human frailty, Cribb’s book addresses the same issues as the Bulletin, and much more. It is an indispensable reference for solutions to what ails the world. For example, Chapter 4 Nuclear Awakening pages 44-53: “The greatest single risk of human extinction among the 10 catastrophic threats that comprise our existential emergency is still nuclear war. However, the core issue is that conflict can originate with almost any one of them – with food shortages leading to international disputes over food, land and water, in quarrels over dwindling fish, forest, energy, etc.….” (p. 47)

“An instance of how mega-risks may compound into nuclear war is the long-standing animosity between India and Pakistan, chiefly over Kashmir, terrorism, and the waters of the Indus River which feed both countries at a time of growing climate stress. Even a relatively limited nuclear conflict between the two – 100-150 warheads of Hiroshima scale- is projected to kill 100 million people directly and 1-2 billion people worldwide as the resulting ‘nuclear winter’ would cause harvests to fail and food supplies to collapse all around the planet.” (p. 47)

Furthermore, on dozens of occasions because of human error or technical miscue or active threat, the world has come dangerously close to the brink of nuclear conflagration. As Cribb explains, it is a “terrifying history of which most people remain ignorant.” (p. 49)

Cribb describes seven solutions to the nuclear threat (p. 49-51) and informs individuals of what they can do, actively supporting citizen campaigns to ban nuclear and much, much more. “Understand that a nuclear inferno is a growing threat to you, your children, and to all of posterity. It exists 24/7. It is most likely to be the cause of human extinction. The fact that it has not happened in the last seventy years does not mean it will not happen. The risk is now greater than at any time since atomic weapons were invented.” (p. 51)

Another chapter that hits the bullseye of threats to society that’s also recognized as a serious threat by the Board: Chapter 11 – Ending the Age of Deceit: “Perhaps the deadliest pandemic ever to strike humanity is the plague of deliberate misinformation, mass delusion and unfounded beliefs which is engulfing twenty-first-century human society.” (p. 127)

Misinformation is an all-inclusive threat that humanity has seldom faced on such a massive scale. It’s literally an out-of-control epidemic that crushes the foundations of established principles. Cribb references a study by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom, stating: “Misinformation has reached crisis proportions… it poses a risk to international peace, interferes with democratic decision making, endangers the well-being of the planet and threatens public health.” (p. 127-28).

The motive behind spreading lies and conspiracy theories runs the gamut from monetary greed, political advantage, malice, and hatred of others to ruinous ignorance, the most dangerous element of all the dangers. “The problem of mass delusion is compounded by signs that humans are less intelligent than they were a generation or two ago. Recent research has found that human IQ has declined by around 13 points since the mid-1970s.” (p. 131)

Cribb says a solution to shortsighted, laughable ignorance is to reframe all economic, political, religious, and narrative discourse in a place that calls upon everyone to help develop a worldwide plan for survival in the face of unprecedented challenges, requiring worldwide leadership at all levels, media, teachers, religious leaders, and actively involved citizen groups forming an Earth System Treaty negotiated internationally by all countries in a uniform plan to “fix our planet.” Thus, overriding, overshadowing ignorant chatter and its blockhead stupidity of bold-faced lies.

The crucial significance of Cribb’s book is found in its introduction: “We humans are facing the greatest emergency of our entire million-year existence. This is a crisis compounded of 10 catastrophic risks, each of our own making. These threats are deeply interconnected and are now arriving together. However, their collective scale is so vast and their relationships so complex that few yet understand the peril they place us in.” (p. 5)

According to Cribb, the world needs a “survival revolution.” And that is precisely what How To Fix A Broken Planet explains in detail and with solutions. It’s a fascinating, enjoyable, quick read filled with uppermost classroom quality facts that ultimately point to an Earth System Treaty with an Earth Standard Currency that literally stands the neoliberal brand of capitalism on its head and establishes value for the biosphere.

Julian Cribb is an ideal adjunct of the breadth and depth of core analysis by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, a group of 18 experts with backgrounds in public policy, diplomacy, and worldwide trends with advice from a Board of Sponsors, which includes eleven Nobel laureates.

The initial setting for the Doomsday Clock in 1947 was seven (7) minutes to midnight. The furthest from midnight occurred in 1991 at seventeen (17) minutes to midnight on the eve of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War.

According to the venerable clock, the most threatening years are the most recent, 2021 and 2022, both set at 100 Seconds to Midnight, a result of global nuclear/political tensions, COVID-19, climate change, a surge of disinformation undermining the integrity of democratic institutions and increasing biological weapon threats. Now, the two most threatening years have succumbed to a new low of 90 Seconds to Midnight.

Never has civilization been so much at odds with itself.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

The post Doomsday Clock Jitters and “How to Fix a Broken Planet” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

They never got the help they needed with learning disabilities. Or they came to this country without the ability to read English. Or they graduated from schools that failed to teach them the most crucial skills.

For a number of sometimes overlapping reasons, 48 million American adults struggle to read basic English, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That may leave them unable to find and keep a decent job, navigate the signage on city streets, follow medical instructions and vote. They’re vulnerable to scams and face stigma and shame.

The main remedy available is adult education: free classes where they can improve their reading and earn a high school credential.

But the infrastructure for adult education is profoundly inadequate, a ProPublica investigation found — and, as the nation’s persistently low literacy rates reveal, the government’s efforts haven’t done enough to address the problem. About 500 counties across the nation are hot spots where nearly a third of adults struggle to read basic English. This contributes to disproportionate underemployment. In communities with lower literacy, there is often less economic investment, a smaller tax base and fewer resources to fund public services.

“It’s in our best interest to make sure that, regardless of why people didn’t get an education the first time around, that they get one now,” said Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, a senior fellow at the National Skills Coalition who focuses on adult education and workforce policy.

ProPublica interviewed experts, students and educators about some of the best ideas for improving adult education. While many experts have said that more money is critical to improving the national system, many states have developed innovations in spite of their limited funding. There are ways to help adults overcome low literacy, and making that help more widely accessible would solve larger problems, both for individuals and for their communities.

Strict federal standards prompt states to push adult students to get a high school credential as fast as possible. Students who need more time can flounder in such a system. “It’s so hard to get students at the basic level. They are lacking so much,” said Andrew Strehlow, who directs adult education for Rankin County School District in Mississippi.

The expectation of steady academic gains can be challenging for adult students, particularly for those who have not learned in a classroom in more than a decade. “If you are reading at the sixth-grade level and someone said you have three months to pack in six years of high school because that’s the end of the program, realistically, how many will do it? None,” said Diane Renaud, who directs the St. Vincent and Sarah Fisher Center in Detroit. Research has shown that some programs even resort to pushing out struggling students from their classes.

Some programs have focused on providing students with more one-on-one support. The Las Vegas-Clark County Library District offers each student the chance to work with a coach who calls and encourages them as they work toward a high school credential. Jill Hersha, the library’s literacy services manager, said many of the program’s students had worked in the hospitality industry for years and lost their jobs. “But they hadn’t been in school in forever,” she said. Coaches help them define their goals and move forward, step by step.

ProPublica found that large swaths of the country lack adult education classes, and residents must travel dozens of miles to enroll in programs. In Mississippi, about 1 in 5 counties lacks a state-run program. In some parts of rural Nevada, people must take virtual classes or drive up to 70 miles, said Meachell LaSalle Walsh, who directs adult education at Great Basin College in Elko. Even in urban areas, inflexible class scheduling may make it difficult for people to attend.

To increase accessibility, some states have developed partnerships to ensure programming is available across vast areas. A decade ago, after a state report found its vast adult education system uncoordinated and fragmented, California reconfigured it into regional consortia that could better assess local needs and collaborate with community groups. In each of the 71 regions, local community colleges and school districts work together to align their teaching materials, collect data on students across programs and make sure they offer distinct services. The new structure helps ensure students can access programs, regardless of where they live. “The idea is to work together to meet the needs of the students and the workforce within that region,” said Carolyn Zachry, the state’s adult education director.

Experts estimate that as many as half of adult students have learning disabilities, which are sometimes undiagnosed. Many programs don’t have resources to work with these students. “They are horribly underserved,” said Monica McHale-Small, education director for the Learning Disabilities Association of America. Nationally, less than 5% of adult teachers are certified in special education, according to federal data. Last year, in the entire state of Tennessee, there was only one teacher for adults who was certified in special education.

Some states have developed centralized programs to show teachers how to work with adults with disabilities. Minnesota funds the Physical And Nonapparent Disability Assistance program, which gives workshops and consults with programs on best practices. “Individuals who have disabilities, especially the hidden disabilities, you wouldn’t know unless they disclosed it, and they may not have ever even been diagnosed,” said Wendy Sweeney, who manages the organization. “It’s important that we make sure the teachers have some strategies to work with a student in their class and help them with their learning.”

The federal government provided about $675 million to states for adult education last year, a figure that has been stagnant for more than two decades, when adjusted for inflation. And while states are also required to contribute a minimum amount, ProPublica found large gaps in what they spend. Lower funding leads to smaller programs with less reach: Less than 3% of eligible adults receive services. “When there’s no awareness by these legislators at the state or federal level, they just don’t put the extra money in,” said Michele Diecuch, programs director at the nonprofit ProLiteracy.

This year, Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia introduced a bill to expand access and increase the federal adult education budget by $300 million over the next five years. The House passed the bill this spring, but it’s hung up in the Senate and unlikely to become law anytime soon. Some states have also increased their funding for adult education in recent years. After cutting more than a million dollars from adult education in 2021, Georgia chose to restore that money in its upcoming state budget. It also raised pay for full-time state employees by $5,000, which helps some but not all adult education teachers. State lawmakers often need a big push from advocates and educators to increase funding, said Sharon Bonney, chief executive officer of the Coalition on Adult Basic Education. “Talk to your governor about the value of the work that you do, because when governors understand that they’re much more likely to fund it,” she said.

Most adult education teachers work part time or are volunteers, leading to high turnover and inconsistent instruction. In Tennessee, more than a third of staff teachers are uncertified, and more than 80% only work part time. (Uncertified teachers must take training modules on adult education, according to the state’s labor and workforce department.) Leslie Travis, adult education coordinator at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology in Athens, dreams about what she could do with more full-time teachers. “I could open a whole lot more classes,” she said. “I need to hire at least six teachers right now.” Travis landed on a less-than-ideal solution to avoid wait-listing students: crowding more than 25 students into classrooms. Similarly, in Nevada, almost all adult education teachers work part time and half of them are uncertified. “Even in Reno and Las Vegas, they’re having trouble staffing,” said Nancy Olsen, the state’s adult education programs supervisor.

Some states have found ways to provide teachers with professional development: Massachusetts and Minnesota have “train the trainer” programs, where experienced teachers train newer ones. In Arkansas, which commits a larger share of funding than other states, all teachers must be certified in education and full-time teachers must be specifically certified to teach adults or working toward a license — sharpening their ability to support nontraditional students. “It really makes a difference when you have teachers who have gone through training of how to teach adult learners of different levels,” said Arkansas’ adult education director, Trenia Miles.

Since she dropped out of high school in 11th grade to care for her newborn daughter, Mississippi-native Rolonda McNair, 27, has long wanted to obtain a high school credential. “You’re not going to get a good paying job without having it,” she said. But between work and child care responsibilities, she could not set aside enough time to attend class. To restart her education this past summer, McNair had to stop working full time and move in with her mother, who could watch her children while she was in school. Many adult learners face similar barriers, from a lack of steady child care or transportation to job inflexibility. Educators are increasingly recognizing the importance of addressing these obstacles.

Mississippi has created the MIBEST initiative, providing some students with support like child care, transportation, food assistance, help with testing fees and career counseling. But the program relies on temporary philanthropic funding and mostly directs support to students who enter at the highest levels. “We have never had enough funding to offer that level of support to every single person,” said Nikitna Barnes, an assistant director at the Mississippi Community College Board, which oversees adult education for the state.

Kathryn Iski, 56, entered a Nashville, Tennessee, adult education program last year as a beginner in both reading and math. Iski, who did not attend school as a child, studied for months and progressed multiple grade levels in reading. But this June, she had to stop after her job at a Target deli required her to work overtime. After more than three months, she fell behind in her studies and had to work hard to catch up. Adult students like Iski often must skip classes when they conflict with work schedules. They may fall behind and take longer to achieve their goals.

Some of the most innovative programs combine adult education and actual jobs to encourage attendance; experts say these opportunities are rare because of insufficient federal and state funds. ProPublica’s story highlighted Detroit’s Skills for Life, which pays residents to return to school two days a week and pays them to work city jobs the other three days. Last year, in Georgia, DeKalb County’s sanitation department offered employees without high school diplomas an opportunity to take virtual classes on company time. The department also covered fees for credential exams. “We had 100% retention,” said Meghan McBride, who leads adult education at Georgia Piedmont Technical College and helped start the workplace program.

A handful of states, including Arizona and Georgia, prevent adult education programs from using state funding to serve undocumented people. Arizona denies enrollment to hundreds of people each year because they did not provide evidence of citizenship or legal residence in the country, as required by a law passed by voters in 2006. In Georgia, which passed a law in 2010 requiring programs to verify that applicants are in the country legally, three federally funded groups that serve mainly immigrants and refugees are denied state funding because they allow undocumented students. Arizona’s Department of Education declined to comment on the policy’s impact on enrollment or programs. Georgia’s assistant commissioner of adult education, Cayanna Good, said undocumented immigrants without programs to serve them are falling through the cracks.

In these states, undocumented immigrants who want to learn English, obtain a high school credential or improve their reading skills have few choices, and even fewer that are free. This decision comes with a price, according to adult education expert Bergson-Shilcock. “The ‘price’ in this case is not only lost earnings and tax revenue from less-educated workers, but the human cost of creating a two-tiered society in which some people are explicitly being told that their lives and aspirations are not worth investing in,” she said. “The immediate cost of educating a person is far cheaper than the long-run social costs of not educating them.”

In the 2000s, adult students in Washington were, at best, obtaining high school credentials, but they were not progressing to further education or jobs that paid a living wage. “We were hemorrhaging people up and down the pipeline,” said Will Durden, a state adult education director. The programs were poorly connected to college classes or work credential programs. “You’re spending all this time learning math that doesn’t seem relevant, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to help you get ahead in life,” he said. “So students drop out.”

Washington pioneered the I-BEST program, which allows adults without high school diplomas to pursue academic skills and job training at the same time. Two teachers — one providing reading and math skills, and the other job training — work in tandem, putting lessons into context and allowing adults to advance more quickly. Recent studies show I-BEST students were more likely to attain a technical credential than adult students who did not go through the program. It has been replicated in other places, including Mississippi.

Experts say the best way to improve literacy rates is to teach children to read proficiently before they become adults. Even though all state constitutions include a right to an education, the U.S. Constitution does not — although 170 other countries affirm that right in their constitutions. Without this commitment, children and their families have struggled to hold schools accountable for appalling proficiency rates.

In recent years, a handful of lawsuits have challenged whether children have a right to literacy. In 2016, a group of Detroit students sued the state, claiming its failure to provide an adequate education left a district serving almost exclusively low-income children of color struggling to read, in violation of the 14th Amendment. “Literacy is fundamental to participation in public and private life and is the core component in the American tradition of education,” plaintiffs said in their complaint.

A federal judge initially dismissed the case, agreeing with the state’s position that “access to literacy is not a fundamental right.” Two years later, in 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed part of the ruling, declaring students should have a “fundamental right to a basic minimum education, meaning one that can provide them with a foundational level of literacy.” Michigan settled the case about a month later, promising $94 million for literacy programs in Detroit’s schools.

Students across the country are fighting to hold states accountable to their constitutional commitments. In California in 2017, students sued for a right to literacy, arguing that it was essential to a person’s ability to participate in democracy. They eventually settled with the state. Recent litigation in Minnesota and North Carolina has also argued for access to a quality education.

“There is no defense of a system that fails to teach kids how to read,” said Mark Rosenbaum, the attorney for students in both the Detroit and California cases. “You deny students access to literacy, it’s the most effective strategy you can develop to disenfranchise communities.”

One in Five Americans Struggles to Read. We Want to Understand Why.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Annie Waldman, Aliyya Swaby and Anna Clark.

Schuyler Wight is a fourth generation rancher who has raised longhorn cattle outside Midland, Texas, for decades. Wight is no geologist, but over the years, he’s had to familiarize himself with what lies underground. Scattered across his sprawling 20,000-acre ranch are more than 100 abandoned oil and gas wells left behind by wildcatters who drilled in random locations for decades looking for oil. Many were unsuccessful, but the drilling opened up layers of porous rock, revealing water, and minerals. 

Rather than cap the holes, the wildcatters and their oil companies–now long gone–transferred ownership of unproductive wells to the previous owners of Wight’s ranch to be used as water wells, known as P-13 wells.

Decades later, some of the wells on Wight’s land are leaking contaminated water, hydrogen sulfide and radioactive materials. Occasionally, Wight’s cattle drink water that has bubbled up to the surface and die, representing thousands of dollars in losses for his ranch. 

Typically, the Texas Railroad Commission would take responsibility for cleaning up oil and gas wells abandoned by now–defunct drilling companies. But the commission won’t spend a dime on wells like Wight’s. That’s because the commission argues his wells aren’t oil or gas wells because they never successfully produced fossil fuel.

Without state or federal funds to clean up the mess, farmers, ranchers, and small local governments are struggling to fix the major environmental damage left from decades of drilling. Wight has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars–and counting–to clean up just a few of the wells on his property. 

“That’s a lot of money when you’ve got to pay it back with cattle,” Wight said. 

Across the state, according to the commission’s records, there are nearly 2,000 documented P-13 wells. Not all of them have started to leak as on Wight’s ranch, but it’s impossible to know the full scale of the problem. “The RRC does not maintain a cost estimate to plug abandoned water wells as it is the responsibility of the landowner to complete those pluggings,” the agency’s spokesperson Andrew Keese said in an email. 

In Pecos County, the Middle Pecos Groundwater Conservation District has repeatedly asked the Railroad Commission to add 40 wells to the agency’s statewide list of 8,000 abandoned wells marked for cleanup. The small local agency doesn’t have the funds, staff or resources it needs to plug the abandoned wells that are now polluting groundwater in the region, said Ty Edwards, the district’s manager. Many of the wells are on remote properties, owned by absentee landowners, environmental advocates say. The most infamous of these wells, Sloan Blair #1, has been spewing so much briny water that it’s formed a body of water nicknamed Lake Boehmer in the middle of the West Texas desert. 

According to an analysis commissioned by the groundwater district, the well was originally drilled into the San Andres formation as an oil test well and then was abandoned. Now, underground pressure is causing the salty water to spew to the surface, bringing with it contaminants such as benzene and xylene, both carcinogens. The analysis found both compounds were at unsafe levels. The well is also leaking hydrogen sulfide gas at potentially lethal levels for humans, and heat-trapping gasses including methane and carbon dioxide. To survey the site, researchers have to wear hazmat suits.

“The problem is that when they drilled into this formation, there are several [layers] with no well integrity–you’re picking up different constituents that are causing the water quality to go very, very bad,” Edwards said. “The water quality in the area is drastically degrading over time,” becoming undrinkable and unusable. “It’s known that you can’t get any good water in the area–most people get on the county water line that comes from 20 or 30 miles away. It’s making some areas uninhabitable.”

The million dollar– perhaps even billion dollar– question is why the Railroad Commission has doubled down on shedding responsibility for the converted water wells, said Cole Ruiz, a lawyer for the groundwater district. “The factual circumstances around these P-13 wells is that they were originally drilled by oil and gas operators–which requires a permit granted by the Railroad Commission,” he said. “There’s nothing in the statute that allows them to shed jurisdiction once they’ve reclassified it as a water well.” 

In essence, the Railroad Commission’s narrow definition of what counts as an oil and gas well allows it to choose which wells it will plug with state and federal funds. Since wells are still being converted on paper to water wells–anywhere from a handful to a few dozen in recent years–that means the problem is still growing, and operators may be escaping future liability.  

Ruiz suspects if the wells were added to the state’s roster of orphan wells, they’d cost millions of more dollars than the state has already committed towards cleanup, and would slow the progress the agency has been reporting in recent years. In one particularly severe case, for example, an abandoned and improperly plugged oil and gas well on Wight’s land caused a sinkhole so deep the state transportation agency is now spending more than $25 million to reroute a road. 

Railroad Commission staff members who testified at a recent Texas House Natural Resources Committee hearing repeated their argument that some of Pecos County’s most troublesome wells, like the one that created Lake Boehmer, simply aren’t in the agency’s jurisdiction. “It never produced any oil, or any gas. But it did produce a lot of water,” said Clay Woodul, the commission’s assistant director of field operations.  “And that’s the difference. It never has been an oil or gas well. It will never be an oil or gas well.” 

In the 1980s, the Texas Legislature allocated money from regulatory and permit fees toward cleaning up wells and oil fields that were abandoned by companies that went bankrupt. Each abandoned well can cost at least $20,000 to plug, according to some estimates. An influx of federal dollars through the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill has granted the state $25 million to chip away at the $480 million problem. The commission has said it won’t use federal money for the P-13 wells.

Nationwide, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are more than 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells that need to be plugged in order to reduce methane emissions still leaking from the wells, in addition to other pollutants.

When Wight first noticed the leaking wells on his property in 2015, he couldn’t find records for them in the Railroad Commission’s databases. Wight hired a surveyor from Dallas, Jackie Portsmouth, who searched through the basement of the Midland Energy Library to find a paper trail for the problem wells. “Part of the problem is that the Railroad Commission’s older well data from 1964 hasn’t been put in their system properly,” Portsmouth said.

Portsmouth used GIS tools to determine the geolocation of the wells. Eventually, he found the permits, the mineral rights leases, and other documentation for the wells. The company that drilled one of the problem wells in 1969, Union Texas Petroleum, doesn’t exist on paper anymore–it was acquired by ARCO, another oil and gas company, for $2.5 billion in the 1990s.  

“One of the arguments the [Railroad Commission] is making now is, ‘We never got any oil out of this,’” Wight said. “But sometimes you drill dry holes, that’s the way that thing goes. You have to get a permit to drill it. I’m not very smart, but it sure looks like it’s their baby.” 

Advocates and experts say the Railroad Commission’s distinction between water wells and oil and gas wells is arbitrary. The decision seems to be based solely on current commissioners’ and staffers’ interpretations of the state’s natural resource code; there are no strings attached to federal orphan well funds that would make some wells ineligible. 

“The definition of orphan wells is broad enough that it could encompass P-13 wells,” said Tannya Benavides, the advocacy director for the nonprofit watchdog group Commission Shift. “The Railroad Commission is passing the buck–these wells weren’t originally drilled as water wells.” 

Commission Shift has advocated for the state legislature to amend the Natural Resources Code to specifically include the converted wells in its definition of orphan wells. That would force the commission to include the wells in its cleanup and could also provide additional funding, studies and resources to address the problem of converted wells on private property. 

“I’m not trying to put words in their mouth, but it seems like this is a problem the Railroad Commission wants to go away,” Ruiz, Middle Pecos’ lawyer, said. “But I can tell you, it’s not going to go away.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Abandoned Texas oil wells are blowing out. The state won’t fix them. on Oct 13, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amal Ahmed.

Elon Musk is once again suggesting his business interests can solve a high-profile crisis: This time, the SpaceX CEO says Starlink satellite internet can alleviate Iran’s digital crackdown against ongoing anti-government protests. Iranian dissidents and their supporters around the world cheered Musk’s announcement that Starlink is now theoretically available in Iran, but experts say the plan is far from a censorship panacea.

Musk’s latest headline-riding gambit came after Iran responded to the recent rash of nationwide protests with large-scale disruption of the country’s internet access. On September 23, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced the U.S. was easing restrictions on technology exports to help counter Iranian state censorship efforts.

Musk, ready to pounce, quickly replied: “Activating Starlink …”

Predictably, Musk’s dramatic tweet set off a frenzy. Within a day, venture capitalist and longtime Musk-booster Shervin Pishevar was already suggesting Musk had earned the Nobel Peace Prize. Just the thought of Starlink “activating” an uncensored internet for millions during a period of Middle Eastern political turmoil was an instant public relations coup for Musk.

In Iran, though, the notion of a benevolent American billionaire beaming freedom to Iran by satellite is derailed by the demands of reality, specifically physics. Anyone who wants to use Starlink, the satellite internet service provider operated by Musk’s rocketry concern, SpaceX, needs a special dish to send and receive internet data.

“I don’t think it’s much of a practical solution because of the problem of smuggling in the ground terminals.”

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

“I don’t think in the short term this will have an impact on the unrest in Iran.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Sam Biddle.

Scientists have been warning about the consequences of excessive levels of CO2 and urging both Congress and the White House to take action for decades.

Now that the broken climate system has been recognized as a serious threat, as a general rule, if something is broken, it can be fixed. There’s no other plausible outcome. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible to build it in the first instance, or looked at another way, if it can be built, it can be fixed.

But, is it possible to fix a broken climate system?  Meaning the system that we all depend upon for life support. But, we didn’t build it. Yet, we broke it. So, it does not conform to the axiom: “If it can be built, it can be fixed.” Ergo, it may be a challenge that’s bigger than the current scramble to find solutions to build-out quickly enough to turn down the heat.

Along those lines, there’s a multitude of facts readily available to prove that the climate system is truly broken (a lengthy list is available upon request). Most concerning is the breakdown in various, but not all ecosystems happening so much earlier at such a lower global average temperature change +1.2°C above pre-industrial than anybody thought possible. At only +1.2°C life support by the planet, which is our only life support, is at some indeterminate level of risk, and nobody knows how soon the major breakdown will occur, guesstimates run the gamut from (a) within this decade to (b) beyond this century. All of which brings forth the troublesome consideration that scientists’ models have been off target by a country mile over the past decades. They’re almost always too conservative and outpaced by actual climate change. They’re late to parties.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of climate scientists, engineers, physicists that say: “Yes, it can be fixed via engineering the climate system.” In point of fact, they are currently sending recommendations to the White House Office of Science and Technology. It’s that seriously urgent.

Whereas interestingly, in point of fact, human influence has already engineered or geo-engineered the climate system by changing the composition or the chemistry of the atmosphere with massive emissions of greenhouse gases, CO2 as an example.

Engineering, or is it geo-engineering, the climate system is a yes/no issue amongst experts and non-experts, no maybes allowed, and it’s loaded with controversy enough to inspire loud screaming and physical threats. It’s wild out there in the provocative world of “pro or anti” geo-engineering.

Depending upon whom y0u happen to bump into at the airport bar and grill and strike up a conversation about geo-engineering, it’s either feared or ridiculed or praised or a fist to the face, no mushy in-between opinions. There are web sites dedicated to studying geo-engineering. There are conspiracy theories galore. And, there are serious-minded research programs ongoing at major universities of the world like MIT and Harvard and Stanford and Cambridge.

“Relevant scientific research on direct climate cooling methods and technologies currently being conducted include marine cloud brightening, stratospheric aerosol injection, sea-ice freezing, ocean thermal energy conversion, ocean and glacier microspheres, terrestrial and atmospheric mirrors, cirrus cloud thinning, iron salt aerosols, and white reflective rooftops and streets.” ¹

In the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) in coordination with other relevant federal agencies has been directed by Congress to research a five-year scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions in the context of near-term climate risks and hazards. In other words, key people at the highest levels have gotten the troubling message that climate change is deadly serious business and a threat to the stability of lifestyles.

The Assessment will address: “(1) goals for scientific research (2) the capabilities needed to model, analyze, observe, and monitor atmospheric composition (3) climate impacts and the radiation budget for the planet (4) what’s required for coordination of federal research and investments necessary to deliver an assessment to the point of managing near-term climate risk as well as research addressing climate intervention.” ²

The Assessment, as outlined above, is the long version of saying: We’ve got a serious problem that needs immediate attention.

A fixit program labeled The Climate Triad is being proposed by the Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC), which is a diverse international coalition of scientists, engineers, technologists, and public policy wonks. HPAC recommends a coordinated program involving (1) Direct Climate Cooling, DCC (2) Greenhouse Emissions Reductions (3) Greenhouse Gas Removal, GHGR. All three should be treated as co-equal priorities with a goal of keeping global average temperatures below 1.5°C pre-industrial (whenever that started?).

The tone of the fixit message is one of urgency to deploy direct climate cooling “now necessary to reduce current and near term human and other species harm and risk from current and near term future levels of global warming.”²

As such, and with even more urgency, the coalition is requesting the White House to work towards shortening the proposed five-year research and implementation plan by accelerating it to one-to-two years. Implicit in this urgent request, the coalition members evidently believe that climate change is so dangerously proactive that mitigation efforts must start ASAP, which reinforces the HPAC request to jumpstart by compressing the time frame to 1-2 years versus the 5-year plan as outlined by Congress.

For a list of proposals by HPAC or to join in their efforts, go here:

For example, the coalition has submitted a menu of 15 proposed climate-cooling approaches, such as:  (a) cirrus cloud thinning (b) ice shields to thicken polar ice (c) stratospheric aerosol injection. And, of utmost importance, refreezing the poles is considered a top priority in support of national and international security purposes, biodiversity protection, reducing extreme weather episodes and sea level rise.

At the top of the HPAC list: “Arctic Amplification (with up to four times the temperature rise of the equator) and the role of Arctic sea-ice in regulating climate through the jet stream and ocean currents make the Arctic Circle the most serious planetary warming risk and cooling priority.”²

This sense of urgency about climate change and the big push by Congress for the White House to take a leadership role in a massive attempt to fix the climate system is a positive testimonial to the influence of a Democratic-led Congress. There’s no other way to look at it. What is the GOP’s position?

Still, there are two sides to this hurry-up hopeful keeping fingers crossed rescue plan. One side is almost 100% certain that human engineering of the climate system will be positive, and thus the only way out of a sticky problematic climate change/global warming morass.

The other side believes an artificially (human) engineered climate system is destined to trigger negative unforeseen consequences that may spin out of control.

And, by all appearances certain aspects of the climate system are already out of control. Just ask anybody in Pakistan about the Himalayan range, where global warming has whacked the alpine glaciers with glacial lakes bursting or ask barge companies on European rivers or the hundreds of towns living on trucked water in both France and Italy, or Lake Mead nearing “dead pool” status, and the list could go on and on. All of which is happening at unprecedented levels, never before seen, signs of a disruptive or broken climate system. Nothing’s normal any longer.

Understandably, it’s the foreseen consequences (mentioned above) that are the big push behind the urgency and necessity for massive planetary experimentation. But, so far, almost all proposals are desktop modeling. The real world waits for testing hopefully leading to actual results that work according to plan.

If it works, it’ll be something to behold, kinda like a miracle.

Stay tuned!

1. Suzanne Reed, Healthy Planet Action Coalition, “Compilation of Comments Submitted to White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Regarding US Climate Intervention Study by HPAC and Affiliated Organizations and Individuals”, September 9, 2022.
2. Ibid.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

Image by NASA.

When Congress directs the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) to coordinate with other relevant federal agencies to research a five-year scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions, it’s only too apparent that the highest levels of government have gotten the internal memo that the climate is in trouble. Even so, they are still fashionably late to the party.

Scientists have been warning about the consequences of excessive levels of CO2 and urging both Congress and the White House to take action for decades.

Now that the broken climate system has been recognized as a serious threat, as a general rule, if something is broken, it can be fixed. There’s no other plausible outcome. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible to build it in the first instance, or looked at another way, if it can be built, it can be fixed.

But, is it possible to fix a broken climate system? Meaning the system that we all depend upon for life support. But, we didn’t build it. Yet, we broke it. So, it does not conform to the axiom: “If it can be built, it can be fixed.” Ergo, it may be a challenge that’s bigger than the current scramble to find solutions to build-out quickly enough to turn down the heat.

Along those lines, there’s a multitude of facts readily available to prove that the climate system is truly broken (a lengthy list is available upon request). Most concerning is the breakdown in various, but not all ecosystems happening so much earlier at such a lower global average temperature change +1.2°C above pre-industrial than anybody thought possible. At only +1.2°C life support by the planet, which is our only life support, is at some indeterminate level of risk, and nobody knows how soon the major breakdown will occur, guesstimates run the gamut from (a) within this decade to (b) beyond this century. All of which brings forth the troublesome consideration that scientists’ models have been off target by a country mile over the past decades. They’re almost always too conservative and outpaced by actual climate change. They’re late to parties.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of climate scientists, engineers, physicists that say: “Yes, it can be fixed via engineering the climate system.” In point of fact, they are currently sending recommendations to the White House Office of Science and Technology. It’s that seriously urgent.

Whereas interestingly, in point of fact, human influence has already engineered or geo-engineered the climate system by changing the composition or the chemistry of the atmosphere with massive emissions of greenhouse gases, CO2 as an example.

Engineering, or is it geo-engineering, the climate system is a yes/no issue amongst experts and non-experts, no maybes allowed, and it’s loaded with controversy enough to inspire loud screaming and physical threats. It’s wild out there in the provocative world of “pro or anti” geo-engineering.

Depending upon whom y0u happen to bump into at the airport bar and grill and strike up a conversation about geo-engineering, it’s either feared or ridiculed or praised or a fist to the face, no mushy in-between opinions. There are web sites dedicated to studying geo-engineering. There are conspiracy theories galore. And, there are serious-minded research programs ongoing at major universities of the world like MIT and Harvard and Stanford and Cambridge.

“Relevant scientific research on direct climate cooling methods and technologies currently being conducted include marine cloud brightening, stratospheric aerosol injection, sea-ice freezing, ocean thermal energy conversion, ocean and glacier microspheres, terrestrial and atmospheric mirrors, cirrus cloud thinning, iron salt aerosols, and white reflective rooftops and streets.” (Source: Suzanne Reed, Healthy Planet Action Coalition, Compilation of Comments Submitted to White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Regarding US Climate Intervention Study by HPAC and Affiliated Organizations and Individuals, September 9, 2022)

In the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) in coordination with other relevant federal agencies has been directed by Congress to research a five-year scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions in the context of near-term climate risks and hazards. In other words, key people at the highest levels have gotten the troubling message that climate change is deadly serious business and a threat to the stability of lifestyles.

The Assessment will address: “(1) goals for scientific research (2) the capabilities needed to model, analyze, observe, and monitor atmospheric composition (3) climate impacts and the radiation budget for the planet (4) what’s required for coordination of federal research and investments necessary to deliver an assessment to the point of managing near-term climate risk as well as research addressing climate intervention,” Ibid.

The Assessment, as outlined above, is the long version of saying: We’ve got a serious problem that needs immediate attention.

A fixit program labeled The Climate Triad is being proposed by the Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC), which is a diverse international coalition of scientists, engineers, technologists, and public policy wonks. HPAC recommends a coordinated program involving (1) Direct Climate Cooling, DCC (2) Greenhouse Emissions Reductions (3) Greenhouse Gas Removal, GHGR. All three should be treated as co-equal priorities with a goal of keeping global average temperatures below 1.5°C pre-industrial (whenever that started?).

The tone of the fixit message is one of urgency to deploy direct climate cooling “now necessary to reduce current and near term human and other species harm and risk from current and near term future levels of global warming,” Ibid.

As such, and with even more urgency, the coalition is requesting the White House to work towards shortening the proposed five-year research and implementation plan by accelerating it to one-to-two years. Implicit in this urgent request, the coalition members evidently believe that climate change is so dangerously proactive that mitigation efforts must start ASAP, which reinforces the HPAC request to jumpstart by compressing the timeframe to 1-2 years versus the 5-year plan as outlined by Congress.

For a list of proposals by HPAC or to join in their efforts, go to: https://www.collaborationconnection.org/

For example, the coalition has submitted a menu of 15 proposed climate-cooling approaches, such as: (a) cirrus cloud thinning (b) ice shields to thicken polar ice (c) stratospheric aerosol injection. And, of utmost importance, refreezing the poles is considered a top priority in support of national and international security purposes, biodiversity protection, reducing extreme weather episodes and sea level rise.

At the top of the HPAC list: “Arctic Amplification (with up to four times the temperature rise of the equator) and the role of Arctic sea-ice in regulating climate through the jet stream and ocean currents make the Arctic Circle the most serious planetary warming risk and cooling priority,” Ibid.

This sense of urgency about climate change and the big push by Congress for the White House to take a leadership role in a massive attempt to fix the climate system is a positive testimonial to the influence of a Democratic-led Congress. There’s no other way to look at it. What is the GOP’s position?

Still, there are two sides to this hurry-up hopeful keeping fingers crossed rescue plan. One side is almost 100% certain that human engineering of the climate system will be positive, and thus the only way out of a sticky problematic climate change/global warming morass.

The other side believes an artificially (human) engineered climate system is destined to trigger negative unforeseen consequences that may spin out of control.

And, by all appearances certain aspects of the climate system are already out of control. Just ask anybody in Pakistan about the Himalayan range, where global warming has whacked the alpine glaciers with glacial lakes bursting or ask barge companies on European rivers or the hundreds of towns living on trucked water in both France and Italy, or Lake Mead nearing “dead pool” status, and the list could go on and on. All of which is happening at unprecedented levels, never before seen, signs of a disruptive or broken climate system. Nothing’s normal any longer.

Understandably, it’s the foreseen consequences (mentioned above) that are the big push behind the urgency and necessity for massive planetary experimentation. But, so far, almost all proposals are desktop modeling. The real world waits for testing hopefully leading to actual results that work according to plan.

If it works, it’ll be something to behold, kinda like a miracle.

Stay tuned!

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

Sign up for ProPublica’s User’s Guide to Democracy, a series of personalized emails that help you understand the upcoming election, from who’s on your ballot to how to cast your vote.

This story was co-published with Gray TV.

Faye Combs used to enter the voting booth with trepidation. Unable to read until she was in her 40s, she would struggle to decipher the words on the ballot, intimidated by how quickly the people around her finished and departed. “When the election was over, I didn’t even realize what I had voted for because it was just so much reading,” she said.

Combs’ feelings of insecurity and disorientation when faced with a ballot are not unusual. Voters with low literacy skills are more likely to take what they read literally and act on each word, sometimes without considering context, literacy experts say. Distractions can more easily derail them, causing them to stop reading too soon.

“I’ve seen people try to read [the ballot] left to right and end up skipping entire contests,” said Kathryn Summers, a University of Baltimore professor who has spent decades studying how information can be made more accessible. She has found that voters who struggle to read are also more likely to make mistakes on their registration applications, such as writing their birth date incorrectly or forgetting to fill in the check box that indicates they are a citizen, either of which could lead to their vote being rejected.

As a ProPublica investigation found, today’s election system remains a modern-day literacy test — a convoluted obstacle course for people who struggle to read. Though many people may require assistance with registration or at the ballot box, some counties and states have made it more challenging to secure help.

Experts say that redesigning both the registration and election processes to be more accessible will allow more people to vote without assistance and participate more robustly in democracy. Ballots and forms should be simply written and logically laid out, jargon should be stripped from instructions and ballot amendments and, if possible, new forms should be tested on a diverse group of constituents.

Such reforms can be expensive and time-consuming, which stops some states and municipalities from taking on the task, said Dana Chisnell, who co-founded the nonprofit Center for Civic Design to help states and counties develop accessible voter materials. “They may have old voting systems that they’re holding together with duct tape and baling twine because they can’t afford to replace them or there were other priorities in the county,” she said.

But numerous examples show that when such changes are made, more votes get counted. “If we make it better for people with low literacy, it will actually be better for everyone,” Summers said.

As ProPublica has written, bad ballot design can sabotage up to hundreds of thousands of votes each election year. After the confusing butterfly ballot infamously wreaked havoc in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, the federal government increased its oversight and regulation of local election administration, including by issuing voluntary guidelines for how ballots and election materials should look. But states and counties continue to wind up with miscast or uncast votes as a result of design failures.

In 2018, for example, Florida’s Broward County used a ballot where the names of Senate candidates were listed at the bottom of a column, under a long list of instructions.

In most of the state, where other ballot designs were used, the Senate race drew about the same number of votes as the governor’s race. But in Broward County, a Democratic stronghold, fewer people voted for Senate than for governor, which was the race listed at the top of the second column. It’s likely that many people simply missed the Senate race at the bottom of the page. This discrepancy amounted to around 25,000 votes that were never cast. Republican Rick Scott won the race by about 10,000 votes.

Improving design has resulted in fewer skipped races and rejected ballots. The Center for Civic Design has created free online guides for designing accessible forms, which are intended to help local election officials short on resources.

If the essence of democracy is making sure that everyone who is eligible can vote, the election process should lean toward inclusion and accessibility, said Whitney Quesenbery, co-founder and executive director of the center. “Someone who has decided to vote ought to have a fair shot at getting their ballot counted,” she said. “The way you make sure that it gets honored is by telling people what they have to do in a clear way.”

Accessibility experts like Quesenbery say that these changes can improve the voting process for everyone, but especially for voters with limited reading abilities.

In 2010, New York voters got confusing messages if they accidentally overvoted — that is, voted for too many candidates — using machines made by two companies, Election Systems and Software and Dominion. The electronic screen on ES&S machines featured a red button saying “Don’t Cast — Return Ballot” and a green button saying “Accept.” Similarly, the Dominion machines featured a red button labeled “Return” and a green button labeled “Cast.” It was unclear which button would actually allow voters to fix the problem and many pressed the green button, which submitted their incorrectly filled-out ballot and meant that their vote was not counted at all.

As a result of a lawsuit that the Brennan Center for Justice and other groups filed against New York election officials, ES&S changed the messages on its buttons before the 2012 election, but Dominion did not get final permission for similar changes in time. The new buttons on ES&S machines gave voters the option to either “correct your ballot” or “cast your ballot with mistakes” — a much easier choice to understand than the previous options. That election year, rates of overvoting declined on both machines, but ES&S machines saw twice as big a drop as Dominion machines.

ES&S spokesperson Katina Granger said the accessibility changes for that election show “the need to continually obtain real world feedback from both customers and usability experts.” Dominion did not respond to ProPublica’s emailed questions.

In advance of the 2014 election, Florida’s Escambia County redesigned its absentee ballot forms to format instructions as a checklist on the outside of the envelope, add simple illustrations and place a colored highlight over the spot where voters were supposed to sign. Many states, including Florida, require absentee ballots to be rejected if a signature is missing or doesn’t match other records. The new design’s emphasis on providing a signature reduced the share of ballots that were missing a signature by 42% between 2014 and 2016, and reduced by 53% the share of ballots that were rejected even after voters were offered a chance to add their signatures.

Similarly, New York redesigned its statewide absentee ballot template in 2020. The number of rejected absentee ballots in New York City decreased from around 22% in that year’s primary to just 4% by the general election.

Many states have redesigned their voter registration forms, making the very first step in the election process more accessible for voters with low literacy skills. In 2015, when Pennsylvania launched online voter registration for the first time, state elections officials worked with the Center for Civic Design to test early versions with residents of the state. Their input helped officials design final versions of both online and paper forms with simplified language and minimal text on the page. The sections on the paper application are more clearly defined, with the instructions on the left and the voter tasks on the right. Pennsylvania noticed a decrease in rejected voter registration forms since the launch of the new forms, according to Department of State spokesperson Grace Griffaton, but could not separate the effect of the simpler design from the launch of online registration.

States like Colorado, Vermont and New York have created similar designs.

This year, Vermont debuted its new online registration form, completed with assistance from the Center for Civic Design, according to Secretary of State Jim Condos. Election workers had struggled to read voters’ handwriting on the previous form, which featured cramped spaces where residents had to fill in their information. The new form is much easier to fill out and read. “It’s really about making sure the language is simple enough but to the point,” Condos said.

The United States has some of the lowest voter registration and turnout rates among its international peers. It also stands out for its relatively burdensome voting process. Many experts believe these two things are related.

Other industrialized countries with comparable or even lower literacy rates to the United States tend to have higher levels of voter turnout. One simple reason for their increased participation is that they make it easier to vote. Most of them have some form of compulsory or automatic voter registration in place, according to research from the Pew Research Center and the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network. Countries allow citizens to vote on Election Day without having to actively sign up beforehand, or they automatically register citizens who interact with government organizations, like motor vehicle departments or social service agencies. Other countries, like Australia, have gone further and made voting mandatory, and citizens who do not cast ballots may be subject to penalties.

In nations with automatic registration programs in place, the percentage of people who are signed up to vote is substantially higher than in the United States, where only 67% of the voting-age population is registered. By comparison, in Canada, 93% of the voting-age population is registered to vote, and similarly, that number is 94% in Sweden and 99% in Slovakia, according to Pew. In the United Kingdom, where government officials seek out voters every year through nationwide canvassing, the registration rate is 92%.

Barry Burden, a professor and the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that in the United States, the registration step “is probably more of a deterrent to voter participation than we realize,” he said. “It’s a little challenging for most voters, but if a person doesn’t have the literacy skills or language skills to navigate that bureaucratic process, it could be a deterrent to even getting registered or getting a ballot in the first place.”

The United States is starting to shift its registration policies. Some states have initiated automatic voter registration programs, which use information from other government agencies to complete registration electronically unless people opt out. Since 2015, at least 15 states and Washington, D.C., have launched automatic registration programs, and the impact has been extraordinary — with new systems in place, registrations increased by 16% in Oregon, 27% in California and 94% in Georgia.

Allowing people to register on the same day they vote could increase participation, too. Voters who made errors earlier in the process would have another opportunity to register or fill out their ballots alongside election officials who could ensure their accuracy. As of 2012, states with same-day registration had, on average, 10% higher turnout than states without, according to the Center for American Progress.

Combs, who is now 78, no longer feels intimidated in the voting booth. She understands that there are many people like her, who have figured out ways to navigate the world without being able to read well enough to handle routine civic duties like voting.

At the age of 7, Combs was sexually abused by a stranger, a trauma that shadowed her childhood, she said, making it harder for her to remember the lessons she had learned in school. She pressured classmates for the answers to homework and exams, and her teachers passed her on from grade to grade. When she graduated from high school in Bakersfield, California, she said, she left with the secret that she couldn’t read. She was too ashamed to tell her husband until seven years into their marriage. She often brought him into the polling booth because she didn’t even know where to sign her name on the election forms.

Working as a manager of Berkeley’s Meals on Wheels program, Combs thought she was hiding her inability to read from her coworkers — until one day her secretary left a flyer on her desk about a local literacy program. She began learning with a tutor, strengthening both her ability to read and her desire to be more politically engaged. Since then, Combs has made it her mission to empower people to learn how to read and participate in democracy.

She now works with the Key to Community Project, which guides struggling readers through the voting process, helping them develop skills to research candidates and understand how elections work. The nonpartisan project, led by people who learned to read as adults, is an extension of California Library Literacy Services, the country’s first statewide library-based literacy program. Literacy advocates argue that states should contribute more to adult education in order to increase workforce skills and democratic participation. Combs counsels participants in the California program not to worry about taking as much time as they need to understand the ballot.

“I know what the shame is, but you have to move beyond that shame,” Combs said. “That attitude about ‘My vote doesn’t count’ needs to be banished.”

One in Five Americans Struggles to Read. We Want to Understand Why.

Asia Fields contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Aliyya Swaby and Annie Waldman.

The post America’s Porous Health Care “Safety Net”: Beyond Past Policy Failures To A Universal Coverage Fix appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John P. Geyman.

The post You Can’t Fix the Economy by Hurting People appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rakeen Mabud.

The post Capitalism Won’t Fix the Climate Crisis. It Will Also Not Survive It. appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Kendall Hawkins.

In prescribing cures for inflation, economists rely on the diagnosis of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman: inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon—too much money chasing too few goods. But that equation has three variables: too much money ("demand") chasing (the "velocity" of spending) too few goods ("supply"). And "orthodox" economists, from Lawrence Summers to the Federal Reserve, seem to be focusing only on the "demand" variable. 

The Fed's prescription is to suppress demand (borrowing and spending) by raising interest rates. Summers, a  former U.S. Treasury Secretary who presided over the massive post-2008 bank bailouts, is proposing to reduce demand by raising taxes or raising unemployment rates, reducing disposable income and thus people's ability to spend. But those rather brutal solutions miss the real problem, just as Summers missed the crisis leading up to the 2008-09 crash. As explained in a November 2021 editorial titled "Too Few Goods – The Simple Explanation for October's Elevated Inflation Rates," we don't actually have too much consumer money chasing available goods: 

M2 money supply surged [in 2020] as the Fed pumped out liquidity to replace businesses' lost sales and households' lost paychecks. But bank reserves account for nearly half of the cumulative increase since 2020 began, and the vast majority seem to be excess reserves sitting on deposit at Federal Reserve banks and not backing loans. Excluding bank reserves, M2 money supply is now growing more slowly than it did for most of 2015 – 2019, when inflation was mostly below the Fed's 2% y/y target, much to policymakers' chagrin. Weak lending also suggests money isn't doing much "chasing," a notion underscored by the historically low velocity of money. US personal consumption expenditures—the broadest measure of household spending—have already slowed from a reopening resurgence to rates more akin to the pre-pandemic norm and surveys show many households used stimulus money to repay debt or build savings they may not spend at all. It doesn't look like there is a mountain of household liquidity waiting to do more chasing from here. [Emphasis added.]

In March 2022, the Federal Reserve tackled inflation with its traditional tools – raising interest rates and tightening the money supply by selling bonds, pulling dollars out of the economy. But not only have prices not gone down since then, they are going up. As observed in a July 15 article on Seeking Alpha titled "Fed-Induced Recession Looms As Rate Fears Roil All Markets":

On Wednesday, the Consumer Price Index came in at a 9.1% annual rate. The higher-than-expected reading puts the CPI at a new 41-year high.

The biggest contributors to rising consumer prices are the basic necessities of food, fuel, and shelter. As households struggle to make ends meet, they are trimming discretionary spending, burning through savings, and running up credit card balances.

Businesses are also getting squeezed. On Thursday, the Producer Price Index showed wholesale costs rising at a massive 11.3% year-over-year.

When their own costs go up, producers must raise the prices of their products to cover those costs, regardless of demand. Less money competing for their products won't bring producer costs down. It will just drive the companies out of business, as happened in the Great Depression. The Seeking Alpha article concludes:

… As both businesses and consumers are forced to tighten their belts, a slowdown looms.

And if the Federal Reserve makes another major policy misstep, then a severe recession and financial crisis may also be coming. 

Recession is already evident. The stock market has lost a cumulative $7 trillion in value this year, while the crypto market has lost $2 trillion since last November. Emerging markets are in even worse straits. According to a July 14 article by Larry McDonald on ZeroHedge, "Emerging and frontier market countries currently owe the IMF over $100 billion. US central banking policy plus a strong USD is vaporizing this capital as we speak.… A quarter-trillion dollars of distressed debt is threatening to drag the developing world into a historic cascade of defaults." 

Some pundits predict that the Fed will back off its aggressive interest rate hikes when the carnage from that approach becomes painfully evident, but it seems to be a phase we have to go through to convince policymakers that the Fed's current tools are not able to curb the price inflation we have today.

Every time the Fed raises rates, borrowing becomes more expensive. That means higher interest costs not only for governments but for borrowers with mortgages, home equity lines of credit, credit cards, student debt and car loans. For both large and small businesses, loans also get pricier.

To be clear, this is not the same sort of inflation that Paul Volcker was taming in 1980 when he raised the Fed funds rate to 20%. McDonald observes, "In 2021, global debt reached a record $303T, according to the Institute of International Finance .… Volcker was jacking rates into a planet with about $200T LESS debt." [Emphasis added]

Volcker was also not dealing with the supply shortages we have today, generated by lockdowns that put more than 100,000 U.S. companies out of business; sanctions and war that cut off global supplies of fuel, food and resources; and farming crises such as that in the Netherlands, generated by overly stringent regulations. 

Higher interest rates don't alleviate cost/push inflation caused by supply crises; they make it worse. Rather than making money harder to get, the government needs to focus on the supply side of the equation, stimulating local production to bring supply levels up. Rather than Volcker's solution, what we need is that pioneered by Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pulled us out of similar crises with public banking institutions designed to stimulate infrastructure and development. 

For foreign models, we can look to the infrastructure-funding central banks of Australia, New Zealand and Canada in the first half of the 20th century; and to China, which salvaged the global economy following the 2008 banking crisis with massive infrastructure and development funded through its state-owned development banks. 

China Did It

In the last 40 years, China has exploded from one of the world's poorest countries to a global economic powerhouse. Among other notable achievements, from 2008 to 2022 it built 23,500 miles of high-speed rail, at a time when U.S. infrastructure projects were stalled for lack of funding. How did China pull this off? Rather than relying on taxpayer funds or foreign debt, it borrowed from its own banks. 

China has three massive state-owned infrastructure and development banks – the China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Agricultural Development Bank of China. Called "policy banks," they get their liquidity either (a) directly from the People's Bank of China (PBOC) in the form of "Pledged Supplementary Lending," or (b) by issuing bonds, which have higher credit ratings than commercial bank bonds and are in demand because they can be used as collateral to borrow from the central bank. China's policy banks are limited to funding certain specific government policies; and these policies are all productive and public-purpose-driven, unlike the short-term private profit-maximization driving Wall Street banks.       

Besides its big state-owned banks, China has an extensive network of local banks, which know their local markets. The PBOC website lists seven tools it can use for adjusting monetary policy, including not just a short-term lending facility like the U.S. Fed's discount window, but a facility to inject liquidity into banks for medium-term loans, as well as the "pledged supplementary lending" to fund long-term loans from the three policy lenders for specific sectors, including agriculture, small businesses, and shanty town re-development.   

Yet all this stimulus has not driven up Chinese prices. In fact consumer prices initially fell in 2008 and have hovered around 2% ever since.

Prices are creeping up now, as is happening everywhere; but they have reached only 2.5%—far below the 9.7% seen in the U.S. in July. 

Our Forebears Did It Too

State-owned infrastructure banks are not unique to China. In the United States, a similar model was initiated by Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury Secretary. The "American System" of government-issued money and credit was key both to winning the American Revolutionary War and to transforming the nation from a collection of agrarian colonies to an industrial powerhouse. But after the War, the federal government was $70 million in debt, including $44 million from the colonies-turned-states. 

Hamilton solved the debt problem with debt-for-equity swaps. Debt instruments were  accepted in partial payment for stock in the First U.S. Bank. This capital was then leveraged into credit, issued as the first U.S. currency. Loans were based on the fractional reserve model. Hamilton wrote, "It is a well established fact, that Banks in good credit can circulate a far greater sum than the actual quantum of their capital in Gold & Silver." 

That was also the model of the Bank of England, the financial engine of the colonial oppressors; but there were fundamental differences between the two models. The Bank of the United States (BUS) was designed for public development. The Bank of England (BOE) was intended for private gain. (See Hamilton Versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics by Nancy Spannaus, and Alexander Hamilton: A Biography by Forrest McDonald.)

The BOE was chartered to fund a national war and was capitalized exclusively by public debt. The government would pay private lenders, who controlled what policies could be funded. Hamilton's BUS, by contrast, was to be a commercial bank, funding itself by generating credit for infrastructure and development. 

Under Hamilton's system of "Public Credit," the primary function of the BUS would be to issue credit to the government and private interests for internal improvements and other economic development. Hamilton said a bank's function was to generate active capital for agriculture and manufactures, increasing the quantity and quality of labor and industry. The BUS would establish a sovereign currency, a banking system, and a source of credit to build the nation, creating productive wealth, not just financial profit. 

The BUS was chartered for only 20 years, after which it lapsed. When economic hardships and monetary pressures followed, the Second Bank of the United States was founded in 1816 under President John Quincy Adams, basically on the Hamiltonian model. It funded one of the most intense periods of economic progress in history, investing directly in canals, railroads, roads, and coal and iron enterprises; lending money to states and cities engaged in such projects; and managing credit so that it continually flowed into needed productive activities. 

After the Second BUS was shut down, Abraham Lincoln's government issued Greenbacks (U.S. Notes) directly, funding both the Civil War and extensive infrastructure and development. The National Banking System was also established, under which national banks would be partially capitalized with federal securities.

An International Movement Is Born

The American System and its leaders not only allowed the American colonists to break free of British control but inspired an international movement. Other British colonies revolted, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada; and other countries rebelled against the British imperial free-trade doctrines and developed their own infrastructure and manufacturing, including Germany, Ireland, Russia, Japan, India, Mexico, and South America.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), founded in 1911, followed the Hamiltonian model. It was masterminded by an American named King O'Malley, who called Hamilton "the greatest financial man who ever walked the earth." The CBA funded major national development and Australia's participation in World War I, simply with national credit issued by the bank. 

In Canada from 1939-74, the government borrowed from its own Bank of Canada, effectively interest-free. Major government projects were funded without increasing the national debt, including aircraft production during and after World War II, education benefits for returning soldiers, family allowances, old age pensions, the Trans-Canada Highway, the St. Lawrence Seaway project, and universal health care for all Canadians.

Meanwhile in the U.S., we got the Federal Reserve – and the worst banking crisis and economic depression ever in 1929-33. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt then rebuilt the U.S. economy financed through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, again funded on the Hamiltonian model. Initially capitalized with $500 million, from 1932 to 1957 it lent or invested over $40 billion for infrastructure and development of all kinds; funded the New Deal and World War II; and turned a net profit to the government of $690 million.

Solving Today's Price Inflation

That could be done again, assuming the political will. Some pundits predict that the Fed will back off its aggressive interest rate hikes when the carnage from that approach becomes painfully evident, but it seems to be a phase we have to go through to convince policymakers that the Fed's current tools are not able to curb the price inflation we have today. We need to stimulate local development with a national infrastructure and development bank like China's; and for that, Congress needs to pass an infrastructure bank bill. 

Four such bills are currently before Congress. Only one, however, is capable of generating the nearly $6 trillion that the American Society of Civil Engineers says is needed over the next decade for U.S. infrastructure investment. This is HR 3339: The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2021, which would effectively be self-funded on the American System model – a critical feature given that the federal debt is at record levels. The bank would be capitalized with federal debt acquired in debt-for-equity swaps – federal securities for non-voting bank shares paying a 2% dividend. This capital would then be leveraged at 10 to 1 into low-interest loans, essentially at cost. The bank would be anti-inflationary, by bringing supply up to meet demand; would not require new taxes but would rather increase the tax base, by increasing GDP; and would require only a small Congressional outlay for startup costs, which would quickly be repaid. For more information on HR 3339, see the National Infrastructure Bank Coalition website.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Ellen Brown.

Steam rises above the Manhattan skyline from the Con Edison plant on a cold winter afternoon, as seen from the FDR Drive in New York City on Jan. 15, 2022.

Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

New York Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani speaks during Earth Day Celebration in Astoria Park in New York City on Apr. 24, 2021.

Photo: Ron Adar/Sipa USA via AP

Not only has PPNY not built a coalition with electricity workers and unions at the center, the bill itself and its proponents show a concerning lack of interest in fundamental aspects of electricity production itself.

Activists rallied on Foley Square organized by Extinction Rebellion climate group after Supreme Court decision against Environmental Protection Agency on June 30, 2022.

Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Ge

Thanks to decades of neoliberal renewable energy policy, public power has a major structural disadvantage: Private renewable projects receive federal subsidies that these public power entities aren’t eligible for.

Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor Roosevelt in a car at Warm Springs, Ga., on Jan. 1, 1930.

Photo: Bettmann Archive

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Matt Huber.

Called the Weatherization Assistance Program, or WAP, it’s one of the best tools the Biden administration has at its disposal to lower carbon emissions while investing in underserved communities. WAP has historically been funded at a few hundred million dollars per year, serving only about 0.2 percent of low-income households annually, by one estimate. So a new average of $700 million per year is a big deal.

But funding isn’t the only factor preventing WAP from reaching more people. The program has a fundamental flaw. Many homeowners who are eligible for WAP upgrades based on their income are ultimately turned away by program administrators, or “deferred,” told that their homes require repairs before any energy efficiency improvements can be made — repairs they often can’t afford.

“Deferrals are a significant problem for equity, because the households that could stand to benefit the most are not able to access a significant source of federal funding,” said Gabriel Chan, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Minnesota. Plus, the conditions that cause deferrals — plumbing problems, asbestos, and leaking roofs, to name a few — “layer health burdens on top of energy burdens,” he said.

A new program in Pennsylvania aims to address the issue. Earlier this month, the legislature voted to create a $125 million Whole Home Repairs Program as part of the state budget. In addition to paying directly for new roofs, septic systems, and other structural repairs, the money will go toward building up the state’s administrative capacity to help people apply to the program and developing the skilled workforce available to do the repair and weatherization work. It was a rare win for progressive Pennsylvania Democrats, who secured bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled legislature.

“The issue cuts across geographies and partisan lines,” said Nikil Saval, the first-term state senator from Philadelphia who spearheaded the policy. “Virtually all of the legislators I talked to, Democratic or Republican, recognize the issue in their districts.”

The issue isn’t just lack of access to energy efficiency funding. It’s an aging housing stock, with homes falling into disrepair, which can lead to abandonment, which can contribute to the collapse of communities. 

Health and safety issues have also been exacerbated by the increase in extreme weather due to climate change. Saval’s program garnered support from community organizers like Angelo Ortega, an Allentown, Pennsylvania, resident whose house suffered damages when the remnants of Hurricane Ida blew through last year. He had just moved into his mother’s house to take care of her after an injury and was supposed to stay in the finished basement, but it flooded during the storm. Almost a year later, he and his mother, who suffers from asthma, are still trying to manage problems with mildew and can’t afford the work required to prevent future flooding. Friends of his in the community are in need of major roof repairs. 

Ortega is a member of Make the Road Pennsylvania, a grassroots organization that advocates for working-class Latino communities. He said once Make the Road started spreading the word about Saval’s Whole Home Repairs proposal, a lot more people began showing up at their biweekly meetings, and Ortega learned how widespread the need for the program was.

“We didn’t know that there were so many persons with problems with their roofs, water decay, and persons with similar situations like myself with the basement flooding,” he told Grist. “It was an all-out expense for some of them.”

According to the most recent U.S. Census American Housing Survey, some 280,000 homes in Pennsylvania lack adequate plumbing, heating, or electricity, or have physical deficiencies like leaky roofs or pipes. But it’s unclear how many homeowners get deferred from the weatherization program  — neither the Department of Energy nor the state collects data on how many people apply to the program or how many are turned away. The Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, the state agency that distributes WAP funding, recently surveyed the local agencies that actually implement the program to get a sense of how many homes were being deferred and came up with an estimate of 36 percent. 

Better data could be on the way. The U.S. Department of Energy recently told NPR that it aims to begin tracking deferrals in spring 2023. However, the agency’s instructions to states, tribes, and territories for 2022 says that tracking deferrals is optional.

Saval’s Whole Home Repairs Program isn’t the first aimed at addressing the issue. Vermont has a “zero deferral” policy, scraping together funds from different sources to pay for repairs. Since 2016, Delaware has run a “Pre-Weatherization” program that’s funded by proceeds from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a partnership between several Eastern states that forces power plant operators to buy permits to pollute.

Steve Luxton, the CEO of the Energy Coordinating Agency, a nonprofit that’s responsible for administering WAP in Delaware and Philadelphia, said the former’s Pre-Weatherization program is “as good as it could possibly get, to be honest with you.” Luxton estimates that in both places, close to 50 percent of eligible applicants are deferred due to structural issues. “In this case, rather than saying, ‘Well, I got bad news for you,’ we just let them know that you’ve got this issue. They don’t have to fill out documents or anything, we can take most of the information we already have and pretty much do what we have to do.”

Connecticut is launching a roughly $8 million Weatherization Barrier Remediation Program to pay for repairs this year. And last week, the Department of Energy announced several million in grants that will go to city and state agencies around the country for pre-weatherization work. 

The challenge for Pennsylvania, and for many of these other programs, is finding a stable source of funding. Both Pennsylvania and Connecticut’s programs are backed by grants from the American Rescue Plan Act, the COVID-19 stimulus package Congress passed last year.

“We will need to find a recurring source of funding, because this is one-time dollars,” said Saval.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A key U.S. energy efficiency program has a major flaw — and Pennsylvania is trying to fix it on Jul 18, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emily Pontecorvo.

The Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 9, 2022.

Photo: Stefani Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by James Risen.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Laurie Macfarlane.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Almut Rochowanski.

Rep. Ilhan Omar on Sunday demanded that the U.S. House launch impeachment probes into right-wing Supreme Court justices as part of a broader plan to reform the nation's chief judicial body following its decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.

"It is not enough to tell people to vote. We need a comprehensive plan to fix this court."

Omar (D-Minn.), the whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, argued that Justice Clarence Thomas should be investigated for his "role in the January 6th coup," a reference to his wife Ginni's close involvement in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett should face congressional inquiries for potentially lying to lawmakers about their views on Roe v. Wade, the Minnesota Democrat added, echoing her progressive colleague Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

"Congress... has the authority to impeach members of the Supreme Court and has done so before," Omar noted in a series of tweets on Sunday as much of the nation reeled from the far-reaching implications of the court's decision Friday, which had an immediate impact across the country as people were turned away from abortion clinics.

Omar also pushed Democratic leaders to embrace longstanding progressive calls for the repeal of the Senate filibuster rule and support legislation that would add four justices to the Supreme Court—a proposal that President Joe Biden opposes.

"Congress can change the number of justices on the court at any time, and has done so seven times throughout history," Omar wrote Sunday. "In the face of stolen seats, a sitting justice implicated in a coup attempt, and a dangerous crisis of legitimacy, it should absolutely be on the table."

With Democratic campaign arms moving quickly to place abortion rights at the center of their midterm messaging, Omar implored her party's leadership to recognize that "it is not enough to tell people to vote."

"We need a comprehensive plan to fix this court," Omar wrote. "And yes, we need you to demand your members of Congress support reform and vote for members who do. But we as leaders need to articulate a clear and bold reform agenda that meets the seriousness and danger of this moment. That is step #1."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

I have a lot of respect for the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. After meeting in closed session for nearly a year, interviewing more than a thousand witnesses and gathering more than 100,000 documents, the nine-member committee will begin a series of televised public hearings on June 9 and release their findings later this summer.

“No President has ever come close to doing what happened here in terms of trying to organize an inside coup to overthrow an election and bypass the constitutional order.”

But what, realistically, can we expect to learn that we don’t already know? More importantly, what impact, if any, will the hearings have?

Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, has set an extremely high bar for the panel. “The hearings will tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House,” Raskin declared in April at an event hosted by Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice in Washington, D.C.

For Raskin, who is one of seven Democrats on the committee and a recognized constitutional scholar, January 6 is the story of an attempt to overthrow U.S. democracy orchestrated by Donald Trump himself.

“No President has ever come close to doing what happened here in terms of trying to organize an inside coup to overthrow an election and bypass the constitutional order,” Raskin said at Georgetown. And no President, he continued, has ever used “a violent insurrection made up of domestic violent extremist groups, white nationalist and racist, fascist groups in order to support the coup.”

As much as I admire Raskin and consider him a person of measured judgment, it might not matter in the end whether the committee’s hearings blow the roof off or—to invoke a dark metaphor from earlier this century—produce “shock and awe.” The sad truth is that our democracy is so damaged it might be beyond repair.

According to the latest annual report published by Freedom House, a non-profit think tank based in Washington, D.C., the United States has fallen to a new low in global rankings in terms of political rights and civil liberties, dropping from an aggregate score of 94 a decade ago to 83 today. The new score places the United States alongside countries like Panama, Romania, and Croatia, and behind Argentina and Mongolia, both of which earned scores of 84. The United Kingdom, in  contrast, received a score of 93, and Canada a 98. Sweden, Finland, and Norway topped the list with perfect tallies of 100.

And while a boatload of blame for the decline in U.S. democracy can be attributed to Trump and his incitement of the insurrection, our political rot runs far deeper than the January 6 committee can ever probe or remedy.

According to another Freedom House study, written last year by Sarah Repucci, the organization’s vice president for research and analysis, this trend ia the result of a decade of decline.

“The deterioration was initially marked by harmful new restrictions on voting, legislative gridlock that has made it nearly impossible for the country to address serious public policy challenges, and the growing political influence of well-funded special interest groups,” Repucci maintains. “The downward trend accelerated considerably over the last four years, as the Trump Administration trampled institutional and normative checks on its authority.”

Repucci identifies “three enduring problems that play an outsized role in undermining the health of the American political system: unequal treatment for people of color, the improper influence of money in politics, and partisan polarization and extremism.”

All of these, she argues, are aggravated by the “realities of wealth distribution in the United States [that] determine who can make … sizable [political] donations, and thus gain special access, to government representatives. Income inequality has deepened without interruption since 1980; by one count, in 2019 the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans controlled roughly 84 percent of the assets traded on Wall Street. Black families’ median and average wealth was less than 15 percent that of White families in 2019, while Hispanic families’ wealth was less than 20 percent that of White families. There is also a wealth gap between ordinary citizens and those who represent them.”

Remedying the ills of democracy that Trump exploited will require not only that he and his enablers be held accountable, but a far-reaching transformation of our basic social and economic institutions—a prospect that seems increasingly remote as the midterm elections approach and a possible Republican takeover of Congress looms.

This does not mean, of course, that the January 6 committee’s hearings won’t be worth watching. 

In all, according to a draft schedule obtained by The Guardian, the committee is expected to hold six hearings. Both the opening session on June 9 and the final meeting on June 23 will air on national television and radio stations during prime time. The others will be held during daytime hours on June 13, 15, 16, and 21. 

A select committee member will lead each hearing, assisted by the panel’s attorneys. Witnesses will be called, videos will be shown, and text messages will be displayed in an effort to present a detailed multi-media narrative of Trump’s scheme to overthrow U.S. democracy, stretching over a sixty-five-day period from the time Trump falsely declared that he won the 2020 election until  the insurrection of January 6.

In addition to the physical assault on the Capitol, the committee is expected to cover the Trump White House’s efforts to coordinate the illegal plan to send fake electors to Congress, the plot to seize voting machines, and the unlawful plan to delay the certification of Joe Biden’s win. The Guardian also reports that the panel likely will delve into the origins of the “Stop the Steal movement” and the Trump campaign’s connections to violent groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

Once the hearings are completed, the committee will prepare a report summarizing its findings, recommend legislation to prevent future insurrections, and make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice. There is speculation the committee will recommend that Trump be prosecuted for obstruction of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States for his role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election, but that has yet to be confirmed.

To date, the committee has made four contempt referrals, and the Department of Justice has responded with indictments of former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro while declining to charge both Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino.

I have no doubt that the committee’s report will be well-crafted and illuminating. What I fear, however, is that it will read more as an epitaph for our democracy than a roadmap toward reckoning and renewal.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Bill Blum.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When guards first brought Daniel Taylor into a room at the Stateville Correctional Center outside Chicago, we were strangers. It was 2001. I was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He was an inmate serving a life sentence.

He had written to me earlier. His was one of the dozen or so letters I’d get from inmates each month — each in an envelope red-stamped with a note saying they were from an inmate at the Illinois Department of Corrections, as if to warn me about their contents. But his letter stood out. He had been convicted of a 1992 double murder, he wrote, but he had records that showed he was in a police station holding cell when the murders were committed.

Even in Chicago, which was fast becoming known for its miscarriages of justice, it was stunning.

Over more than a decade, I talked with Taylor scores of times on the telephone. I visited him in prison. And with Tribune reporters Maurice Possley and Ken Armstrong, I investigated his case as part of a series of stories on false confessions, then followed it until he was exonerated in June 2013.

That it took some two decades for Taylor to be exonerated and win his release spoke to many things, but none more so than the frailties of the criminal justice system and Taylor’s fierce persistence.

Taylor had a kindness and openness I liked immediately. He was candid about his troubled childhood growing up in foster homes and shelters, about leaving school and about life on the streets. Some three months before the murders, he joined the Vice Lords street gang, largely because his friends were in it. He had been arrested a handful of times for such minor offenses as mob action and theft.

Over the years, we got to know each other better. More than anything, I came to admire his tenacity in the face of a justice system that had repeatedly turned aside his innocence claims. His persistence was another indication to me that he might well be innocent, though it was the facts of the case that mattered the most.

This week, the Chicago City Council approved a $14.25 million wrongful-conviction settlement for Taylor in a vote that brought to an end a saga that had begun three decades earlier. His journey should have been so much shorter.

After all, Taylor, then 17, had what seemed the best imaginable alibi: When Jeffrey Lassiter and Sharon Haugabook were shot to death on Nov. 16, 1992, in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, Taylor was behind bars in a nearby police lockup. He had been arrested for fighting two hours before the murders and released more than an hour after the murders.

The Police Department’s own records, and officers working at the lockup, showed he was in their custody at the time of the shooting. But by the time police found those records, they already had built their case against him. Two other young men had been picked up and confessed to being lookouts; they implicated Taylor and others. All told, eight young Black men were charged with the murders.

Taylor confessed, too. He said he concluded it was futile to resist after detectives hit him with a flashlight and told him that he could leave if he told them what they wanted to hear. In the end, he gave a lengthy statement. In it, he said he and the others had killed Lassiter and Haugabook, four of them carrying out the crime, the other four acting as lookouts.

The other young men confessed, too, implicating one another in interlocking statements that, in the end, sent five of them to state prison; the cases against three of the eight fell apart at various stages. Some of the others said they were mistreated as well. Police have repeatedly denied wrongdoing in all these cases.

In Chicago, as elsewhere, confessions are potent pieces of evidence, and it is hard for people to understand how someone could admit to a crime they didn’t commit. But it happens with troubling regularity.

And once a confession is made, it is almost impossible to move law enforcement off that narrative. Police and prosecutors have proceeded with cases even when DNA evidence exonerates a defendant and points to another suspect. They have proceeded when a confession doesn’t match the physical evidence. And they have proceeded with other cases besides Taylor’s where a suspect was in jail when the crime occurred. There have been so many dubious confessions in Chicago — including the false confessions obtained through torture by former Cmdr. Jon Burge and his detectives, cases that have led to tens of millions of dollars in settlements — that criminal justice advocates have called the city the capital of false confessions.

Taylor’s case upends the idealistic notion that injustices, and particularly those that seem more obvious, will be quickly corrected. That when evidence emerges to undermine the theory of a case, there will be an aggressive and thorough reexamination of the facts to be sure the right people are taken to trial and sent to prison. That there will be an honest soul-searching to make people whole when they have been wronged rather than the legal brawl that so many have experienced.

When Taylor went to trial in 1995, prosecutors attacked his alibi. They said the records that showed him behind bars were unreliable, essentially arguing that their own documents and employees couldn’t be trusted. They offered witnesses who said they saw Taylor on the streets when he was supposedly in custody.

At 19, Taylor was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Two of the other men who had confessed were sentenced to life in prison as well, while another two were given 30-year terms.

As we investigated Taylor’s case at the Tribune, we found ample new evidence of his innocence — documents and witnesses who undermined the case against him. If Taylor’s case fell apart, all the cases would fall apart, since they depended on confessions that linked all the young men to the crime. Prompted by our investigation, prosecutors said that they conducted a reexamination of the case; they said they were confident Taylor was guilty. Taylor was upset. My reporting partners and I were not surprised.

Over the next decade or so, as Taylor languished in prison, Possley and I continued to report on the case, increasingly troubled that the system refused to right what seemed so clearly wrong. We uncovered additional evidence that pointed to his innocence. In 2003, one of the convicted men — the only one significantly older than the other seven — admitted he was involved in the slayings and the others weren’t. Other witnesses were found. More exculpatory documents were uncovered. No one else has ever been arrested for the murders; Taylor’s lawyers said there’s no indication they were ever reinvestigated.

And so it went. A slow accumulation of evidence suggested what seemed clear from the start: Daniel Taylor was innocent. At the same time, attorneys at the Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions took on the case, developing additional evidence over many years and making powerful arguments in court that a miscarriage of justice had been perpetrated.

Over time, the case gained traction. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in 2011 that there was “strong proof that Taylor’s participation in the crime was physically impossible.” The Illinois attorney general’s office took an interest and turned over records that Taylor’s lawyers hadn’t seen.

Faced with spending his life in prison, Taylor educated himself and, like many inmates, studied his case. He learned to play chess and he lifted weights. He was doing what seemed impossible to me: making a virtue of necessity. But there were times he lost hope. He cried at night. At one point, he cut his wrist. His life seemed defined by an injustice. We talked every few weeks for years, but I was never sure our conversations offered much in the way of hope or solace. Too often, I had no news to offer him. Investigating wrongful conviction cases, some of them decades old, is slow, painstaking work. You can go months, even years without making any progress.

And then, in 2013, prosecutors agreed to dismiss Taylor’s conviction, saying that a review of documents and interviews with additional witnesses had persuaded them that it was not in the “interest of justice to proceed on this matter” — clinical language that failed to convey the legal battles the Cook County state’s attorney’s office had waged to keep Taylor behind bars.

After spending more than half of his life behind bars, his beard now turning gray, Taylor strode out of the Menard Correctional Center on a hot and sunny afternoon with $41 in his pocket. He walked into the embrace of his family. He walked into freedom. He got an apartment. He found a job at Northwestern University, in shipping and receiving. He became a father.

In 2014, a judge granted him a certificate of innocence. Later that year, he filed his lawsuit, alleging that police had arrested him though they knew he was guilty. That set the stage for the legal fight that followed — years of depositions and motions that led finally to the settlement.

Now, nearly three decades after he was arrested, the city of Chicago will pay Taylor millions of dollars to make up for the years he lost in prison. A police spokesperson declined to comment. Jessica Felker, a deputy corporation counsel for the city, told the Finance Committee last week that settling the case was a “cost-effective measure to limit the city’s exposure.” Felker said that if the case went to trial, Taylor’s lawyers could ask for $21 million to $42 million in damages, plus an additional $4 million in fees.

When Taylor receives his settlement, the city will have paid roughly $40 million to Taylor and the three others who were also exonerated, a stunning amount for a case that seemed dubious from the outset. Police and prosecutors have never revealed publicly if any of the people who handled the investigation or prosecution were disciplined, and Taylor’s lawyers have not found any evidence that anyone has been held accountable. My guess is that no one ever will be.

“Rather than admitting there was a grievous injustice here, the city of Chicago chose to fight and drag this out. They chose to maintain the position that Daniel was guilty,” David Owens, a lawyer at the Chicago firm Loevy & Loevy and one of Taylor’s attorneys in his lawsuit, said in an interview. (The Loevy firm has represented ProPublica in open records lawsuits.)

At every stage, Owens said, Taylor faced opposition. Even after a jury awarded $13.4 million to one of Taylor’s co-defendants in 2017, and after the city of Chicago agreed to pay two others $5.25 million each, the city continued to fight Taylor’s lawsuit. It did so at a steep cost, too, paying outside attorneys more than $2 million in fees, according to Felker.

“They saw Daniel as a defendant,” Owens said, “rather than someone who was traumatized.”

I no longer have Taylor’s initial letter to me; I think I lost it when I moved from the Tribune to ProPublica five years ago. Until this week, I hadn’t talked to him for several years. He had attorneys he had grown close to, including the late Karen Daniel of Northwestern, and I didn’t want to intrude on his freedom. I didn’t want to remind him of his old life. He is charting a new one.

But, with his case now concluded, the time seemed right. We met on Monday at his lawyers’ office and embraced. He looks the same, though his small beard is now more white than gray. At 46, he is focused on his 7-year-old son. He and his girlfriend and son are now planning to move, to leave behind Illinois and the memories of his arrest, prosecution and imprisonment.

Taylor told me he is mostly at peace. He said he has let go of his anger that no one has been held accountable for his wrongful conviction. Instead, he chooses to be excited for the future, for the chance to live “a comfortable life” and to give his son “the opportunities I didn’t have.” His life has changed, but he knows the criminal justice system hasn’t.

“Mark my word,” he said, “I won’t be the last one to be proved innocent.”

Do You Have a Tip for ProPublica? Help Us Do Journalism.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Steve Mills.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham called this year’s wildfire season “dangerously early,” but premature fire seasons catching local, state, or federal authorities off-guard has long been a concern for fire managers and fire researchers. To get ahead of that problem, some members of Congress have a solution. But that legislation hit a bureaucratic roadblock last autumn and has basically died.

Last year, during a Congressional hearing on the state of wildfire research, researchers and fire managers said that coordination among federal agencies to improve wildfire research would be tremendously helpful to prepare for future fires. Partnerships between research agencies, like NOAA, and forest management agencies like, the Department of the Interior, or DOI, do exist. The Joint Fire Science Program, for example, has been helpful in getting necessary information to stakeholders on the ground when wildfires spread. But what these programs often don’t do is connect all the relevant science research agencies together that contribute pieces to the wildfire fighting puzzle.

“[Research agencies] currently provide research and tools, such as fire weather predictions, satellite imagery, predictive fire analysis research and building codes,” testified Erik Litzenberg, Chair of the Wildland Fire Policy Committee of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. “A standardized warning system would help emergency managers and the public act as the fire develops.”

In the wake of the hearing, and the record-breaking wildfires that swept the West in 2020 and 2021, a group of Western House Democrats introduced a bill last October hoping to fill that research gap. The National Wildland Fire Risk Reduction Program Act aims to “to support the development of novel tools and technologies to improve understanding, monitoring, prediction, and mitigation of wildland fires, associated smoke, and their impacts.” 

In practice, the bill codifies coordinated wildfire research between agencies like NASA, NOAA, The Department of Energy, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would also help facilitate collaboration from a host of other agencies including the United States Forest Service and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

The bill would allocate over $2 billion to fund research into writing fire codes, supporting wildfire related classes for university students, improve smoke modeling, and study how wildfires might affect nationwide energy grids. The end result of the coordinated research could have improved how first responders prepare for, and manage, wildfires.

But the bill has stalled in Congress, caught in a parliamentary maze: To prevent slowing the bill’s passage, lawmakers opted to keep legislation’s jurisdiction limited to the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology, effectively barring any direct conversations with firefighters and forest managers – services under the umbrella of different congressional committees. That carve out led Republicans to conclude that the bill wouldn’t be truly comprehensive, while representatives opined that  their Democratic colleagues did not include them as directly in the bill drafting process. As such, Ranking Member of the House Science Committee, Oklahoma Representative Frank Lucas, indicated that the bill would have “no legislative future.” 

But in New Mexico, less than half of the Hermits Peak Fire is fully contained, and firefighters haven’t yet managed to contain any of the Bear Trap Fire that’s burning near the San Mateo Mountains. Officials say that costs to contain the fires, so far, have hit $65 million. The region’s wildfire season can last through December.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wildfires are still catching us off-guard. Congress’ plan to fix that isn’t going anywhere. on May 11, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Chad Small.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The Hawaii Legislature on Thursday unanimously passed landmark legislation appropriating $600 million for the state’s Native Hawaiian homesteading program, a chronically underfunded initiative that has long fallen short of its promise to return Native people to their ancestral land.

The amount represents the largest one-time infusion of money in the program’s 101-year history, and it’s more than seven times the record amount that state lawmakers approved last year. The majority of the funds will go toward the development of nearly 3,000 lots, most of them residential, on Hawaii’s main islands.

Under the program, people who are at least 50% Hawaiian are entitled to lease land for $1 a year and, upon getting the lease, to buy or build a home on the parcel. The homes cost roughly half the market price because the program’s beneficiaries are not paying for the land.

But, as the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica have reported, the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the agency that manages Hawaii’s 203,000-acre land trust, has failed to meet a crushing demand for housing. Today, more than 28,700 Native Hawaiians sit on an ever-growing waitlist. More than 2,000 people have died while waiting, according to the news organizations’ first-of-its-kind analysis.

In 2020, an investigation by the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica revealed a number of structural shortcomings that contributed to the problem. For example, the department has focused on building large subdivision housing, which proved too expensive for many low-income waitlisters, including those who are homeless. The analysis also showed that at the rate DHHL had been developing lots for the previous quarter century, it would need 182 more years to get everyone off the waitlist as it stood in 2020.

In response to the coverage, DHHL officials acknowledged that bold action was needed to deliver on the department’s main mission, and they pressed for more funding. In turn, legislative leaders prioritized the homesteading program this year. It was a top issue for House Speaker Scott Saiki, who cited the news organizations’ reporting as a major factor in the $600 million legislation.

“I never thought I would see the day that something like this would happen,” said Sen. Maile Shimabukuro, who heads the Senate’s Hawaiian Affairs Committee, as the bill was positioned for passage.

Rep. Patrick Branco, a Native Hawaiian lawmaker, called the legislative action great news. “When Native Hawaiians benefit, all of Hawaii benefits,” he said.

Timing also helped the push succeed. As Native Hawaiians and others have become more politically active in recent years about issues affecting Native culture, lawmakers this session faced the rare situation of deciding how to spend a huge budget surplus — about $2 billion — in a year in which all legislative seats are up for grabs in the coming election.

Given all that, the newsrooms’ revelations about the failures of the homesteading program boosted public awareness and prodded legislators to consider big initiatives, according to beneficiaries, advocates and others.

“No doubt about it,” said former Gov. John Waihee, the only Native Hawaiian to serve in the state’s top political post. “It’s like everything came to a head, and all of a sudden you’ve got money.”

The state’s flush fiscal position also paved the way for the proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed in 1999 by more than 2,700 beneficiaries, mostly over the long waits for homesteads. Even though the court in 2009 found that the state breached its trust obligation and was liable for damages, the litigation has dragged on for years, and more than one-third of the original plaintiffs, many of them elderly, died without seeing a resolution. Lawmakers on Tuesday approved a separate $328 million appropriation to settle the case.

Both bills — totaling nearly $1 billion — now go to Gov. David Ige for his signature. He previously told the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica that fulfilling the state’s obligations to the Hawaiian homesteading program is a priority for his administration.

“This has been a historic legislative session for providing additional support to Native Hawaiian beneficiaries,” Ige said in a statement. “Collectively, we have appropriated more funds this session than ever in the history of the state of Hawaii to advance the ideas and priorities of the Hawaiian homesteading program.”

As the $600 million homesteading bill worked its way through the legislative process, lawmakers received hundreds of pages of written testimony, many from waitlisters who applied decades ago and still don’t have homesteads. Some lamented the missed opportunities that being homeowners would have given them and said they watched as beneficiaries left Hawaii because they couldn’t afford the high housing costs.

One who applied in 2008 and is still more than 7,000 names deep on the Oahu residential waitlist shared a common fear: “I don’t want to be like many of my relatives who died on the waitlist without being awarded a lease,” he wrote.

A high school teacher told legislators about one of her students who wrote of his family’s gratitude after getting a new home in a homestead subdivision. But the student’s grandfather, a Vietnam War veteran who had a separate entry on the waitlist, slipped in and out of homelessness and died while waiting.

The majority of the $600 million is expected to be used by DHHL for developing homestead lots and acquiring land — an effort that will be further boosted by a record $22.3 million that Congress approved earlier this year for Native Hawaiian housing. The agency is planning to tackle 17 projects totaling over 2,900 lots statewide. Eight of the developments, totaling nearly 1,700 lots, are on Oahu — the island with the greatest demand for beneficiary housing.

But, because those developments will still only help a fraction of the people on the waitlist, the bill also authorizes DHHL to spend some of the money to help waitlisters in other ways, including offering down-payment assistance to those seeking to purchase homes on the private market, off trust land. The agency could also provide mortgage or rent subsidies to waitlisters who already have housing. The rent relief is aimed at those who cannot afford to purchase their own homes. If the legislation becomes law, the department would have to develop rules and procedures for how the various forms of housing assistance would work. The measure allows DHHL to use a waitlister’s income level, among other factors, to set priorities for who gets assistance and in what amounts.

A department official said the agency was grateful for the one-time infusion but noted it would need up to $6 billion to clear the entire waitlist. Acknowledging that need, Ige, at a news conference Thursday, floated the idea of dedicating a portion of the state’s hotel tax to the homesteading program on an annual basis.

For now, though, DHHL’s plans are welcome news for beneficiaries like Mauna Kekua, a 50-year-old Oahu public school custodian who has been on the waitlist for nearly two decades. She inherited her spot in line from her mother, Sarah Hauoli Larinaga, who died in 2003 after waiting a quarter century for a homestead.

Kekua said she and her husband, a maintenance worker, have struggled to pay the $2,500 in monthly rent for a West Oahu home for their family of nine, including two sons, a son’s girlfriend and four grandchildren. But now they are hopeful they’ll land a spot in a new, 280-lot development that DHHL plans to build in Maili, a Waianae Coast town not far from where Kekua now lives. The first homes in that project are expected to be completed before the end of the decade. Kekua is No. 114 on the area waitlist — a position high enough to make her optimistic about her chances of getting a parcel.

“I’m praying on it,” she said. “I’m leaving this in God’s hands.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Rob Perez, Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

We've heard this line before—our medical system, as it currently stands, is very unreliable and expensive for the average person. You pay thousands to for-profit insurance companies, and you still have to pay hundreds out-of-pocket for medications and services not covered by our plans.

The ACA was never meant to be the end; it was meant to be a step forward to improve our system.

With so much money coming out of our pockets and so many gaps in our plans, one starts to wonder why we're charged so much for insurance.

But what can we do about this? We do have the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) which helps connect residents to health insurers to get them the best, money-safe options. It has helped countless people get coverage that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten. But is this really still enough? Tens of millions of people continue to have no form of health insurance while the most expensive health care system in the world continues to get even more unaffordable.

Mercer County has significant Hispanic (18.5% or 71,658 people) and Black (21.5% or 83,278 people) communities. As a public health worker in Mercer, I see how our current healthcare system somewhat helps our community, but still leaves many more of us behind, especially people of color.

Being on the front lines of both healthcare and the COVID-19 pandemic, and coming from the Trenton-Hamilton area where there is one of the largest concentrations of Black and Hispanic people, too many of us suffer from being uninsured.

In both communities, more than 1 in 5 of us are uninsured. This is an absurd statistic that really shows us how, despite living in the wealthiest country in the world and spending the most on health care, we are failing communities of color and aren't doing enough to address this neglect.

This doesn't even mention the poverty ceiling created by the eligibility requirements under the ACA subsidy program. If these individuals or families earn more money, they risk exceeding the income thresholds of these programs and losing their health coverage.

This creates an incentive to stay below a certain income level, disincentivizing upward class mobility and maintaining wealth stagnation—all to be able to keep the healthcare coverage that's barely affordable. An income-based program risks leaving behind thousands of people. This becomes a racial issue as much as it is a public health issue.

Many here in our very own Mercer County already understand this, including many of our legislators. Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman is a co-sponsor of the Medicare For All House bill and the board of county commissioners unanimously passed a resolution to call on Congress to pass it. The Princeton and Trenton municipal councils have passed local resolutions calling for the bill to pass.

We cannot wait any longer. There is a growing movement for a solution on the scale of the crisis in our health care system. Several residents of the state's 3rd Congressional District have attended town halls and have urged our delegation to support Medicare For All, and continue to do s

Rep. Andy Kim, this is an urgent call to you to support Medicare for All.

The ACA was never meant to be the end; it was meant to be a step forward to improve our system. If we are to be the wealthiest and most innovative nation on Earth, we must care for the people who actually do the work to make us just that.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brady Rivera.

We've heard this line before—our medical system, as it currently stands, is very unreliable and expensive for the average person. You pay thousands to for-profit insurance companies, and you still have to pay hundreds out-of-pocket for medications and services not covered by our plans.

The ACA was never meant to be the end; it was meant to be a step forward to improve our system.

With so much money coming out of our pockets and so many gaps in our plans, one starts to wonder why we're charged so much for insurance.

But what can we do about this? We do have the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) which helps connect residents to health insurers to get them the best, money-safe options. It has helped countless people get coverage that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten. But is this really still enough? Tens of millions of people continue to have no form of health insurance while the most expensive health care system in the world continues to get even more unaffordable.

Mercer County has significant Hispanic (18.5% or 71,658 people) and Black (21.5% or 83,278 people) communities. As a public health worker in Mercer, I see how our current healthcare system somewhat helps our community, but still leaves many more of us behind, especially people of color.

Being on the front lines of both healthcare and the COVID-19 pandemic, and coming from the Trenton-Hamilton area where there is one of the largest concentrations of Black and Hispanic people, too many of us suffer from being uninsured.

In both communities, more than 1 in 5 of us are uninsured. This is an absurd statistic that really shows us how, despite living in the wealthiest country in the world and spending the most on health care, we are failing communities of color and aren't doing enough to address this neglect.

This doesn't even mention the poverty ceiling created by the eligibility requirements under the ACA subsidy program. If these individuals or families earn more money, they risk exceeding the income thresholds of these programs and losing their health coverage.

This creates an incentive to stay below a certain income level, disincentivizing upward class mobility and maintaining wealth stagnation—all to be able to keep the healthcare coverage that's barely affordable. An income-based program risks leaving behind thousands of people. This becomes a racial issue as much as it is a public health issue.

Many here in our very own Mercer County already understand this, including many of our legislators. Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman is a co-sponsor of the Medicare For All House bill and the board of county commissioners unanimously passed a resolution to call on Congress to pass it. The Princeton and Trenton municipal councils have passed local resolutions calling for the bill to pass.

We cannot wait any longer. There is a growing movement for a solution on the scale of the crisis in our health care system. Several residents of the state's 3rd Congressional District have attended town halls and have urged our delegation to support Medicare For All, and continue to do s

Rep. Andy Kim, this is an urgent call to you to support Medicare for All.

The ACA was never meant to be the end; it was meant to be a step forward to improve our system. If we are to be the wealthiest and most innovative nation on Earth, we must care for the people who actually do the work to make us just that.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brady Rivera.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

A few days after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Michal Freedhoff settled into her cramped home office in a suburb of Washington, D.C., to get to work as the nation’s new top chemical regulator.

It was a key role, charged with protecting Americans from toxic substances used in agriculture and manufacturing. But going back decades, the office had gained a reputation for being captured by the companies it regulated. Under the Trump administration, the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, like many federal agencies, had taken a hard turn away from science. Important new rules, years in the making, had been delayed or diluted.

In Freedhoff, Biden had found a public servant steeped in the risks of chemicals and what it takes to police them. Testaments to her drive surround her desk. On one wall hangs a framed front page of The Washington Post from the day that automakers struck a deal she helped broker with California on vehicle emissions standards; on another is an original copy of a 2016 law that gave the Environmental Protection Agency sweeping new authority to protect people from toxic substances. Seven senators had signed it, thanking her personally.

Freedhoff has long kept up a frenetic pace. The mother of four would stay out late for work events and then send emails at 4 a.m. before heading out on a pre-dawn bike ride. And she knew her new job would require a massive cleanup effort, working with a traumatized staff to rework decisions the Trump administration had pushed through based on skewed science. She was guaranteed just four years, and she had a list of critical to-dos that ranged from finally banning asbestos to fixing the process for authorizing new chemicals. A clock was ticking.

When Freedhoff dug in, what she found was often just … weird. Like a pile of simple, low-level tasks that had ended up on her desk: two hundred perfunctory notices that hadn’t been sent to the federal register, the daily log of official government actions. Fifteen months worth of new chemical rules that had been approved but not publicly announced. They weren’t controversial. It’s just that nobody but the office head had been allowed to click a button.

Gradually, Freedhoff, a hyperlogical fast talker who occasionally flashes a big smile when something amuses her, realized that her predecessor under then-President Donald Trump simply hadn’t delegated routine duties — a symptom of the distrust within the office between career employees and political appointees.

In those first strange weeks, Freedhoff would gaze out on a sea of staffers’ faces filling a Microsoft Teams grid on her screen and ask why something happened the way it did. No one would respond. Later, she’d learn that there was no thoughtful answer to “why”; the person responsible was simply following orders. Often, Freedhoff found, staff had been detailed to trivial projects to help companies that had relationships with Trump appointees.

“We thought we knew which rules were messed with, we thought we knew which policies and which offices were shrunk,” Freedhoff mused last fall, sitting on a bench in the courtyard outside the EPA’s imposing headquarters in Washington. “But I found the damage to be a lot more pervasive than that.”

There’s a saying in Washington that “personnel is policy”: Political appointees in federal agencies are essential to carrying out the president’s plans. With Biden’s legislative agenda stalled, progressives are pushing people like Freedhoff to make good on the president’s promise that government can tackle big problems again.

Biden’s own campaign slogan had been to “build back better.” But Freedhoff’s first year has been a process of learning just how much she’d need to build just to get back to the way things were before Trump arrived. She told me about it in a series of interviews that provide a window into the Biden administration’s struggles to deliver on the president’s promises.

“We all just assumed that everything would sort of snap back to normal,” said Freedhoff, who has been sleeping even less than usual these days. “There was this initial burst of, ‘Thank God, we made it,’ and there were expectations that things would change more quickly than they have.”

Her budget only recently got a small boost, after years of starvation. Her staff remains overstretched. Unexpected roadblocks have cropped up, both inside and outside the agency, hampering her ability to execute decisions. And now, while they acknowledge the positive steps taken so far, the environmentalists she once worked alongside are increasingly voicing frustration that Freedhoff isn’t doing enough.

“I’m concerned,” said Daniel Rosenberg, director of federal toxics policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “I firmly believe that she is committed to protecting public health and the environment. I think the jury’s still out as to where they’re going, and there’s been enough things that are worrisome.”

Freedhoff got her political education in an era when environmental protections were in retreat, and she quickly learned how to operate in a world where a hold-your-nose compromise was often the best-case scenario.

She had grown up in Toronto as a theater kid, attending a high school for the performing arts. Freedhoff took up science in college, taking a cue from her mother, who was a professor of theoretical physics. After Michal Freedhoff received a doctorate in chemistry in 1995, she moved to Washington and landed a job at the American Institute of Physics. There, she translated science into language that policymakers could understand, trying to protect basic research funding from a Republican drive to slice budgets.

Freedhoff soon jumped to Congress to handle science policy for then-Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, dealing with everything from nuclear waste to vehicle emissions standards. She followed Markey to the Senate in 2013 and worked her way up to become director of oversight on the powerful Environment and Public Works committee.

By then, the limits of the nation’s main chemical safety law were all too obvious. The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, was never as strong as its older siblings, the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. What power it did have had been largely gutted in 1991, when an appeals court voided the EPA’s attempt to ban asbestos.

Freedhoff was haunted by stories about workers who’d died from exposure to chemicals that the EPA had never managed to take off the market, driving her to act.

“I remember meeting with families of young adults, who were trained, properly equipped, wore respirators and nevertheless dropped dead while refinishing someone’s bathtub from methylene chloride poisoning,” Freedhoff recalled. “The law was broken for so long.”

Even chemical manufacturers were looking to strengthen safety laws to bolster public confidence in their products. So Freedhoff began working with a close-knit, bipartisan group of staffers to craft an overhaul of the TSCA, relentlessly pushing both sides until they found something they could all live with.

“Trying to solve problems is at her core,” said Dimitri Karakitsos, who was formerly a counselor for Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe and now lobbies for industry. “Because it’s not ideological, it’s like, ‘How do we fix this.’” (Freedhoff also remains friends with Ryan Jackson, the committee’s Republican staff director who became the EPA’s chief of staff under Trump and now works for the National Mining Association.)

The amended law wasn’t perfect, but it was a step forward. It mandated new risk evaluations of chemicals already in use to decide if they should be restricted. It also made it easier for the EPA to order companies to test their chemicals to prove they are safe. In exchange, the chemical industry got a uniform federal regime that could preempt state governments from imposing their own rules — which Freedhoff called the “price tag” for passage.

After the bill was signed in June 2016, Freedhoff recalled talking to a lobbyist at one of the many parties that the group of staffers and interest groups threw to celebrate. He asked if she’d thought of running the toxics office in a prospective Hillary Clinton administration, which would implement the law she helped write. “It didn’t even occur to me,” Freedhoff told me later. But she warmed to the idea.

Instead, after Clinton lost, Freedhoff sat in her Senate office, working furiously to thwart the new administration’s efforts to weaken chemical regulations. When Trump picked a notoriously industry-friendly toxicologist to lead the chemicals office, she made sure enough Republican senators opposed the nomination to force the White House to withdraw the name. After that rare defeat, Trump subbed in a widely respected environmental lawyer.

But the office still finalized chemical risk evaluations that ignored harms to vulnerable populations. Another division, led by an official hired straight from DuPont, sped new chemicals through the vetting process.

Freedhoff wrote letters and issued warnings as key tasks prescribed by the new law were carried out very differently from how she had intended. “This is where I’m going to become the skunk at the garden party again,” she said on a panel with consultants and agency officials in the summer of 2020, predicting that many actions the agency had undertaken would have to be redone because they didn’t comply with the law.

One of the many fronts on which Freedhoff fought the Trump administration — and that she would later inherit responsibility for when she went to work for Biden — is the spread of a class of toxics known as “forever chemicals.”

So named because they don’t break down in the environment over time, these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS) have been used for decades to repel liquids in products such as food packaging and nonstick pans. The chemicals have also found their way into most Americans’ blood. In higher concentrations, they’ve been associated with an array of health problems, including several cancers, autoimmune disorders, and fertility challenges.

As a Senate staffer, Freedhoff chastised the Trump EPA for dragging its feet on regulating PFAS and helped draft legislation that would force the agency to take action. Freedhoff had also already strengthened another tool that could help address PFAS: The 2016 TSCA amendments bolstered the agency’s authority to order chemical manufacturers to pay for testing regarding the effects of their products.

It seemed like the perfect tool for one community that was facing a PFAS disaster.

In 2016, researchers determined that North Carolina’s Cape Fear River contained alarming levels of several PFAS, potentially affecting 300,000 people. Many of the substances came from Fayetteville Works, a chemical manufacturing plant owned by Chemours, which spun out of DuPont in 2015. Critically, the local public utilities weren’t able to filter the chemicals out.

The discovery prompted a flurry of activism as residents mobilized to secure safe drinking water. In 2019, the state brokered a consent order that required the company to essentially stop releasing the chemicals. But it did nothing to help Cape Fear residents understand what decades of exposure to Chemours’ emissions meant for their health.

The last time Chemours’ corporate predecessor DuPont poisoned a drinking water supply with a type of PFAS, in the early 2000s, residents of Parkersburg, West Virginia, were able to use litigation to force the company to fund large-scale tests. Ultimately, 69,000 victims participated in a study that cost DuPont $33 million. The flood of data linked the chemical to health issues including ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension, thyroid disease, and testicular cancer.

While Cape Fear residents and the state of North Carolina have also sued Chemours and DuPont, the companies have opposed the lawsuits, and any settlement would likely take years.

But Emily Donovan, a Christian youth group leader turned local community activist, found a potential shortcut.

In traveling the country talking about what was happening in Cape Fear, she learned that the TSCA has long allowed anyone to petition the EPA to compel polluters to pay for testing. Doing so got slightly easier in 2016, thanks to the amendments Freedhoff helped craft.

“Every time I go to conferences and talk to scientists, they say, ‘You need the statistical power to prove it. Who’s going to fund it? How about the manufacturer,’” Donovan told me. “And guess what, TSCA allows that.”

So starting in 2019, Donovan worked with a nonprofit advocacy group and scientific experts to draft a 42-page petition for testing and build a coalition to campaign for it. Along with lab and animal studies on the mixtures of PFAS in the river, they wanted tests of at least 100,000 people who had been exposed to the company’s waste.

Such tests could help answer crucial questions for people like Marianne Ashworth, a freelance translator who lives on the outskirts of Fayetteville and started receiving dozens of jugs of water from Chemours after her well tested positive for PFAS. Ashworth had discovered a fibroid in her uterus, which a recent study suggested could be linked to PFAS exposure, although Chemours says that the types of PFAS examined in the study are not among those associated with its plant. She wonders if it might have to do with showering in, washing dishes in, jumping in a swimming pool full of the contaminated well water for the past seven years.

She has two young kids and wants to know what conditions she should be on the lookout for in them. “As a parent, you blame yourself,” Ashworth said. “There’s all this extra exposure that they didn’t need. You don’t think that there’s something in my water that’s going to slowly kill us.”

Donovan’s coalition filed its petition in October of 2020. Two weeks before Trump left office, his administration denied the request. The groups responded by suing the EPA last March. But then they paused the case, hoping that Freedhoff — who had just taken over the chemical safety office — would use her authority to grant the petition after all.

In January of last year, then-acting assistant administrator Freedhoff got to work in a room off the kitchen, within shouting distance of four middle and high schoolers doing remote classes and a wriggly black puppy. Freedhoff is short — barely peeking over the wheel of her sunshine-yellow Honda Fit — with frizzy blond hair; she favors chunky necklaces, wide-leg pants, and practical shoes. A copy of Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” props up her laptop.

At Freedhoff’s confirmation hearing in May, her former colleagues in the Senate hailed her nomination. Inhofe, an arch climate skeptic, addressed her two daughters sitting behind her. “Your mama probably is the only person in America that will have equal praise from Sen. Markey and me,” Inhofe pronounced. She sailed through on a voice vote.

For Freedhoff, it was a chance to finish what she started.

“That’s what I came to do,” she told me. “It wasn’t just, ‘Write a rule for this chemical or that chemical.’ It was, ‘Implement a law that I had the opportunity to help write.’”

But before she could make progress, she almost immediately had to make a big concession to corporations.

In 2016, Congress directed the EPA to prioritize regulating one class of hazardous chemicals. The Trump administration finalized rules limiting how the substances can be used and handled just before the end of Trump’s term in January 2021. Many industries apparently didn’t realize the implications. Out of nowhere, businesses that make everything from farm equipment to semiconductors began calling and sending letters to top EPA officials warning of dire consequences if the agency didn’t delay a compliance deadline.

“My initial reaction was, ‘Are you kidding me? The first thing I have to do under TSCA is weaken a rule?’” Freedhoff said. But if they didn’t, whole product lines would have to be taken off the market until supply chains could be re-engineered. Freedhoff held up her iPhone cable. “Do you really want another charge cable? It was really that ubiquitous.” The rule was pushed back for years.

Next, Freedhoff had to figure out what to do with the Trump administration’s reviews of the first 10 chemicals that the agency had decided to take on under the overhauled TSCA. They were a rogue’s gallery of mostly still-available toxics, including asbestos, which the agency had failed to ban back in 1991. She would have to balance redoing Trump-era risk evaluations that had narrowly defined hazards and downplayed exposure with the need to get the rules finalized before the end of Biden’s term.

Freedhoff had nowhere near enough resources to get it all done.

The EPA’s funding has been sliding downward since soon after the agency was founded. The decline began in the 1980s, when the EPA spent more than double (in inflation-adjusted dollars) what it did in 2020. As a result, its staff has contracted by more than 20 percent since the end of Bill Clinton’s administration.

Congress conferred heavy new responsibilities on the chemical safety office in 2016, fully anticipating that it would need more funding — but the Trump administration never asked for it. The law even allowed the EPA to assess higher fees on companies for their chemical reviews, but the Trump administration delayed doing so and then pursued less than it could have.

That put significant strain on the staff who remained. Freedhoff learned that under Trump, the staff routinely had 4:30 p.m. meetings involving tricky scientific questions and were asked to report back with answers the next morning at 8 a.m. Still, important duties had been neglected. Part of the office, the pollution prevention division, was raided to do more pressing work that was required under the revised TSCA.

Biden’s budget proposal for 2022 promised enough money to hire 87 new people, but it was tied up with one stopgap funding measure after another, while Biden’s $1.75 trillion climate and social spending bill floundered. As time dragged on with no reinforcements, Freedhoff started to go public with her appeals.

Last October, she was called to testify before her old colleagues at the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a room with sky-high ceilings and huge portraits of the committee’s former chairs on the walls. With a severe case of nerves, she prepared for hours, thinking about how best to convey her key message: In order to do anything that representatives might ask for — whether it was reducing the backlog of applications to approve new chemicals or finally dealing with asbestos — she needed more money.

She sat alone before the panel of politicians, facing antagonistic questions from Republicans — a startling departure from the bipartisan spirit in which the new law had passed five years earlier — and also impatience from Democrats, who wanted rules to be made faster. Each time, she answered calmly.

“It’s a series of compounding resource errors that prevent us from hiring the kinds of scientific experts we need,” she told them, measuring her words. “Everybody’s been working on a shoestring for a long time now. And that’s going to take time to get back on track.”

Within the chemicals office, Freedhoff has encouraged staff to take time off, saying that deadlines weren’t everything. Yet one deadline is critical: the 2024 election.

In previous eras, a change in party control, while certainly shifting priorities, wouldn’t necessarily derail an entire regulatory process. But if another administration like Trump’s came to power, anything not finalized before Inauguration Day could wind up being tossed.

And the delays are mounting, pushing the regulatory agenda deep into 2024. Freedhoff learned that during the Trump years, the chemicals office had clashed with others within the EPA, creating rifts that took time to smooth over. While in the Senate, she had admonished the agency to follow certain consultation procedures, which she has now realized would slow her own progress.

“This is one of those karmic things,” she said ruefully. Isn’t that how it should be? I asked. She sighed. “It is how it should be.”

David Fischer spent 10 years at the American Chemistry Council before serving as deputy chemicals chief under Trump’s EPA and then rotating back out to the law firm Keller & Heckman. He points out that his team was poised to regulate several chemicals more quickly than Freedhoff will, even though they would have done so less comprehensively. “That effort will now have to wait for years to happen,” he said.

Fischer is just one of many former EPA officials who now circle Freedhoff’s office, watching for missteps. The crowd includes Freedhoff’s predecessor and another Trump appointee who has penned several op-eds critical of Freedhoff’s decisions. One lobbying shop that focuses exclusively on chemical regulation has at least eight ex-EPA staffers who now help represent clients before their former colleagues.

Freedhoff figures that litigation is inevitable. Winning cases quickly requires a certain amount of dotting i’s and crossing t’s. That takes time, which is in short supply, especially since new funding took so long to arrive. When it finally came through earlier this month, the 2022 budget included less than a third of the $15 million increase she’d asked for.

“There’s a stars-aligning thing that has to happen, and I am worried about that,” Freedhoff said.

“It all just kind of adds up. You have one government shutdown that goes for a month, or you have one legitimate scientific thing that takes a while to work through, and you’ve got problems.”

Environmental advocates are sympathetic to Freedhoff’s constraints, but they’re starting to lose patience.

Some decisions, they argue, wouldn’t take much time or money. For example, Freedhoff’s office decided to improve the Trump administration’s methodology for evaluating existing chemicals, which an independent panel had found to be flawed. But rather than simply switching to an already peer-reviewed playbook, as the panel recommended, the agency instead adapted the Trump version, saying the other options didn’t suit the requirements of the law. Public health experts have panned the revised method.

“It just is perplexing that they’re saying they’re following the best available science when they’re not,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. “She has the potential to make very important structural changes that she is not taking advantage of.”

When faced with this kind of criticism, Freedhoff gets a little exasperated. She sees a “disconnect” between academic experts and regulators who have to map science onto statutes that are fundamentally political documents.

“It doesn’t do anyone any good to ignore the words in the law,” she said. “Science is one driver in every law, but it’s not the only driver.”

Donovan and her fellow Cape Fear advocates were among those who had high expectations for Freedhoff, hoping that she would instill a new sense of corporate accountability and reverse the Trump administration’s rejection of their petition.

A June meeting with Freedhoff and her deputies, however, turned out to be a surprisingly chilly affair. Donovan recalled that the officials seemed reluctant to order Chemours to pay for health studies. Alarmingly, a high-level manager named Tala Henry reiterated some of the company’s original arguments about how it wasn’t necessarily responsible for all 54 PFAS listed in the petition. (The company said that its manufacturing process involved all but seven, and acknowledged that some of the rest may have arisen when its chemicals reacted with the environment.)

Henry referred questions to EPA’s press office. “Comments made by EPA’s Dr. Henry during various meetings with Ms. Donovan sought to provide relevant, factual information on the specifics of stakeholder requests, informed by career EPA staff, and legal counsel, and not based on personal feelings or beliefs,” a spokesperson said.

Donovan’s concerns grew when she saw a story in The Intercept soon after the meeting about EPA scientists who alleged that during the Trump years, Henry and other managers had warped their work in ways that favored industry. Since Henry seemed to be overseeing the response to their petition, it didn’t bode well. (The EPA told The Intercept that the complaints were being investigated and that the agency was taking steps to shore up scientific integrity.)

Nevertheless, in September, Donovan and others finally got a bit of good news: The EPA told them that it would formally reconsider their petition and respond within 90 days.

A few weeks later, Biden’s new EPA chief, Michael Regan, came to North Carolina to announce a nationwide plan for dealing with the types of chemicals that Cape Fear residents had been begging them to study. It was a homecoming: Regan had previously been North Carolina’s chief environmental regulator and had brokered the deal that got Chemours to stop dumping PFAS.

Standing outside on a podium, with the EPA logo in front of them and Lake Raleigh sparkling behind them, the governor and his top environmental official welcomed Regan, describing how their state had been sickened by PFAS emissions. Cape Fear had become a national symbol of the dangerous chemicals’ spread.

To cap the event, Regan laid out what he called the PFAS Strategic Roadmap, a timeline for research, regulation, and cleanup. He promised to finally prioritize people over polluters. A forthcoming assessment of one of Chemours’ PFAS compounds, he said, would “ensure that no other community has to go through what the Cape Fear River communities had to endure.”

Donovan was in the audience, welling up with tears, wanting to believe him.

The EPA’s response to her petition was due on Dec. 28. Three days before Christmas, Donovan sat down at her desk to write a last-ditch appeal to Freedhoff and other top EPA officials. In her email, Donovan noted that the petition had been endorsed by the city of Wilmington, its county, and the local water utility (along with half of North Carolina’s congressional delegation and dozens of academic scientists).

In closing, she described two friends suffering from cancer, wanting to know whether the possibly carcinogenic chemicals in their water played a role.

“You have the power to protect and heal these communities,” Donovan wrote. “I pray you use your authority to lift up human health over corporate wealth.”

Freedhoff responded the next day. “I wanted to thank you for your continued advocacy on behalf of your family, friends, and community,” she emailed. “I also wanted to convey my hopes that the members of your community who are faced with the grave health challenges you described below are able to find peace and recovery in the new year.” She didn’t, however, betray what she was planning to do.

When the response came, in the form of a letter to the coalition’s legal counsel, Robert Sussman, the agency’s response at first sounded like a win. “EPA is granting the petition,” it began.

But while touting the agency’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap as a partial solution, the 29-page document promised to deliver little of what the petition had specifically asked for. Most importantly, it didn’t order Chemours to fund a human health study. The EPA argued that designing another study would consume scarce staff time, and that similar studies were underway elsewhere — a rationale also offered by the Trump administration in its initial rejection of the petition.

In a statement at the time, Chemours said it “supports national, industry-wide PFAS-related regulatory and testing requirements that are data-driven and based on the best available science.” (A spokesperson declined to comment further for this story.)

The petitioners were irate. Even Cape Fear River Watch, which wanted to stay on the EPA’s good side so it could get help with other campaigns, reacted angrily. “Their response was so unethical in its dishonesty,” said the group’s executive director, Dana Sargent. “If they had come out and said, like the Trump administration, ‘No we’re not going to grant it,’ I would have been less likely to come out so strongly.”

Freedhoff said she’d pushed as far as she legally could. In overhauling the TSCA, Congress had made it easier for the EPA to order companies to pay for testing — and in exchange, the agency had to prove the current data was insufficient before ordering new tests. Enough information is already either available or in progress that, she said, that if they’d ordered everything the petitioners asked for, Chemours could sue and might win.

“You can’t ask companies to spend a bunch of money producing data that already exists,” Freedhoff said, noting that her office also has some confidential company data on PFAS. “If you go in knowing that what you’re doing isn’t supported by science or the law, that’s not a good place to start. It’s not where anyone in this administration would start.”

That’s perplexing to Sussman, who served as deputy EPA administrator in the Clinton administration and as a senior agency adviser under Obama. The petitioners had done a comprehensive literature search and found that none of the chemicals had been studied enough to help residents understand the potential health consequences of Chemours’ pollution.

“These are weak arguments and EPA should not be afraid of taking them on,” Sussman said.

The decision is also perplexing to scientists who study PFAS contamination in the Cape Fear River watershed, like Jamie DeWitt, a toxicology professor at East Carolina University who signed a letter endorsing the petition. The state has provided a few million dollars for PFAS research, including DeWitt’s, but it’s halting and infrequent. When I visited her lab in Greenville, she was scrambling to submit a National Institutes of Health grant for more PFAS work. Without Chemours bankrolling a large study, it’s not clear how it could happen.

“I do think people have the right to know what is getting into their bodies from the food they eat, the water they drink, the products they use. It should be free,” DeWitt said. “The question is, who’s gonna pay for it?”

Around the midpoint of the Obama administration, when Republicans hardened their resistance to the Democratic leader’s legislative efforts, the president turned to executive action to try to advance issues ranging from immigration to power plant emissions.

This time around, progressive activists don’t want Biden to wait that long. They’re pushing him to use the executive branch in as muscular a fashion as possible, as the Trump administration did, using bold legal means — like granting a petition asking a polluter to pay for tests — to crack down on corporate malfeasance.

“We’re frustrated, throughout the administration, with a lack of creativity and willingness to just throw up their hands when they get to the first barrier,” said Dorothy Slater, a senior researcher with the Revolving Door Project, which focuses on agency appointments.

The EPA scientists who blew the whistle on managers who allegedly manipulated their work in favor of industry also wanted Freedhoff to take more aggressive action. Optimistic about her appointment, they originally filed their complaints soon after the 2020 election.

A couple months into the job, Freedhoff sent out an all-staff memo recognizing several examples of political interference and affirming her commitment to scientific integrity. Later, she announced new advisory councils and recordkeeping requirements. But none of it did what the whistleblowers really wanted: remove the accused managers, most of whom remain in their positions, engendering distrust both within the agency and outside it.

The EPA’s inspector general is investigating the complaints, and Freedhoff has said that she can’t simply move people around without due process, as the Trump administration did. Moreover, it bothers her when people accuse civil servants of acting in bad faith — she thinks the staffers just implemented policies from political appointees who were higher up the chain.

“You’re supposed to do what they tell you to do,” Freedhoff said. “You can complain, but I don’t think you should expect everyone to be Paul Revere. Only Paul Revere is Paul Revere.”

Emily Donovan doesn’t buy that explanation, and she finds it confounding that officials who facilitated Trump’s orders would now hold sway over her community’s fate.

In early February, Donovan, and I walked out on a beach near the mouth of the Cape Fear River to see foam that she said looked unusually frothy. She’d gotten it tested last fall and found it contained several types of PFAS. She doesn’t let her kids swim there anymore, but people were fishing while standing on the sand, seemingly unaware of the dangerous chemicals in the water.

When I told Donovan about Freedhoff’s rationale for leaving someone who had been accused of manipulating science in charge of the chemicals office’s response to her petition, she thought about it for a second.

“We lose in that. We lose,” she said, coldly, the wind whipping her hair. “I actually think it does a disservice to the American people, because we didn’t elect Biden to maintain the status quo.”

In late January, the Cape Fear coalition restarted the lawsuit it had originally filed after the Trump administration rejected its petition. Donovan finds it ironic that the agency seems more willing to be sued by citizens than by the corporation that had contaminated her drinking water.

Freedhoff hears Donovan’s frustration everywhere. There was a time when she might have felt the same. While on the Hill, she pushed for regulators to move faster and accomplish more. Now that she’s on the inside, she’s come to fully understand the handicaps the agency has faced for decades.

“When you’re sitting in Congress saying, ‘Hey, do a rule in a year,’ you keep getting told by the agency, ‘That is not possible,’” she told me, over lunch in January at a taco place near her house. “And you get to the agency and you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, it kind of is impossible.’”

She’s been thinking a lot lately about the parents she met years ago as they grieved children who died from exposure to toxic chemicals. Those kids would have been Freedhoff’s age now, and the EPA still hasn’t banned the chemicals that killed them. But she can’t make amends for the past.

“There’s all these examples where for generations, communities were exposed to chemicals, never told about it, and suddenly realized what happened to them, and want answers and want justice,” Freedhoff said. “And it is extremely hard to feel like I can’t do all the things they want.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline She’s supposed to protect Americans from toxic chemicals. First, she just has to fix Trump’s mess and decades of neglect. on Apr 30, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lydia DePillis.

While welcoming the White House's move Tuesday to repair some of the damage that the Trump administration did to a federal law known as "the Magna Carta of environmental legislation," green groups also urged President Joe Biden to go even further.

"I'm glad this administration... is moving forward to restore the protections that have helped protect our environment while promoting sustainable development for decades."

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) finalized its "phase 1" rule for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), reaffirming that federal agencies reviewing infrastructure projects such as highways and pipelines must consider all relevant environmental impacts, including those that are climate-related.

"This is a critical first step toward restoring commonsense environmental safeguards, but we have a long way to go and very little time," declared Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

"The Biden administration must ensure that every federal decision addresses systemic environmental injustice, climate chaos, and the extinction crisis," he said. "These key protections must be quickly put back in place and then strengthened during the next phase."

Leslie Fields, Sierra Club's national director of policy, advocacy, and legal, similarly said that "we are encouraged to see the Biden administration take action to restore this bedrock environmental protection," which "plays a critical role in keeping our communities and our environment healthy and safe."

Blasting former President Donald Trump's attempts to weaken the law as "clearly nothing more than a handout to corporate polluters," Fields added that "we look forward to the coming phase 2 rule-making, and encourage CEQ to finalize the strongest NEPA regulations possible, as soon as possible."

Earthjustice president Abigail Dillen called NEPA "our core framework for transparent decision-making informed by the best science and the lived experience of impacted people and communities," and said that "by reinstating the long-standing definitions of direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts, the Council for Environmental Quality is making federal agencies responsible for addressing the reality of environmental injustice, ecosystem collapse, and our climate emergency."

In addition to doing that, CEQ explained in a statement, the regulation "restores the full authority of agencies to work with communities to develop and analyze alternative approaches that could minimize environmental and public health costs."

Further, the policy "establishes CEQ's NEPA regulations as a floor, rather than a ceiling, for the environmental review standards that federal agencies should be meeting," the council said. "This proposal restores the ability of federal agencies to tailor their NEPA procedures, consistent with the CEQ NEPA regulations, to help meet the specific needs of their agencies, the public, and stakeholders."

"Restoring these basic community safeguards will provide regulatory certainty, reduce conflict, and help ensure that projects get built right the first time," said CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory. "Patching these holes in the environmental review process will help projects get built faster, be more resilient, and provide greater benefits—to people who live nearby."

CEQ will now work on broader phase 2 changes to the 1970 law.

"Good NEPA process requires robust community engagement, rigorous analysis, and public disclosure, which leads to government accountability, better projects with more community buy-in, and less litigation," said Dillen. "As we transition to a clean energy future, following NEPA can and must help us to advance equitable solutions, including resilient and innovative new infrastructure."

"While this phase 1 rule represents an essential step forward, the Biden administration cannot stop here," she said. "The upcoming phase 2 rule-making process is an opportunity for the administration to engage directly with those most impacted by polluting industries and reflect their voices in a final rule that delivers on the commitments this administration has made to environmental justice communities."

Dillen vowed that Earthjustice "will continue working with the Biden administration throughout the upcoming phase 2 rule-making process to ensure we tap NEPA's full potential to address the unprecedented environmental challenges we face now."

Describing the rule as "a bright spot after a dark winter for Biden's climate agenda," The Washington Post noted:

About $555 billion in proposed climate action has been stalled in Congress since last winter, when a lack of support from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) derailed the Democrats' spending bill. With Congress taking little action on climate change, the administration has focused on using the president's executive authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

But a forthcoming ruling by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, a case that will be decided this year, could frustrate the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to shift the United States toward cleaner sources of energy. And since Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent oil prices soaring, Biden has faced an additional challenge: an emboldened fossil fuel industry calling for expanded drilling on federal land. Pressure to lower gas prices has pushed the president, who campaigned on tackling climate change, to encourage more domestic oil and gas production.

Along with winning praise from environmental activists, Biden's NEPA rule was celebrated by some members of Congress—including Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.).

"The previous administration stripped and gutted NEPA protections, effectively blocking federal agencies from taking climate change and public input into account when they make major decisions that affect our environment and the health of our communities," Grijalva said. "I'm glad this administration recognizes how egregiously wrong those actions were and is moving forward to restore the protections that have helped protect our environment while promoting sustainable development for decades."

"But the work here isn't done," he added. "With investments from the historic Infrastructure law going out the door as we speak, this administration needs to complete the second phase of rule-making and they need to do it soon. Without a strengthened NEPA and public engagement process, these investments could very well fall short of their full potential to advance equity and environmental justice for all communities."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News &amp; Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which oversees the program, says the new rubric will more fairly assess flood risks when it calculates insurance premiums. That approach, Risk Rating 2.0, takes into account a home’s individual flood history and rebuilding costs.

David Maurstad, senior executive of the National Flood Insurance Program, called the upgrade “long overdue” in a statement announcing the changes last year. “Now is the right time to modernize how risk is identified, priced, and communicated,” he said. “By doing so we empower policyholders to make informed decisions to protect their homes and businesses from life-changing flooding events that will strike in the months and years ahead due to climate change.” 

The new system marks a major shift in the program’s approach to risk analysis, first established in 1968. Until now, assessments were largely based on a given home’s square footage and elevation relative to the “100-year flood plain,” a swathe of land expected to flood in a major storm. 

Under that system, homeowners at similar elevations — even if one was far inland and the other, on the coast — might have paid similar rates. “The way we were pricing insurance wasn’t fair,” said Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “People in relatively low-risk areas paid more than they should and people in relatively high-risk areas paid less than they should.” Home by home, the new rubric takes a much closer look to determine each property’s unique flood risk. 

The transition to the new model was broken into two phases. On October 1, the new structure went into effect for homeowners opening new policies. Friday marked the point at which the new system takes effect for current policyholders. For those whose rates will go up, the rates will increase over time until they reach the new premiums, with increases capped at 18 percent each year. Around 20 percent of homeowners are expected to pay less for coverage, Moore noted.

In effect, the homes that will see the steepest price hikes are the highest-value properties right on the coast. But considering their risk levels, owners of such homes have long paid relatively low premiums, which were subsidized by their inland neighbors, often lower-income communities. 

Lawmakers in states like Florida and Louisiana — where residents face rising seas and therefore expect swelling premiums — have raised concerns that homeowners would sooner cancel coverage entirely rather than pay higher rates. “FEMA is making flood insurance unaffordable for Louisianians,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said in a statement.

Still, advocates say the much-needed upgrade is essential for understanding the risks posed by extreme weather. The new method “will provide property owners information on their full risk rates,” wrote advocates and experts last September, in a letter expressing their support of FEMA’s efforts. 

The updates may also communicate the growing unsuitability of homes in desirable, but flood-prone areas, such as affluent stretches of the Florida or New Jersey coast. “Hopefully it sends a bit of a price signal that maybe people would be better off living somewhere else,” Moore said. “But if you’re building a big home on the beach, the price of flood insurance is probably not going to be a determining factor.”

Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline  Can FEMA fix its unfair flood insurance system? We’re about to find out. on Apr 4, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lina Tran.

Scientists are documenting changes that are “much more widespread” and “much more negative,” she said, than anticipated for the 1.09 degrees Celsius of global warming that has occurred to date. “This has opened up a whole new realm of understanding of what the impacts of overshoot might entail.”

It was a critical message that was easy to miss. “Overshoot” is jargon that has not yet made the jump from scientific journals into the public vernacular. It didn’t make it into many headlines. 

But just days earlier, the topic generated extensive debate when Parmesan and her coauthors went over their findings with government representatives from around the world. And next week, after the IPCC releases another big report on climate solutions, you may just start hearing about it more and more.

“Remember this word: overshoot,” Janos Pasztor, the executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative and the former United Nations assistant secretary-general on climate change, wrote in an op-ed published in January. “It will gain increasing importance as the herculean difficulty of reducing emissions to net zero and removing vast stores of carbon from the atmosphere become clearer.”

The topic of overshoot has actually been lingering beneath the surface of public discussion about climate change for years, often implied but rarely mentioned directly. In the broadest sense, overshoot is a future where the world does not cut carbon quickly enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels — a limit often described as a threshold of dangerous climate change — but then is able to bring the temperature back down later on. A sort of climate boomerang.

Here’s how: After blowing past 1.5 degrees, nations eventually achieve net-zero emissions. This requires not only reducing emissions, but also canceling out any remaining emissions with actions to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, commonly called carbon removal. At that point, the temperature may have only risen to 1.6 degrees C, or it could have shot past 2 degrees, or 3, or 4 — depending on how long it takes to get to net-zero. 

The global temperature will begin to stabilize, but it will not decline. So next, nations will aim to scale up carbon removal even further. This will lower the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and bring the temperature on earth back down below 2 degrees C, if not to 1.5, or even lower, by the end of this century.

This possibility of overshoot was first conceived by scientific models that map out potential pathways for climate policy. And in the realm of a computer model, overshoot is a success story. We may fail to meet global climate targets in the next few decades, but hey, we can always turn things around and achieve them by 2100. But Parmesan and other scientists are warning that overshoot should not be considered lightly. While the rise in temperature is theoretically reversible, many of the consequences of a temporarily hotter planet will not be. 

In a sense, we are on the pathway to overshoot right now. Warming is already dangerously close to 1.5 degrees, emissions are not going down, and existing policies put the world on track to warm 3 degrees by the end of the century. Policymakers are also beginning to seriously invest in carbon removal research and development, however, these solutions are still nowhere near being able to turn temperature rise around.

When I reached out to Parmesan to ask about her statement in the press conference, she was eager to talk about overshoot. “It’s so important, and really being downplayed by policymakers,” she wrote.
“I think there’s very much an increased awareness of the need for action,” she told me when we got on the phone. “But then they fool themselves into thinking oh, but if we go over for a few decades, it’ll be okay.”

The effects of overshoot could undermine climate solutions

The February report was part of the sixth major assessment of climate science by the IPCC, a body of hundreds of scientists convened by the U.N. The assessment is published in three volumes that look at the physical science of climate change, the effects of a warming planet on ecosystems and people and how to adapt to them, and the options for cutting emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere. That third volume will be released next week. 

Parmesan said the IPCC’s recent impacts report shed light on two key risks of a future period of overshoot that she felt people were not paying enough attention to. The first is that some impacts will be irreversible, like the loss of coral reefs and species extinctions. “Global warming coming back down is not going to bring you that species back,” she said. 

Though Parmesan did note that for many threatened species, “the shorter the overshoot, the lower the overshoot, the less likely they are to actually go extinct.”

Sea-level rise is also irreversible — the heat collecting in ice sheets and the ocean will continue to drive sea-level rise long after the temperature is stabilized or even lowered. Not to mention the possibility of losing entire nations and cultures to the sea, or the mass loss of human life from a world with more dangerous heat waves and storms.

But the second risk throws the whole possibility of eventually reversing global warming into question. This is the part that stirred up confusion and controversy prior to the IPCC report’s release, when scientists were going over their findings with government delegates. 

It has to do with climate feedbacks — changes to natural systems caused by climate change that then exacerbate climate change. The report documents countless examples that scientists are already observing. Insect outbreaks and wildfires are killing trees, causing huge releases of greenhouse gases from forests. Heat and drought are causing some parts of the Amazon rainforest to release more carbon than they suck up — even in intact, old-growth areas that have not been disturbed by agriculture or development. Arctic permafrost — frozen, carbon-rich soil — is thawing and beginning to release the carbon stored within. Scientists estimate that there is five times as much carbon stored in permafrost than has ever been emitted by humans.

Scientists say it is still possible to stop or even reverse these feedbacks with aggressive cuts to fossil fuel emissions and by actively restoring ecosystems. Walt Oeschel, a biologist at San Diego State University who first discovered that Arctic permafrost was becoming a net source of emissions in the 1980s, said that in northern Alaska, the permafrost is more than 1,000 feet thick, and for the most part, it’s just the surface layer that’s melting and releasing carbon. “But it’s going to get harder and harder to ameliorate or to reverse the longer we wait,” he said. 

This is the crux of Parmesan’s second warning. Once some of these processes get chugging along, they may reach a point where it becomes impossible to stop them. “Humans can control human actions, but humans cannot control the biosphere’s responses to climate change,” she said. “And we’re witnessing responses that are going to make it harder and harder and harder for humans to get global warming down.”

If permafrost and rainforests begin pumping carbon into the atmosphere, the possibility of achieving net-zero, or even net-negative emissions would become a much bigger uphill battle. Even if we develop significant carbon removal capacity, these feedback emissions could make trying to remove carbon from the atmosphere feel like trying to shovel the walkway in the middle of a blizzard.

Scientists cannot pinpoint a specific temperature, or how long of an overshoot period may lead to unstoppable emissions from these systems. “But we can tell you these processes have already started,” said Parmesan. “And the longer they go on, the higher the warming, the longer the warming, the harder it’s going to be to reverse.”

Wolfgang Cramer, a co-author on the IPCC impacts report, said that when they explained this to government delegates, the discussion grew thorny. Some felt that talking about this would discredit the idea that we can aggressively cut carbon later in the century and reverse global warming. “It was seen as a way to be policy prescriptive,” Cramer said. “As if we wanted to tell them that if you don’t get it now then there’s no point in trying later.”

But to him that missed the point. “We’re just telling you that you may find it harder to come back later in the century than you think,” he said. “We were just making a case against delaying action.”

From models to policy

A future with overshoot is not some niche idea. Parmesan said the impression she gets from global climate talks like COP26 is that this is what some policymakers are planning for. “They have been talking about it as though okay, this isn’t great, but, you know, this is probably what’s going to happen,” she told Grist.

It’s unclear whether that was the case when world leaders signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, promising to limit warming to “well below 2 degrees” and “pursue efforts” to stay below 1.5 degrees. David Morrow, the director of research for the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University, said it struck him at the time that 1.5 was an aspirational target, something that people took less seriously then than they do now.

“I think it was what climate ethicist Steve Gardner calls ‘bearing witness’ to our collective failure in climate policy,” he said. “It was small island states pointing out, 2 degrees is a death sentence for us. We are not willing to accept that and so we want you to acknowledge this 1.5 degree target.”

Keywan Riahi, director of the energy program at the Austrian research institute IIASA and a prominent climate modeler, speculated that 1.5 degrees would not have been on the table in Paris if it wasn’t for climate models that showed pathways to bring temperatures back down after a peak.

Overshoot scenarios dominate the climate modeling literature. In a 2018 IPCC report, researchers analyzed more than 200 modeled climate action pathways that would keep warming under 2 degrees by the end of the century. Only nine of them avoided going beyond 1.5 degrees. For those nine, it wasn’t even a sure bet — the likelihood of staying below that threshold throughout the 21st century was only 50 to 66 percent.

There are a few reasons for this. One is time. Morrow said modelers build in an assumption that climate action will ramp up gradually, rather than accelerate dramatically in the near term and then level out. We’re already dangerously close to 1.5 degrees, so that gradual process doesn’t do us any favors. And because the goal of these models is to achieve a specific temperature far away in 2100, they can make up for the slow start by ratcheting up climate policies, as well as negative emissions, later in the century.

Riahi said another reason was cost. The models are designed to find the most cost-effective way to achieve temperature targets. “The quicker we reduce emissions, the higher the cost will be,” Riahi explained, “because we have a lot of long-lived fossil-based infrastructure which would need to be prematurely phased out if we really try to accelerate and achieve zero emissions early.” 

But now, modelers are beginning to try a new approach where instead of studying how to achieve end-of-the-century outcomes, they are looking at how to cap global warming at a specific maximum level. Last year, Riahi published a paper in Nature exploring the costs and feasibility of achieving temperature targets with no or limited overshoot. Contrary to the argument that gradual climate action is more cost effective, he found that the upfront investments needed to limit overshoot would bring long-term economic gains.

But these models, which are underpinned by climate science, still do not take into account the climate feedbacks that Parmesan and her co-authors are warning about. She said there’s still not enough data to plug those observations in.

That’s important to keep in mind next week, when the IPCC releases its next report on the topic of climate change mitigation. The report will evaluate our options for achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, with and without overshoot. It will also wrestle with the risks of presuming that we will be able to remove significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and evaluate the promise of various options for doing so.

Parmesan felt that the government delegates started out thinking she and her co-authors were exaggerating, but after two weeks of discussion, they started to get it. “They actually started realizing, Oh, we’ve seriously underestimated the risk of overshoot. And it’s like, yes, you have. That’s the whole point.”

It might not seem like a very challenging idea that climate change will bring irreversible impacts. Of course there are irreparable consequences of a future with more drought, heat, floods, and fires. 

Cramer laughed when I put this to him. “You’re right,” he said. “It is actually not very complicated. You’re probably right that most people will understand it as soon as you talk to them about it. I think where there’s a sense in talking about it is to make people aware that the current engagement for reducing emissions is insufficient. We actually need to get emissions down now. Every 10th of a degree counts.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Can the world overshoot its climate targets — and then fix it later? on Mar 30, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emily Pontecorvo.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

A few days after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Michal Freedhoff settled into her cramped home office in a suburb of Washington, D.C., to get to work as the nation’s new top chemical regulator.

It was a key role, charged with protecting Americans from toxic substances used in agriculture and manufacturing. But going back decades, the office had gained a reputation for being captured by the companies it regulated. Under the Trump administration, the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, like many federal agencies, had taken a hard turn away from science. Important new rules, years in the making, had been delayed or diluted.

Never miss the most important reporting from ProPublica’s newsroom. Subscribe to the Big Story newsletter.

In Freedhoff, Biden had found a public servant steeped in the risks of chemicals and what it takes to police them. Testaments to her drive surround her desk. On one wall hangs a framed front page of The Washington Post from the day that automakers struck a deal she helped broker with California on vehicle emissions standards; on another is an original copy of a 2016 law that gave the Environmental Protection Agency sweeping new authority to protect people from toxic substances. Seven senators had signed it, thanking her personally.

Freedhoff has long kept up a frenetic pace. The mother of four would stay out late for work events and then send emails at 4 a.m. before heading out on a pre-dawn bike ride. And she knew her new job would require a massive cleanup effort, working with a traumatized staff to rework decisions the Trump administration had pushed through based on skewed science. She was guaranteed just four years, and she had a list of critical to-dos that ranged from finally banning asbestos to fixing the process for authorizing new chemicals. A clock was ticking.

When Freedhoff dug in, what she found was often just … weird. Like a pile of simple, low-level tasks that had ended up on her desk: two hundred perfunctory notices that hadn’t been sent to the federal register, the daily log of official government actions. Fifteen months worth of new chemical rules that had been approved but not publicly announced. They weren’t controversial. It’s just that nobody but the office head had been allowed to click a button.

Gradually, Freedhoff, a hyperlogical fast talker who occasionally flashes a big smile when something amuses her, realized that her predecessor under then-President Donald Trump simply hadn’t delegated routine duties — a symptom of the distrust within the office between career employees and political appointees.

In those first strange weeks, Freedhoff would gaze out on a sea of staffers’ faces filling a Microsoft Teams grid on her screen and ask why something happened the way it did. No one would respond. Later, she’d learn that there was no thoughtful answer to “why”; the person responsible was simply following orders. Often, Freedhoff found, staff had been detailed to trivial projects to help companies that had relationships with Trump appointees.

“We thought we knew which rules were messed with, we thought we knew which policies and which offices were shrunk,” Freedhoff mused last fall, sitting on a bench in the courtyard outside the EPA’s imposing headquarters in Washington. “But I found the damage to be a lot more pervasive than that.”

There’s a saying in Washington that “personnel is policy”: Political appointees in federal agencies are essential to carrying out the president’s plans. With Biden’s legislative agenda stalled, progressives are pushing people like Freedhoff to make good on the president’s promise that government can tackle big problems again.

Biden’s own campaign slogan had been to “build back better.” But Freedhoff’s first year has been a process of learning just how much she’d need to build just to get back to the way things were before Trump arrived. She told me about it in a series of interviews that provide a window into the Biden administration’s struggles to deliver on the president’s promises.

“We all just assumed that everything would sort of snap back to normal,” said Freedhoff, who has been sleeping even less than usual these days. “There was this initial burst of, ‘Thank God, we made it,’ and there were expectations that things would change more quickly than they have.”

Her budget only recently got a small boost, after years of starvation. Her staff remains overstretched. Unexpected roadblocks have cropped up, both inside and outside the agency, hampering her ability to execute decisions. And now, while they acknowledge the positive steps taken so far, the environmentalists she once worked alongside are increasingly voicing frustration that Freedhoff isn’t doing enough.

“I’m concerned,” said Daniel Rosenberg, director of federal toxics policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “I firmly believe that she is committed to protecting public health and the environment. I think the jury’s still out as to where they’re going, and there’s been enough things that are worrisome.”

Freedhoff got her political education in an era when environmental protections were in retreat, and she quickly learned how to operate in a world where a hold-your-nose compromise was often the best-case scenario.

She had grown up in Toronto as a theater kid, attending a high school for the performing arts. Freedhoff took up science in college, taking a cue from her mother, who was a professor of theoretical physics. After Michal Freedhoff received a doctorate in chemistry in 1995, she moved to Washington and landed a job at the American Institute of Physics. There, she translated science into language that policymakers could understand, trying to protect basic research funding from a Republican drive to slice budgets.

Freedhoff soon jumped to Congress to handle science policy for then-Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, dealing with everything from nuclear waste to vehicle emissions standards. She followed Markey to the Senate in 2013 and worked her way up to become director of oversight on the powerful Environment and Public Works committee.

By then, the limits of the nation’s main chemical safety law were all too obvious. The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, was never as strong as its older siblings, the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. What power it did have had been largely gutted in 1991, when an appeals court voided the EPA’s attempt to ban asbestos.

Freedhoff was haunted by stories about workers who’d died from exposure to chemicals that the EPA had never managed to take off the market, driving her to act.

“I remember meeting with families of young adults, who were trained, properly equipped, wore respirators and nevertheless dropped dead while refinishing someone’s bathtub from methylene chloride poisoning,” Freedhoff recalled. “The law was broken for so long.”

Even chemical manufacturers were looking to strengthen safety laws to bolster public confidence in their products. So Freedhoff began working with a close-knit, bipartisan group of staffers to craft an overhaul of the TSCA, relentlessly pushing both sides until they found something they could all live with.

“Trying to solve problems is at her core,” said Dimitri Karakitsos, who was formerly a counselor for Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe and now lobbies for industry. “Because it’s not ideological, it’s like, ‘How do we fix this.’” (Freedhoff also remains friends with Ryan Jackson, the committee’s Republican staff director who became the EPA’s chief of staff under Trump and now works for the National Mining Association.)

The amended law wasn’t perfect, but it was a step forward. It mandated new risk evaluations of chemicals already in use to decide if they should be restricted. It also made it easier for the EPA to order companies to test their chemicals to prove they are safe. In exchange, the chemical industry got a uniform federal regime that could preempt state governments from imposing their own rules — which Freedhoff called the “price tag” for passage.

After the bill was signed in June 2016, Freedhoff recalled talking to a lobbyist at one of the many parties that the group of staffers and interest groups threw to celebrate. He asked if she’d thought of running the toxics office in a prospective Hillary Clinton administration, which would implement the law she helped write. “It didn’t even occur to me,” Freedhoff told me later. But she warmed to the idea.

Instead, after Clinton lost, Freedhoff sat in her Senate office, working furiously to thwart the new administration’s efforts to weaken chemical regulations. When Trump picked a notoriously industry-friendly toxicologist to lead the chemicals office, she made sure enough Republican senators opposed the nomination to force the White House to withdraw the name. After that rare defeat, Trump subbed in a widely respected environmental lawyer.

But the office still finalized chemical risk evaluations that ignored harms to vulnerable populations. Another division, led by an official hired straight from DuPont, sped new chemicals through the vetting process.

Freedhoff wrote letters and issued warnings as key tasks prescribed by the new law were carried out very differently from how she had intended. “This is where I’m going to become the skunk at the garden party again,” she said on a panel with consultants and agency officials in the summer of 2020, predicting that many actions the agency had undertaken would have to be redone because they didn’t comply with the law.

One of the many fronts on which Freedhoff fought the Trump administration — and that she would later inherit responsibility for when she went to work for Biden — is the spread of a class of toxics known as “forever chemicals.”

So named because they don’t break down in the environment over time, these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS) have been used for decades to repel liquids in products such as food packaging and nonstick pans. The chemicals have also found their way into most Americans’ blood. In higher concentrations, they’ve been associated with an array of health problems, including several cancers, autoimmune disorders and fertility challenges.

As a Senate staffer, Freedhoff chastised the Trump EPA for dragging its feet on regulating PFAS and helped draft legislation that would force the agency to take action. Freedhoff had also already strengthened another tool that could help address PFAS: The 2016 TSCA amendments bolstered the agency’s authority to order chemical manufacturers to pay for testing regarding the effects of their products.

It seemed like the perfect tool for one community that was facing a PFAS disaster.

In 2016, researchers determined that North Carolina’s Cape Fear River contained alarming levels of several PFAS, potentially affecting 300,000 people. Many of the substances came from Fayetteville Works, a chemical manufacturing plant owned by Chemours, which spun out of DuPont in 2015. Critically, the local public utilities weren’t able to filter the chemicals out.

The discovery prompted a flurry of activism as residents mobilized to secure safe drinking water. In 2019, the state brokered a consent order that required the company to essentially stop releasing the chemicals. But it did nothing to help Cape Fear residents understand what decades of exposure to Chemours’ emissions meant for their health.

The last time Chemours’ corporate predecessor DuPont poisoned a drinking water supply with a type of PFAS, in the early 2000s, residents of Parkersburg, West Virginia, were able to use litigation to force the company to fund large-scale tests. Ultimately, 69,000 victims participated in a study that cost DuPont $33 million. The flood of data linked the chemical to health issues including ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension, thyroid disease and testicular cancer.

While Cape Fear residents and the state of North Carolina have also sued Chemours and DuPont, the companies have opposed the lawsuits, and any settlement would likely take years.

But Emily Donovan, a Christian youth group leader turned local community activist, found a potential shortcut.

In traveling the country talking about what was happening in Cape Fear, she learned that the TSCA has long allowed anyone to petition the EPA to compel polluters to pay for testing. Doing so got slightly easier in 2016, thanks to the amendments Freedhoff helped craft.

“Every time I go to conferences and talk to scientists, they say, ‘You need the statistical power to prove it. Who’s going to fund it? How about the manufacturer,’” Donovan told me. “And guess what, TSCA allows that.”

So starting in 2019, Donovan worked with a nonprofit advocacy group and scientific experts to draft a 42-page petition for testing and build a coalition to campaign for it. Along with lab and animal studies on the mixtures of PFAS in the river, they wanted tests of at least 100,000 people who had been exposed to the company’s waste.

Such tests could help answer crucial questions for people like Marianne Ashworth, a freelance translator who lives on the outskirts of Fayetteville and started receiving dozens of jugs of water from Chemours after her well tested positive for PFAS. Ashworth had discovered a fibroid in her uterus, which a recent study suggested could be linked to PFAS exposure, although Chemours says that the types of PFAS examined in the study are not among those associated with its plant. She wonders if it might have to do with showering in, washing dishes in, jumping in a swimming pool full of the contaminated well water for the past seven years.

She has two young kids and wants to know what conditions she should be on the lookout for in them. “As a parent, you blame yourself,” Ashworth said. “There’s all this extra exposure that they didn’t need. You don’t think that there’s something in my water that’s going to slowly kill us.”

Donovan’s coalition filed its petition in October of 2020. Two weeks before Trump left office, his administration denied the request. The groups responded by suing the EPA last March. But then they paused the case, hoping that Freedhoff — who had just taken over the chemical safety office — would use her authority to grant the petition after all.

In January of last year, then-acting assistant administrator Freedhoff got to work in a room off the kitchen, within shouting distance of four middle and high schoolers doing remote classes and a wriggly black puppy. Freedhoff is short — barely peeking over the wheel of her sunshine-yellow Honda Fit — with frizzy blond hair; she favors chunky necklaces, wide-leg pants and practical shoes. A copy of Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” props up her laptop.

At Freedhoff’s confirmation hearing in May, her former colleagues in the Senate hailed her nomination. Inhofe, an arch climate skeptic, addressed her two daughters sitting behind her. “Your mama probably is the only person in America that will have equal praise from Sen. Markey and me,” Inhofe pronounced. She sailed through on a voice vote.

For Freedhoff, it was a chance to finish what she started.

“That’s what I came to do,” she told me. “It wasn’t just, ‘Write a rule for this chemical or that chemical.’ It was, ‘Implement a law that I had the opportunity to help write.’”

But before she could make progress, she almost immediately had to make a big concession to corporations.

In 2016, Congress directed the EPA to prioritize regulating one class of hazardous chemicals. The Trump administration finalized rules limiting how the substances can be used and handled just before the end of Trump’s term in January 2021. Many industries apparently didn’t realize the implications. Out of nowhere, businesses that make everything from farm equipment to semiconductors began calling and sending letters to top EPA officials warning of dire consequences if the agency didn’t delay a compliance deadline.

“My initial reaction was, ‘Are you kidding me? The first thing I have to do under TSCA is weaken a rule?’” Freedhoff said. But if they didn’t, whole product lines would have to be taken off the market until supply chains could be re-engineered. Freedhoff held up her iPhone cable. “Do you really want another charge cable? It was really that ubiquitous.” The rule was pushed back for years.

Next, Freedhoff had to figure out what to do with the Trump administration’s reviews of the first 10 chemicals that the agency had decided to take on under the overhauled TSCA. They were a rogue’s gallery of mostly still-available toxics, including asbestos, which the agency had failed to ban back in 1991. She would have to balance redoing Trump-era risk evaluations that had narrowly defined hazards and downplayed exposure with the need to get the rules finalized before the end of Biden’s term.

Freedhoff had nowhere near enough resources to get it all done.

The EPA’s funding has been sliding downward since soon after the agency was founded. The decline began in the 1980s, when the EPA spent more than double (in inflation-adjusted dollars) what it did in 2020. As a result, its staff has contracted by more than 20% since the end of Bill Clinton’s administration.

EPA spending in 2022 dollars.

Congress conferred heavy new responsibilities on the chemical safety office in 2016, fully anticipating that it would need more funding — but the Trump administration never asked for it. The law even allowed the EPA to assess higher fees on companies for their chemical reviews, but the Trump administration delayed doing so and then pursued less than it could have.

That put significant strain on the staff who remained. Freedhoff learned that under Trump, the staff routinely had 4:30 p.m. meetings involving tricky scientific questions and were asked to report back with answers the next morning at 8 a.m. Still, important duties had been neglected. Part of the office, the pollution prevention division, was raided to do more pressing work that was required under the revised TSCA.

Biden’s budget proposal for 2022 promised enough money to hire 87 new people, but it was tied up with one stopgap funding measure after another, while Biden’s $1.75 trillion climate and social spending bill floundered. As time dragged on with no reinforcements, Freedhoff started to go public with her appeals.

Last October, she was called to testify before her old colleagues at the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a room with sky-high ceilings and huge portraits of the committee’s former chairs on the walls. With a severe case of nerves, she prepared for hours, thinking about how best to convey her key message: In order to do anything that representatives might ask for — whether it was reducing the backlog of applications to approve new chemicals or finally dealing with asbestos — she needed more money.

She sat alone before the panel of politicians, facing antagonistic questions from Republicans — a startling departure from the bipartisan spirit in which the new law had passed five years earlier — and also impatience from Democrats, who wanted rules to be made faster. Each time, she answered calmly.

“It’s a series of compounding resource errors that prevent us from hiring the kinds of scientific experts we need,” she told them, measuring her words. “Everybody’s been working on a shoestring for a long time now. And that’s going to take time to get back on track.”

Within the chemicals office, Freedhoff has encouraged staff to take time off, saying that deadlines weren’t everything. Yet one deadline is critical: the 2024 election.

In previous eras, a change in party control, while certainly shifting priorities, wouldn’t necessarily derail an entire regulatory process. But if another administration like Trump’s came to power, anything not finalized before Inauguration Day could wind up being tossed.

And the delays are mounting, pushing the regulatory agenda deep into 2024. Freedhoff learned that during the Trump years, the chemicals office had clashed with others within the EPA, creating rifts that took time to smooth over. While in the Senate, she had admonished the agency to follow certain consultation procedures, which she has now realized would slow her own progress.

“This is one of those karmic things,” she said ruefully. Isn’t that how it should be? I asked. She sighed. “It is how it should be.”

David Fischer spent 10 years at the American Chemistry Council before serving as deputy chemicals chief under Trump’s EPA and then rotating back out to the law firm Keller & Heckman. He points out that his team was poised to regulate several chemicals more quickly than Freedhoff will, even though they would have done so less comprehensively. “That effort will now have to wait for years to happen,” he said.

Fischer is just one of many former EPA officials who now circle Freedhoff’s office, watching for missteps. The crowd includes Freedhoff’s predecessor and another Trump appointee who has penned several op-eds critical of Freedhoff’s decisions. One lobbying shop that focuses exclusively on chemical regulation has at least eight ex-EPA staffers who now help represent clients before their former colleagues.

Freedhoff figures that litigation is inevitable. Winning cases quickly requires a certain amount of dotting i’s and crossing t’s. That takes time, which is in short supply, especially since new funding took so long to arrive. When it finally came through earlier this month, the 2022 budget included less than a third of the $15 million increase she’d asked for.

“There’s a stars-aligning thing that has to happen, and I am worried about that,” Freedhoff said.

“It all just kind of adds up. You have one government shutdown that goes for a month, or you have one legitimate scientific thing that takes a while to work through, and you’ve got problems.”

Environmental advocates are sympathetic to Freedhoff’s constraints, but they’re starting to lose patience.

Some decisions, they argue, wouldn’t take much time or money. For example, Freedhoff’s office decided to improve the Trump administration’s methodology for evaluating existing chemicals, which an independent panel had found to be flawed. But rather than simply switching to an already peer-reviewed playbook, as the panel recommended, the agency instead adapted the Trump version, saying the other options didn’t suit the requirements of the law. Public health experts have panned the revised method.

“It just is perplexing that they’re saying they’re following the best available science when they’re not,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. “She has the potential to make very important structural changes that she is not taking advantage of.”

When faced with this kind of criticism, Freedhoff gets a little exasperated. She sees a “disconnect” between academic experts and regulators who have to map science onto statutes that are fundamentally political documents.

“It doesn’t do anyone any good to ignore the words in the law,” she said. “Science is one driver in every law, but it’s not the only driver.”

Donovan and her fellow Cape Fear advocates were among those who had high expectations for Freedhoff, hoping that she would instill a new sense of corporate accountability and reverse the Trump administration’s rejection of their petition.

A June meeting with Freedhoff and her deputies, however, turned out to be a surprisingly chilly affair. Donovan recalled that the officials seemed reluctant to order Chemours to pay for health studies. Alarmingly, a high-level manager named Tala Henry reiterated some of the company’s original arguments about how it wasn’t necessarily responsible for all 54 PFAS listed in the petition. (The company said that its manufacturing process involved all but seven, and acknowledged that some of the rest may have arisen when its chemicals reacted with the environment.)

Henry referred questions to EPA’s press office. “Comments made by EPA’s Dr. Henry during various meetings with Ms. Donovan sought to provide relevant, factual information on the specifics of stakeholder requests, informed by career EPA staff, and legal counsel, and not based on personal feelings or beliefs,” a spokesperson said.

Donovan’s concerns grew when she saw a story in The Intercept soon after the meeting about EPA scientists who alleged that during the Trump years, Henry and other managers had warped their work in ways that favored industry. Since Henry seemed to be overseeing the response to their petition, it didn’t bode well. (The EPA told The Intercept that the complaints were being investigated and that the agency was taking steps to shore up scientific integrity.)

Nevertheless, in September, Donovan and others finally got a bit of good news: The EPA told them that it would formally reconsider their petition and respond within 90 days.

A few weeks later, Biden’s new EPA chief, Michael Regan, came to North Carolina to announce a nationwide plan for dealing with the types of chemicals that Cape Fear residents had been begging them to study. It was a homecoming: Regan had previously been North Carolina’s chief environmental regulator and had brokered the deal that got Chemours to stop dumping PFAS.

Standing outside on a podium, with the EPA logo in front of them and Lake Raleigh sparkling behind them, the governor and his top environmental official welcomed Regan, describing how their state had been sickened by PFAS emissions. Cape Fear had become a national symbol of the dangerous chemicals’ spread.

To cap the event, Regan laid out what he called the PFAS Strategic Roadmap, a timeline for research, regulation and cleanup. He promised to finally prioritize people over polluters. A forthcoming assessment of one of Chemours’ PFAS compounds, he said, would “ensure that no other community has to go through what the Cape Fear River communities had to endure.”

Donovan was in the audience, welling up with tears, wanting to believe him.

The EPA’s response to her petition was due on Dec. 28. Three days before Christmas, Donovan sat down at her desk to write a last-ditch appeal to Freedhoff and other top EPA officials. In her email, Donovan noted that the petition had been endorsed by the city of Wilmington, its county, and the local water utility (along with half of North Carolina’s congressional delegation and dozens of academic scientists).

In closing, she described two friends suffering from cancer, wanting to know whether the possibly carcinogenic chemicals in their water played a role.

“You have the power to protect and heal these communities,” Donovan wrote. “I pray you use your authority to lift up human health over corporate wealth.”

Freedhoff responded the next day. “I wanted to thank you for your continued advocacy on behalf of your family, friends and community,” she emailed. “I also wanted to convey my hopes that the members of your community who are faced with the grave health challenges you described below are able to find peace and recovery in the new year.” She didn’t, however, betray what she was planning to do.

When the response came, in the form of a letter to the coalition’s legal counsel, Robert Sussman, the agency’s response at first sounded like a win. “EPA is granting the petition,” it began.

But while touting the agency’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap as a partial solution, the 29-page document promised to deliver little of what the petition had specifically asked for. Most importantly, it didn’t order Chemours to fund a human health study. The EPA argued that designing another study would consume scarce staff time, and that similar studies were underway elsewhere — a rationale also offered by the Trump administration in its initial rejection of the petition.

In a statement at the time, Chemours said it “supports national, industry-wide PFAS-related regulatory and testing requirements that are data-driven and based on the best available science.” (A spokesperson declined to comment further for this story.)

The petitioners were irate. Even Cape Fear River Watch, which wanted to stay on the EPA’s good side so it could get help with other campaigns, reacted angrily. “Their response was so unethical in its dishonesty,” said the group’s executive director, Dana Sargent. “If they had come out and said, like the Trump administration, ‘No we’re not going to grant it,’ I would have been less likely to come out so strongly.”

Freedhoff said she’d pushed as far as she legally could. In overhauling the TSCA, Congress had made it easier for the EPA to order companies to pay for testing — and in exchange, the agency had to prove the current data was insufficient before ordering new tests. Enough information is already either available or in progress that, she said, that if they’d ordered everything the petitioners asked for, Chemours could sue and might win.

“You can’t ask companies to spend a bunch of money producing data that already exists,” Freedhoff said, noting that her office also has some confidential company data on PFAS. “If you go in knowing that what you’re doing isn’t supported by science or the law, that’s not a good place to start. It’s not where anyone in this administration would start.”

That’s perplexing to Sussman, who served as deputy EPA administrator in the Clinton administration and as a senior agency adviser under Obama. The petitioners had done a comprehensive literature search and found that none of the chemicals had been studied enough to help residents understand the potential health consequences of Chemours’ pollution.

“These are weak arguments and EPA should not be afraid of taking them on,” Sussman said.

The decision is also perplexing to scientists who study PFAS contamination in the Cape Fear River watershed, like Jamie DeWitt, a toxicology professor at Eastern Carolina University who signed a letter endorsing the petition. The state has provided a few million dollars for PFAS research, including DeWitt’s, but it’s halting and infrequent. When I visited her lab in Greenville, she was scrambling to submit a National Institutes of Health grant for more PFAS work. Without Chemours bankrolling a large study, it’s not clear how it could happen.

“I do think people have the right to know what is getting into their bodies from the food they eat, the water they drink, the products they use. It should be free,” DeWitt said. “The question is, who’s gonna pay for it?”

Around the midpoint of the Obama administration, when Republicans hardened their resistance to the Democratic leader’s legislative efforts, the president turned to executive action to try to advance issues ranging from immigration to power plant emissions.

This time around, progressive activists don’t want Biden to wait that long. They’re pushing him to use the executive branch in as muscular a fashion as possible, as the Trump administration did, using bold legal means — like granting a petition asking a polluter to pay for tests — to crack down on corporate malfeasance.

“We’re frustrated, throughout the administration, with a lack of creativity and willingness to just throw up their hands when they get to the first barrier,” said Dorothy Slater, a senior researcher with the Revolving Door Project, which focuses on agency appointments.

The EPA scientists who blew the whistle on managers who allegedly manipulated their work in favor of industry also wanted Freedhoff to take more aggressive action. Optimistic about her appointment, they originally filed their complaints soon after the 2020 election.

A couple months into the job, Freedhoff sent out an all-staff memo recognizing several examples of political interference and affirming her commitment to scientific integrity. Later, she announced new advisory councils and recordkeeping requirements. But none of it did what the whistleblowers really wanted: remove the accused managers, most of whom remain in their positions, engendering distrust both within the agency and outside it.

The EPA’s inspector general is investigating the complaints, and Freedhoff has said that she can’t simply move people around without due process, as the Trump administration did. Moreover, it bothers her when people accuse civil servants of acting in bad faith — she thinks the staffers just implemented policies from political appointees who were higher up the chain.

“You’re supposed to do what they tell you to do,” Freedhoff said. “You can complain, but I don’t think you should expect everyone to be Paul Revere. Only Paul Revere is Paul Revere.”

Emily Donovan doesn’t buy that explanation, and she finds it confounding that officials who facilitated Trump’s orders would now hold sway over her community’s fate.

In early February, Donovan and I walked out on a beach near the mouth of the Cape Fear River to see foam that she said looked unusually frothy. She’d gotten it tested last fall and found it contained several types of PFAS. She doesn’t let her kids swim there anymore, but people were fishing while standing on the sand, seemingly unaware of the dangerous chemicals in the water.

When I told Donovan about Freedhoff’s rationale for leaving someone who had been accused of manipulating science in charge of the chemicals office’s response to her petition, she thought about it for a second.

“We lose in that. We lose,” she said, coldly, the wind whipping her hair. “I actually think it does a disservice to the American people, because we didn’t elect Biden to maintain the status quo.”

In late January, the Cape Fear coalition restarted the lawsuit it had originally filed after the Trump administration rejected its petition. Donovan finds it ironic that the agency seems more willing to be sued by citizens than by the corporation that had contaminated her drinking water.

Freedhoff hears Donovan’s frustration everywhere. There was a time when she might have felt the same. While on the Hill, she pushed for regulators to move faster and accomplish more. Now that she’s on the inside, she’s come to fully understand the handicaps the agency has faced for decades.

“When you’re sitting in Congress saying, ‘Hey, do a rule in a year,’ you keep getting told by the agency, ‘That is not possible,’” she told me, over lunch in January at a taco place near her house. “And you get to the agency and you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, it kind of is impossible.’”

She’s been thinking a lot lately about the parents she met years ago as they grieved children who died from exposure to toxic chemicals. Those kids would have been Freedhoff’s age now, and the EPA still hasn’t banned the chemicals that killed them. But she can’t make amends for the past.

“There’s all these examples where for generations, communities were exposed to chemicals, never told about it, and suddenly realized what happened to them, and want answers and want justice,” Freedhoff said. “And it is extremely hard to feel like I can’t do all the things they want.”

Do You Work for the Federal Government? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Lydia DePillis.

The post Corporations Are Suppressing Wages…There’s an Easy Fix for That appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

The post How to Fix America’s Badly Broken System for Taxing Its Richest appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Bob Lord.

An Auckland nurse says a lucrative incentive payment has not fixed the city’s dire hospital staffing shortage in Aotearoa New Zealand’s current covid-19 outbreak.

Nurses, midwives and others employed by the region’s district health boards (DHBs) have been entitled to an extra $500 on top of their normal pay for extra shifts overnight.

The scheme is being reviewed today and the clinical director in charge of co-ordinating the city’s health response, Dr Andrew Old, said it would continue if it was needed to address staffing shortages.

• LISTEN TO RNZ: ‘We’re in the eye of the storm now’ – Dr Andrew Old
• ‘We are tired, we are exhausted, we are short-staffed’ – Di McCulloch
• ‘The level of care you might expect [in hospital] is not as good’ – Sarah Dalton
• ‘It’s almost chaotic in terms of the response at this time’ – Tevita Funaki
• READ MORE: Ten deaths, 930 people in hospital, 19,566 new community cases

Dr Old said going into the pandemic Auckland’s hospitals had about 15 percent staff vacancies across the board which meant starting from a challenging position.

“So you then layer on top of that the challenge of Covid and it really has stretched the city.”

A nurses’ union delegate at Waitematā DHB, Di McCulloch, said while the $500 incentive scheme was popular, it had not been good for nursing overall because it led to exhausted workers and did not fix the staffing problems.

She said the nursing situation was dire.

Influx of unwell patients
“We continue to have an influx of unwell patients that normally enter the hospital and this has been compounded by omicron.”

She said once the subsidy ends the nursing shortages will continue and the DHBs will continue to redeploy non-clinical staff to fill the staffing gaps in wards.

Dr Old acknowledged how tired hospital staff in Auckland are.

“You know this has been going on for two years and the intensity has really stepped up in the last couple of weeks and I think certainly the city and the country are incredibly well served by the professionalism of the health workforce.”

Dr Old said the $500 payment was being reviewed today and there was the potential for it to be extended.

It aimed to ensure staff were available, particularly for hard to fill shifts such as overnights, he said.

“Look, we recognise people are tired, we’re asking them to go above and beyond and it’s just a recognition of the fact that actually everyone is really stretched.”

Hospitals just managing
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton described the current situation as a crisis and said hospitals were only just managing.

“People are going above and beyond, they’re doing everything they can to keep it safe for patients, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a crisis, it doesn’t mean that the entrenched short staffing that we were trying to deal with before covid hasn’t made this almost impossible to deal with.”

It was not just Auckland and a lot of surgery and outpatient appointments were being cancelled around the country, she said.

McCulloch said the border closure had made the nursing shortages worse because in the past there had been a reliance on internationally qualified nurses (IQN).

“So it’s become an ongoing issue, this has been going on for years within nursing and the nursing voice are saying that we are tired, we are exhausted, we are short-staffed daily on the ground.”

But McCulloch said that had “not been heard by the powers that be”.

In terms of dealing with New Zealand’s ongoing nursing shortage, McCulloch said New Zealand needed to keep its new nursing graduates working here.

She said that could mean bonding newly qualified nurses to working in New Zealand for a minimum of two years.

Auckland hospitals put care on hold
Auckland hospitals have put all but the most urgent care on hold to allow them to focus on covid-19 patients.

At the same time they are managing with 25 percent fewer staff as covid-19 cases continue to rise.

There were 19,566 cases and 930 people in hospital with the virus yesterday, more than two thirds of them in Auckland. Ten new covid-related deaths were also reported, taking the total to 151.

Dr Old said the region was grappling with peak hospitalisations and staff shortages due to the omicron outbreak.

“We’re in the eye of the storm now, so with cases thankfully coming down a bit but peak hospitalisations coinciding with near peak staff needing to be off to support their own family or off with covid themselves.”

But Dr Old said the number of staff vacancies due to covid-19 was starting to come down as coronavirus numbers start to drop and he was hopeful that things would improve this week.

He said there had been some limited cases of covid-19 positive staff working at Auckland hospital’s as the region dealt with the peak.

Serious challenges
“Those have been people where without them coming back we would have had serious challenges keeping those services going and so yes, coming back into environments where they’re only dealing with covid positive patients.”

Dalton said it was appalling to be in a position where in limited circumstances employers are encouraging staff unwell with covid-19 to go back to work.

“What they’re saying is they’re only doing that in covid settings and where otherwise there would be risk to life and limb effectively, so it’s a life preserving service.

“But to think that we’re in such a fragile state in terms of staffing that that has to be part of cover at the moment is really distressing.”

Dr Old stressed that urgent care was still available at the region’s hospitals.

“But anything that can be deferred essentially over the last couple of weeks really has been, so that’s pretty much all out-patient activity … and almost all planned surgery as well.”

Challenging to get support to South Auckland families
Auckland Pacific health and social service provider The Fono said it was run off its feet keeping up with the demands of a community struck by covid-19.

Chief executive Tevita Funaki said the service was looking after more than 900 active cases at one time.

“It’s not just the health challenges but also the whole welfare support and food and also other needs of the families.”

The service also had a number of staff getting sick or isolating due to covid-19.

The Fono had been using the network of churches in the Pacific community to distribute what was needed for families, Tevita said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Actually, it’s quite simple, according to British scholar Bill Hayton. Just acknowledge that the current occupiers of each feature have the best claim to sovereignty over it.

Hayton, associate fellow in the Asia-Pacific Program at Chatham House, a U.K. think-tank, shared his views in a recent commentary in “Perspective,” a publication of the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

He argues that researchers now “know enough about the history of the South China Sea to resolve the competing territorial claims to the various rocks and reefs.”

The basic facts of the South China Sea disputes are well-known. Six parties – Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam – have competing territorial claims. China holds the biggest claim, up to 90 percent of the sea, demarcated by a so-called nine-dash line. It says it has historical rights to the area – a position rejected by an international tribunal in 2016 that Beijing has refused to acknowledge. China’s stance has also put it at loggerheads with Western powers, particularly the U.S.

The disputes are not just about claims to the tiny islets and reefs scattered across the South China Sea, but also claims to jurisdiction over maritime zones associated with these features.

Because of that, a seventh country, Indonesia, also has a stake. Although it does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, China claims historic rights to parts of the sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.  

Hayton says that of the six formal claimants, all claim at least one islet, and “a few islets are claimed by at least five states.” The rival claims have always been thought to be “too complicated to ever sort out.”

“There are too many rocks and reefs, too many claimants, too much history. Trying to understand and disentangle all the overlapping claims is just impossible, or so people thought,” said Hayton.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

“Territorial issues in the South China Sea only started in the beginning of the 20^th century so you don’t have to look at thousands of years of history.”

“The real problem is different claimants have framed their claims to claims to island groups. It would be very hard to try to work out who has the best claim to the whole island group,” Hayton explained.

China and Vietnam, for example, claim the whole of the Paracel and Spratly island chains.

“But once you try to disentangle and desegregate the claims and look at who has the best claim to specific features, then things become a lot easier.”

“No particular country, or state or regime ever controlled the whole of the South China Sea,” he said.

In Hayton’s opinion, breaking down expansive claims to entire island groups into specific claims to named features would open a route to compromise and the resolution of the disputes.

The scholar pointed out that there have been successful precedents in Southeast Asia. Indonesia and Malaysia resolved their dispute over the islands of Ligitan and Sipadan in 2002; as did Malaysia and Singapore over three sets of uninhabited rocks in the Singapore Straits in 2008. In both cases, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) played an important role.

“By ruling out vague claims to sovereignty “from time immemorial” and demanding specific evidence of physical acts of administration, the ICJ also gave the South China Sea claimants a route out of their impasse,” Hayton suggested.

The historical evidence of physical acts of administration on the disputed rocks and reefs suggests, with a few exceptions, that the current occupiers of each feature have the best claim to sovereignty over it, according to the British scholar.

The main exception would be the Paracel Islands where Vietnam occupied about a half until China took over in 1974 after a bloody battle that saw 74 Vietnamese soldiers killed.

“Southeast Asian states have an interest in recognising each other’s de facto occupation of specific features and then presenting a united position to China,” Hayton added.

In the case some countries are unwilling to make use of the ICJ and international law, he suggested that non-governmental organisations could get involved to create a so-called ‘Track Two Tribunal’. Track two typically describes informal or unofficial discussions by people outside of government to help find solutions to complex diplomatic issues.

Hayton said they could “collect rival pieces of evidence, test the claimants’ legal arguments, and present the likely outcomes of any future international court hearing to the claimants and their publics.”

Hayton, however, admitted that the process would not be easy.

“Populations in different countries would be claiming that this is some terrible sell-out but frankly, all of the countries are working on the basis that this is the status quo that they’re going to accept. They need to turn that into a political commitment,” he said.

Hayton’s proposal “would have merit in an ideal world,” said Mark Valencia, a scholar at the Chinese National Institute for South China Sea Studies.

“But unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world and nationalist-infused domestic politics would likely prove a fatal stumbling block to acceptance and implementation of this proposal,” Valencia said, adding that most politicians in Southeast Asian countries “would try to stay as far away as possible.”

The maritime analyst also warned that since China would not accept and adhere to a formal arbitration ruling against it for maritime space, “it is highly unlikely to accept the verdict of an unofficial Track Two Tribunal regarding territory.”

Furthermore, the idea that each claimant keeps what it currently occupies and drops its claims to other features has been proposed before without any takers, he said.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.