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leilamulveny

Opinion | How President Biden Can Support Myanmar - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...myanmar-biden-help.html

opinion biden support myanmar new york times crisis policy Politics

shared by leilamulveny on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Myanmar’s nominal transition to democracy ended abruptly on Feb. 1 when the military arrested the civilian government and seized power. This coup was the most egregious among the three in the country’s modern history. The military claimed it was acting in response to election irregularities, but the charges it later imposed on elected leaders — the country’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was accused of illegally importing walkie-talkies, for example — were preposterous. Of course, the Burmese military leaders’ actual goal is to nullify the results of the November 2020 democratic elections.
  • Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, later expanded sanctions to include individual members of the Burmese military.
  • More than 130 nongovernmental organizations around the world have called on the Security Council to take such action.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The United States should ensure that companies that do business in America are not also doing business with Singaporean companies that have interests in Myanmar.
  • Since Mr. Biden rightly designated Myanmar’s crisis “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” in his executive order, he should also ask Congress to investigate how the Burmese military’s actions endanger the security of the United States.
  • The Burmese military spent much of the past three decades operating under economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union. Military leaders have recently made clear they are not afraid of blanket sanctions. While the military may not fear sanctions, coup leaders have responded violently to courageous protesters.
  • The military responded with a massacre. I fled, along with close to 10,000 other student activists, to the forested areas along the border with Thailand. Eventually I made my way to the United States, where I now teach political science, social change in Southeast Asia and the challenge of establishing democracies.
  • leilamulveny on 10 Mar 21
     
    Tun Myint (@DrTunMyint) is an associate professor of political science at Carleton College in Minnesota. He was a student leader of the 1988 democracy movement in Myanmar and is a co-founder of Mutual Aid Myanmar.
aleija

Opinion | Our Firearms Problems Just Keep Piling Up - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...afety-accidental-shooting.html

opinion politics policy US Culture

shared by aleija on 16 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Although in some parts of the country, the idea of putting kids in prison seems to elicit more enthusiasm than the idea of locking away the weapons.
  • Last year at least 371 children stumbled across a loaded gun and fired, causing 143 deaths and 243 injuries. In one case, a 3-year-old shot himself to death with a pistol that had fallen out of the pocket of a member of his family — apparently while the adults were playing cards.
  • Many Americans like to arm themselves to the teeth as protection from crime — and bleep over the danger that comes with all that hardware, especially in the hands of people who aren’t really equipped to use it.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Another survey found only 14 percent of the people living with gun owners had any formal instruction.
  • A majority of all gun deaths are suicides. One study found that in 2018, an average of 67 Americans shot themselves to death every day.
  • “Who do you think you are — to disarm Americans and leave them vulnerable?” our old friend Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado asked the House, as members prepared to pass — by a narrow margin — two bills making very modest adjustments in our current, wildly inadequate, gun safety laws
  • We’ve had a lot of tragic gun-related headlines lately. The story of the baby’s death was overshadowed by a crisis in Minnesota, where an officer yelling “Taser! Taser!” pulled the trigger on a man she’d stopped for expired tags. And, as the whole nation now knows, the Taser was actually a loaded gun.
  • “Holy shit!” the officer shouted in horror after she realized what she’d done. How many Americans do you think muttered the same thing when they first heard the story? We are thinking about this tragedy in terms of race, and police relations with minority communities. As well we should.
ethanshilling

Police Chief Says Derek Chauvin 'Should Have Stopped' Pinning George Floyd - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...george-floyd-murder-trial.html

US police trial

shared by ethanshilling on 06 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • The prospect that a police chief would take the witness stand against a fellow officer is exceedingly rare. But there was the chief of the Minneapolis Police Department on Monday, condemning the actions of Derek Chauvin, the officer charged with murdering George Floyd, as wrong by every imaginable measure.
  • “To continue to apply that level of force to a person proned out, handcuffed behind their back — that in no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy,” said the chief, Medaria Arradondo. “It is not part of our training. And it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values.”
  • Chief Arradondo said Mr. Chauvin’s actions might have been reasonable in the “first few seconds” to get Mr. Floyd “under control.” But, he said, “Once Mr. Floyd had stopped resisting, and certainly once he was in distress and trying to verbalize that, that should have stopped.”
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Chief Arradondo is the highest-ranking public safety employee to testify against Mr. Chauvin, with prosecutors also turning to Genevieve Hansen, an off-duty firefighter who tried to provide medical attention at the scene
  • Criminal justice experts said the police chief’s testimony might upend a tendency on the part of juries to give police officers the benefit of the doubt when they make decisions on the job.
  • “Generally, you’re thinking that police departments are going to defend their police officers,” said David Schultz, a visiting professor of law at the University of Minnesota. “Getting the police chief to come in and say, ‘This is not what our practices were, these are not our protocols, these are not our standards’ — I have to think that’s got to weigh very heavily on a jury
  • Asked to recall his own involvement in the case, Chief Arradondo said he was at home on May 25 when he was informed that a man had been arrested who was not expected to survive. The chief notified the state agency that investigates police use of force, called the mayor and went to his office, where he watched footage of the arrest from a city-owned surveillance camera, which had no sound, was taken from a distance and showed the officers from the back.
  • After watching Chief Arradondo’s testimony on Monday, Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer, said she had been the resident who had originally alerted the chief to the video on the night Mr. Floyd died.
  • Chief Arradondo joined the Police Department in 1989, an era when, he said on Monday, de-escalation “wasn’t mentioned.” As a lieutenant, he sued his own department for racial discrimination.
  • On Monday, the lawyer for Mr. Chauvin argued that force is an unpleasant but necessary part of the job.The lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, began his cross-examination of the chief by asking, “When’s the last time that you’ve actually — I don’t mean to be dismissive, but actually arrested a suspect?”
  • Throughout his questioning, Mr. Nelson focused on the proposition that the department’s policies gave officers leeway to decide what was best in the moment: “Ultimately, it’s not an all-inclusive list of considerations for the reasonableness of the use of force, agreed?”Chief Arradondo agreed.
  • Mr. Chauvin’s defense is paid for by the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, an organization of unions that has agreed to maintain a legal defense fund to cover all union members who become targets of criminal investigations.
  • It was video taken by a bystander, close up, painfully graphic and showing the nine and a half minutes that Mr. Chauvin had his knee on Mr. Floyd. It spread across the internet, setting off protests over racism and police abuse across Minneapolis and in cities across the country.
  • “He set a powerful example that police chiefs across the nation should follow when they know that their officers have violated people’s human rights and constitutional rights,” Ms. Armstrong said.
Javier E

In Minnesota, a G.O.P. Lawmaker's Death Brings Home the Reality of Covid - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...relph-covid-minnesota.html

harm principle morality pandemic responsibility liberty

shared by Javier E on 18 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • while Republicans insist that their freedom was at issue in refusing to wear masks or enforce mandates, such events and the death of Mr. Relph raise urgent questions as to where individual “freedom” ends and where responsibility to others begins in a pandemic during which breathing shared air can be fatal.
  • “It’s ironic that Senator Gazelka, as majority leader, was always the person most outspoken in opposing the governor’s emergency order and would state to us over and over again that Minnesotans would do the responsible thing,” said Richard Cohen, a Democrat who retired from the Legislature last month. “And now it is alleged that because of a caucus event, where apparently many people were not wearing masks, a caucus member became ill and then passed away.”
  • An owner of the catering hall, John Schiltz, said that his servers had worn masks and gloves throughout that evening, and that none had later tested positive. Although masks were offered to guests, state guidelines at the time allowed them to be removed at tables.Mr. Schiltz said the dinner was the only event any group had booked at his venue in November before he had to close on Nov. 20.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Pressed about the dinner in a radio interview in late November, Mr. Gazelka, 61, who is reported to be considering a run for governor, said he had no regrets.
  • “The idea that everyone can just be trusted rings a little hollow with the knowledge” that Republicans did not tell Democrats of the positive cases before the special session, Ms. Kent said in an interview last week.
  • He continued through the year to argue that mask mandates or limits on restaurants and bars were not needed because Minnesotans could be trusted to make responsible choices, and that the harmful effects on schools, the economy and people’s mental health outweighed the value of restrictions.
  • Holding the celebratory dinner wasn’t the only point of contention.Afterward, Republicans alerted their own caucus about the virus outbreak, but not Democrats. They instructed Republican staff members not to go to the Capitol for a special session of the Legislature on Nov. 12 — but did not inform Democrats, who were livid after learning of the positive cases from news reports.
  • “There was a lot of food and a lot of beverage, and when you’re at an activity when the food and beverage is there, that’s when you don’t have your mask,” he said. “I don’t regret that we had the celebration. The Republican majority was the No. 1 target to switch from Republican to Democrat.”
  • She described the working environment of the Senate as poisoned by Republicans’ disregard for masks. Most refuse to wear them on the Senate floor, she said. One Republican senator, she recounted, broke into fake coughing while waiting for an elevator in a cramped vestibule with Democratic colleagues.
  • After learning of the outbreak from Republican leaders, Mr. Relph, who did not have any symptoms, went for a coronavirus test, his daughter said. It came back positive.
  • “None of us can be sure he got sick at that party, but it’s really, really likely,” Dana Relph said. “There wasn’t any other place he would have gotten it.”
  • As one of the Senate’s oldest members, Mr. Relph was one of the few Republicans known for regularly wearing a face covering. He had an underlying condition, mild asthma, his daughter said.
  • As a lab technician for 3M, Ms. Relph tests industrial masks. “The fact that people deny the science behind masks makes me even angrier,” she said. She recalled that a Senate colleague of her father’s had stopped by her family’s house, without a mask, while her father was in the hospital. “Point blank, he said, ‘I don’t think this is as serious as they’re telling us it is,’” Ms. Relph said. “My dad was dying. These are people that think they’re good, kind, compassionate people, and yet they don’t act that way.”
  • Last week, as the Legislature returned for its 2021 session, senators held a moment of silence for Mr. Relph. Mr. Gazelka called him “a great senator, a true friend.”
  • The majority leader also led his party in blocking a Democratic proposal to require masks in public areas of the Capitol, flouting a statewide mask mandate, imposed by the governor, in indoor settings. (The Legislature is not subject to the governor’s orders.) Republicans questioned the effectiveness of masks. But Mr. Gazelka did include language in a resolution “strongly encouraging” mask wearing.
  • Ms. Kent, the Democratic leader, said that she had noticed lately that Mr. Gazelka was always wearing a mask himself in the Capitol, where before he had not worn one. Besides Mr. Relph’s death, Mr. Gazelka’s mother-in-law died in December after contracting Covid-19.
katherineharron

Democratic debate winners and losers, according to Chris Cillizza - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 16 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor proved Tuesday night that he is the best debater in this field
  • The Massachusetts senator delivered the line of the night, noting that the four men on the stage had lost 10 races while the two women on stage -- she and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar -- had never lost a race.
  • The Minnesota senator went into the debate with a simple goal: Cast herself as a pragmatic alternative to voters looking for someone other than Biden (or, to a lesser extent, Buttigieg) to vote for.
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  • If Buttigieg is the best of the debaters among the top six, then the former vice president is the worst.
  • Sanders' dismissiveness about Warren's statement that he had told her a woman couldn't win the White House in 2020 -- "I didn't say it," he claimed -- bothered me. Sanders tried to portray the issue as immaterial -- hatched by Republicans and the media to distract voters.
  • Simply put, the billionaire businessman looked badly out of his depth. He struggled badly to make the case that he was better equipped than his rivals to manage the country's foreign policy -- his answer amounted to the fact that he has traveled a lot internationally (and, no, I am not kidding) -- and things didn't get much better for him from there.
Javier E

Stanford Study Seeks to Quantify Infections Stemming From Trump Rallies - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-infections-trump-rallies.html

stanford study infections trump politics rallies leadership pandemic

shared by Javier E on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • the Stanford researchers, led by Professor B. Douglas Bernheim, the chairman of the university’s economics department, conducted a regression analysis. They compared the 18 counties where Mr. Trump held rallies with as many as 200 counties with similar demographics and similar trajectories of confirmed Covid-19 cases before the rally date.
  • The events took place from June 20 to Sept. 12; only the first two — in Tulsa, Okla., and Phoenix — were held indoors. The president has held about three dozen additional rallies since the study ended in September.
  • “The motivation for this paper,” he said, “is that there is a debate that is raging about the trade-off between the economic consequences of restrictions and the health consequences of transmission, and as an economist, I take that debate to be both important and appropriate.”
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  • Based on their models, the researchers concluded that on average, the 18 events produced increases in confirmed cases of more than 250 per 100,000 residents. Extrapolating that figure to the 18 rallies, they concluded that the gatherings ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and that the rallies had “likely led to more than 700 deaths,” though those deaths would not necessarily have occurred solely among attendees.
  • Around the country, state and local public health officials have also wrestled with the question of whether Mr. Trump’s rallies have become so-called superspreader events. With thousands of people gathered together in close quarters, many not wearing masks, the gatherings provide a fertile environment for the virus to spread.
  • In Minnesota, for example, state officials traced 16 coronavirus infections and two hospitalizations to a Trump rally on Sept. 18 in the city of Bemidji, in Beltrami County. Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., who wears masks and encourages his supporters to do so, held his own campaign even that same day in Duluth; it resulted in one coronavirus infection, but no hospitalizations.
  • But Doug Schultz, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Health, said that the full extent of the spread that had resulted from those cases was difficult to quantify, because many people who develop Covid-19 are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms and do not seek treatment, and even those who test positive may not respond to contact tracing inquiries.
  • “What we are seeing in Beltrami County are indicators of transmission, and this is likely just the tip of the iceberg,”
kaylynfreeman

How Three Election-Related Falsehoods Spread - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...related-falsehoods-spread.html

US politics

shared by kaylynfreeman on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The data showed how a single rumor pushing a false narrative could rapidly gain traction on Facebook and Twitter, generating tens of thousands of shares and comments. That has made the misinformation particularly hard for elections officials to fight.
  • 1. False claims of ballot “harvesting”This misinformation features the unproven assertion that ballots are being “harvested,” or collected and dropped off in bulk by unauthorized people.
  • Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, was falsely accused last month of being engaged in or connected to systematic illegal ballot harvesting.
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  • There were 3,959 public Facebook posts sharing this rumor, according to our analysis. Those posts generated 953,032 likes, comments and shares. Among those who shared the lie were two pro-Trump Facebook groups targeting Minnesota residents, as well as President Trump himself. At least 26,300 tweets also discussed the falsehood.
  • 2. False claims of mail-in ballots being dumped or shreddedMail-in ballots and related materials being tossed was another popular falsehood that election officials said they were hearing.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 03 Nov 20
       
      i heard that as well
  • 3. False claims of planned violence at polling sites by Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters
  • Election officials also said people were confronting them with false assertions that antifa, the loose collection of left-wing activists, and Black Lives Matter protesters were coordinating riots at polling places across the country.Image
  • He said in an email that his post was not a call for violence and that The New York Times should focus on “the key planners and financiers of all the rioting, arson, looting and murder” instead.
rerobinson03

What Time Do the Polls Close? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...poll-closing-times.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The first polls will close at 6 p.m. Eastern time in parts of Indiana and Kentucky. Then there will be a steady stream of poll closings, every hour and sometimes every 30 minutes, until the last polls in Alaska shut down at 1 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday.
  • But this is not a normal year. Because so many Americans are voting by mail, it’s very possible that we won’t know who won on election night, or even Wednesday morning.
  • The keywords here are patience and caution. Do not expect states to be called quickly, and do not draw conclusions from partial results, which are likely to be misleading.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • But early returns will not say much, because the polls will be open for another hour in parts of western Kentucky and Indiana that are on Central time.
  • Florida and Georgia are expected to count ballots faster than other swing states — Florida especially so — and if Mr. Biden wins either of them, he will be in a formidable position.
  • If Mr. Trump wins them, then we may be looking at a long wait for results in the Midwest to decide the race.
  • orth Carolina and Ohio are key presidential swing states, but while they are expected to report a majority of results quickly, they will also continue to accept mail-in ballots for more than a week. That means in a close race, we might not know who won until mid-November.
  • The last polls in Florida close at this time, as do all or most polls in three other important swing states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas.
  • Michigan and Pennsylvania may take several days to count mail ballots, and the returns there on election night may be disproportionately Republican.
  • There won’t be much to see at the statewide level in Arkansas, which is safe Republican territory for both Mr. Trump and Senator Tom Cotton.
  • Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota and Wisconsin are the states in play here. Arizona, Minnesota and Wisconsin will be closely watched in the presidential race, and Democrats are hoping to flip Senate seats in Arizona and Colorado.
  • None of the states with polls closing this time have competitive presidential or Senate races.
  • There is probably nothing to watch in Alaska or Hawaii on election night. Hawaii will report its results very quickly but does not have any competitive races. And while Alaska’s Senate and House races may be competitive, the state will not start — you read that right, start — counting absentee ballots until Nov. 10.
rerobinson03

Joe Biden's 2020 - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...020-presidential-campaign.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Joseph R. Biden Jr. began his 2020 presidential campaign by losing, and then losing some more
  • Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris accepted their nominations in front of socially distanced reporters at an event center in Wilmington — a far cry from the packed arena that was supposed to have cheered them on. On the convention’s final night, supporters gathered in their cars as if at a drive-in theater, and the new Democratic ticket joined them for a fireworks display.
  • Mr. Biden’s year got off to a rocky start. In February, Iowans dealt him his first setback with a fourth-place finish in the state’s caucuses, and New Hampshire’s primary a week later went even worse. He finished in fifth place — and fled the state before the results came in.
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  • Then came South Carolina. It was the first early contest where a large number of Black voters would register their preferences, and Mr. Biden enjoyed good will with those voters, stemming from his loyal service at the side of President Barack Obama.
  • When the results came in, he had won — and he had done so decisively, with more than twice as many votes as his closest rival, Mr. Sanders.
  • On Super Tuesday, Mr. Biden won 10 of 14 states, including some that he never campaigned in. His former rivals continued to coalesce around him over the next week. Senators Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey endorsed Mr. Biden before Michigan’s primary a week later.
  • Mr. Biden re-emerged on Memorial Day, placing a wreath at a veterans memorial in Wilmington, Del., and wearing a mask, in contrast to how Mr. Trump had been appearing.
  • The next week, he met with community leaders at a Black church in Wilmington following the death of George Floyd in police custody
  • His campaign organized occasional in-person events in Delaware and neighboring Pennsylvania that were designed with safety in mind, with large white circles on the ground ensuring social distancing among reporters who attended.
  • After months of suspense, he selected Ms. Harris, a former rival, to join the Democratic ticket.
  • Mr. Biden is now facing President Trump in a contest dominated by a global pandemic and a summer of unrest over police killings of Black Americans.
  • Once again, his campaign held carefully arranged events with social distancing and mask wearing, a stark contrast to Mr. Trump’s crowded rallies.
  • Mr. Biden was returning from a campaign trip to Minnesota when the news broke: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. Mr. Trump and Senate Republicans moved quickly to appoint Judge Amy Coney Barrett in her place.
  • Mr. Biden tried to frame the court fight as a battle over the future of health care in America, warning about Mr. Trump’s desire for the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
  • The first debate was the subject of great anticipation, presenting Mr. Trump with a chance to change a race that was unfolding in Mr. Biden’s favor. It also put a spotlight on Mr. Biden after Mr. Trump had spent months portraying him as a senile old man.
  • The meeting, however, was remembered not for Mr. Biden’s performance but for Mr. Trump’s constant interruptions.
  • Later that week came another seismic development: Mr. Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. Within two weeks, he had recovered and returned to the campaign trail with large rallies that flouted public health guidance.
  • Mr. Biden stuck to his approach. He made more visits to battleground states but refrained from holding crowded events.
  • In the final weeks, Mr. Biden pioneered a pandemic-appropriate substitute for traditional events: drive-in campaign rallies.His speeches quickly took on a new soundtrack, with applause lines punctuated by the beeping of car horns.
  • On the last weekend before Election Day, Mr. Biden campaigned with former President Barack Obama in Michigan, a state their ticket won twice. With coronavirus cases surging in many places, they condemned Mr. Trump over his handling of the pandemic.
  • Mr. Biden finished the campaign much the way he had started, presenting himself as a unifying figure who would work to repair the damage inflicted by Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Javier E

Those Obama-Trump Counties - The Bulwark - 0 views

thebulwark.com/those-obama-trump-counties

working class Obama-Trump voters crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 07 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Of the 206 counties that voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012 but then went for Trump in 2016, nearly all of them—186 as of this writing—remained faithful to the president in 2020.
  • For Democrats the picture is slightly better in the upper Midwest. Trump won by smaller margins in a number of Obama-Trump counties in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. A few even flipped back into the Democratic fold: Biden edged out Trump in 1 of Michigan’s 12 Obama-Trump counties, and a few in Minnesota, a state that went narrowly for Clinton
  • Even in these states, though, Trump actually padded his margins in many Democratic strongholds that Obama and Biden won just eight years ago.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Biden’s weak showing in Obama-Trump country is a reminder that Democrats will need to reckon with their increasingly strained relationship to the white working class.
  • As we argue in our new book, Trump’s Democrats, citizens in these communities admire Trump not primarily because of defects in their personal character. Rather, they like Trump for reasons that are more cultural than psychological.
  • many were Trumpy well before Trump arrived on the national political stage. Some of these communities’ most beloved Democratic leaders are brazen, thin-skinned, nepotistic, and promise to provide for their constituents by cutting deals—and corners, if needed. This is partly because their political culture has been shaped by a working-class honor culture that prizes strong men and a tradition of boss-style politics that is more transactional than ideological.
  • These citizens also have strong loyalties to hometowns that are confronting serious social and economic problems. Unlike the Proud Boys, most Trump Democrats take more pride in their hometown than their skin color
  • just looking at some of the places where he performed well at the polls suggests that his appeal cannot be reduced to white nationalism.
  • Biden, after all, won back some of these states by the slimmest of margins despite a pandemic and slumping economy hanging over the head of the incumbent president
  • it really took a plague to drive Donald Trump from office.
  • even if Democrats are somehow able to consistently cobble together winning coalitions without these voters, they still have to ask themselves a more existential question: What kind of party do they want theirs to become? More pointedly, do they want to have a broad-based party of the American working class?
  • progressives need to better understand the cultural chasm that divides blue communities in college towns and urban centers from those that lie behind the Democrats’ tattered blue wall.
  • Republicans, meanwhile, face a different challenge. They need to dispense with Trumpism without alienating the president’s new enthusiasts. To walk that tightrope, they need a far better cultural understanding of these Obama-Trump voters
  • For Never Trumpers that begins by resisting the temptation to read Trump’s deplorableness back into his supporters.
nrashkind

New charges in Floyd killing may give prosecutors clearer path to conviction - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...th-to-conviction-idUSKBN23B04Q

shared by nrashkind on 04 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Prosecutors seeking to put a former Minneapolis police officer in prison for the death of George Floyd bolstered allegations on the use of force but stopped short of calling the killing intentional in a move legal experts said could ease the path to a conviction.
  • Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Wednesday added a more serious second-degree murder charge against Derek Chauvin. Prosecutors last week accused Chauvin of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
  • He could serve up to 40 years in prison.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Three other officers (here) who were with Chauvin at the time of Floyd's death - Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao - all face two counts:
  • aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. Two of those officers helped keep Floyd pinned to the ground.
  • Under Minnesota law, second-degree murder can be charged as an intentional or unintentional act.
  • “It makes their job a lot easier. They don’t have to prove intent to kill,” Groshek said. “This allows for a jury to return a conviction without having to believe the cop was bad. Juries don’t like to convict cops.”
  • Floyd, 46, died on May 25 after Chauvin used a knee to pin his neck for nearly nine minutes. A video of the incident led to a week of sometimes violent protests and civil unrest (here) in dozens of U.S. cities.
  • The new charges also modify the probable cause statement that was included with Chauvin’s original charging document.
katherineharron

Biden sharpens contrast with Trump: 'I won't traffic in fear and division' - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 02 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • In a speech in Philadelphia, the presumptive Democratic 2020 presidential nominee addressed systemic racism and empathized with those who are protesting across the nation in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota in ways Trump has not.
  • I won't traffic in fear and division. I won't fan the flames of hate. I'll seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our country, not use them for political gain. I'll do my job and I'll take responsibility -- I won't blame others,"
  • Building on his campaign's core theme that the "soul of the nation" is at stake, Biden made explicit his differences in approach from Trump, who on Monday urged governors to "dominate" protesters, and bragged on Twitter Tuesday morning that "overwhelming force" and "domination" had been on display in the nation's capital.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • "Is this what we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren -- fear, anger, finger-pointing, rather than the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety, self-absorption, selfishness? Or do we want to be the America we know we can be, the America we know in our hearts we could be and should be?"
  • "The president held up the Bible at St. John's Church yesterday. I just wish he opened it every once in a while instead of just brandishing it," Biden said. "If he opened it, he could have learned something."
  • "It's time to pass legislation that will give true meaning to our constitutional promise of legal protection under the law," Biden said.
  • On Monday, as Trump urged governors in a phone call to "dominate" protesters, Biden held a discussion with African American community leaders in Wilmington and a virtual roundtable with the mayors of cities that have seen protests and violence: Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minnesota.
  • "They speak to a nation where too often just the color of your skin puts your life at risk. They speak to a nation where more than 100,000 people have lost their lives to a virus and 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment -- with a disproportionate number of these deaths and job losses concentrated in the black and minority communities," Biden said. "And they speak to a nation where every day millions of people -- not at the moment of losing their life -- but in the course of living their life -- are saying to themselves, 'I can't breathe.'"
brookegoodman

George Floyd: protests and unrest coast to coast as US cities impose curfews | US news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-saturday-curfews-minneapolis

US crisis culture

shared by brookegoodman on 31 May 20 - No Cached
  • Tense protests over the death of George Floyd and other police killings of black men spread across the US on Saturday night as mayors around the country imposed curfews and several governors called in the national guard amid scenes of violence, injuries and unrest.
  • Governors of six states, including Minnesota, where Floyd died on Monday, called out national guard troops. Many cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles, Louisville, Columbia, Denver, Portland, Milwaukee and Columbus, imposed curfews in anticipation of a restless night ahead.
  • Saturday’s demonstrations had started early but as the night drew on sporadic violence broke out again, seeing businesses torched, police cars set on fire and protesters injured and arrested.
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  • Near Union Square, in the heart of Manhattan, a police vehicle was on fire, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. In Brooklyn, protesters and police clashed for hours in Flatbush. In Los Angeles, a police post was burned in a shopping mall while nearby shops were looted. In Nashville, Tennessee, a historic courthouse was set on fire and in Salt Lake City, Utah, vehicles were burned and a man with a bow and arrow was arrested after he aimed it at protesters.
  • Social media posts showed flames and thick black smoke billowing from a fire in downtown Philadelphia, where an earlier peaceful protest ended with cars being set ablaze, and law enforcement vehicles came under attack in and Chicago.
  • The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, struck a different tone, calling protests against police brutality “right and necessary” but urging an end to violence. “The act of protesting should never be allowed to overshadow the reason we protest,” he said in a statement.
  • Numerous media outlets, including CNN, Reuters and MSNBC, reported that their staff covering protests in the city had been hit by rubber bullets fired at them. Media outlets and journalists in numerous cities reported being targeted by police with chemical agents or less-lethal rounds, and several reporters were arrested.
  • “We will not tolerate actions like these against New York City police officers,” the city’s police department said in a tweet announcing the arrest of “multiple people” for throwing molotov cocktails at police vehicles. The US attorney’s office subsequently announced that it had filed federal charges against three people over the incidents.
  • “The memory of George Floyd is being dishonored by rioters, looters and anarchists,” Trump said, speaking at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center after watching the launch of the historic SpaceX mission.
  • George Floyd’s brother, Philonise, said on Saturday he had briefly spoken to Trump about the death of his brother. “It was so fast. He didn’t give me the opportunity to even speak. It was hard. I was trying to talk to him but he just kept like pushing me off like, ‘I don’t want to hear what you’re talking about,’” Philonise told MSNBC.
  • In Atlanta, people set a police car ablaze and broke windows at CNN’s headquarters. In Oakland, San Jose and Los Angeles, protesters blocked highways and police fired teargas. In Louisville, Kentucky, police fired projectiles at a reporter and her cameraman during a live shot. Protests over police brutality and the death of George Floyd ignited once again on Friday, as Minneapolis faced another night of chaos and demonstrators clashed with police in cities across the US.
  • You’ve read more than 70 articles in the last six months. We believe every one of us deserves equal access to fact-based news and analysis. We’ve decided to keep Guardian journalism free for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay. This is made possible thanks to the support we receive from readers across America in all 50 states.
Javier E

Allina Health System in Minnesota Cuts Off Patients With Medical Debt - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lina-health-hospital-debt.html

health system us denial care minnesota patients poor

shared by Javier E on 01 Jun 23 - No Cached
  • An estimated 100 million Americans have medical debts. Their bills make up about half of all outstanding debt in the country.
  • About 20 percent of hospitals nationwide have debt-collection policies that allow them to cancel care, according to an investigation last year by KFF Health News. Many of those are nonprofits. The government does not track how often hospitals withhold care
  • Under federal law, hospitals are required to treat everyone who comes to the emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. But the law — called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act — is silent on how health systems should treat patients who need other kinds of lifesaving care, like those with aggressive cancers or diabetes.
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  • But the federal rules do not dictate how poor a patient needs to be to qualify for free care
  • In exchange, the Internal Revenue Service requires Allina and thousands of other nonprofit hospital systems to benefit their local communities, including by providing free or reduced-cost care to patients with low incomes.
  • In 2020, thanks to its nonprofit status, Allina avoided roughly $266 million in state, local and federal taxes, according to the Lown Institute, a think tank that studies health care.
  • Doctors and patients described being unable to complete medical forms that children needed to enroll in day care or show proof of vaccination for school.
  • Allina is one of Minnesota’s largest health systems, having largely grown through acquisitions. Since 2013, its annual profits have ranged from $30 million to $380 million. Last year was the first in the past decade when it lost money, largely owing to investment losses.
  • The financial success has paid dividends. Allina’s president earned $3.5 million in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. The health system recently built a $12 million conference center.
  • Allina sometimes plays hardball with patients. Doctors have become accustomed to seeing messages in the electronic medical record notifying them that a patient “will no longer be eligible to receive care” because of “unpaid medical balances.”
  • In 2020, Allina spent less than half of 1 percent of its expenses on charity care, well below the nationwide average of about 2 percent for nonprofit hospitals
  • Serena Gragert, who worked as a scheduler at an Allina clinic in Minneapolis until 2021, said the computer system simply wouldn’t let her book future appointments for some patients with outstanding balances.
  • Ms. Gragert and other Allina employees said some of the patients who were kicked out had incomes low enough to qualify for Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for poor people. That also means those patients would be eligible for free care under Allina’s own financial assistance policy — something many patients are unaware exists when they seek treatment.
  • Allina says the policy applies only to debts related to care provided by its clinics, not its hospitals. But patients said in interviews that they got cut off after falling into debt for services they received at Allina’s hospitals.
  • Jennifer Blaido lives in Isanti, a small town outside Minneapolis, and Allina owns the only hospital there. Ms. Blaido, a mechanic, said she racked up nearly $200,000 in bills from a two-week stay at Allina’s Mercy Hospital in 2009 for complications from pneumonia, along with several visits to the emergency department for asthma flare-ups
  • Ms. Blaido, a mother of four, said most of the hospital stay was not covered by her health insurance and she was unable to scrounge together enough money to make a dent in the debt.
  • Last year, Ms. Blaido had a cancer scare and said she couldn’t get an appointment with a doctor at Mercy Hospital. She had to drive more than an hour to get examined at a health system unconnected to Allina
  • In court filings, the couple described how Allina canceled Ms. Anderson’s appointments and told her that she could not book new ones until she had set up three separate payment plans — one with the health system and two with its debt collectors.Even after setting up those payment plans, which totaled $580 a month, the canceled appointments were never restored. Allina allows patients to come back only after they have paid the entire debt.
  • When the Andersons asked in court for a copy of Allina’s policy of barring patients with unpaid bills, the hospital’s lawyers responded: “Allina does not have a written policy regarding the canceling of services or termination of scheduled and/or physician referral services or appointments for unpaid debts.”In fact, Allina’s policy, which was created in 2006, instructs employees on how to do exactly that. Among other things, it tells staff to “cancel any future appointments the patient has scheduled at any clinic.”
  • It does provide a few ways for patients to continue being seen despite their unpaid bills. One is by getting approved for a loan through the hospital. Another is by filing for bankruptcy.
alexdeltufo

Republican Party Unravels Over Donald Trump's Takeover - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...er-donald-trumps-takeover.html

politics US

shared by alexdeltufo on 08 May 16 - No Cached
  • By seizing the Republican presidential nomination for Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night,
  • Rarely if ever has a party seemed to come apart so visibly. Rarely, too, has the nation been so on edge about its politics.
  • They fear their party is on the cusp of an epochal split — a historic cleaving between the familiar form of conservatism forged in the 1960s and popularized in the 1980s and a rekindled, atavistic nationalism,
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  • Yet if keeping the peace means embracing Mr. Trump and his most divisive ideas and utterances, a growing number are loath to do it.
  • “Because Paul Ryan, and I love him to death, but he’s one of those career politicians.
  • “Trump leveraged a perfect storm,” said Steve Case, the founder of AOL, in an email message. “
  • After seething at Washington for so long, hundreds or thousands of miles from the capital, many of these voters now see Mr. Trump as a kind of savior.
  • Many Republican voters trudged along with those earlier nominees, but never became truly animated until Mr. Trump offered them his brand of angry populism: a blend of protectionism at home and a smaller American footprint abroad.
  • “Everything is subject to negotiation, but I can’t and won’t be changing much, because the voters support me because of what I’m saying and how I’m saying it,” Mr. Trump said.
  • . Leaders such as Mr. Romney warned in the direst terms that Mr. Trump’s nomination would stain the party and lead it to ruin. Venerable media outlets on the right,
  • On the left, too, Senator Bernie Sanders has built his own movement with millions of voters, and $210 million in fund-raising, by using online tools as simple as email to seek support.
  • The adhesive that once held Republicans together — a shared commitment to a strong national defense and limited government
  • Alongside the turbulent economy were signs of something more profound plaguing blue-collar white communities, which have increasingly become core Republican constituencies: an increase in children born to single parents, higher rates of addiction and suicide, and shortened average life spans.
  • The party has never been more out of touch with our voters,” Vin Weber, a former Minnesota congressman, said of the two factions, acknowledging that Republicans could splinter completely after this election. “I don’t know how you reconcile a lot of them.”
alexdeltufo

The GOP's electoral-map problem is not about Trump. It's about demographics. - The Wash... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html

shared by alexdeltufo on 08 May 16 - No Cached
  • Start here: Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia have voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election between 1992 and 2012. Add them up, and you get 242 electoral votes.
  • What that means in practical terms is that if Clinton wins the 19 states that every Democratic nominee dating to her husband has won and she wins Florida (29 electoral votes), she wins the White House. It’s that simple.
  • But to do so ignores recent history. Barack Obama won 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012.
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  • Democrats’ electoral-map advantage echoes the clear headstart Republicans had during the 1980s, when Bush’s 426 electoral votes were the fewest that the GOP presidential nominee won that decade.
  • At the same time, as these states have grown friendlier to Democrats, there are very few states that are growing increasingly Republican. Wisconsin and Minnesota are two, but neither is moving rapidly in Republicans’ favor just y
  • Perhaps the best example of this movement and how it has hurt Republicans is New Mexico, whose population is almost half Hispanic.
  • Obama won the state by 10 percentage points over Mitt Romney; neither side targeted it in any meaningful way. In 2016, it’s not even on the long list of potentially competitive states.
  • The current Republican disadvantage in the electoral map is less about any individual candidate than it is about demographics.
  • The counter-argument made by Trump allies is that he can make the industrial Midwest more competitive than past Republican nominees because of his strengths among white male voters.
Javier E

The Democrats' Real Turnout Problem - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rats-real-turnout-problem.html

Democratic party strategy problem politics

shared by Javier E on 18 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • In the simplest terms, Republican turnout seems to have surged this year, while Democratic turnout stagnated. The Republican surge is easiest to see in those same heartland states that flipped the election.
  • an analysis focused on the returns in six states — five that switched from Obama to Trump, and Minnesota, which Trump barely lost. In these states, turnout rose more in conservative areas than in liberal ones. That pattern, obviously, cannot be explained by vote-switching among the white working class.
  • In counties where Trump won at least 70 percent of the vote, the number of votes cast rose 2.9 percent versus 2012. Trump’s pugnacious message evidently stirred people who hadn’t voted in the past. By comparison, in counties where Clinton won at least 70 percent, the vote count was 1.7 percent lower this year
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  • Pennsylvania is a good example. The state’s southern strip stretches from distant suburbs of Pittsburgh through the Appalachian Mountains and Interstate 76, ending in Lancaster County, not far from Philadelphia. It’s solidly Republican territory, even in a normal year.
  • This year, the number of votes cast in the counties along that strip rose almost 10 percent relative to 2012. In Pennsylvania’s big cities and the labor union stronghold of Allentown, the vote count rose only a few percent.
  • For every one voter nationwide who reported having voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, at least five people voted for Trump after not having voted four years ago. Clinton attracted substantially fewer 2012 nonvoters, the data show. On net, Trump’s gains among nonvoters mattered more than his gains from vote switchers
  • Many strong Democratic constituencies — like young voters, Latinos and Asian-Americans — have relatively low turnout rates. African-American turnout has trailed white turnout when Obama was not on the ballot.
  • Second, the Democrats should recommit themselves to old-fashioned organizing without giving up on the emerging science of voter turnout.
  • Finally, the Democrats should remember that inspiring turnout and persuading swing voters aren’t separate problems. It’s a lot easier to do both with a galvanizing message that makes voters feel part of a larger project — be it an uplifting project or a combative one
Javier E

Was Barack Obama Bad for Democrats? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...k-obama-bad-for-democrats.html

obama presidency history politics legacy

shared by Javier E on 23 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • His legacy regrettably includes the more than 1,000 Democrats who lost their elections during his two terms. Republicans now have total control in half of America’s states.
  • Why such political carnage?
  • Faced with the economy’s potential collapse as he took office, Mr. Obama devoted his presidency to the economic recovery, starting with restoring the financial sector. But he never made wage stagnation and growing inequality central to his economic mission
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  • At the same time, Mr. Obama declined to really spend time and capital explaining his initiatives in an effective way. He believed that positive changes on the ground, especially from economic policies and the Affordable Care Act, would succeed, vindicating his judgment and marginalizing his opponents.
  • When President Obama began focusing on those “left behind” by the recovery, he called for building “ladders of opportunity.” That communicated that the president believed the country’s main challenges were unrealized opportunity for a newly ascendant, multicultural America, rather than the continuing economic struggle experienced by a majority of Americans.
  • Mr. Obama also offered only tepid support to the most important political actor in progressive and Democratic politics: the labor movement.
  • In fact, he spent the last couple of years of his presidency pursuing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a free trade law vociferously opposed by the labor movement. Under President Obama, union membership has declined to 11.1 percent from 12.3 percent.
  • Models, it appears, do not substitute for the hard work of organizing and engaging voters in nonpresidential years; models that apparently drove nearly every decision made by the Clinton campaign are no substitute for listening to voters.
  • On the eve of the 2016 election, the president used the refrain: “We’ve seen America turn recession into recovery” and 15.5 million new jobs. Pointedly, he said, “Incomes are rising. Poverty is falling.”
  • The public’s reaction was stark from the beginning. People did not believe his view on the economy, and his approval ratings fell in Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2010 and in Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2014 — the states that led the working-class move away from the Democrats.
  • Just as important, however, was the discontent brewing with the Democrats’ own base. Combined, the approximately 40 percent of minority, unmarried female and millennial voters disapproved of how President Obama was handling his job in 2010 and 2014, and many stayed home during the off-year elections. Mitt Romney carried white millennials by 7 percentage points in 2012.
  • The president will leave office with a rising approval rating near the same league of Ronald Reagan, an economy nearing full employment and real wages tipping up. Yet a majority of voters in the last election said the economy was the top issue in their vote.
  • We think voters were sending a clear message: They want more than a recovery. They want an economy and government that works for them, and that task is unfinished.
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