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Javier E

Scott Morrison's economic humblebrag disproved by New Zealand comeback | Scott Morrison | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...is-successfully-managing-covid

new zealand australia pandemic

shared by Javier E on 19 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The reason I’m flagging the strength of New Zealand’s “comeback” (to borrow a word currently on high rotation in this country) is to highlight a basic fact. The simple point to make is there is no durable economic recovery from the coronavirus unless people are confident that the risks of Covid-19 are contained.
  • Bloomberg put the dynamic succinctly in its news report of the growth rebound this week: “New Zealanders have gone on a spending spree since the nation eliminated community transmission of Covid-19 in May and then successfully contained sporadic outbreaks.”
  • The best strategy for economic recovery is a successful public health strategy.
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  • But tracking back to the fundamentally fraught nature of this exercise, the risk of flogging the “comeback” too hard is people think the pandemic is over, and a sanctioned complacency creeps in.
  • If you are Morrison and Frydenberg, you want to build confidence but not complacency, and that can be a fine distinction to hit. If you sound too positive, you invite the nation to conclude the crisis has passed when it hasn’t, and that increases the risk of outbreaks, and so it goes.
  • One of the stranger dynamics during this deeply strange year has been various players in the federal government castigating various premiers for internal border closures, when the big daddy of border closures was actually the decision of the Morrison government to close the international border – a decision with huge economic ramifications.
Javier E

Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? | History News Network - 0 views

hnn.us/7302

genocide Indian American Indian policy US historiography

shared by Javier E on 20 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • It is a firmly established fact that a mere 250,000 native Americans were still alive in the territory of the United States at the end of the 19th century
  • Still in scholarly contention, however, is the number of Indians alive at the time of first contact with Europeans.
  • To sum up, European settlers came to the New World for a variety of reasons, but the thought of infecting the Indians with deadly pathogens was not one of them. As for the charge that the U.S. government should itself be held responsible for the demographic disaster that overtook the American-Indian population, it is unsupported by evidence or legitimate argument.
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  • About all this there is no essential disagreement. The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby,"but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath." It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers.
  • As an example of actual genocidal conditions, Stannard points to Franciscan missions in California as"furnaces of death."
  • The missionaries had a poor understanding of the causes of the diseases that afflicted their charges, and medically there was little they could do for them. By contrast, the Nazis knew exactly what was happening in the ghettos, and quite deliberately deprived the inmates of both food and medicine; unlike in Stannard’s"furnaces of death," the deaths that occurred there were meant to occur.
  • True, too, some colonists later welcomed the high mortality among Indians, seeing it as a sign of divine providence; that, however, does not alter the basic fact that Europeans did not come to the New World in order to infect the natives with deadly diseases.
  • But Chardon's journal manifestly does not suggest that the U.S. Army distributed infected blankets, instead blaming the epidemic on the inadvertent spread of disease by a ship's passenger. And as for the"100,000 fatalities," not only does Thornton fail to allege such obviously absurd numbers, but he too points to infected passengers on the steamboat St. Peter's as the cause. Another scholar, drawing on newly discovered source material, has also refuted the idea of a conspiracy to harm the Indians.
  • Similarly at odds with any such idea is the effort of the United States government at this time to vaccinate the native population. Smallpox vaccination, a procedure developed by the English country doctor Edward Jenner in 1796, was first ordered in 1801 by President Jefferson; the program continued in force for three decades, though its implementation was slowed both by the resistance of the Indians, who suspected a trick, and by lack of interest on the part of some officials. Still, as Thornton writes:"Vaccination of American Indians did eventually succeed in reducing mortality from smallpox."
  • The disparity in estimates is enormous. In 1928, the ethnologist James Mooney proposed a total count of 1,152,950 Indians in all tribal areas north of Mexico at the time of the European arrival. By 1987, in American Indian Holocaust and Survival, Russell Thornton was giving a figure of well over 5 million, nearly five times as high as Mooney’s, while Lenore Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr. suggested a total of 12 million. That figure rested in turn on the work of the anthropologist Henry Dobyns, who in 1983 had estimated the aboriginal population of North America as a whole at 18 million and of the present territory of the United States at about 10 million.
  • Still, even if up to 90 percent of the reduction in Indian population was the result of disease, that leaves a sizable death toll caused by mistreatment and violence. Should some or all of these deaths be considered instances of genocide?
  • Despite the colonists' own resort to torture in order to extract confessions, the cruelty of these practices strengthened the belief that the natives were savages who deserved no quarter
  • A second famous example from the colonial period is King Philip’s War (1675-76).
  • The war was also merciless, on both sides. At its outset, a colonial council in Boston had declared"that none be Killed or Wounded that are Willing to surrender themselves into Custody."
  • But these rules were soon abandoned on the grounds that the Indians themselves, failing to adhere either to the laws of war or to the law of nature, would"skulk" behind trees, rocks, and bushes rather than appear openly to do" civilized" battle. Similarly creating a desire for retribution were the cruelties perpetrated by Indians when ambushing English troops or overrunning strongholds housing women and children.
  • Before long, both colonists and Indians were dismembering corpses and displaying body parts and heads on poles. (Nevertheless, Indians could not be killed with impunity. In the summer of 1676, four men were tried in Boston for the brutal murder of three squaws and three Indian children; all were found guilty and two were executed.)
  • In 1704, this was amended in the direction of"Christian practice" by means of a scale of rewards graduated by age and sex; bounty was proscribed in the case of children under the age of ten, subsequently raised to twelve (sixteen in Connecticut, fifteen in New Jersey). Here, too, genocidal intent was far from evident; the practices were justified on grounds of self-preservation and revenge, and in reprisal for the extensive scalping carried out by Indians.
  • To force the natives into submission, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, who for two decades after the Civil War commanded the Indian-fighting army units on the Plains, applied the same strategy they had used so successfully in their marches across Georgia and in the Shenandoah Valley. Unable to defeat the Indians on the open prairie, they pursued them to their winter camps, where numbing cold and heavy snows limited their mobility. There they destroyed the lodges and stores of food, a tactic that inevitably resulted in the deaths of women and children.
  • As the United States expanded westward, such conflicts multiplied. So far had things progressed by 1784 that, according to one British traveler,"white Americans have the most rancorous antipathy to the whole race of Indians; and nothing is more common than to hear them talk of extirpating them totally from the face of the earth, men, women, and children."
  • To understand all is hardly to forgive all, but historical judgment, as the scholar Gordon Leff has correctly stressed,"must always be contextual: it is no more reprehensible for an age to have lacked our values than to have lacked forks."
  • According to Article II of the convention, the crime of genocide consists of a series of acts" committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such" (emphases added). Practically all legal scholars accept the centrality of this clause.
  • During the deliberations over the convention, some argued for a clear specification of the reasons, or motives, for the destruction of a group. In the end, instead of a list of such motives, the issue was resolved by adding the words"as such"—i.e., the motive or reason for the destruction must be the ending of the group as a national, ethnic, racial, or religious entity. Evidence of such a motive, as one legal scholar put it,"will constitute an integral part of the proof of a genocidal plan, and therefore of genocidal intent."
  • The crucial role played by intentionality in the Genocide Convention means that under its terms the huge number of Indian deaths from epidemics cannot be considered genocide.
  • y contrast, some of the massacres in California, where both the perpetrators and their supporters openly acknowledged a desire to destroy the Indians as an ethnic entity, might indeed be regarded under the terms of the convention as exhibiting genocidal intent.
  • the convention does not address the question of what percentage of a group must be affected in order to qualify as genocide. As a benchmark, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has suggested"a reasonably significant number, relative to the total of the group as a whole," adding that the actual or attempted destruction should also relate to"the factual opportunity of the accused to destroy a group in a specific geographic area within the sphere of his control, and not in relation to the entire population of the group in a wider geographic sense."
  • If this principle were adopted, an atrocity like the Sand Creek massacre, limited to one group in a specific single locality, might also be considered an act of genocide.
  • Applying today’s standards to events of the past raises still other questions, legal and moral alike. While history has no statute of limitations, our legal system rejects the idea of retroactivity (ex post facto laws).
  • No doubt, the 19th-century idea of America’s"manifest destiny" was in part a rationalization for acquisitiveness, but the resulting dispossession of the Indians was as unstoppable as other great population movements of the past. The U.S. government could not have prevented the westward movement even if it had wanted to.
  • Morally, even if we accept the idea of universal principles transcending particular cultures and periods, we must exercise caution in condemning, say, the conduct of war during America’s colonial period, which for the most part conformed to thenprevailing notions of right and wrong.
  • The real task, then, is to ascertain the context of a specific situation and the options it presented. Given circumstances, and the moral standards of the day, did the people on whose conduct we are sitting in judgment have a choice to act differently?
  • Finally, even if some episodes can be considered genocidal—that is, tending toward genocide—they certainly do not justify condemning an entire society
  • Guilt is personal, and for good reason the Genocide Convention provides that only"persons" can be charged with the crime, probably even ruling out legal proceedings against governments.
  • noncombatants incidentally and accidentally, not purposefully." As for the larger society, even if some elements in the white population, mainly in the West, at times advocated extermination, no official of the U.S. government ever seriously proposed it. Genocide was never American policy, nor was it the result of policy.
  • The violent collision between whites and America's native population was probably unavoidable.
  • Genocide? These actions were almost certainly in conformity with the laws of war accepted at the time. The principles of limited war and of noncombatant immunity had been codified in Francis Lieber's General Order No. 100, issued for the Union Army on April 24, 1863. But the villages of warring Indians who refused to surrender were considered legitimate military objectives.
  • In the end, the sad fate of America's Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy, involving an irreconcilable collision of cultures and values.
  • efforts of well-meaning people in both camps, there existed no good solution to this clash. The Indians were not prepared to give up the nomadic life of the hunter for the sedentary life of the farmer. The new Americans, convinced of their cultural and racial superiority, were unwilling to grant the original inhabitants of the continent the vast preserve of land required by the Indians’ way of life.
  • To fling the charge of genocide at an entire society serves neither the interests of the Indians nor those of history.
Javier E

Colonoscopies Explain Why U.S. Leads the World in Health Expenditures - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ld-in-health-expenditures.html

health medical costs us comparative international economics health care

shared by Javier E on 02 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • In many other developed countries, a basic colonoscopy costs just a few hundred dollars and certainly well under $1,000. That chasm in price helps explain why the United States is far and away the world leader in medical spending, even though numerous studies have concluded that Americans do not get better care.
  • Whether directly from their wallets or through insurance policies, Americans pay more for almost every interaction with the medical system. They are typically prescribed more expensive procedures and tests than people in other countries, no matter if those nations operate a private or national health system. A list of drug, scan and procedure prices compiled by the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurers, found that the United States came out the most costly in all 21 categories — and often by a huge margin.
  • “The U.S. just pays providers of health care much more for everything,” said Tom Sackville, chief executive of the health plans federation and a former British health minister.
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  • Largely an office procedure when widespread screening was first recommended, colonoscopies have moved into surgery centers — which were created as a step down from costly hospital care but are now often a lucrative step up from doctors’ examining rooms — where they are billed like a quasi operation.
  • The high price paid for colonoscopies mostly results not from top-notch patient care, according to interviews with health care experts and economists, but from business plans seeking to maximize revenue; haggling between hospitals and insurers that have no relation to the actual costs of performing the procedure; and lobbying, marketing and turf battles among specialists that increase patient fees.
  • While several cheaper and less invasive tests to screen for colon cancer are recommended as equally effective by the federal government’s expert panel on preventive care — and are commonly used in other countries — colonoscopy has become the go-to procedure in the United States. “We’ve defaulted to by far the most expensive option, without much if any data to support it,”
  • Hospitals, drug companies, device makers, physicians and other providers can benefit by charging inflated prices, favoring the most costly treatment options and curbing competition that could give patients more, and cheaper, choices. And almost every interaction can be an opportunity to send multiple, often opaque bills with long lists of charges: $100 for the ice pack applied for 10 minutes after a physical therapy session, or $30,000 for the artificial joint implanted in surgery.
  • Even doctors often do not know the costs of the tests and procedures they prescribe. When Dr. Michael Collins, an internist in East Hartford, Conn., called the hospital that he is affiliated with to price lab tests and a colonoscopy, he could not get an answer. “It’s impossible for me to think about cost,” he said
  • The more than $35,000 annually that Ms. Yapalater and her employer collectively pay in premiums — her share is $15,000 — for her family’s Oxford Freedom Plan would be more than sufficient to cover their medical needs in most other countries. She and her husband, Jeff, 63, a sales and marketing consultant, have three children in their 20s with good jobs. Everyone in the family exercises, and none has had a serious illness.
  • A major factor behind the high costs is that the United States, unique among industrialized nations, does not generally regulate or intervene in medical pricing, aside from setting payment rates for Medicare and Medicaid, the government programs for older people and the poor. Many other countries deliver health care on a private fee-for-service basis, as does much of the American health care system, but they set rates as if health care were a public utility or negotiate fees with providers and insurers nationwide, for example.
  • “In the U.S., we like to consider health care a free market,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund and a former adviser to President Obama. ”But it is a very weird market, riddled with market failures.”
  • Consumers, the patients, do not see prices until after a service is provided, if they see them at all. And there is little quality data on hospitals and doctors to help determine good value, aside from surveys conducted by popular Web sites and magazines. Patients with insurance pay a tiny fraction of the bill, providing scant disincentive for spending.
  • The United States spends about 18 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, nearly twice as much as most other developed countries. The Congressional Budget Office has said that if medical costs continue to grow unabated, “total spending on health care would eventually account for all of the country’s economic output.”
  • Instead, payments are often determined in countless negotiations between a doctor, hospital or pharmacy, and an insurer, with the result often depending on their relative negotiating power. Insurers have limited incentive to bargain forcefully, since they can raise premiums to cover costs.
  • “People think it’s like other purchases: that if you pay more you get a better car. But in medicine, it’s not like that.”
lmunch

Opinion | The Wreckage Betsy DeVos Leaves Behind - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-department-cardona-biden.html

Politics crisis policy education

shared by lmunch on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • she told districts that were seeking guidance on how to operate during the coronavirus pandemic that it was not her responsibility to track school district infection rates or keep track of school reopening plans.
  • initiatives that rolled back civil rights protections for minority children
  • predatory for-profit colleges that saddle students with crushing debt while granting them useless degrees.
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  • Ms. DeVos had almost no experience in public education and was clearly disinterested in the department’s mission. Mr. Cardona worked his way up from teacher to principal to education commissioner of Connecticut.
  • Given these realities, the new education secretary — whoever he or she turns out to be — should resist calls to put off annual student testing.
  • The Education Department should also recognize that this pandemic will not be the last one. That means developing a list of best practices and strategic schools plans that can be swiftly rolled out when another medical crisis occurs with a different infectious agent.
  • the new education commissioner needs to revoke a series of department communiqués that had the effect of letting school districts off the hook for discriminatory disciplinary practices and other potential violations of civil rights law.
  • The DeVos administration sold out to predatory for-profit colleges and their various abettors within a nanosecond of taking office.
  • new education secretary can begin rule-making processes where necessary and inform the courts that it will no longer defend against lawsuits filed by state attorneys general and others who have dogged the DeVos department in court for buddying up to the for-profit industry and attacking student borrowers who deserve to have their student loans forgiven because they were defrauded by career education programs.
  • a lawsuit filed by 22 states and the District of Columbia charging that Ms. DeVos unlawfully rescinded an Obama-era rule that allowed students who had been defrauded by career colleges to have their federal loans forgiven.
  • Ms. DeVos disregarded a scathing indictment by her department’s career staff, reinstating an accrediting body that had been stripped of its authority for exercising lax oversight.
  • she told districts that were seeking guidance on how to operate during the coronavirus pandemic that it was not her responsibility to track school district infection rates or keep track of school reopening plans. This telling remark implies a vision of the Education Department as a mere bystander in a crisis that disrupted the lives of more than 50 million schoolchildren.
  • Mr. Cardona would need to pay close attention to how districts plan to deal with learning loss that many children will suffer while the schools are closed. Fall testing data analyzed by the nonprofit research organization NWEA suggests that setbacks have been less severe than were feared, with students showing continued academic progress in reading and only modest setbacks in math.
  • However, given a shortage of testing data for Black, Hispanic and poor children, it could well be that these groups have fared worse in the pandemic than their white or more affluent peers. The country needs specific information on how these subgroups are doing so that it can allocate educational resources strategically.
  • Research has long since shown that a summer vacation can wipe out a month or two of student learning. Making up for an even more serious learning shortfall will require planning that should begin now. An obvious first step would be to use the summer of 2021 for summer school or catch-up tutoring.
  • The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights exposed the depth of this problem during the Obama years, when it released data showing that excessively punitive policies were being used at every level of the public school system — and that even minority 4-year-olds were being disproportionately suspended and expelled.
  • The Department of Education lies in ruins at precisely the time when the country most needs it. The president-elect and his new education secretary, whoever that turns out to be, need to get the institution up and running as swiftly as possible. Given the dire context, there is no time to waste.
yehbru

Republican efforts to undermine Biden victory expose growing anti-democratic streak - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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

US Politics Trump Biden Election Voting Democrats Republicans

shared by yehbru on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The scattershot efforts to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's election victory are coalescing into a movement led by top Republicans determined to exploit a manufactured crisis for broader political gains.
  • Nearly a dozen more GOP senators, a handful of whom will be sworn-in Sunday, have now announced they will challenge Biden's clear Electoral College win over President Donald Trump next week during what has traditionally been a ceremonial exercise on Capitol Hill.
  • The President is, predictably, cheering on the charade. And in a taped phone conversation on Saturday, reported by The Washington Post, encouraged Georgia's top elections official to "find" enough votes to overturn Biden's victory in the state.
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  • Vice President Mike Pence -- who has sought to keep a safe distance from the more inflammatory claims and behavior of fellow Republicans while subtly egging them on when it suits him -- has also welcomed congressional Republicans' challenge
  • "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state."
  • "There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated," Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
  • Notably, none of the officials who signed the Saturday statement, nor any of what could be as many as 140 allies in the House, have suggested that the election fraud that so concerns them might have also affected their own races.
  • The group's citation of a poll that underscores voters' distrust in the election process ignores Trump's role in ginning up an increasingly paranoiac strain of conservatism
  • The process in his state, which the President won, had met a "high bar," he insisted, before suggesting that other states had a responsibility to "restore" the confidence that the leaders of his own party had spent so much time trying to break.
  • The announcement Saturday from Republican senators and senators-elect cut deeper and, framed in a maddening circular logic, argued that Congress should commission an "emergency 10-day audit" of results from "disputed states" because of the volume of "allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities."
  • Trump again attacked Raffensperger Sunday morning, before their phone call became public, complaining in a tweet that the Georgia Republican had not turned up evidence of nonexistent voter fraud.
  • Trump has called on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, also a Republican, to resign after repeated recounts of the presidential vote there confirmed Biden's narrow win.
  • Kemp is one of a handful of Republicans to speak out against Trump's behavior. Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring in 2022, has also been critical of his GOP colleagues' rhetoric and, on Saturday, responded to the new announcement with a sharp rebuke of the senators involved.
  • Biden's success in Pennsylvania, Toomey concluded, said little about the election process and could be "easily explained by the decline in suburban support for President Trump and the President's slightly smaller victory margins in most rural counties."
  • The vice president, through Justice Department lawyers, pushed back against a lawsuit filed by Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and Arizona Republicans that sought to give Pence the power to effectively dump the electoral college results and hand reelection to Trump. The suit was dismissed, for a lack of standing, by a federal judge on Friday night.
  • "Vice President Pence shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election," Pence chief of staff Marc Short said in a statement. "The Vice President welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th."
  • "They could not and would not give credence to what they know is not true," Biden said. "They knew this election was overseen, it was honest, it was free and it was fair. They saw it with their own eyes, and they wouldn't be bullied into saying anything different."
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats and was Biden's toughest competition in the 2020 party primary, called the effort "pathetic" and its aims "unconstitutional."
  • "What all of this comes down to is that Donald Trump and right wing extremists are refusing to accept the will of the people and the fact that Trump lost the election," Sanders said in a statement. "In their contempt for democracy, they are using lies and conspiracy theories about 'voter fraud' in an attempt to overturn the election results."
lmunch

'Nightmare' Australia Housing Lockdown Called Breach of Human Rights - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ckdown-covid-human-rights.html

Australia politics Pandemic rights

shared by lmunch on 02 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The sudden lockdown this summer of nine public housing towers in Melbourne that left 3,000 people without adequate food and medication and access to fresh air during the city’s second coronavirus wave breached human rights laws, an investigation found.
  • “There is no rule book for this, nobody in Victoria has done this before,” he said at a news conference in Melbourne on Thursday. “We took the steps that the experts said were necessary to save lives.”
  • The report was also a reminder that such measures were rarely applied equitably and have come at great cost to those who are economically disadvantaged. Many of the towers’ residents are minorities or immigrants. Some residents noted that police officers had swarmed around the towers, making it difficult to leave.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • the residents had been effectively placed under house arrest for 14 days in July without warning. It deprived them of essential supports, as well as access to activities like outdoor exercise, the report said.
  • “We may be tempted, during a crisis, to view human rights as expendable in the pursuit of saving human lives,” the report warned. “This thinking can lead to dangerous territory.”
  • The authorities “at all times acted lawfully and within the applicable legislative framework,” Richard Wynne, the minister for planning and housing, said in a statement released on Thursday.“We make no apologies for saving lives,” he added.
katherineharron

Pence 'welcomes' congressional Republicans' bid to challenge electoral votes - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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

election

shared by katherineharron on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday signaled his support for a bid by Republicans lawmakers to challenge electoral votes when Congress is expected to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory in a meeting this week.
  • "Vice President Pence shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election. The vice president welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th," Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, said in a statement to CNN.
  • Though there have been no credible allegations of any issues with voting that would have affected the election, a dozen GOP senators -- a handful of whom will be sworn-in Sunday -- have announced they will object to counting votes in Biden's clear Electoral College win during what has traditionally been a ceremonial exercise on Capitol Hill.
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  • While at least 140 House Republicans are expected to join their Republican colleagues in the Senate in voting against counting the electoral votes in Congress
  • Last week, Sen. Josh Hawley became the first senator to announce plans to object to the results -- a significant move since both a House member and senator are required to mount an objection when Congress counts the electoral votes.
  • For every state that Hawley objects to, the House and Senate much each debate separately for two hours and hold a vote.
  • while Hawley and Trump are speaking regularly, given their close relationship, Hawley has also heard from members of Trump's campaign team.
  • None of the challenges will change the fact that Biden will be the next president of the United States, and multiple courts have thrown out challenges to the election
aleija

How to Deal With a Crisis of Misinformation - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-crisis-of-misinformation.html

pandemic history crisis Culture technology

shared by aleija on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • False news is on the rise. We can fight the spread with a simple exercise: Slow down and be skeptical.
  • There’s a disease that has been spreading for years now. Like any resilient virus, it evolves to find new ways to attack us. It’s not in our bodies, but on the web.
  • But misinformation has now crept into much darker, sinister corners and taken on forms like the internet meme, which is often a screenshot overlaid with sensational text or manipulated with doctored images.
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  • “The meme is probably the most dangerous,” Mr. Duke said. “In seven or 20 words, somebody can say something that’s not true, and people will believe it and share it. It takes two minutes to create.”
  • Before the pandemic, the group would present a few examples of misinformation every few days. Now each student is reporting multiple examples a day.
  • The rise of false news is bad news for all of us. Misinformation can be a detriment to our well-being in a time when people are desperately seeking information such as health guidelines to share with their loved ones about the coronavirus. It can also stoke anger and cause us to commit violence. Also important: It could mislead us about voting in a pandemic that has turned our world upside down.
  • We have to employ more sophisticated methods of consuming information, like doing our own fact-checking and choosing reliable news sources.
mimiterranova

Powerful Typhoon Goni Slams The Philippines, Leaving At Least 10 Dead And 3 Missing : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...g-at-least-10-dead-and-3-missi

philippines storm dead missing

shared by mimiterranova on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Recovery efforts are underway in the Philippines after Super Typhoon Goni brought flooding, mudslides and strong winds to its largest island early Sunday morning. The storm, whose maximum wind speeds earned it the distinction of the year's most powerful cyclone, left at least 10 people dead and three missing.
  • Ahead of the storm, the international airport in Manila closed for 24 hours starting on Sunday. And nearly one million residents were preemptively evacuated, a process further complicated by the coronavirus pandemic — Johns Hopkins University puts the number of confirmed cases in the hard-hit Philippines at more than 383,000.
  • The storm intensified rapidly on Friday, adding 80 miles per hour to its maximum sustained winds in just 24 hours. Peak winds were estimated at 195 mph prior to landfall, which is equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.
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  • Goni was the 18th tropical cyclone to hit the country this year, which faces an average of 20 typhoons annually. And number 19 could come later this week: Tropical Storm Atsan, officials said, entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility early Sunday.
  • Citing local officials, Reuters reported that the 10 recorded fatalities and three people reported missing were all in the region of Bicol, which encompasses the southern part of Luzon. Nine of those deaths were in the province of Albay.
  • The AP reports that in one Albay community, the typhoon triggered volcanic mudflows that "engulfed" about 150 houses.
  • Philadelphia officials issued a citywide curfew on Wednesday after consecutive nights of protests — which at times turned violent — following the fatal police shooting of a 27-year-old Black man, Walter Wallace Jr. He was holding a knife when police shot him.
  • "By looting, people are not only hurting retail businesses that have struggled in the midst of the pandemic, but they're doing a great disservice to the many others who want to exercise their First Amendment rights by protesting,"
  • City officials said Wednesday afternoon that 81 people had been arrested during the previous night's demonstrations, including 53 for burglary, seven for disorderly conduct and eight accused of assaulting police.
  • Police will soon release 911 tapes, body camera footage
  • City officials urged residents in certain districts to remain indoors Tuesday night due to "widespread demonstrations that have turned violent with looting."
  • A racially diverse crowd came together Tuesday evening at Malcolm X Park, not far from the West Philadelphia neighborhood where Wallace was killed.
  • The gathering featured speeches and preceded a march, Philadelphia member station WHYY reported, adding that one speaker noted there were "far too many comfortable white people here tonight."
  • "Stop this looting and stop and stop burning our city down," the elder Wallace told CNN. "It's not going to solve anything," he said. "I don't want to leave a bad scar on my son and my family with this looting and chaos stuff." Wallace's killing was captured on cellphone video and posted to social media, where it went viral.
  • Family reportedly called for an ambulance, not police
  • A police spokesperson said Monday that officers were responding to a report of a man with a knife. They ordered Wallace to drop the weapon, saying that he "advanced towards officers." Both officers fired their guns at Wallace. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
mimiterranova

Philadelphia Issues Curfew Amid Protests Over Police Shooting Of Walter Wallace : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...lice-shooting-of-walter-wallac

protests police shooting violence Culture

shared by mimiterranova on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • following the fatal police shooting of a 27-year-old Black man, Walter Wallace Jr. He was holding a knife when police shot him.
  • "By looting, people are not only hurting retail businesses that have struggled in the midst of the pandemic, but they're doing a great disservice to the many others who want to exercise their First Amendment rights by protesting,"
  • City officials said Wednesday afternoon that 81 people had been arrested during the previous night's demonstrations, including 53 for burglary, seven for disorderly conduct and eight accused of assaulting police.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Police will soon release 911 tapes, body camera footage
  • Community members gather in West Philly
  • A racially diverse crowd came together Tuesday evening at Malcolm X Park, not far from the West Philadelphia neighborhood where Wallace was killed.
  • "far too many comfortable white people here tonight."
  • "Stop this looting and stop and stop burning our city down," the elder Wallace told CNN.
  • "It's not going to solve anything," he said. "I don't want to leave a bad scar on my son and my family with this looting and chaos stuff." Wallace's killing was captured on cellphone video and posted to social media, where it went viral.
  • Family reportedly called for an ambulance, not police
  • Wallace's wife told the officers when they arrived that her husband had bipolar disorder and urged the officers to stand down.
  • They ordered Wallace to drop the weapon, saying that he "advanced towards officers."
  • Both officers fired their guns at Wallace. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
  • mimiterranova on 02 Nov 20
     
    another one about Walter Wallace Jr. because it's making me very mad. He should not have been shot to death and I understand the anger of these protesters. While I don't agree with their violent actions, we have to remember a company can be rebuilt but a life can't be taken back.
mimiterranova

What To Do If Police Stop You: These Are Your Rights : Life Kit : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ect-you-here-s-what-to-remembe

rights culture Education

shared by mimiterranova on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Routine stops can be downright life-threatening for Black and brown people in America.
  • you are guaranteed basic rights under the Constitution.
  • Training and educational resources that cover this are often called "know your rights" materials.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Am I free to leave? Am I being detained?
  • The First Amendment grants you the freedom of speech and the right to protest peacefully.
  • The Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable search and seizure. And the Fifth Amendment gives you the right to remain silent.
  • 2. Look into state-specific protections you may have. Check your state constitution, and look for state statutes that might grant you additional protections.
  • Unreasonable search and seizure Excessive force Filming the police Rights at the time a police officer stops you Consent to search
  • 3. There are different levels to an interaction with the police: conversation, detention and arrest.
  • Just like you can walk away from conversations with other people, you can walk away from the police if you are not being detained. Ask:
  • 1. Familiarize yourself with your constitutional rights. The First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments are most relevant in interactions with the police.
  • If you are not free to leave, you are being detained. During this phase of the interaction, you are being held so the police can investigate any reasonable suspicion. An officer may ask to search you while you are detained. If that search leads to incriminating evidence, you may be arrested.
  • (C) If an officer finds probable cause, you can be arrested.
  • 4. If you are stopped, stay calm and don't volunteer too much information — you don't want to accidentally incriminate yourself. Under the Fifth Amendment, you have the right to remain silent.
  • "If we start saying things to the police, you know, in an attempt to mitigate our involvement...That is going into a police report, which can go into a prosecutor's hands," says Hollie. That information could be used to decide whether or not to charge you with a crime.
  • 5. You do not have to consent to a search. If you opt out, make sure you verbally assert that right.
  • If you are asked by a police officer if they can search you or your belongings, you have the right to say no, under the Fourth Amendment. If you are opting to exercise this right, it is crucial you verbally assert that you do not consent to a search. You can simply say, "I do not consent to a search."
  • Beware: in some cases, body language can signal consent. "So really [be] mindful of your body language, the non-verbal cues that could be used to establish that you gave consent, even if that wasn't your intent," cautions Hollie.
  • You can do everything "right" and still have your rights violated. If that happens, try to stay hopeful that a court of law will uphold your rights.
  • If you don't consent to a search but a police officer does it anyway, Hollie says: don't resist. That could lead to charges against you. "Save it for court. Save it for your advocate to argue that what the officers did was unlawful and unconstitutional."
  • "I think that this system gives you new and unfortunate reasons to not trust and to not hope. But if anything, I just can't see myself doing the work that I do if I don't have hope."
katherineharron

Activists move from 'protests to the polls' in a push to shape a slew of local races on Election Day - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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

election

shared by katherineharron on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Progressive activists are working to turn this year's nationwide protests over police brutality and racial injustice into results at the polls on Election Day,
  • Georgia Democrats need to flip 16 seats out of 180 to take control of the chamber.
  • In addition, the Color of Change PAC, the political arm of a longstanding civil rights organization, has endorsed a slate of what it defines as progressive prosecutors. And liberal organizations recently created The Frontline initiative to turn out young people of color.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • The Working Families Party, aligned with high-profile progressives, such as New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is battling on behalf of liberal candidates in contests that will decide who holds positions as sheriffs and prosecutors.
  • "We're going from protests to the polls," Angela Angel, a former Maryland state legislator who is a senior adviser to the new Black Lives Matter PAC, told CNN. "We understand in this moment that the real power is in exercising our right to vote."
  • the group has targeted young voters in more than a dozen key states with a particular focus on reaching people who had requested absentee ballots but had not yet returned them.
  • In Georgia, a traditionally red state now in play in this year's presidential and US Senate elections, the Black Lives Matter PAC is backing Joyce Barlow, a Democrat running for the Georgia House of Representatives to represent a swath of rural southwest Georgia.
  • A study released earlier this year by the Prosecutors and Politics Project at the University of North Carolina's Law School at Chapel Hill examined more than 2,300 prosecutors' races around the country and found contested elections in fewer than 700 -- or less than a third -- in either the primary or general election.
  • In Florida, meanwhile, the PAC is urging a "yes" vote on Amendment 2, which would phase in a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the Sunshine State by 2026.
  • Tuesday's election "isn't just about the presidency. Your money, your minimum wage is on the ballot."
  • "We saw that very different outcomes were realized by Black people killed by police violence, based on the prosecutors elected in their jurisdictions," said Arisha Hatch, who oversees the Color of Change PAC.
  • Taylor's mother has sought the appointment of an independent prosecutor to handle the case. In September, Cameron announced that a grand jury indicted one former Louisville Metro Police Department Detective Brett Hankison, with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment in connection with his actions on the night of the raid.
  • But the Color of Change PAC and other liberal groups are putting their political muscle into local prosecutors' races around the country
  • The groups engaged in electoral politics include Black Lives Matter, the sprawling social justice organization closely associated with this year's protests.
  • Rural counties might lack enough lawyers to mount a challenge to an incumbent. Prosecutor elections don't generate much attention. And voters don't always understand the power local county and district attorneys wield.
  • The Working Families Party mailers in the race tout Rucker's opposition to cash bail for non-violent offenses. "People shouldn't be sitting in jail because they can't afford to not be there," Rucker said in an interview with CNN.
  • The Working Families Party's "people's charter" calls to "shift resources away from policing, jails and detention centers" and into schools, housing and jobs programs.
rerobinson03

Opinion | Vote and Renew Democracy - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...2020-election-voting.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • As Americans go to the polls on Tuesday, the last day of voting in the 2020 election, the health of American democracy hangs in the balance.
  • Mr. Trump, and other Republican officials, can help by setting aside plans to interfere. One attempt at sabotage suffered a setback on Monday when a federal judge rejected an effort by Texas Republicans to toss more than 127,000 ballots from drive-through polling stations in Harris County, which includes Houston. Ben Ginsberg, a longtime lawyer for the Republican Party in voting cases, including in Florida in 2000, broke ranks in that case. “Not so long ago, it was a core tenet of the Republican Party that the vote of every qualified voter should be counted, even if, at times, it did not work in the party’s favor,” Mr. Ginsberg wrote. That should be a core tenet for both parties in the coming days.
  • Even as President Trump has celebrated acts of violence against people who do not support his re-election, Americans in the millions have taken advantage of these new opportunities to vote. More than 97 million people have already cast ballots nationwide.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Even as the coronavirus pandemic rages, millions more Americans plan to put on masks on Tuesday and vote in person. Some will wait for hours in long lines — a heroic response to a disgraceful reality — to exercise their right to pick the people who will serve them in Washington and in state and local government.
  • State election officials have an obligation to ensure that all of these votes are counted. That process will not end on Tuesday. Some states may report results quickly; others expect it will take days to make the count.
  • Even as Republican officials work frantically to discourage voting, and to prevent ballots from being counted, officials in many states have made it easier to vote than ever before.
  • Candidates also have an obligation to wait for the votes to be counted. Mr. Trump has suggested he is ready to claim victory before states finish their counting. Such premature claims, sometimes excused as gamesmanship, would be particularly irresponsible in the present climate. Should a candidate make such a claim, however, it’s also worth noting that there’s no special magic in saying the words. Mr. Trump cannot obtain a second term by declaring himself the winner.
  • Voters have made their own compromises in selecting candidates who embody some but not all of their priorities, some but not all of their values. Once those choices are made, the men and women they have selected must go to work and forge their own compromises.
  • Over the past four years, those challenges have only increased, in part because Mr. Trump has failed to understand the work of a president. He has sought to rule by fiat, to besiege his opponents and demand that they surrender. Time and again, he has decided that no loaf is better than half a loaf.
  • Now America gets its quadrennial chance to start over again.
  • The immediate challenge is to hold a free and fair election, to demonstrate to ourselves more than anyone else that this nation remains committed to representative democracy and to the rule of law.
anonymous

'Non-scalable' fencing erected around White House, stores boarded up in anticipation of election protests - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...story

shared by anonymous on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Many businesses in downtown Washington have boarded up windows in anticipation of violence as have some in New York City.
  • office has not received any credible threats of violence, but that the city has received a number of requests for demonstration permits.
  • “We welcome people to come to the District of Columbia to exercise their First Amendment right, but we won’t tolerate violence or unrest,”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Bowser also said that she has not requested help from the National Guard.
  • “We also know that some people would like to cause mayhem or trouble. We don’t have any specific thing to report to you about that, but we will tell you that we are preparing to ensure the city’s safety,”
mattrenz16

Live Election Trump vs. Biden Updates: Town Hall Recap - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-biden-town-halls

shared by mattrenz16 on 16 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • In a result that few in the TV and political arena predicted, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ABC town hall on Thursday night drew a larger audience than President Trump’s competing event on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC, according to preliminary Nielsen figures.
  • 13.9 million viewers, compared to 13.1 million for Mr. Trump
  • Savannah Guthrie pressed him to denounce QAnon and white supremacy (Mr. Trump hesitated on both) and clear up questions about his medical condition.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Americans are simply growing bored with The Trump Show.
  • Mr. Trump is known for his sexist remarks, and the clips the ad shows are real. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, has long styled himself a champion of women. He still refers to the Violence Against Women Act as his proudest legislative achievement and he said months before he selected Ms. Harris as his running mate that he would name a woman to his ticket.
  • President Trump’s rude and demeaning comments to and about women are no secret. Just last week, he called Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, a “monster.” A new ad from the Lincoln Project urges voters to consider what it would be like to have a different kind of president — a man, it suggests, who actually respects women.
  • The 90-second ad opens with two directives: “Imagine a young girl looking in the mirror, searching for role models in the world to give her hope that one day she, too, can make a difference. Now imagine how she feels when she watches women being verbally attacked.” Cue a series of clips that show Mr. Trump belittling women, including female reporters. “Your daughters are listening,” the ad says.
  • North Carolina may have broken a record for first-day, early-voting turnout on Thursday, when more than 333,000 people showed up in person to cast their ballots, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
  • The forums replaced what was to be the second debate between the two candidates, after Mr. Trump rejected the decision by the Commission on Presidential Debates to hold the debate virtually because of Mr. Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis.
  • Mr. Trump also all but confirmed that he owed about $400 million to creditors, as reported in a New York Times investigation about his taxes.
  • Over on ABC News, at a very different octane and a very different volume, Mr. Biden answered policy questions from George Stephanopoulos.
  • Mr. Biden’s outing was not completely easy. He again dodged a question on expanding the Supreme Court if he gets elected, though he did say, that he would offer an answer before Election Day but wanted to see how the nomination process for Judge Amy Coney Barrett plays out first.
  • Mr. Biden also made some news, saying that his support of the 1994 crime bill — which has been blamed for the large-scale incarceration of Black people — was a “mistake,”
  • National polls released on Thursday showed Mr. Biden up by an average of more than 10 points.
  • The venerable NBC/WSJ poll did show Mr. Biden’s lead dropping from 14 points, right after the Sept. 29 debate, to 11 points.
  • In Arizona, for instance, two new polls found Mr. Biden ahead by four points and one found Mr. Trump ahead by one point.
  • But in several other swing states, Mr. Biden continues to retain comfortable leads.
  • He also dodged repeated questions about whether he had a negative coronavirus test immediately before the first presidential debate.
  • Mr. Biden got his numbers wrong on troop levels in Afghanistan relative to when he left office four years ago and mischaracterized an element of the Green New Deal, but generally avoided clear misstatements.
  • That day, Nov. 3 this year, instead represents the end of a six-week sprint during a record number of Americans cast their ballots in advance.
  • In an effort to make polling places less crowded on Election Day, many states have encouraged absentee voting, opened more in-person early-voting sites and, in a few cases, mailed ballots to all registered voters.
  • While the long lines were a vivid symbol of longstanding efforts to make voting more difficult — particularly for people of color — they also demonstrated the intensity of the desire to vote in an election that millions of Americans have waited for since the last one,
  • Yet the voters keep coming, intent on exercising a constitutional right and in hopes of shaping a better future for their country.
anonymous

Post-Election Violence: Cities And Businesses Prepare For Unrest : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-post-election-unrest-violence

shared by anonymous on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Across the country, there are growing concerns that the bitterness and animosity over the presidential election will not end when the polls close Tuesday night. From coast to coast, cities are preparing for possible protests, civil unrest and violence, regardless of the election's outcome.
  • While the nation's capital city is certain to be a focal point of post-election demonstrations, other cities are bracing for possible chaos too.
  • The National Retail Federation has held training webinars for members on crisis prevention and de-escalating conflict and hired security consultants to help store owners prepare.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • but also the mom & pop shops on the South and the West sides of Chicago who he says "are hanging on by a thread right now because of the pandemic."
  • "They cannot afford to be looted. They cannot afford destruction, because if that happens, they very well may close and not reopen,"
  • Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says the city has been planning and preparing for potential election-related protests and civil unrest for months.
  • Chicago has been running tabletop exercises and gaming out how, when and where violence might erupt.
  • the city will flood certain areas with a highly visible police presence to deter violence. The city will also be using snow plows, dump trucks and other heavy vehicles to block certain streets and expressway exit ramps to keep demonstrators away.
  • Chicago police will respect people's rights to peacefully protest and will work first and foremost to de-escalate any confrontations, but he hastens to add that his officers will take swift action against anyone intent on spreading chaos.
  • Groups on all sides of the political spectrum are planning election night demonstrations and the very real possibility that the results might not be known for days or weeks after Election Day could escalate tensions.
  • mass organized political violence is not a part of the American psyche.
  • but in terms of actual massive violence, this is not something we have done before."
  • 2020 is already a year of political tension and unrest unlike anything seen in the country since the 1960s
  • Phil Brach spent the weekend putting huge sheets of plywood up over the massive glass windows of the store where he works, Rodman's Food and Drug in Washington, D.C., in preparation for Election Day.
  • Across the country, there are growing concerns that the bitterness and animosity over the presidential election will not end when the polls close Tuesday night. From coast to coast, cities are preparing for possible protests, civil unrest and violence, regardless of the election's outcome.
  • Nolan says he went to the store the night of the looting along with a police officer who advised him to leave.
  • "We put some film on these windows so that they're not easily broken, if they're smashed, they'll stay in place. And we're hoping that no one can break into the store, at least not easily," Roy says. Nolan adds, "The film makes the glass shatterproof so it doesn't just explode upon contact."
  • While the nation's capital city is certain to be a focal point of post-election demonstrations, other cities are bracing for possible chaos too.
  • Workers were busy boarding up store windows while supporters of President Trump held a "freedom rally" that was briefly disrupted by counter protesters.
  • "Coming off of the summer, seeing the looting that occurred, there's a lot of anxiety," says Elliott Richardson who heads the Small Business Advocacy Council in Chicago.
  • Superintendent David Brown says Chicago police will respect people's rights to peacefully protest and will work first and foremost to de-escalate any confrontations, but he hastens to add that his officers will take swift action against anyone intent on spreading chaos.
  • In Beverly Hills, Calif. tensions felt high already this weekend.
  • The National Retail Federation has held training webinars for members on crisis prevention and de-escalating conflict and hired security consultants to help store owners prepare.
  • Groups on all sides of the political spectrum are planning election night demonstrations and the very real possibility that the results might not be known for days or weeks after Election Day could escalate tensions.
kaylynfreeman

The Latest Photos As America Goes To The Polls | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...tos_n_5fa18d48c5b6128c6b5cdac2

politics US

shared by kaylynfreeman on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the polls look very different this year. Photos show winding lines, spaced-out voting booths and unusual face masks as people exercise their right to participate in American democracy.
  • Eboni Price and Cornelius Ates ride horses to a polling station on Election Day in Houston, Texas, on Nov. 3, 2020.
  • The Los Pasajeros mariachi band plays for voters at a polling place at Dodger Stadium on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, in Los Angeles. 
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Caution tape closes off a voting stall to help distance voters and prevent the spread of the coronavirus during Election Day at the East End School, Tuesday, Nov. 3, in Portland, Maine.
Javier E

How the Black Vote Became a Political Monolith - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...black-vote.html

vote black history politics culture racism

shared by Javier E on 21 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • The conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, the Georgia state representative Vernon Jones and others have recently resurfaced the old and ugly allegation that Black people are trapped on the Democratic “plantation,” dociles practicing a politics of grievance and gratuity that makes them beholden to the party.
  • From 1964 to 2008, according to a report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, an average of 88 percent of Black votes went to the Democratic Party’s presidential nominees, a number that increased to 93 percent in the last three presidential elections
  • as my family experience demonstrates, a monolithic Black electorate does not mean uniform Black politics.
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • Surveys routinely show that Black Americans are scattered across the ideological spectrum despite overwhelmingly voting for Democrats. Gallup data for last year showed that just over two in five Black Americans identify as moderate and that roughly a quarter each identify as liberal or conservative
  • An enduring unity at the ballot box is not confirmation that Black voters hold the same views on every contested issue, but rather that they hold the same view on the one most consequential issue: racial equality.
  • The existence of the Black electoral monolith is evidence of a critical defect not in Black America, but in the American practice of democracy. That defect is the space our two-party system makes for racial intolerance and the appetite our electoral politics has for the exploitation of racial polarization — to which the electoral solidarity of Black voters is an immune response.
  • To be Black in America has often meant to act in political solidarity with other Black people. Sometimes those politics have been formal and electoral, sometimes they have been of protest and revolt. But they have always, by necessity, been existential and utilitarian.
  • A recognition that achieving racial equality required a strong government fueled Black progressivism, which demanded anti-lynching federal legislation; eradication of the poll tax and other barriers to voting; and expansion of quality public education
  • The ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments codified freedmen’s participation in the electoral process at a time when upward of 90 percent of Black Americans lived in the Southern states, constituting actual or near majorities in more than a few.
  • This was the Black monolith’s forceful debut. In a thriving democracy, one aligned to the nation’s professed values, a competition for these new voters would have ensued. The monolith would have dissipated as individual Black voters sought out their ideological compatriots instead of being compelled to band against segregation and racial violence.
  • In the first century of American politics, the word “compromise” — Three-Fifths, Missouri, 1850, 1877 — was often a euphemism for prying natural and constitutional rights from Black Americans’ grip.
  • These political arrangements underscored the paradox that plagued Black America from the outset: The same federalist government charged with the delivery and defense of constitutional rights was often the means of denying them. On matters of race, the state was at once dangerously unreliable and positively indispensable.
  • The contours of Black politics were shaped by this quandary. The lack of faith in American democracy’s ability to do what was right undergirded Black conservatism, producing economic philosophies like Booker T. Washington’s bootstrapping self-determination; social efforts toward civic acceptance like the respectability politics of the Black church; and separatist politics like the early iterations of black nationalism.
  • When Black men were first enfranchised after the end of the Civil War, they faced a partisan politics reduced to one stark choice: Side with those who would extend more rights of citizenship to Black people or with those who would deny them.
  • Truman’s decision to sign executive orders desegregating the military and the federal work force was an electoral broadside constructed, in part, to help win over the support of northern Black voters.
  • The Democrats’ and Republicans’ national platforms in this period often addressed civil rights in nearly equal measure, and sometimes Republicans were more progressive on the question.
  • President Dwight Eisenhower declared in the 1950s that racial segregation harmed the nation’s security interests.
  • Richard Nixon held positions on civil rights similar to John F. Kennedy’s during the 1960 presidential campaign, and won nearly a third of the Black vote that yea
  • Stumping for Nixon in 1960, Senator Barry Goldwater, the Arizona Republican, declared that “there’s hardly enough difference between Republican conservatives and the Southern Democrats to put a piece of paper between.” When Goldwater became the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and voiced his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, Black voters bunched themselves into the Democratic Party for good, supporting Lyndon Johnson at a rate comparable with Barack Obama’s nearly a half-century later.
  • Within a decade, white Southern Democrats were responding favorably to the appeals of the Republican Party. Richard Nixon’s “law and order” refrain and Ronald Reagan’s renewed call for “states’ rights” were racialized, implicitly communicating opposition to progressive policies like busing and tapping into anxieties about a rapidly integrating society.
  • With explicitly racist appeals now socially taboo, symbolic and ostensibly colorblind gestures made the transition easier by reframing the race question as one about free-market principles, personal responsibility and government nonintervention.
  • Racial segregation could be achieved without openly championing it; the social hierarchy maintained without evangelizing it. American voters, Black and white alike, got the message.
  • The result was that racial polarization was now less a product of partisan philosophies about the personhood or citizenship of Black Americans and more a fact of partisan identity — and a political instrument to hold and wield power.
  • This was a subtle but profound shift, and a dangerous one. As the University of Maryland professor Lilliana Mason writes in her 2018 book, “Uncivil Agreement,” “Partisan, ideological, religious and racial identities have, in recent decades, moved into strong alignment, or have become ‘sorted,’” such that partisan attacks can become race-based, personal and unmoored from policy disputes.
  • Partisan energy accordingly is hardly ever expended in an earnest competition for Black voters but rather in determining whether they can vote, tilting the axis of the issue away from the exercise of the franchise to access to it.
  • Racial identity has now become fully entangled with partisanship: The Republican Party is attracting more white voters while people of color are massing in the Democratic Party.
  • Not only does race now split the parties more cleanly than ever, but the racial gap exacerbates partisan polarization.
  • In “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop,” the political scientist Lee Drutman notes that the modern American two-party system so consecrates competition that party leaders are more incentivized to disparage the other side as extreme and un-American than to compromise.
  • Deliberation is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. A people that does not seriously deliberate about its nation and its leaders is a people ill suited to the task of providing the consent from which government derives its power.
  • For Black voters, agency and political freedom are luxuries they have never fully enjoyed.
  • It didn’t have to be this way. There have been moments in history in which better leaders and better people would have competed for Black America’s increasing electoral power instead of organizing against it.
  • or a nation deeply divided on race relations, the easy and more politically expedient strategy has always won out.
  • For our democracy to reach its final form, the answer cannot be that one party has tried to answer the call — it must be that each party does so and without penalty.
  • A young John Lewis made this argument in 1963 at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. In his impassioned speech, he channeled the frustrations of Black America and excoriated the nation’s partisan democracy for posturing on race relations instead of taking revolutionary action to realize the promise of America.
  • “Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march on Washington? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march in the streets of Birmingham?”
cartergramiak

Opinion | Conservatives Try to Lock In Power - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...atives-supreme-court-2020.html

trump us history politics

shared by cartergramiak on 21 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • The death of the iconic Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has shocked the political world, altered the contours of the upcoming election and induced an overwhelming dread among liberals who fear some basic rights could now be in jeopardy.
  • it remains unclear whether the Senate will hold a vote before Election Day. If it did, it would represent a colossal act of hypocrisy since many of the same senators refused to even give Barack Obama’s last nominee, Merrick Garland, a hearing, arguing that it was inappropriate to fill a seat on the court in an election year.
  • But Republicans have the power to force a vote, and barring defections, they could exercise it.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • 78 percent of white evangelical voters are Republicans or lean Republican. So are 62 percent of white men without a college degree, 60 percent of rural southerners and 57 percent of people who attend religious services weekly.
  • the percentage of Americans who are not affiliated with a religion keeps rising — up 9 percentage points since 2009, to 26 percent in 2019 — and the percentage of people identifying as Christians keeps falling — down 12 percentage points, to 65 percent over the same decade
  • Lastly, the percentage of Americans with college degrees keeps rising, moving from 4.6 percent in 1940 to 36 percent in 2019.
  • Conservatives see all of these trends, and they are alarmed. So, they want to freeze time, or even turn it back. Their reading of the Constitution is stuck in the understanding of it when it was written. It is the same for religious texts. They want to return to a pre-1960s era, before the civil rights movement, women’s rights movement and the gay rights movement, before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and Roe v. Wade, before the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage, before there was a Black president and a browning country.
  • This is why they happily cheer Trump’s attack on immigrants — both legal and undocumented. It is why they encourage efforts to disenfranchise voters. It is why Trump’s attacks on cities resonate, as does his MAGA mantra.
  • Social progress is now on the chopping block. In this way, for many of us, Donald Trump’s legacy will likely be with us for the rest of our lives.
ethanshilling

Why Charges Against Protesters Are Being Dismissed by the Thousands - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...protests-lawsuits-arrests.html

US

shared by ethanshilling on 20 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Prosecutors declined to pursue many of the cases because they concluded the protesters were exercising their basic civil rights.
  • An English teacher at Marion C. Moore School at that time, Mr. Kaufmann was among more than 800 people swept up by the police in Louisville during the many months of demonstrations prompted by the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
  • Now, more than five months later, as Mr. Kaufmann’s case and those of thousands of others finally land in courts across the United States, a vast majority of cases against protesters are being dismissed. Only cases involving more substantial charges like property destruction or other violence remain.
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  • Prosecutors called the scale of both the mass arrests and mass dismissals within a few short months unrivaled, at least since the civil rights protests of the early 1960s.
  • There was also the recognition that law enforcement officers often use mass arrests as a technique to help clear the streets, not to confront illegal behavior.
  • “This is the hangover from months of protests,” said Ted Shouse, a criminal defense attorney in Louisville who helped to organize more than 100 volunteer defense attorneys.
  • Defense attorneys working on cases in numerous cities said more people of color than white people were charged, but it was not a universal pattern.
  • A recent study by The Louisville Courier-Journal found that Black people constituted 53 percent of those arrested there during the four months starting May 29, but that they faced 69 percent of the felony charges.
  • “Seventy to 80 percent would not survive constitutional challenges,” said Mr. Schmidt, who added that the costs far outweighed any benefit to public safety.
  • In Louisville, those cases are referred to as being in the “parking lot.” There are some 22,000 such cases over all, with just four of 10 trial courts functioning in the Jefferson County Courthouse. Across two days in late October, 300 protest case arraignments were jammed onto the calendar, about 10 times the normal rate.
  • “We were dumbfounded, we were shocked,” Mr. Kaufmann said. “The country does not live up to the values that we have been teaching in class.”
  • “My young Black male and female friends who I met through the protests were in greater danger than I was and some of them are still dealing with these charges,” he said. “It is not fair, it is not consistent and we have to do better.”
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