Jun 29, 2021
Today's Tweet
Accountability? In the United States Senate? Are you daft? That's just never gonna fly.
Without the filibuster we could conceivably have senators from both parties working together because they would have to represent their state and not their party.
— PoliticsGirl (@IAmPoliticsGirl) June 26, 2021
An example… pic.twitter.com/GHvgyrPLsX
Krugman Speaks
Paul Krugman - NYT: (pay wall)
Oh, wait. That was no leftist, that was Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. What set Carlson off was testimony in which Milley told a congressional hearing that he considered it important “for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and widely read.”
The problem is obvious. Closed-mindedness and ignorance have become core conservative values, and those who reject these values are the enemy, no matter what they may have done to serve the country.
The Milley hearing was part of the orchestrated furor over “critical race theory,” which has dominated right-wing media for the past few months, getting close to 2,000 mentions on Fox so far this year. One often sees assertions that those attacking critical race theory have no idea what it’s about, but I disagree; they understand that it has something to do with assertions that America has a history of racism and of policies that explicitly or implicitly widened racial disparities.
And such assertions are unmistakably true. The Tulsa race massacre really happened, and it was only one of many such incidents. The 1938 underwriting manual for the Federal Housing Administration really did declare that “incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities.”
We can argue about the relevance of this history to current policy, but who would argue against acknowledging simple facts?
The modern right, that’s who. The current obsession with critical race theory is a cynical attempt to change the subject away from the Biden administration’s highly popular policy initiatives, while pandering to the white rage that Republicans deny exists. But it’s only one of multiple subjects on which willful ignorance has become a litmus test for anyone hoping to succeed in Republican politics.
Thus, to be a Republican in good standing one must deny the reality of man-made climate change, or at least oppose any meaningful action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. One must reject or at least express skepticism about the theory of evolution. And don’t even get me started on things like the efficacy of tax cuts.
What underlies this cross-disciplinary commitment to ignorance? On each subject, refusing to acknowledge reality serves special interests. Climate denial caters to the fossil fuel industry; evolution denial caters to religious fundamentalists; tax-cut mysticism caters to billionaire donors.
But there’s also, I’d argue, a spillover effect: Accepting evidence and logic is a sort of universal value, and you can’t take it away in one area of inquiry without degrading it across the board. That is, you can’t declare that honesty about America’s racial history is unacceptable and expect to maintain intellectual standards everywhere else. In the modern right-wing universe of ideas, everything is political; there are no safe subjects.
This politicization of everything inevitably creates huge tension between conservatives and institutions that try to respect reality.
There have been many studies documenting the strong Democratic lean of college professors, which is often treated as prima facie evidence of political bias in hiring. A new law in Florida requires that each state university conduct an annual survey “which considers the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented,” which doesn’t specifically mandate the hiring of more Republicans but clearly gestures in that direction.
An obvious counterargument to claims of biased hiring is self-selection: How many conservatives choose to pursue careers in, say, sociology? Is hiring bias the reason police officers seem to have disproportionately supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, or is this simply a reflection of the kind of people who choose careers in law enforcement?
But beyond that, the modern G.O.P. is no home for people who believe in objectivity. One striking feature of surveys of academic partisanship is the overwhelming Democratic lean in hard sciences like biology and chemistry; but is that really hard to understand when Republicans reject science on so many fronts?
One recent study marvels that even finance departments are mainly Democratic. Indeed, you might expect finance professors, some of whom do lucrative consulting for Wall Street, to be pretty conservative. But even they are repelled by a party committed to zombie economics.
Which brings me back to General Milley. The U.S. military has traditionally leaned Republican, but the modern officer corps is highly educated, open-minded and, dare I say it, even a bit intellectual — because those are attributes that help win wars.
Unfortunately, they are also attributes the modern G.O.P. finds intolerable.
So something like the attack on Milley was inevitable. Right-wingers have gone all in on ignorance, so they were bound to come into conflict with every institution — including the U.S. military — that is trying to cultivate knowledge.
COVID-19 Update
World
USA
Covid Live Updates: Delta Variant Drives New Lockdowns in Asia and Australia
Bangladesh and Malaysia are among the countries scrambling to contain outbreaks as slow vaccination campaigns leave people vulnerable. The W.H.O. is recommending that fully vaccinated people wear masks, in a split with the C.D.C.
Here’s what you need to know:
New Cases: 316,908 (⬆︎ .17%)
New Deaths: 6,287 (⬆︎ .16%)
USA
New Cases: 10,754 (⬆︎ .03%)
New Deaths: 187 (⬆︎ .02%)
Yesterday, June 28th, 2021
0 Vaccinated people
and
6.287 Un-Vaccinated people
were killed by COVID-19
179.6 million vaccinated
Including more than 153.8 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the United States.
In the last week, an average of 834.0k doses per day were administered,
a 20% decrease over the week before.
NYT: (pay wall)
Covid Live Updates: Delta Variant Drives New Lockdowns in Asia and Australia
Bangladesh and Malaysia are among the countries scrambling to contain outbreaks as slow vaccination campaigns leave people vulnerable. The W.H.O. is recommending that fully vaccinated people wear masks, in a split with the C.D.C.
Here’s what you need to know:
Jun 28, 2021
On Bad Apples
Of course it's always important to keep things in context, and to remember that the anecdote is not the trend.
That said, when the anecdotes pile up to the extent we've seen lately, we have to admit that we've got more than a bushel or two of bad apples. It's just possible that what we've got is a full-blown blight.
After being convicted of second and third-degree murder as well as manslaughter for the killing of George Floyd, Chauvin was sentenced to 270 months (22 years and 6 months). Chauvin will probably serve two-thirds or 15 years of this sentence. While some may view this chapter of police brutality closed, others know Chauvin is the tip of the iceberg regarding changes needed to improve law enforcement.
The city of Minneapolis paid out $27 million to the Floyd family for his wrongful death days before the start of the Chauvin trial in March. During the less than two week trial, police in the United States killed over 60 people. A person could watch a major league baseball game and a basketball playoff game and come to the realization that police probably killed a person at some point during that time span.
Chauvin’s actions were not isolated. Indeed, he did it previously. Since 2015, Chauvin is on record for kneeling on people’s necks and/or putting them in chokeholds at least six times. Of the people involved in these incidents, two were Black, one was Latino, one was American Indian, and two others were of an unknown race. In 2017, Chauvin kneeled on the back of a 14-year-old Black boy for 17 minutes. These incidents make up a small portion of the over 20 complaints that Chauvin received during his 19-year law enforcement career.
These facts may explain why Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s defense attorney, rambled off a series of “what ifs” during the sentence hearing that Chauvin allegedly stated over the past year. The what ifs focused on whether the officer should not have come in to work that day or not responded to the call. Interestingly, none of Chauvin’s what ifs included what clearly is the most important consideration: what if Chauvin pulled his knee off of Floyd’s neck when he stated he could not breathe?
How could Chauvin get away with this brutality for so long? Why didn’t anyone intervene or stop him? Why wasn’t he reprimanded or even fired? Chauvin was not simply a bad apple, but a bad apple that helped rotten the barrel and poison good apples that could have been, like the two early-career officers who watched him kill Floyd and participated in it. For all the good officers protecting and serving their communities, there are more Chauvins than there should be.
So, how should police departments ensure that officers like Chauvin do not brutalize our communities? Overall, accountability must be increased to ensure that these incidents become nonexistent rather than a regular occurrence. Focusing on duty to intervene legislation, malpractice insurance, and positive police outcomes are central.
Implement state-level duty to report programs
States need to have duty to intervene laws that protect police officers who report bad behavior. Moreover, simply having duty to intervene laws is not enough. Officers who report misconduct need protection from retaliation. I call it GAPP (Good Apples Protection program for law enforcement). This requires state legislatures creating an independent reporting and investigation program at the state level. If it stays local, officers will be less likely to report or more likely to be targeted for reporting. This recently occurred in Prince George’s County, Maryland (one of the 30 largest police departments in the country) when two officers reported that another officer used excessive force. In retaliation, some officers were told not to back up the officers who reported the excessive force. The two reporting officers just happened to be Black.
If there is a state or federal program for officers who report misconduct, officers may be more likely to intervene and report misconduct. The blue wall of silence does not simply exist because officers are loyal to the badge and each other. The blue wall of silence exists because there are consequences to breaching it. This is the same process that happens on streets plagued with violent crime. People who provide information to law enforcement are rarely given immediate protection for that information. Instead, they are further exposed to retaliation. In this regard, the same process of reporting and retaliation that operates in neighborhoods plagued with violent crime also operates in many of our police departments. This is a huge problem and needs to change.
Link law enforcement certification to malpractice insurance
Municipalities need to restructure civilian payouts for police misconduct. Cities and counties need to think through a plan that does not include using funding from general tax revenue to pay for misconduct settlements. While many states and municipalities are waiting to determine what will occur with The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that aims to absolve qualified immunity for law enforcement, police department insurance policies and individual officer liability insurance may be the key regardless.
Municipalities and states can establish a certification program that requires officers to carry liability insurance. If they have engaged in misconduct, their insurance premium will be higher, just like drivers who are careless or reckless behind the wheel. If officers are unable to obtain liability insurance, they should not be able to obtain certification to work in law enforcement just like a person who is unable to obtain insurance cannot get a license.
Additionally, it is vital for municipalities to carry their own insurance policy on the police department to not simply throw officers under the bus and absolve the organizational structure that helped create the bad apples. This is important because municipalities are spending billions of dollars in misconduct settlements. Some small cities like Inkster, Michigan and large cities like Chicago do not have the funding to cover these misconduct settlements. Consequently, people’s property taxes are increased and cities take out “police brutality bonds” with very high fees and interests to cover these costs.
Replicate departments with low misconduct and low crime
Law enforcement finally needs to start replicating the changes that have taken place in cities like Newark and Camden. Newark police did not shoot a single shot in 2020 and recovered over 500 illegal guns. Camden had fewer shootings in 2020 than it did in 2019, one of the few cities in the country. Part of these positive outcomes are driven by the police department working with community activists to ensure transparency and accountability for law enforcement, which, in turn, gains the trust of people living in the community. These outcomes are also driven by oversight to ensure more accountability.
For too long, negative and deficit outcomes have driven law enforcement. It is time to change policing culture by scaling up positive outcomes. This is especially important since research documents that violent crime rates are unrelated to police killing rates. This suggests that we can decrease crime as well as decrease police killings and brutality. Only accountability, transparency, and equity can make this happen.
COVID-19 Update
World
USA
New Cases: 311,291 (⬆︎ .17%)
New Deaths: 6,276 (⬆︎ .22%)
USA
New Cases: 4,740 (⬆︎ .01%)
New Deaths: 93 (⬆︎ .02%)
Yesterday, June 27th, 2021
0 Vaccinated people
and
6,276 Un-Vaccinated people
were killed by COVID-19
179.3 million vaccinated
Including more than 153 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the United States.
In the last week, an average of 765.8k doses per day were administered, a 32% decrease over the week before.
I may need a booster (Janssen J&J), and people who got AstraZenaca will see a boost in immunity with a 3rd shot down the road, but people who got Pfizer or Moderna may be fine - possibly "for years" - without a followup.
NYT: (pay wall)
The vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna set off a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years, scientists reported on Monday.
The findings add to growing evidence that most people immunized with the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms — which is not guaranteed. People who recovered from Covid-19 before being vaccinated may not need boosters even if the virus does make a significant transformation.
“It’s a good sign for how durable our immunity is from this vaccine,” said Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.
The study did not consider the vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, but Dr. Ellebedy said he expected the immune response to be less durable than that produced by mRNA vaccines.
Dr. Ellebedy and his colleagues reported last month that in people who had survived Covid-19, immune cells that recognize the virus remained in the bone marrow for at least eight months after infection. A study by another team indicated that so-called memory B cells continue to mature and strengthen for at least a year after infection.
Based on those findings, researchers suggested that immunity might last years, possibly a lifetime, in people who were infected and later vaccinated. But it was unclear whether vaccination alone might have a similarly long-lasting effect.
After an infection or a vaccination, a specialized structure called the germinal center forms in lymph nodes. This structure is an elite school of sorts for B cells.
The broader the range and the longer these cells have to practice, the more likely they are to be able to thwart variants of the virus that may emerge.
After infection with the coronavirus, the germinal center forms in the lungs. But after vaccination, the cells’ education takes place in lymph nodes in the armpits, within reach of researchers.
Dr. Ellebedy’s team found that 15 weeks after the first dose of vaccine, the germinal center was still highly active in all 14 of the participants, and that the number of memory cells that recognized the coronavirus had not declined.
“The fact that the reactions continued for almost four months after vaccination — that’s a very, very good sign,” Dr. Ellebedy said. Germinal centers typically peak one to two weeks after immunization, and then wane.
“Usually by four to six weeks, there’s not much left,” said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona. But germinal centers stimulated by the mRNA vaccines are “still going, months into it, and not a lot of decline in most people.”
Dr. Bhattacharya noted that most of what scientists know about the persistence of germinal centers is based on animal research. The new study is the first to show what happens in people after vaccination.
The results suggest that a vast majority of vaccinated people will be protected over the long term — at least, against the existing variants. But older adults, people with weak immune systems and those who take drugs that suppress immunity may need boosters; people who survived Covid-19 and were later immunized may never need them at all.
Exactly how long the protection from mRNA vaccines will last is hard to predict. In the absence of variants that sidestep immunity, in theory immunity could last a lifetime, experts said. But the virus is clearly evolving.
Closer Than We Think
The first recorded case of a United States Military officer using the "I was only following orders" defense dates back to 1799. During the War with France, Congress passed a law making it permissible to seize ships bound for any French Port. However, when President John Adams wrote the authorization order, he wrote that U.S. Navy ships were authorized to seize any vessel bound for a French port, or traveling from a French port. Pursuant to the President's instructions, a U.S. Navy captain seized a Danish Ship (the Flying Fish), which was en route from a French Port.
The owners of the ship sued the Navy captain in U.S. Maritime Court for trespass. They won, and the United States Supreme Court upheld the decision. The U.S. Supreme Court held that Navy commanders "act at their own peril" when obeying presidential orders when such orders are illegal.
(my apologies to Gilbert-n-Sullivan, and to anyone who still has the tiniest bit of sensibility left in this ridiculously non-sensical period of political madness)
And I think the reason for Milley's supposed turnaround, is that he's not a guy who's going to roll over and beg for a belly rub from any random puke - even a POTUS - when he knows the guy is playing him for a fool.
Trump's Situation Room shouting match
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeatedly blew up at President Trump over how to handle last summer's racial-justice protests, The Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender writes in his forthcoming book, "Frankly, We Did Win This Election."
The backdrop:
Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act and put Milley in charge of a scorched-earth military campaign to suppress protests that had spiraled into riots in several cities.
Milley — now a GOP villain for his testimony last week on critical race theory — pushed back, Bender writes in a passage Axios is reporting for the first time:
Seated in the Situation Room with [Attorney General Bill] Barr, Milley, and [Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper, Trump exaggerated claims about the violence and alarmed officials ... by announcing he’d just put Milley "in charge."
Privately, Milley confronted Trump about his role. He was an adviser, and not in command. But Trump had had enough.
"I said you're in f---ing charge!" Trump shouted at him."Well, I'm not in charge!" Milley yelled back."You can't f---ing talk to me like that!" Trump said. ..."Goddamnit," Milley said to others. "There's a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?""He's right, Mr. President," Barr said. "The general is right."
Asked for a response, Trump told Jonathan Swan through an aide: "This is totally fake news, it never ever happened. I'm not a fan of Gen. Milley, but I never had an argument with him and the whole thing is false. He never talked back to me. Michael Bender never asked me about it and it's totally fake news."
Trump later added: "If Gen. Milley had yelled at me, I would have fired him."
Bender then told Swan:
- "This exchange was confirmed by multiple senior administration officials during the course of hundreds of hours of interviews with dozens of top Trump World aides for this book."
- "Contrary to Mr. Trump’s assertion, I asked the former president for his side of this particular argument in a written question — as he requested — along with other queries included in my thorough fact-checking process. He did not reply.”
P.S. At Trump's Ohio rally on Saturday night, he attacked Milley without naming him: "You see these generals lately on television? They are woke."
The brink of disaster is always something we should keep in mind.
Lately, we've been dancing at the edge of the abyss.
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