⬇︎ click a pic ⬇︎
Jul 2, 2021
Jul 1, 2021
On Jan6
Take the American Democratic Process, rhetorically turn it upside down, inside out, and backwards, and you can sell it as Tyranny to a mob of stoopid hicks.
That's the game for The Daddy State - the method to their madness is to condition people to take your word as Gospel no matter how obviously false it is.
Do it right and they'll eat fresh dog shit off the grass, proclaiming to all the world that they love it more than their favorite ice cream.
Notice the rioters co-opting the please we heard from (eg) the Egyptians a few years ago - "You're one of us" - "We are one of you".
Chilling shit #1: "They believe they've been deputized by their president to stop a crime."
Chilling shit #2: "We're going to yank them out of their seats."
And the biggest chilling shit: "Hang Mike Pence."
The Rankings Are In
It seems weird, but 45* does not come last in the survey of Best Presidents.
They put him at 41st - just 3 places from the bottom.
A note, if you please: Remember that while there have been 46 "presidencies" (including Biden now), there have been only 45 men who've served as president. Grover Cleveland occupies 2 slots because his terms weren't consecutive.
Despite being impeached twice, former president Donald Trump is not the worst president in U.S. history, according to 142 presidential historians surveyed by C-SPAN, the results of which were released Wednesday.
But the survey doesn’t give Trump much to brag about either. He ranked lower than William Henry Harrison, who was only president for 31 days, and John Tyler, the only former president buried in a coffin draped with the Confederate flag.
So who ranked worse than Trump? According to the historians, presidents Franklin “Bleeding Kansas” Pierce, Andrew “First to Be Impeached” Johnson and James “Failed to Stop the Civil War” Buchanan, who came in last.
To be clear, this was an informal survey whose respondents were selected by C-SPAN, not a scientific poll. Dozens more historians were invited to complete the survey this time than in years past. C-SPAN said this was to reflect “new diversity in race, gender, age and philosophy,” but that also makes it harder to compare it to previous surveys.
Still, the respondents are all distinguished presidential historians covering a broad range of perspectives, and there are insights to gain from their collective opinions.
Even with all the new historians participating, the top and bottom rankings remained unchanged. Since 2009, the top four presidents have been: 1) Abraham Lincoln 2) George Washington 3) Franklin D. Roosevelt and 4) Theodore Roosevelt. (Washington and FDR switched places in the 2000 survey.) The bottom three have been always been Pierce, Johnson and Buchanan, in that order.
The survey is conducted only when there is a change in administration, so that each presidency can be evaluated in its entirety. The historians do not rank the presidents themselves. Instead they are asked to rate each president from 1 to 10 on 10 leadership categories; the averages of all of the ratings are then ranked. The 10 categories are public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursuit of equal justice for all and performance within the context of the times.
Trump got his best average rating on public persuasion, in which he came in 32nd. On moral authority and administrative skills, however, he came in dead last.
Alexis Coe is one of the historians invited to do the survey for the first time, after her well-regarded 2020 book “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.” In her newsletter, she said she “jumped for joy” when she received the survey, then “agonized over every rating” for months. What about vision/setting an agenda for James K. Polk, who brought enslaved people to the White House and also annexed Texas? Warren G. Harding certainly rates low on moral authority, she wrote, but how low for his policies and how low for cheating on the first lady?
“I’ve yet to study a president who’s a perfect 10,” Coe wrote.
The president whose reputation has improved the most in the past two decades? That’s Ulysses S. Grant, who started at No. 33 and is now ranked 20th. Grant has had a number of sympathetic biographies in recent years, and these days gets more credit for Reconstruction and his diplomacy than condemnation for his alleged corruption.
No president has fallen quite as much as Grant rose in the same period; but Trump-favorite Andrew Jackson fell the most, from No. 13 to No. 22. It is perhaps a reflection of changing attitudes in the public. Soon Jackson may fall right off the $20 bill.
Other interesting patterns reveal themselves in the rankings. The five presidents from 1933 to 1969 — FDR, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson — rank in the top 11, making it the best stretch of presidents historians say America has had. The worst stretch came from 1837 to 1869, with the notable exception of four-time champion Lincoln.
In 2017, former president Barack Obama entered the ranking at No. 12, though Howard University historian Edna Greene Medford warned The Washington Post at the time that “historians prefer to view the past from a distance, and only time will reveal his legacy.” Four years later, a little distance seems to be doing Obama’s legacy good — he is now ranked No. 10.
President Biden will not be included in the C-SPAN survey until he has left office.
C-SPAN is not the only outfit conducting presidential rankings, and other recent surveys have included Trump before he left office. In 2018, when Boise State University surveyed presidential scholars for its Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness survey, Trump came in last. And that was before the two impeachments, the coronavirus pandemic and the Capitol insurrection.
Read more Retropolis:
The 10 worst presidents: Besides Trump, whom do scholars scorn the most?
‘A hack job,’ ‘outright lies’: Trump commission’s ‘1776 Report’ outrages historians
The 10th president’s last surviving grandson: A bridge to the nation’s complicated past
‘His Accidency’: The first president to die in office and the constitutional confusion
Bad News Good News
The bad news is that Bill Cosby is on the loose again.
The good news is that Donald Rumsfeld is dead.
fuck 'em
COVID-19 Update
World
USA
More than 80 teens and adult staffers from a Central Illinois summer camp tested positive for Covid-19 in an outbreak that has impacted people across three states, officials said.
The Crossing Camp in Schuyler County held in mid-June did not check vaccination status for campers or staffers, and masks were not required indoors at the camp, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) said in a news release.
The Crossing Camp has not responded to calls, email or Facebook messages left by CNN on Monday and Tuesday.
All campers and staff were eligible for vaccination, although "IDPH is aware of only a handful of campers and staff receiving the vaccine," the department said Monday.
One unvaccinated young adult who tested positive after attending the camp was also hospitalized, according to IDPH.
In Illinois, 46.1% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the latest data. However, officials across the country have are becoming alarmed by the reluctance of young adults to get vaccinated, especially as the more transmissible Delta variant is spreading more widely.
"The perceived risk to children may seem small, but even a mild case of COVID-19 can cause long-term health issues," IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in Monday's statement.
IDPH said that at least two individuals from the camp also attended a nearby conference, which resulted in 11 additional positive cases of Covid-19.
The week-long camp from June 13-17 was designed was for 8th graders -- through graduating seniors.
An upcoming camp created for fourth- and fifth-grade students has been postponed to August due to the outbreak, according to a message posted on its official website.
" We were so looking forward to spending time with your campers this weekend, but we believe the best way to value and love our students, difference makers, and staff is to delay camp until a safer time," it read.
The Schuyler County Health Department worked with camp staffers "to provide guidance and mitigate the situation," according to a county statement from last week. The Crossing Camp also followed CDC guidelines in relation to the "cleaning and disinfection of their facility," the Schuyler County Health Department said.
County and state health officials are advising anyone who visited the camp during the mid-June timeframe to get a PCR test, even if they are not experiencing Covid-19 symptoms.
New Cases: 390,781 (⬆︎ .21%)
New Deaths: 8,500 (⬆︎ .21%)
USA
New Cases: 14,197 (⬆︎ .04%)
New Deaths: 249 (⬆︎ .04%)
Yesterday, July 1st, 2021
0 Vaccinated people
and
8,500 Un-Vaccinated people
were killed by COVID-19
180.7 million vaccinated
Including more than 154.9 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the United States.
In the last week, an average of 949.9k doses per day were administered, a 16% increase over the week before.
Dammit, you guys.
More than 80 teens and adult staffers from a Central Illinois summer camp tested positive for Covid-19 in an outbreak that has impacted people across three states, officials said.
The Crossing Camp in Schuyler County held in mid-June did not check vaccination status for campers or staffers, and masks were not required indoors at the camp, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) said in a news release.
The Crossing Camp has not responded to calls, email or Facebook messages left by CNN on Monday and Tuesday.
All campers and staff were eligible for vaccination, although "IDPH is aware of only a handful of campers and staff receiving the vaccine," the department said Monday.
One unvaccinated young adult who tested positive after attending the camp was also hospitalized, according to IDPH.
In Illinois, 46.1% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the latest data. However, officials across the country have are becoming alarmed by the reluctance of young adults to get vaccinated, especially as the more transmissible Delta variant is spreading more widely.
"The perceived risk to children may seem small, but even a mild case of COVID-19 can cause long-term health issues," IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in Monday's statement.
"Additionally, infected youth who may not experience severe illness can still spread the virus to others, including those who are too young to be vaccinated or those who don't build the strong expected immune response to the vaccine," she said.
IDPH said that at least two individuals from the camp also attended a nearby conference, which resulted in 11 additional positive cases of Covid-19.
The week-long camp from June 13-17 was designed was for 8th graders -- through graduating seniors.
An upcoming camp created for fourth- and fifth-grade students has been postponed to August due to the outbreak, according to a message posted on its official website.
" We were so looking forward to spending time with your campers this weekend, but we believe the best way to value and love our students, difference makers, and staff is to delay camp until a safer time," it read.
The Schuyler County Health Department worked with camp staffers "to provide guidance and mitigate the situation," according to a county statement from last week. The Crossing Camp also followed CDC guidelines in relation to the "cleaning and disinfection of their facility," the Schuyler County Health Department said.
County and state health officials are advising anyone who visited the camp during the mid-June timeframe to get a PCR test, even if they are not experiencing Covid-19 symptoms.
Jun 30, 2021
Bullet Dodged
...plenty more bullets to come.
Supreme Court Rejects Request to Lift Federal Ban on Evictions
The C.D.C. had imposed an eviction moratorium, saying it was needed to address the coronavirus pandemic.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to lift a moratorium on evictions that had been imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Brett M. Kavanaugh in the majority.
The court gave no reasons for its ruling, which is typical when it acts on emergency applications. But Justice Kavanaugh issued a brief concurring opinion explaining that he had cast his vote reluctantly and had taken account of the impending expiration of the moratorium.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Because the C.D.C. plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds, I vote at this time to deny the application” that had been filed by landlords, real estate companies and trade associations.
He added that the agency might not extend the moratorium on its own. “In my view,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the C.D.C. to extend the moratorium past July 31.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, Congress declared a moratorium on evictions, which lapsed last July. The C.D.C. then issued a series of its own moratoriums.
“In doing so,” the challengers told the justices, “the C.D.C. shifted the pandemic’s financial burdens from the nation’s 30 to 40 million renters to its 10 to 11 million landlords — most of whom, like applicants, are individuals and small businesses — resulting in over $13 billion in unpaid rent per month.” The total cost to the nation’s landlords, they wrote, could approach $200 billion.
The moratorium defers but does not cancel the obligation to pay rent; the challengers wrote that this “massive wealth transfer” would “never be fully undone.” Many renters, they wrote, will be unable to pay what they owe. “In reality,” they wrote, “the eviction moratorium has become an instrument of economic policy rather than of disease control.”
In urging the Supreme Court to leave the moratorium in place, the government said that continued vigilance against the spread of the coronavirus was needed and noted that Congress has appropriated tens of billions of dollars to pay for rent arrears.
The challengers argued that the moratorium was not authorized by the law the agency relied on, the Public Health Service Act of 1944.
The 1944 law, the challengers wrote, was concerned with quarantines and inspections to stop the spread of disease and did not bestow on the agency “the unqualified power to take any measure imaginable to stop the spread of communicable disease — whether eviction moratoria, worship limits, nationwide lockdowns, school closures or vaccine mandates.”
The C.D.C. argued that the moratorium was authorized by the 1944 law. Evictions would accelerate the spread of the coronavirus, the agency said, by forcing people “to move, often into close quarters in new shared housing settings with friends or family, or congregate settings such as homeless shelters.”
The case was complicated by congressional action in December, when lawmakers briefly extended the C.D.C.’s moratorium through the end of January in an appropriations measure. When Congress took no further action, the agency again imposed moratoriums under the 1944 law.
In its Supreme Court brief, the government argued that it was significant that Congress had embraced the agency’s action, if only briefly.
Last month, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the Federal District Court in Washington ruled that the agency had exceeded its powers in issuing the moratorium.
“The question for the court,” she wrote, “is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the C.D.C. the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.”
Judge Friedrich granted a stay of her decision while the government appealed, leaving the moratorium in place. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to lift the stay, saying the government was likely to prevail on appeal.
Whatever else may be said about the eviction moratorium, the challengers told the Supreme Court, it has outlived its purpose.
“The government may wish to prolong the moratorium to see out its economic-policy goals,” they wrote, “but that does not render its stated justification plausible. Forcing landlords to provide free housing for vaccinated Americans may be good politics, but it cannot be called health policy.”
SCOTUS narrowly decides to be a mensch about it and comes down on the side of the people who pay the rent that makes it possible for the rent collectors to collect the rent.
But don't get comfortable - we're comin' for your ass in a month's time. And don't start thinking we're not still looking to build prisons and workhouses for the undeserving poor.
NYT: (pay wall)
Supreme Court Rejects Request to Lift Federal Ban on Evictions
The C.D.C. had imposed an eviction moratorium, saying it was needed to address the coronavirus pandemic.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to lift a moratorium on evictions that had been imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Brett M. Kavanaugh in the majority.
The court gave no reasons for its ruling, which is typical when it acts on emergency applications. But Justice Kavanaugh issued a brief concurring opinion explaining that he had cast his vote reluctantly and had taken account of the impending expiration of the moratorium.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Because the C.D.C. plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds, I vote at this time to deny the application” that had been filed by landlords, real estate companies and trade associations.
He added that the agency might not extend the moratorium on its own. “In my view,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the C.D.C. to extend the moratorium past July 31.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, Congress declared a moratorium on evictions, which lapsed last July. The C.D.C. then issued a series of its own moratoriums.
“In doing so,” the challengers told the justices, “the C.D.C. shifted the pandemic’s financial burdens from the nation’s 30 to 40 million renters to its 10 to 11 million landlords — most of whom, like applicants, are individuals and small businesses — resulting in over $13 billion in unpaid rent per month.” The total cost to the nation’s landlords, they wrote, could approach $200 billion.
The moratorium defers but does not cancel the obligation to pay rent; the challengers wrote that this “massive wealth transfer” would “never be fully undone.” Many renters, they wrote, will be unable to pay what they owe. “In reality,” they wrote, “the eviction moratorium has become an instrument of economic policy rather than of disease control.”
In urging the Supreme Court to leave the moratorium in place, the government said that continued vigilance against the spread of the coronavirus was needed and noted that Congress has appropriated tens of billions of dollars to pay for rent arrears.
The challengers argued that the moratorium was not authorized by the law the agency relied on, the Public Health Service Act of 1944.
The 1944 law, the challengers wrote, was concerned with quarantines and inspections to stop the spread of disease and did not bestow on the agency “the unqualified power to take any measure imaginable to stop the spread of communicable disease — whether eviction moratoria, worship limits, nationwide lockdowns, school closures or vaccine mandates.”
The C.D.C. argued that the moratorium was authorized by the 1944 law. Evictions would accelerate the spread of the coronavirus, the agency said, by forcing people “to move, often into close quarters in new shared housing settings with friends or family, or congregate settings such as homeless shelters.”
The case was complicated by congressional action in December, when lawmakers briefly extended the C.D.C.’s moratorium through the end of January in an appropriations measure. When Congress took no further action, the agency again imposed moratoriums under the 1944 law.
In its Supreme Court brief, the government argued that it was significant that Congress had embraced the agency’s action, if only briefly.
Last month, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the Federal District Court in Washington ruled that the agency had exceeded its powers in issuing the moratorium.
“The question for the court,” she wrote, “is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the C.D.C. the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.”
Judge Friedrich granted a stay of her decision while the government appealed, leaving the moratorium in place. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to lift the stay, saying the government was likely to prevail on appeal.
Whatever else may be said about the eviction moratorium, the challengers told the Supreme Court, it has outlived its purpose.
“The government may wish to prolong the moratorium to see out its economic-policy goals,” they wrote, “but that does not render its stated justification plausible. Forcing landlords to provide free housing for vaccinated Americans may be good politics, but it cannot be called health policy.”
Tucker
Not meaning to amplify a putz like Tucker Carlson, but there's a subtext here that might be worth looking at.
The National Security Agency issued a statement Tuesday calling claims made by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the NSA is spying on him "untrue."
Driving the news: Carlson claimed on "'Tucker Carlson Tonight," Monday that the NSA was monitoring his electronic communications "in an attempt to take this show off the air," but the agency said this did not happen and he "has never been an intelligence target."
Of note:
The National Security Agency issued a statement Tuesday calling claims made by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the NSA is spying on him "untrue."
Driving the news: Carlson claimed on "'Tucker Carlson Tonight," Monday that the NSA was monitoring his electronic communications "in an attempt to take this show off the air," but the agency said this did not happen and he "has never been an intelligence target."
- On his show Monday, Carlson admitted his claim was "shocking" and "ordinarily we'd be skeptical of it." But he said a whistleblower provided evidence that such surveillance was occurring.
- The host has yet to share the evidence.
- A Fox News spokesperson pointed Axios to a segment from his Tuesday evening show in which he called the NSA's statement a "paragraph of lies." He said the statement "does not deny" that it read his private emails without his permission.
- Carlson insisted the agency and the Biden administration won't answer his question about whether they read his emails.
Keith Olbermann:
Today's Culture War Dispatch
"My dearest Karen...I have run afoul of the woke police, who, in this case, are the actual police..."
If they think the key to winning elections is the heat they can generate by pimping white backlash to Critical Race Theory, then the GOP is confirming the tenets of CRT itself.
The Daily Show:
And I'll say it again.
Republicans are acknowledging the premise that race - and thereby oppressively racist policy - is their central issue.
COVID-19 Update
World
USA
New Cases: 374,344 (⬆︎ .21%)
New Deaths: 7,659 (⬆︎ .19%)
USA
New Cases: 11,427 (⬆︎ .03%)
New Deaths: 294 (⬆︎ .05%)
Yesterday, June 29th, 2021
0 Vaccinated people
and
7,659 Un-Vaccinated people
were killed by COVID-19
179.9 million vaccinated
Including more than 154.2 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the United States.
In the last week, an average of 847.0k doses per day were administered, a 15% decrease over the week before.
And now all the interesting pandemic stuff has practically disappeared from the media altogether.
I guess there's just not enough bad news - and not enough good news that's good enough - to make the cut.
No news is not necessarily good news. The search continues.
Jun 29, 2021
Overheard
 |
| @Ir8te33 |
I'll tell you a little secret. I don't care if there are undocumented immigrants in this country - it's a non-issue. The overwhelming majority of them are normal people trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. And without Social Security Numbers, they're not getting the welfare help people claim they're getting.
This whole Build-A-Wall-And-Deport-The-Illegals bullshit is just the One Percent convincing the working poor to blame a subset of the working poor for the fact that they're all poor (and getting poorer), instead of realizing they're poor due to a vast artificial gulf of Income Inequality, together with Resource Price Inflation and Wage Stagnation, and outright Benefit Theft.
The existence of another poor person is not why you're poor.
You're poor because the people who control everything refuse to treat you better.
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.
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