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POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; Mike’s Health Update; Dozens of Texas water systems exceed new federal limits on “forever chemicals”; Governors of six Southern states warn workers against joining UAW union; DeSantis signs bill ending push in Miami-Dade to pass worker heat protections; Google blocks some California news as fight over online journalism bill escalates; Senate Democrats issue subpoena in Supreme Court ethics probe; Former RNC chair dissects Ronna McDaniel’s NBC ouster; The Supreme Court effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states; Biden Administration Raises Costs to Drill and Mine on Public Lands; Japan, Philippines, US rebuke China over ‘dangerous’ South China Sea moves; More.
Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host, assistant producer and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:
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- An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
- You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.
- Primary Election runoffs will be held on May 28th. So if you need to register to vote, or to update your voter information, now is a good time to take care of that. Consider it a form of Texas Two-Step. Links to county election sites for Harris and adjacent counties can be found at the bottom of this week’s blog post.
- Mike’s Health update:
- I’m going to share my recent medical experience because I think there’s a larger story here with broader implications, so bear with me. I’m also going to admit that I am blessed with very good health coverage, which made many decisions easier.
- I had a couple of weeks of poor health that included severe chills and shakes alternating with heavy sweating. The chills and shakes were sometimes so severe that they left me gasping for breath. My temperatures were varying between about 99 degrees up to 102, but I was taking ibuprofen and acetaminophen, so my temperatures were probably moderated to some extent by those meds. But as most of us would, I attributed this to a virus that would likely pass in a few days.
- After more than a week of this, early on a Friday morning, my wife encouraged me to call 911 and go to the emergency room. (This is when I learned that one of the most important roles of wives is to encourage men to call 911.)
- They hydrated me with an IV, drew some blood, gave me some supplements, released me later that day, and encouraged me to see my Primary Care Physician the following week.
- When I saw my doctor the following Thursday, he examined me, looked at my discharge diagnostics, and urged me to go immediately to the ER for what could be a heart infection called endocarditis.
- After a few hours in the ER, and I was formally admitted to the hospital for a blood infection of unknown origin, where I spend the next few days getting blood drawn for cultures to figure out what I had, and getting IV doses of strong antibiotics and other fluids.
- Endocarditis was eventually ruled out, but they discovered other things. The original diagnosis was bacteremia; a blood infection. If my wife and doctor hadn’t urged me to go back to the ER, that could have escalated quickly.
- I was discharged from hospital on Wednesday afternoon after a one week stay, but here’s a kicker: While there, they discovered three blood clots in areas of my GI tract. Now I’m on blood thinners as well as antibiotics.
- Not what I went in for, but also potentially serious.
- Just goes to show how quickly you can go from feeling basically healthy to potentially being on death’s doorstep.
- So what general lessons might you listeners draw from my health crisis experience?
- First, if your symptoms become severe enough to be scary, don’t be afraid to call 911 or otherwise get to the ER. And if you are a partner of someone whose symptoms become scary, DO encourage them to go.
- Second, going for medical assistance for symptoms is an obvious thing to do. But what about the times that you are found to have a health issue for which you felt asymptomatic? That’s a relatively easy call: Get help for it.
- But here’s the tricky one. What about health annoyances you have that seem to be minor nuisances and to which doctors pay little if any attention? These are health issues for which you are actually symptomatic, but there is no easily discernible cause, hence easily dismissed as just “normal”.
- I’ve long had some gastrointestinal discomforts with no obvious cause. It turns out that at least some of these may have been symptomatic of the blood clots that were discovered and for which I’m now being treated.
- I’ve long had some annoying skin stuff that seems to be improving as a result, I infer, of the powerful antibiotics I’ve been given. None of these annoying but seemingly minor issues rose to the level of diagnostic urgency, and yet they are peripherally responding to treatments.
- I’m not suggesting that you go to your doctor and demand powerful antibiotics or other significant medical interventions just because “maybe”.
- But I do have one concrete suggestion regarding routine medical care, especially for those who are 65 and older. I would advocate for whole body CT scans at an agreed upon base age, and every 5 years thereafter.
- Getting Medicare or other insurance to cover these scans would have to have a financial justification to get support, but I think the financial trade-off would be early diagnosis and cheaper treatment of ailments that otherwise can escalate and become quite costly not only to treat, but to cover possible lasting effects requiring long-term care.
- My experience has made me wonder how many sudden deaths of apparently healthy older people might be prevented with the kinds of early diagnoses that routine CT scans might allow. Early discovery of blood clots, aneurysms, and other medical anomalies might save many lives and, in the long run, save society money, not to mention the grief caused to families by sudden and unexpected deaths.
- Along with other preventive care made free by Medicare, I think that routine CT scans should be included.
- Anyway, that’s my story and my two cents.
- Dozens of Texas water systems exceed new federal limits on “forever chemicals”; The EPA set its first-ever drinking water limits for five types of PFAS chemicals, and nearly 50 of Texas public water systems have reported exceeding the new limits for at least one. by Alejandra Martinez | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | April 16, 2024, 10 hours ago. TAGS: Environment, Water supply, Forever Chemicals, PFAS, PFOA, PFOS
- In Texas, 49 public water utility systems have reported surpassing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever limits for five “forever chemicals” in drinking water, according to data submitted to the federal agency.
- Experts say there are likely more since not all water systems have submitted their data.
- PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are widespread and long lasting in the environment. They are called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down and can persist in water and soil, and even human blood indefinitely. The chemicals have been used since the 1940s to repel oil and water and resist heat. They have been included in thousands of household products from nonstick cookware to industrial products like firefighting foam. …
- [The new EPA standards announced last week set new limits for five forever chemicals.]
- … The new standards will require water utilities to meet them within five years. The EPA estimates that the new limits, which are legally enforceable, will reduce exposure for 100 million people nationwide and help prevent thousands of deaths and illnesses, including from cancer.
- One study found the chemicals in the blood of nearly 97% of all Americans. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to cancer, causing low birth rate and birth defects, damage to the liver and immune system, and other serious health problems. In 2022, the EPA issued health advisories that said the chemicals were much more hazardous to human health than scientists originally thought. …
- [Said Mary Gugliuzza, a media relations and communications coordinator for the Fort Worth Water Department,] “To be honest, there’s not a lot of technologies available for [treatment] and the cost to implement the technology is going to be very expensive.” …
- The EPA has approved the use of activated carbon, reverse osmosis (purifying water using pressure) and ion exchange systems (a chemical process) to remove PFAS from drinking water. …
- Texas water utilities that have reported one or more PFAS chemical exceeding the new federal standard [include several in the greater Houston area]: City of Livingston; Clear Lake Water Authority; Deer Park Surface Water Treatment Plant; Fort Bend County Municipal Utility District No. 133; Fort Bend County Municipal Utility District No. 41; Harris County Municipal Utility District No. 119; Harris County Municipal Utility District No. 8; Spencer Road Public Utility District (HOUSTON); Big Oaks Municipal Utility District (KATY); West University Place Plant 1 and 2.
- MIKE: There is a more complete list in the actual article, which you can click on from this show’s blog post.
- MIKE: PFAS chemicals is an ongoing story on this show. There are two takeaways here for me. First, the federal government has finally set standards for these chemicals in our water supplies that it expects to be met within several years. Second, two of the mitigation methods are within reach of most homeowners and even many apartment dwellers: Reverse osmosis, often installed at the kitchen sink, and whole-house or faucet-mounted filters that use activated charcoal.
- MIKE: I think that overall, this is promising and useful news.
- Starbucks Stops Opposing Its Baristas’ Union; In a historic breakthrough, Starbucks and its workers announce they’ve come together. by Harold Meyerson | PROSPECT.ORG | February 27, 2024. TAGS: Labor, Unions, Starbucks, SEIU, UAW, Autoworkers, NLRB, Corporate Power,
- “This is what we’ve always wanted,” says Michelle Eisen, a Starbucks barista who’s been with the company since 2010 and works at the Buffalo outlet that was the first to vote to go union, back in 2021. “We wanted Starbucks to actually be the company they always said they were.”
- … Starbucks may have finally become just that. In a joint announcement released by both Starbucks and Workers United, the baristas’ union that is part of SEIU, the company agreed “to begin discussions on a foundational framework designed to achieve … collective bargaining agreements for represented stores and partners.” …
- [T]he Prospect has learned that Starbucks has affirmatively agreed to bargaining with workers and their representatives to craft a master contract that applies to all unionized outlets, to be augmented, if necessary, by add-on contracts dealing with issues specific to particular outlets.
- To demonstrate its good faith to understandably skeptical workers, the company also agreed to let them receive credit card tipping and also [to] receive the back pay from the raises and benefits the company had given to all its employees, except those in outlets that had voted to go union.
- After decades of decline, the American union movement has seen a dramatic uptick in the past couple of years, with a wave of unionizations among difficult-to-replace professional workers (university teaching assistants, hospital interns and residents); a landmark contract for unionized autoworkers; and rulings from President Biden’s National Labor Relations Board that enable workers to win back some of their organizing rights. But organizing and winning contracts for the kind of workers who can be replaced, whom managers have routinely fired when they seek to join or form unions, has still presented a nearly insuperable obstacle. And as a result, union density hasn’t really budged amid these victories.
- This is why [the Starbucks] announcement is the single most important breakthrough American workers have achieved in a very long time. Until [now], workers in industries such as fast-food or other parts of the service sector appeared to be all but unorganizable, so fierce and successful (and routine) was management’s opposition to such initiatives. It certainly was fierce at Starbucks so long as the company founder, Howard Schultz, called the shots. During the more than two years since the Buffalo baristas voted to go union (since followed by baristas at nearly 400 other Starbucks, out of the 9,000 that the company owns), the company has faithfully followed the union-buster’s playbook, firing workers who led organizing campaigns, refusing to bargain with workers who’d voted to go union (who now total roughly 10,000), and withholding raises from them.
- Despite that, the workers persisted. In recent weeks, baristas at 21 outlets all filed for unionization elections on the same day, and a slate of three pro-worker notables (including Wilma Liebman, who chaired the NLRB during the Obama presidency) have been running for Starbucks board director seats at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting, to be held two weeks from tomorrow. In recent weeks as well, the company, now led by post-Schultz CEO Laxman Narasimhan, released a statement suggesting it was willing to alter its course, though no tangible course alterations were apparent until [this announcement].
- [So this] is the single most important breakthrough American workers have achieved in a very long time.
- The grounds on which company and union came together was a mediation process to settle a company suit and a union countersuit over some workers’ use of the word “Starbucks” to identify themselves during an action they took in opposition to the ongoing Gaza war. Over just the past week, that mediation broadened to include settling the underlying disputes between the company and its workers. It was only on Tuesday, however, with the release of the joint statement, that the baristas learned that a larger agreement had been reached. …
- Beyond the immediate factors, what [was really] behind Starbucks’s epochal shift was a change in the zeitgeist. Unions are more popular today than they’ve been in 60 years, and young workers—a description that covers the vast majority of the company’s baristas—are overwhelmingly pro-union. Over the past two years, 90 percent of thousands of university student employees who’ve participated in unionization elections have voted to go union, and I suspect we may see a similar rate at hundreds and perhaps thousands more Starbucks outlets now that the company has said it will work toward a master agreement for unionized shops.
- Does this change at Starbucks betoken a change in the nation at large? The UAW has just invested $40 million in its campaign to organize the country’s non-union auto and battery plants, and also on Tuesday, it announced that more than half the workers at the Mercedes plant in Alabama—Mercedes’s largest factory in the U.S.—had signed union affiliation cards. If the UAW can organize those plants, following on the victory at Starbucks, will that trigger the kind of wave that followed the UAW’s sit-down occupation of General Motors factories in 1937, which led to the unionization of the country’s largest employers? Will it spur the Teamsters to take on Amazon? Or other unions to take on Walmart?
- If so, that would signal an epochal shift in the nation’s political economy. Organizing private-sector workers, save only those whose special skills or knowledge meant they couldn’t be fired if they sought to organize, more or less ground to a halt during the 1950s. At that time, in a world where the egalitarian effects of the New Deal continued to shape the nation’s economy, and prosperity was broadly shared, unions represented about a third of the nation’s workforce. Many union leaders viewed continued organizing as unnecessary. The already “organized fellow is the fellow that counts,” said AFL-CIO President George Meany, voicing a complacency that proved to be nearly fatal to unions’ effective existence.
- As big business managed to steadily weaken the New Deal’s social contract, private-sector union growth ceased, the middle class shrank, and stratospheric levels of economic inequality came to define today’s American economy. Workers have been pushing back, largely unsuccessfully, for some time now. It’s only in the past few years that we’ve seen some breakthroughs. None have been so hard-fought or dramatic, though, as [the one] at Starbucks. Just how dramatic, and how historic, depends on how successfully a largely somnolent labor movement, slowly awakening to the change in climate, can roll it on.
- MIKE: We all want unfair things to become more just within our working lifetimes, but unfortunately, change tends to be generational.
- MIKE: For many years, I’ve made the observation that one of the first things that kids learn to say is, “That’s not fair!” A sense of fairness seems to be almost genetically inherent in our world view, but as we mature, the world shows us that unfairness is more the rule than the exception, and we feel forced to tolerate it and manage our lives around inherent unfairness as best we can.
- MIKE: The first wave of unionization from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century managed to mitigate ruthless capitalist exploitation of workers by extracting concessions on wages, work hours, healthcare, and more. Between union accomplishments and New Deal legislation, it has been said that capitalism was saved from itself during an era of social and political upheaval both here and in Europe.
- MIKE: But a side effect of these gains was a generation that saw these benefits as normal, and forgot what it took to win them. Along with Republican and business efforts to demonize unions, that led to workers dismissing union membership dues as an unnecessary wage deductions and an infringement on their so-called “right to work”.
- MIKE: Now the generational pendulum is swinging the other way. Younger workers are seeing how businesses erode workers’ rights and benefits in the absence of collection bargaining, and their overwhelming generational feeling is, “That’s not fair!”
- MIKE: So it appears that unionization is in for a period of significant growth. Good!
- Governors of six Southern states warn workers against joining UAW union; Joint statement comes a day before Volkswagen factory in Tennessee votes on unionization — the first of more than a dozen factories the UAW is targeting. By Jeanne Whalen | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | Updated April 16, 2024 at 5:15 p.m. EDT / Published April 16, 2024 at 4:18 p.m. EDT
- In a high-profile attempt to head off unionization of their states’ auto factories, the governors of six Southern states warned their residents that joining the United Auto Workers would threaten jobs and “the values we live by.”
- The joint statement from the Republican governors comes just a day before a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., is set to vote on joining the UAW — the first of more than a dozen factories the union is targeting in the South as it attempts to break out of its Midwestern stronghold.
- “The reality is companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity,” the governors of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas wrote. “Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy.”
- The remarkable intervention follows signs of optimism among pro-union workers at the VW plant, who in recent days have expressed hope that the vote will pass. It begins Wednesday and lasts three days, with results expected late Friday. …
- An economist who has closely studied unionization in the South called the statement “unprecedented and shocking” and said it discouraged workers from exercising their legal right to organize.
- “It implies that the governors fear that the UAW will prevail in the upcoming union recognition election and that UAW success could upend their economic models built on relatively low pay and minimal worker voice,” Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University, said by email.
- Tennessee Republicans have helped thwart two UAW attempts to unionize the VW factory, in 2014 and 2019, and have ramped up their opposition in recent weeks with news conferences and public statements. During a visit to Chattanooga this month, Gov. Bill Lee said joining the union would be “a big mistake.” …
- Some VW workers told The Washington Post this month that they wished politicians would stay out of the matter and leave it up to employees.
- Democratic politicians have voiced support for the UAW. Democratic state senators in Tennessee on Tuesday criticized the Republican governors on social media. …
- Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, [a Democrat] whose state faces a UAW organizing effort at a Toyota factory in Georgetown, said on social media last week that unions have raised workers’ standard of living and that he was “proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder” with the UAW.
- MIKE: For Republican governors of six states to attempt to create a unified wall against UAW unionization efforts is really quite extraordinary. But we’ll know by next week whether this last ditch effort by anti-union politicians has the effect they’re hoping for or perhaps, paradoxically, the reverse.
- DeSantis signs bill ending push in Miami-Dade to pass worker heat protections; By Alex Harris | MIAMIHERALD.COM | Updated April 12, 2024 6:00 PM. TAGS: Ron DeSantis, Heat Protections For Outdoor Workers, Florida,
- With the stroke of the governor’s pen, local governments in Florida are now blocked from requiring heat protections for outdoor workers, driving a stake through the heart of Miami-Dade County’s efforts to keep farmworkers and construction workers safe from extreme heat.
- Ron DeSantis quietly signed the bill (HB 433) into law late Thursday night, along with a host of other small bills, despite a Democrat-led campaign for a veto.
- The result: cities and counties in Florida can no longer mandate employers offer water, rest and shade to their outdoor employees on hot days.
- The Republican-led pre-emption was sparked by Miami-Dade’s push for these protections, along with financial penalties if employers didn’t follow them. But even before the bill was drafted in November, lobbyists from the politically powerful real estate and agriculture industries successfully watered down the fledgling bill and derailed it. It officially died last month.
- Lobbyists for those business interests, along with the politicians supporting the pre-emption, argued that new worker protections for one corner of the state would be too complicated for employers to follow, and said that the current rules do a good enough job of protecting employees. …
- Outdoor workers, and the advocacy groups supporting them, insist that the current regulations aren’t enough. Workers are getting sick and dying in the heat, and summers are only getting hotter as climate change turns up the temperature.
- In an April 2 letter asking DeSantis to veto the bill, more than 40 labor and environmental groups said that outdoor workers are not protected by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and employers are “not incentivized” to offer water, rest and shade.
- “The industry argument against local worker protection ordinances is that employers are already protecting their workers. If this is the case, then, why are industry leaders concerned about a bill that can protect those workers whose employers may not be providing those protections? …,” they wrote.
- The bill also bans local governments from requiring contractors to offer anything higher than the statewide minimum wage, which is currently $12 an hour and is set to rise to $13 an hour in September.
- MIKE: I always find it interesting how Conservatives who spend most of their time living and working in chairs in air-conditioned spaces seem so against giving some degree of relief to workers who are physically laboring in the hot sun for most of their days, and barely being able to afford air conditioning in their homes when they return from work.
- MIKE: It’s almost as if these people have neither sympathy nor understanding nor empathy for these workers.
- MIKE: Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials, wrote; “In my work with the defendants [at the Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1949] I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
- MIKE: So sayeth Captain Gilbert. How, then, should we see these sorts of apparently heartless laws? I suggest you draw your own conclusions.
- Google blocks some California news as fight over online journalism bill escalates; The search giant is reprising a tactic it has used to battle similar bills in other countries, requiring platforms to pay news publishers. By Jeremy B. White | POLITICO.COM | 04/12/2024 09:01 AM EDT / Updated: 04/12/2024 03:24 PM EDT. TAGS: Google, Journalism, California, Sacramento, Meta
- Californians may find their Google results bereft of local news links Friday morning as the search giant escalates its fight against a landmark state bill aimed at forcing tech giants to pay online publishers.
- Google is temporarily blocking California-based news outlets’ content for some state residents, reprising a political tactic the tech industry has repeatedly used to try to derail such bills in places like Canada and Australia that require online platforms to pay journalism outlets for articles featured on their websites.
- “We have long said that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism,” Google’s vice president for global news partnerships, Jaffer Zaidi, said in a Friday blog post. Zaidi warned the bill could “result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.”
- Sacramento is hosting the latest round of a global fight over the journalism industry’s future in the digital age, and California’s battle has taken on additional resonance because the state is home to tech titans. Advocates for such legislation argue companies like Google and Meta have helped decimate already flagging newsroom revenues through their control over digital advertising, and outlets deserve compensation for content that users may see on their platforms for free.
- The companies counter that these laws could stifle vital sources of information — and they’ve fought back by attempting to preview what they say that would look like.
- Google made similar threats to block content in Canada over its online news legislation before reaching a deal there with the government. Meta, meanwhile, permanently erased news content from its social feed in Canada and has threatened to do the same if Congress and California advance similar legislation.
- In California, the company has lobbied heavily against the measures currently before the California Legislature, channeling more than $1 million to an organization that ran an ad campaign decrying the bill as a “link tax.” Zaidi used the same phrase in his blog post.
- The bill’s supporters argued Google had demonstrated why legislation is needed by displaying its outsize control over information. Danielle Coffey, president of the News/Media Alliance trade group, assailed what she called the company’s “undemocratic” approach. …
- Assemblymember Buffy Wicks parked the legislation in the state Senate Judiciary committee last year after it cleared the Assembly on a bipartisan vote. …
- Wicks said in a statement that she was “committed to continuing negotiations with Google and all other stakeholders to secure a brighter future for California journalists and ensure that the lights of democracy stay on.”
- Despite the industry’s counteroffensive, many Democrats have embraced Wicks’ argument that the journalism industry needs a financial lifeline. At an informational hearing in December, some senators pushed back on a Google representative who decried Wicks’ bill.
- “Newspaper publishers and the journalists provide a really important service as a part of [Google’s] broader business model, and meanwhile they’re going bankrupt and you guys have record profits,” state Sen. Ben Allen said.
- MIKE: This is a subject we’ve been following on this show for some time. News media are considered essential for democracy to function, and the shrinkage and disappearance of news media has become a national security issue for democracies around the world.
- MIKE: It became a topic of discussion in the US, especially in the context of news organizations starving for revenue and either consolidating or going out of business. The main argument is that news aggregators like Google, Facebook, and MSN piggyback on the headlines and news stories generated by news media, generating eyeballs for their sites, but pay nothing to the media they exploit. The news aggregators argue that they are performing a service for the news organizations by showing their viewers the stories that are being generated and thereby sending them to the news sites that originated the story, thus generating clicks and revenue.
- MIKE: The truth is likely in between. I liken the ultimate solution to the equivalent of ASCAP or BMI for music licensing. I feel that media sites should be given some type of royalties for the eyeballs and subsequent revenue that they currently are generating for news aggregators for free.
- MIKE: Personally, along the lines of ASCAP or BMI, I would love to pay a single subscription fee for news and for those fees to be apportioned by some governing organization in an appropriate fashion.
- MIKE: The first country to pursue this question seriously was, I believe, Australia. The news aggregators played hardball and pulled news from their sites, but a compromise of sorts was eventually reached.
- MIKE: Canada is currently making efforts for news aggregators to fairly reimburse news media, and aggregators are playing the same kind of hardball, withdrawing news stories from their sites. A settlement will arise eventually.
- MIKE: Now it’s California acting as the US vanguard, seriously pursuing fair compensation for news organizations by news aggregators. California by itself is a market the size of major countries both in terms of population and in terms of economic power. As California goes in this fight, so will probably go the rest of the United States.
- MIKE: We should all be following the outcome of this legal battle in the months and years ahead. In the long run, our democracy may hinge on the outcome.
- Senate Democrats issue subpoena in Supreme Court ethics probe; by Filip Timotija | THEHILL.COM | 04/11/24 10:52 PM ET. Tags: Dick Durbin Harlan Crow Leonard Leo
- Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a subpoena to a conservative legal advocate as a part of an ethics probe driven by reports of undisclosed gifts to some conservative Supreme Court justices, multiple outlets reported Thursday.
- The committee sent the subpoena Thursday to Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society who was paramount in deciding former President Trump’s potential nominees for the nation’s highest court.
- “Since July 2023, Leonard Leo has responded to the legitimate oversight requests of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a blanket refusal to cooperate,” Durbin said in a statement to Reuters. “His outright defiance left the Committee with no other choice but to move forward with compulsory process.”
- The subpoena comes months after the committee voted along party lines to authorize subpoenas for both Leo and GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow after reports that Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepted, but did not disclose, luxury gifts and travel trips. It is unclear why multiple months passed between the November vote and the subpoena being sent.
- Leo confirmed he received the subpoena, telling CNN it is “politically motivated” and “unlawful.” …
- Leo’s lawyer, David Rivkin, sent a letter to Durbin, saying his client is “not complying” with the “unlawful and politically motivated subpoena,” according to CNN.
- Thomas was on lavish trips with Crow, developments that were not reported on the judge’s financial disclosure reports, as revealed in multiple articles published by ProPublica. Alito also did not report a fishing trip with Leo from 2008, according to ProPublica.
- MIKE: Increasingly, some politicians and billionaires seem to feel above the law, ignoring Congressional subpoenas when it suits them.
- MIKE: According to Ballotpedia, “Subpoena is derived from the Middle English term subpoena and the Latin phrase sub poena [poe-EH-na] which means “under penalty.” The power to subpoena a person is granted to officers of the court, such as clerks of courts, attorneys, and judges.”
- MIKE: Subpoenas typically begin with the words, “YOU ARE COMMANDED … ,” all in upper case just to make sure that there is no misunderstanding.
- MIKE: I don’t think there is anything ambiguous about that language. Yet some folks seem to feel that their appearance is optional, as if that language actually means, “You are invited …”
- MIKE: Let’s clear this right up. When you are subpoenaed, your appearance is NOT optional, but appearing does not waive your Constitutional rights, particularly your 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
- MIKE: The House and Senate have different enforcement rules and procedures, but they both have the ability to compel appearance with penalties ranging from fines to incarceration, or both.
- MIKE: These rules are both cumbersome and sometimes politically unpalatable, but I think that the increasing frequency with which these subpoenas are being ignored means that enforcement is necessary in order for those who are subpoenaed to take their commanded appearances more seriously.
- MIKE: Money and political power give many privileges, some real and some perceived, but neither should put individuals or companies above the law. It’s time for those who issue subpoenas to use their legal teeth. Enforcement matters.
- Former RNC chair dissects Ronna McDaniel’s NBC ouster; Reince Priebus says the debacle was a failure of vetting. By Kelly Garrity | POLITICO.COM | 03/31/2024 12:48 PM EDT
- [F]ormer Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus — now an ABC contributor — addressed the controversy over Ronna McDaniel’s rapid hiring and firing as a contributor at NBC News.
- “The case on Ronna that I find to be obvious for someone like me who’s a contributor here. … I’ve never been hired without the management bringing me in, meeting with people, doing interviews where I wasn’t on a signed contract, finding whether or not I could get off the talking points or not,” Priebus said in discussing one of his successors at the RNC on Sunday during a roundtable discussion on ABC’s “This Week.” The roundtable also featured a former DNC chair, Donna Brazile.
- “The root of the problem is that the management never brought her in before the contract was signed so that all of this stuff could get worked out, and that was a huge failure in my opinion,” Priebus added.
- McDaniel first appeared as a paid contributor on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” last Sunday, sparking immediate on-air backlash from the network’s chief political analyst Chuck Todd. After less than a week of internal tumult, NBC severed ties with McDaniel, whose past denial that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election caused concern about her ability to serve as a reliable on-air narrator.
- [Donna] Brazile said Sunday she didn’t have a reaction to the McDaniel situation. “I didn’t understand the hire,” Brazile said. “So I have none. But I’ve enjoyed every year of my life being on shows like this and cable television.”
- MIKE: I was going to discuss this last week, but my hospital stay interfered. Here is a roundabout way for me to comment on the Ronna McDaniel fiasco.
- MIKE: There is a saying often attributed to Mark Twain: “A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
- MIKE: We live in a media environment where this is truer today than Mark Twain could ever have imagined.
- MIKE: I’ve observed that after every presidential election in my living memory, the mainstream media does a self-critique of their coverage and swears that they must and will do better next time.
- MIKE: Now I’m 73. I’ve lived through 16 presidential elections that I can remember to one degree or another. Number 17 is in progress, and I must ask the media, “How is that repeated soul-searching self-analysis working out for you?”
- MIKE: The media are still captivated by metaphorical shiny objects. They still treat elections like horse races rather than the high-stakes events that they truly are. They allow themselves to be captured by focus-grouped phrases and untrue talking points without critically examining them or interrogating them.
- MIKE: They seem to fear asking really tough questions that might discourage guests from ever returning.
- MIKE: In my opinion, that’s fine. Ask the tough questions, especially when political spin starts crossing the line into outright falsehood. If guests are unable to respond to tough questions in these circumstances and if tough questions discourage them from appearing again, then I say good riddance to them. We don’t need lies replacing facts and legitimate opinions based on facts.
- MIKE: Ronna McDaniel is a liar. Unless NBC interviewers were prepared to tear her lies to shreds under determined interrogation, she had no actual news value as a political analyst.
- MIKE: This must be the journalistic doctrine for all political guests and opinion-makers. Strictly gloves off. And if these interviewees can’t take the heat, they have no business in the metaphorical kitchen.
- OPINION — The Supreme Court effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states; It is no longer safe to organize a protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Texas. By Ian Millhiser | VOX.COM | Apr 15, 2024, 10:26am EDT. TAGS: Supreme Court, Criminal Justice, Politics,
- The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
- Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.
- It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.
- For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016.
- The facts of the Mckesson case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson case who is identified only as “Officer John Doe.” Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head.”
- Everyone agrees that this rock was not thrown by Mckesson, however. And the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, absent unusual circumstances that are not present in the Mckesson case — such as if Mckesson had “authorized, directed, or ratified” the decision to throw the rock.
- Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion accompanying the Court’s decision not to hear Mckesson, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment “precludes punishment” for inciting violent action “unless the speaker’s words were ‘intended’ (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.”
- The reason Claiborne protects protest organizers should be obvious. No one who organizes a mass event attended by thousands of people can possibly control the actions of all those attendees, regardless of whether the event is a political protest, a music concert, or the Super Bowl. So, if protest organizers can be sanctioned for the illegal action of any protest attendee, no one in their right mind would ever organize a political protest again.
- Indeed, as Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, who dissented from his court’s Mckesson decision, warned in one of his dissents, his court’s decision would make protest organizers liable for “the unlawful acts of counter-protesters and agitators.” So, under the Fifth Circuit’s rule, a Ku Klux Klansman could sabotage the Black Lives Matter movement simply by showing up at its protests and throwing stones.
- The Fifth Circuit’s Mckesson decision is obviously wrong. Like Mckesson, Claiborne involved a racial justice protest that included some violent participants. In the mid-1960s, the NAACP launched a boycott of white merchants in Claiborne County, Mississippi. At least according to the state supreme court, some participants in this boycott “engaged in acts of physical force and violence against the persons and property of certain customers and prospective customers” of these white businesses.
- Indeed, one of the organizers of this boycott did far more to encourage violence than Mckesson is accused of in his case. Charles Evers, a local NAACP leader, allegedly said in a speech to boycott supporters that “if we catch any of you going in any of them racist stores, we’re gonna break your damn neck.”
- But the Supreme Court held that this “emotionally charged rhetoric … did not transcend the bounds of protected speech.” It ruled that courts must use “extreme care” before imposing liability on a political figure of any kind. And it held that a protest leader may only be held liable for a protest participant’s actions in very limited circumstances: …
- … [I]n its most recent opinion in this case, the Fifth Circuit concluded that Claiborne’s “three separate theories that might justify” holding a protest leader liable are a non-exhaustive list, and that the MAGA-infused court is allowed to create new exceptions to the First Amendment. It then ruled that the First Amendment does not apply “where a defendant creates unreasonably dangerous conditions, and where his creation of those conditions causes a plaintiff to sustain injuries.”
- And what, exactly, were the “unreasonably dangerous conditions” created by the Mckesson-led protest in Baton Rouge? The Fifth Circuit faulted Mckesson for organizing “the protest to begin in front of the police station, obstructing access to the building,” for failing to “dissuade” protesters who allegedly stole water bottles from a grocery store, and for leading “the assembled protest onto a public highway, in violation of Louisiana criminal law.”
- Needless to say, the idea that the First Amendment recedes the moment a mass protest violates a traffic law is quite novel. And it is impossible to reconcile with pretty much the entire history of mass civil rights protests in the United States.
- In fairness, the [Supreme] Court’s decision to leave the Fifth Circuit’s attack on the First Amendment in place could be temporary. As Sotomayor writes in her Mckesson opinion, when the Court announces that it will not hear a particular case it “expresses no view about the merits.” The Court could still restore the First Amendment right to protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in a future case.
- For the time being, however, the Fifth Circuit’s Mckesson decision remains good law in those three states. And that means that anyone who organizes a political protest within the Fifth Circuit risks catastrophic financial liability.
- MIKE: I don’t think I have much to add to this well-thought-out piece. The only idea I might have is whether holding an event organizer responsible for the actions of every single individual at the event sounds a bit like guilt by association.
- MIKE: In legal terms, guilt by association is both slippery to define and legally contestable, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people can place a person in legal jeopardy.
- MIKE: I have no legal training and I’m not qualified to delve into this topic in any great depth, but I have attached two references at the bottom of this story.
- MIKE: One is Protesters’ Rights by the ACLU, and the other is what appears to be an informative article called Understanding Guilt By Association that is written in a very accessible way for the average lay person. If you have questions about the issues addressed in this story, you might start there.
- REFERENCE: Protesters’ Rights — ACLU.ORG
- REFERENCE: Understanding Guilt By Association — BETTERHELP.COM
- Biden Administration Raises Costs to Drill and Mine on Public Lands; For the first time since 1920, the government has raised the rates that companies pay. The fossil fuel industry says it will hurt the economy. By Coral Davenport | NYTIMES.COM | April 12, 2024 / Updated 3:27 p.m. ET. TAGS: Federal Public Lands, Drilling and Mining, Security Bonds, Royalty Rates, Plugging Old Wells, Environmental Cleanups,
- The Biden administration on Friday made it more expensive for fossil fuel companies to pull oil, gas and coal from public lands, raising royalty rates for the first time in 100 years in a bid to end bargain basement fees enjoyed by one of the country’s most profitable industries.
- The government also increased more than tenfold the amount of the bonds that companies must secure before they start drilling.
- The new rules are among a series of environmental regulations that are being pushed out as President Biden, in the last year of his term in the White House, seeks to cement policies designed to protect public lands, lower fossil fuel emissions and expand renewable energy.
- While the oil and gas industry is strongly opposed to higher rates, the increase is not expected to significantly discourage drilling. The federal rate had been much lower than what many states and private landowners charge for drilling leases on state or private property.
- [Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that,] “These are the most significant reforms to the federal oil and gas leasing program in decades, and they will cut wasteful speculation, increase returns for the public, and protect taxpayers from being saddled with the costs of environmental cleanups.”
- The government estimates that the new rules, which would also raise various other rates and fees for drilling on public lands, would increase costs for fossil fuel companies by about $1.5 billion between now and 2032. After that, the minimum royalty rate could increase again.
- About half of that money would go to states, approximately a third would be used to fund water projects in the West, and the rest would be split between the Treasury Department and Interior. …
- [T]he sharp jump in bond payments — the first increase since 1960 — was decided by the Biden administration, not Congress. It came in response to arguments from environmental advocates, watchdog groups and the S. Government Accountability Office that the bonds do not cover the cost of cleaning up abandoned, uncapped wells, leaving taxpayers with that burden. …
- [MIKE: As I’ve often said, in this country, profit is private, but pollution is public. These bond increases at least begin to address a part of that. Continuing … ]
- The new rules increase the minimum bond for an individual drilling lease from $10,000 to $150,000. The amount of a bond for a drilling lease on multiple public lands in one state would rise from $25,000 to $500,000. The changes would replace an existing requirement that companies secure a single $150,000 bond as insurance against multiple damaged, abandoned wells anywhere in the country.
- Oil and gas companies said the changes, which could take effect in as few as 60 days, would hurt fossil fuel production and damage the economy. …
- Last year, the United States produced more oil than any country, ever.
- The oil and gas industry will continue to receive nearly a dozen federal tax breaks, including incentives for domestic production and write-offs tied to foreign production. Total estimates vary widely but the Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker, run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, calculated the total to be about $14 billion in 2022.
- But more expensive bonds could put drilling out of reach for smaller oil and gas producers, said Kathleen Sgamma president of Western Energy Alliance, an association of independent oil and gas companies. “They are ludicrously high, ludicrously out of whack with the problem,” she said. “They could actually put companies out of business and create new orphan wells.”
- The Interior Department estimates that there are 3.5 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States. When oil and gas wells are discarded without being properly sealed, which can happen when companies go bankrupt, the wells can leak methane, a powerful planet-warming pollutant that is a major contributor to global warming.
- The Biden administration has had to navigate challenging terrain when it comes to extraction of fossil fuels on public lands and in federal waters, which is responsible for almost a quarter of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. …
- MIKE: It’s important to note here that the federal royalty rates that the federal government has been charging are a percentage of market value and not a flat fee, so there has been some revenue increase over time even without the recent increase in royalty percentages. What the new increases do is bring government royalty revenue more in line with what states and private individuals are receiving, which seems only fair. There’s no free lunch.
- MIKE: The increase in performance bonds for cleanup purposes again is only fair, based on the principle that if profit is private, cleaning up your own mess should also be private.
- MIKE: Oil and gas leaks from current and old wells are extremely common. They are so common that I’ll close my comments with a 2010 quote from Rachel Madow that I noted at the time of the BP oil leak disaster: “A four-story 98-ton steel box arrived at the ruptured [Deepwater Horizon oil] well earlier today … The dome was built by a company called Wild Well Control, a contractor that, for 35 years, has specialized in these kinds of oil spill disasters, because crises happen so often in the oil and gas industry that they can sustain a whole disaster sub-industry for decades.” ~ Rachel Maddow, “The Rachel Maddow Show”, Thursday, May 6, 2010
- Japan, Philippines, US rebuke China over ‘dangerous’ South China Sea moves; Meeting in Washington, DC, the leaders of Japan, the Philippines and the US stress the importance of abiding by maritime law.COM | Published On 12 Apr 2024
- The leaders of Japan, the Philippines and the United States have voiced “serious concern” over China’s actions in the disputed South China Sea.
- Beijing has stepped up its activities in the strategic waterway in recent years, and tensions have risen, particularly with the Philippines, one of several Southeast Asian countries that claim the parts of the sea around their coastlines.
- Last month, Philippines’s President Ferdinand Marcos said Manila would take countermeasures against China after a confrontation off Second Thomas Shoal injured Filipino soldiers and damaged vessels.
- “We express our serious concerns about the People’s Republic of China’s [PRC] dangerous and aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea,” the three leaders said in a joint statement at the end of a first-ever summit between the three countries, which took place in Washington, DC.
- Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea under its so-called nine-dash line, which was rejected by an international court in 2016.
- As well as the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam also claim parts of the sea.
- The statement noted the “importance of respecting the sovereign rights of states within their exclusive economic zones [EEZ] consistent with international law, as reflected in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS]”.
- It also reiterated the three states’ opposition to China’s “dangerous and coercive use of Coast Guard and maritime militia vessels in the South China Sea”.
- Second Thomas Shoal, known as Ayungin in the Philippines, has been the site of multiple standoffs between Beijing and Manila in recent months, with China’s coastguard using water cannon against ships trying to resupply a contingent of Filipino sailors living on board the deliberately grounded Sierra Madre.
- The shoal lies about 200 kilometres (124 miles) from the western Philippine island of Palawan, placing it within the Philippines’s EEZ, according to UNCLOS. It lies more than 1,000km (621 miles) from China’s southern Hainan island.
- The US has a mutual defence treaty with the Philippines and has repeatedly made clear that it would protect its ally if its forces came under attack anywhere in the South China Sea.
- Following a meeting with top diplomats on Friday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington’s commitment to that treaty was “ironclad”. …
- Earlier on Friday, China summoned Japanese and Philippine diplomats in the country to express what it described as strong dissatisfaction over negative comments made during Thursday’s trilateral summit in the US.
- MIKE: China is assertive about any disputed territory it considers Chinese within its nine-dash line, but it’s particularly assertive, even aggressive, about the Philippines’ Second Thomas Shoal. This is a feature that spends about half the time under water, raising a question as to why?
- MIKE: It made me wonder if China doesn’t have an idea to turn it into another artificial island that it can then turn into a forward base, as it has done with two other islands that it created. This would extend its military reach over the South China Sea, as well as putting it much closer to both the Philippines and the US bases there that might support Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack on the island territory. A Chinese base on the Shoal could create serious obstacles to support of Taiwan in that scenario.
- MIKE: This would put the conflict over the Shoal in a whole new strategic light, as well as explain one reason why the US takes aggressive Chinese actions there so seriously.
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