RSN: Robert Reich | Inflation Isn't the Problem! The Real Problem Is Employers Are Shafting Workers
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12 February 22
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Yes, prices are increasing. But would you prefer a recession? As a practical matter, that’s the choice the Fed gives us. When the Fed puts on the brakes, it often pushes the economy into a ditch. (Anyone remember when Paul Volcker “broke the back of inflation” by putting the economy into a tailspin?) A recession will cause far more hardship for many more Americans than inflation is now causing.
Want to control inflation? Don’t do it by drafting millions of workers into the inflation fight by slowing the economy — causing them to lose jobs and wages. Better to ride out the storm — prices will slow down as shortages are overcome (although don’t expect corporations to reverse their price hikes). Or there’s always stronger medicine — price controls, windfall profits taxes, and antitrust.
Most importantly, focus on the real problems facing working Americans — the power imbalance that’s been keeping wages and working conditions down (adjusted for inflation) while pushing profits and stock prices up.
Specifically, stop employers from using five tactics that are seriously harming working people. Three of them are legal but shouldn’t be. No other advanced nation allows its working people to be treated this way.
1. Forced overtime. Your employer can force you to work for more than 40 hours a week. If you refuse, you can be reprimanded, demoted, or even fired.
Forced overtime is at the heart of the explosion of strikes in 2021. Workers at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas went on strike for nearly three weeks, demanding an end to 12-hour “suicide shifts,” forced 84-hour workweeks, and working conditions that have led to heart attacks, electrocution, and even death.
How is this legal? Because federal overtime laws are wildly out of date. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the 40-hour work week and that workers must be paid “time-and-a-half” for hours worked beyond 40 hours, but imposes no limit on the number of overtime hours -- unlike nearly every other industrialized nation.
The term “forced overtime” should not exist. Congress must pass legislation that bars employers from forcing workers to work more than 40 hours a week.
2. Forced arbitration. Under this often-hidden provision in employment contracts, you must waive your right to sue your employer or participate in a class action lawsuit against them. Employment disputes must be resolved by a private arbitrator — often chosen by the employer — rather than a judge or a jury in a court of law, and the outcome is not public.
Forced arbitration means that workers cannot sue their employers for violating any of their labor rights, whether it be wage theft, discrimination, retaliation, or sexual harassment. You might not have any idea you’re agreeing to this because it’s buried in the fine print of your employment contract. Unsurprisingly, the practice overwhelmingly favors the employer. One study estimates that forced arbitration enabled employers to steal $12.6 billion from low-wage workers in 2019.
As of 2019, forced arbitration affected 60 million workers. It’s particularly prevalent in low-wage jobs held by women and people of color.
Congress must pass legislation banning forced arbitration in employment contracts.
3. Unpredictable and unstable scheduling. Millions of American workers are subject to “just-in-time” scheduling, in which your employer changes your schedule with little or no advance notice. Over 40 percent of younger retail workers with hourly wages report receiving their schedules with one week or less notice.
Unpredictable scheduling puts workers at the whim of their employer and prevents them from planning for childcare, attending school, or holding down a second job. It also causes high levels of stress. And it prevents millions of working families from gaining financial stability and building wealth.
It’s time for Congress to enact a fair workweek law, requiring employers to send out schedules two weeks in advance or pay extra for last-minute changes.
Add to these, two other tactics that are illegal but have become standard practice nonetheless.
4. Wage theft. Employers steal from you by working you off the clock, paying you below minimum wage, or not paying for overtime. A study of just three cities found that employers stole $3 billion in wages from low-wage workers in just a single year. On that basis, researchers estimate $50 billion is stolen from the country’s low-wage workforce every year. Many of them, as a result, have to rely on public assistance, meaning we all subsidize corporate theft.
What can be done? Tougher labor laws, better enforcement, harsher penalties for employers, and stronger unions. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), passed in the House in March 2021, contains all these. But like many important bills that have been passed during the last year in the House, this is being held up in the Senate.
5. Misclassifying full-time employees as independent contractors. If you’re classified as an independent contractor, you’re not entitled to minimum wage, unemployment insurance, overtime pay, sick leave, workers’ compensation, protections against discrimination and sexual harassment, or the right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.
But full-time workers are being misclassified as independent contractors all the time. Many gig-based companies have built their entire business model on misclassification. Uber and Lyft, for example, saved at least $413 million from 2014 to 2020 by not paying into unemployment insurance.
The good news is that more than 20 states have passed laws prohibiting employers from misclassifying employees as independent contractors. The PRO Act would make this the national standard.
To summarize: Inflation is a sideshow. The real problem is a lopsided economic system that allows employers to exploit workers by forcing them to work overtime, makes it impossible for them to sue their employer for violating labor protections, difficult for them to plan their life outside of work, steals their wages, and misclassifies them as independent contractors when they’re full-time employees.
American workers have the power to change this — but only if they demand it (and aren’t distracted by “inflation” scares).
Organize. If necessary, strike. Keep pressure on Congress to pass the PRO Act.
My colleagues and I at Inequality Media have made a short video to inform workers of these five offenses so they can be on the lookout for them and take action. Please share this video so it gets to as many people as possible.
A protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, February 9, 2022. (photo: Pete Kiehart/BuzzFeed)
ALSO SEE: A Ukrainian Sociologist Explains Why
Everything You Know About Ukraine Is Probably Wrong
US Embassy Employees will need to leave the country by Sunday, Feb. 13, two sources told BuzzFeed News. It’s unclear whether some essential staff may remain in the country.
The State Department formally announced the departure on Saturday, saying it had ordered “most US direct hire employees” to leave Kyiv “due to the continued threat of Russian military action.”
Two sources with knowledge of the evacuation plans — including one who provided images of a conversation they had with an embassy employee about the evacuation — told BuzzFeed News earlier on Saturday that employees were told Friday morning that they were to pack their bags and prepare to depart Ukraine.
On Saturday afternoon, the US Embassy was a hive of activity. Several diplomatic vehicles were queuing to enter the compound. Several embassy employees were seen coming out of the gated building carrying bags over their shoulders. BuzzFeed News saw personal and desktop items inside the bags. The employees declined to speak to reporters, but one man held up his possessions and said, “I have all my stuff with me,” when asked if he was ordered to depart Kyiv immediately.
The embassy was closed for regular work but a Ukrainian woman who said she was married to a US citizen told BuzzFeed News she was able to retrieve her passport, which she had submitted in order to be granted permission to travel to the US. She said her husband works for an American company and that he had been “ordered to leave" Ukraine by Sunday.
A limited number of diplomats could be relocated to western Ukraine, according to the Associated Press, which first reported news of the embassy pullout. The embassy had previously discussed the possibility of temporarily relocating its staff to western Ukraine, BuzzFeed News reported this week.
"Despite the reduction in diplomatic staff, the core embassy team, our dedicated Ukrainian colleagues, and [State Department] and U.S. personnel around the world will continue relentless diplomatic and assistance efforts in support of Ukraine’s security, democracy, and prosperity," the US Embassy tweeted.
The evacuation came after new intelligence obtained by Washington indicated Russia may invade Ukraine in the coming days.
“The way [Putin] has built up his forces, and put them in place, along with other indicators that we have collected through intelligence, makes it clear to us there is a very distinct possibility that Russia will choose to act militarily and there is reason to believe that could happen on a reasonably swift timeframe,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday. “The Russians are in a position to be able to mount a major military action in Ukraine any day now.”
The Kremlin has denied that it is planning an attack on Ukraine. But in a move that will likely lend credence to the assessments that it is, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced Saturday that it would draw down its staff at its embassy and consulates in Ukraine. The ministry said that Moscow fears “possible provocations from the Kyiv regime or third countries” that could “seriously complicate the security situation.”
The US embassy evacuation order came down as the White House urged all Americans to leave Ukraine within the next 24 to 48 hours, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin could order the more than 100,000 troops he has positioned around the country to attack “at any time.”
US officials also requested that US members of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission, which has been tracking and monitoring ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine, be pulled out of the region, an OSCE official told BuzzFeed News.
US officials also asked for US members of the monitoring group, more than 40 people, to be out of the region by Feb. 15. The Kyiv Post first reported on the OSCE members’ withdrawal.
On Friday, the State Department was also reaching out to individual US citizens, including a BuzzFeed News photographer in Kyiv, who remained in Ukraine, asking them if they had made arrangements to leave the country.
Meanwhile, Russia is holding military drills in its western regions bordering Ukraine and joint exercises with Belarus in that country. The war games include nearly 100 battle tactical groups, sophisticated missile systems, fighter jets, and tanks, and are expected to end on Feb. 20.
“At the end of the exercises is when [Russian forces] will be ready for some kind of attack,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, the former defense minister of Ukraine, predicted in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
Ukraine is conducting its own military drills in parallel with Russia’s.
President Joe Biden plans to speak with Putin on Saturday, according to CNN.
A poll worker sorts vote-by-mail ballots. (photo: Getty Images)
Some counties have seen rejection rates improve as voters learn of new requirements, including ID numbers with ballots
In recent days, thousands of ballots have been rejected because voters did not meet a new requirement to provide an identification number inside the return envelope.
In Harris County, the state’s most populous county and home to Houston, election officials said Friday that 40 percent of roughly 3,600 returned ballots so far have lacked the identification number required under Senate Bill 1, as the new law is known. In Williamson County, a populous northern suburb of Austin, the rejection rate has been about 25 percent in the first few days that ballots have come in, the top election official there said.
“Twenty-five percent of mail ballots from the starting blocks is a big deal for our county,” said Chris Davis, Williamson County’s elections chief. “We’ve never seen it before. And yes, our hope is that we can get these voters to correct the defects in a timely fashion. But what if they don’t, because three months ago they didn’t have to? There’s a learning curve. There are going to be possibly painful lessons that their vote doesn’t count because they weren’t aware.”
All the officials said that the sample size is small at this early stage and that the rate of rejected ballots could improve as more arrive. Jennifer Anderson, the elections chief in Hays County, southwest of Austin, said her staff had rejected 25 percent of the first small batch of returned ballots — but by Friday morning, the rate had dropped to 4 percent.
“It seems like our outreach is working,” she said.
Still, the defect rate so far is alarming election administrators, voting advocates and some voters as primary day quickly approaches and many thousands more ballots are still to be returned. The rejection rates provide an early opportunity to assess the impact of Senate Bill 1, one of dozens of restrictive voting laws enacted by Republicans across the country last year amid an avalanche of false claims, many from former president Donald Trump, that the 2020 presidential race was tainted by widespread fraud.
State Rep. Briscoe Cain (R), a leading proponent of Senate Bill 1, said in a text message that “Texans deserve to have confidence in the electoral system.” The new law ensures that, Cain said, by creating uniform voting hours across the state, expanding access for those who need assistance and enhancing transparency with provisions that protect the rights of partisan poll watchers.
“I’m confident that local election officials will prioritize assisting voters through the process instead of gaslighting to gin up fear and confusion,” Cain said.
In addition to adding identification requirements, the wide-reaching law imposes new penalties for anyone who registers to vote or casts a ballot but is not eligible to do so. It also empowers partisan poll watchers by imposing penalties on poll workers who impede their ability to observe the voting process, among other changes.
The rejection of mail ballots is not the first challenge that Senate Bill 1 has presented, and election officials — who are nonpartisan in Texas — fear it won’t be the last. In January, counties also began rejecting a high percentage of mail ballot applications, which now require the same identification numbers as the ballots themselves. The law requires voters to provide either a Texas state identification number, typically from their driver’s license, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. The number they provide must match the identification number on file with their registration record.
Many counties are experiencing significant application rejection rates; in Harris, the figure is 35 percent to date, officials said.
In Texas, mail-in voting is open only to those who are over 65, will be away from home on Election Day or have a disability that prevents them from voting in person. Mail voting has for decades been the province of Republicans, who developed robust outreach programs and in many states championed legislation allowing the practice. In 2020, however, when Trump criticized mail balloting as an opportunity for fraud, many GOP voters began shunning the practice.
“It feels like people were just sitting up late at night thinking up ways to discourage people from voting,” said Jo Nell Yarbrough, a 76-year-old retired educator from Katy, Tex., west of Houston, who received a letter early this week from her local election office informing her that she had neglected to include an identification number on her application for a mail ballot.
Yarbrough sent out the application a second time and said she is optimistic that she’ll get the ballot in time to vote and mail it back again — and she is also willing to vote in person if necessary, once early voting begins Monday. But Yarbrough, a Democrat, said she fears that others might not be so persistent.
“It’s just making another hurdle for people,” she said. “And many people are going to give up and say, ‘I don’t feel like doing this or that.’ Not that it’s not worth it, but when you get older, you don’t want hassles.”
The GOP-controlled Texas legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott (R) enacted Senate Bill 1 in early September after Democrats tried unsuccessfully to halt the bill by denying Republicans a quorum in the House for months. The law went into effect in December despite entreaties from county election officials to give them more time to educate their staffs and voters. Lawmakers also denied local officials’ requests to push back the primary date.
As a result, election administrators have been scrambling to understand the new rules, procure new materials such as ballot requests and voter registration forms required under the law — and teach the public how it will affect them. They have relied on guidance from the secretary of state’s office, which in some cases has taken months to develop.
That fueled the confusion about how to process mail-in ballot applications, said Remi Garza, the elections chief in Cameron County, at the state’s southern tip.
“There was a lot of information that had not been distributed to all the 254 counties in Texas, so different administrators had different levels of information with respect to how you could process these applications,” said Garza, who leads the Texas Association of Elections Administrators.
That delay also contributed to a shortage of voter-registration cards as organizers with groups such as the League of Women Voters were unsure whether they could use their stockpiles of old cards or would have to wait to receive new forms from the state. The new form explains Senate Bill 1′s increased penalties for anyone providing false information on their voter registration application.
State officials told League organizers that they would not be able to provide the tens of thousands of registration cards they normally supply because of a nationwide paper shortage and rising costs.
Nancy Kral, an officer with the Houston chapter of the League of Women Voters, said the state’s top election official, Keith Ingram, told her during a telephone call that the state was not going to continue “subsidizing” the League’s registration efforts. The League provides voter registration cards to every participant in naturalization ceremonies in Houston — about 45,000 applications since June 2020.
A spokesman for the office of the secretary of state did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that exchange. But the spokesman, Sam Taylor, said the office has tried to inform election officials about all the changes. “Our office has been working as quickly and diligently as possible within a compressed time frame to provide guidance to both election officials and voters on changes to the voting process in Texas,” he said in an email. “Our goal from day one has always been to make sure that all eligible Texas voters can successfully cast a ballot, and that remains our goal going forward.”
Officials finally gave guidance — in either late December or early January, according to Taylor — that the old registration cards would be accepted this year. The deadline to register in time to vote in the primary was Jan. 31. Officials also provided more forms after the League threatened to sue under the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to provide voter registration forms to third-party groups.
The new law is the target of multiple ongoing lawsuits, including one filed by the League of Women Voters, arguing that it violates the law by restricting voting access.
Kral has been disheartened by the hurdles Senate Bill 1 has erected — as well as the tone it seems to have set, she said. “It’s just so complicated and confusing,” she said. “There’s a perception that the confusion is not only in the name of election integrity but also about influencing who feels comfortable voting. I don’t think they’d admit to that, but that’s the message I’m receiving. They’re bullying.”
The late guidance from the state, as well as the paper crunch, has created stress for election officials, too. Garza, in Cameron County, described having to wait for instructions on the new mail-ballot envelope requirements before he could place his order. The new identification requirements necessitated an envelope redesign that includes a large privacy flap to cover the box where voters must provide their identification number.
Garza said his envelopes had still not arrived last week, when counties were supposed to begin mailing ballots to eligible voters. So on Saturday, he sent three of his staff members on a four-hour road trip to San Antonio, where a local printer had the envelopes in stock.
“We put them in the mail on Monday, and through the cooperation of our local postmaster, the voters began to receive them in their mailboxes today,” Garza said Wednesday. “That’s at least a week and a half later than we would have liked.” And it gives voters that much less time to fix any errors or omissions on their ballots, he added.
Several election administrators said they are optimistic that the rejection rate for both ballots and ballot applications will continue to decline as more come in — and as they get the word out to the public about the new rules.
But they are braced for another source of confusion, which is Senate Bill 1′s new penalty for poll workers who impede the ability of partisan poll watchers to observe voting locations on Election Day.
Davis, the top elections official in Williamson County, said the law has had a chilling effect on his ability to recruit poll workers, who have told him they worry that any effort to maintain order or protect voter privacy could be construed as a violation. But he also said he is optimistic that new mandatory training for poll watchers and poll workers will clarify what is acceptable behavior and what is not.
“Poll watchers are not our enemy — at least they’re not supposed to be our enemy,” Davis said. “The problem up until now is that in a poll watcher’s quest to see irregularities, they may not have had a terribly firm grasp on the ‘regular’ — how things are supposed to run in a polling place.” The training should improve that, he said.
Cain, the Republican lawmaker, said the new law “has ample protections for partisan election judges in dealing with disruptive election observers.”
Several election administrators said clashes between watchers and workers will be less likely on March 1, because it is a primary election. The real test of the new poll watcher rules will come in the general election in November, they said.
That’s just fine with Garza, who believes that voters — and election administrators — have enough to get used to right now.
“Elections are robust,” Garza said. “But they’re also very delicate. People need to mindful of how much things have changed since the last election. That’s what’s keeping me up at night.”
The questions center on what happened on August 26, 2021, less than two weeks after the Taliban seized control of Kabul. (photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)
A major investigation by CNN raises questions about whether U.S. soldiers opened fire on Afghan civilians last August after a massive suicide bomb exploded outside the Kabul International Airport. Compiling hospital records of gunshot wounds, video evidence and eyewitness accounts, CNN’s report appears to directly contradict the Pentagon’s narrative, which said over 180 people were killed in the single blast that ISIS-K claimed responsibility for. We speak to one of the co-authors of the CNN report, Nick Paton Walsh, who says reporters found 19 people “who quite specifically said they saw people shot in front of them or were shot themselves.”
The Pentagon says all of the deaths were linked to the blast, but Afghan eyewitnesses tell a different story. There were initial reports of multiple bombers as well as a gunfight outside the airport. The Pentagon spent months investigating what happened. It issued a report last week saying the attack was carried out by a single suicide bomber who detonated a bomb filled with ball bearings. The report also acknowledged U.S. marines had fired shots, but the Pentagon claims the shots didn’t hit anyone. This is Army Brigadier General Lance Curtis speaking Friday.
BRIG. GEN. LANCE CURTIS: There were a series of crossing fires to the front of the servicemembers on the ground that created the illusion that there was a complex attack, but there absolutely was not. There were no gunshot wounds. We have universal agreement between the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s Office and also the medical providers on the ground. There were absolutely no gunshot wounds. During the course of our investigation, we found no evidence that, post-blast, U.S. servicemembers killed other U.S. servicemembers or Afghans.
AMY GOODMAN: During the news briefing, Army Brigadier General Lance Curtis acknowledged Pentagon investigators did not speak to a single Afghan civilian about what they witnessed August 26, 2021.
BRIG. GEN. LANCE CURTIS: So, talking to actual Afghans, very difficult given the current structure of Afghanistan and also the fact that U.S. forces had — had already left. … During the course of our investigation, we did not have an opportunity to speak with Afghans on the ground.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Army Brigadier General Lance Curtis Friday.
Two new investigations by news outlets are raising questions about the Pentagon’s findings. One was published by ProPublica with the organization Alive in Afghanistan. The second was done by CNN, which interviewed 19 survivors who say they saw people shot or were shot themselves. In a moment, we’ll be joined by Nick Paton Walsh, CNN’s senior international correspondent, but first let’s turn to some of the interviews he conducted with Afghans who survived the August 26 attack.
NICK PATON WALSH: Noorullah Zakhel said he was also in the trench, hit in the head by the blast, and tried to flee with his cousin, Suhail.
NOORULLAH ZAKHEL: I told to my cousin, “Suhail, run!” We run together. We went — I tried to go climb out from the canal. I succeeded, but I think my cousin escaped. The soldier came directly, and they started firing.
NICK PATON WALSH: When did you find out that Suhail was dead?
NOORULLAH ZAKHEL: In the morning time. When I called my family, “Is Suhail OK?” they said he is martyred.
NICK PATON WALSH: And how was his body? What were the injuries on his body?
NOORULLAH ZAKHEL: There were just shooted, in two bullets, one on head in this side and taken out from this side, and another one on the shoulder.
NICK PATON WALSH: A total of 19 survivors CNN has interviewed said they saw people shot or were shot themselves. The U.S. military said the witnesses we spoke to had, quote, “jumbled memories from a concussive event … and are doing their best to piece together what their brain is unlikely to remember clearly.” The volume of testimony from Afghan survivors, though, does present questions as to how so many witnesses could make such similar claims.
Another survivor, Morsal Hamidi, had a bullet injury to the left side of her face, say her records from the Italian hospital in Kabul.
MORSAL HAMIDI: I realized that the blood is coming from my face like water of a tap. I was hit by a bullet in my face, in my right jaw here, and the blood extracted from this part of my throat.
NICK PATON WALSH: We spoke to a doctor who treated patients at Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, one of the biggest in Kabul. He said he pulled bullets out of four injured patients from the airport that night. He said he found gunshot wounds on many other dead bodies he examined, suggesting the number of people shot may be much higher. He asked we hide his identity for his safety.
DOCTOR: There was two kinds of injuries: people burned from the blast with lots of holes in their bodies, but with a gunshot, you can see just one or two holes, in the mouth, in the head, in the eye, in the chest. I removed bullets from four or five injured.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s an excerpt from a major CNN exposé.
We’re joined now by CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, who spent four months investigating what happened outside the Kabul International Airport last August 26th. Nick’s joining us from London, recently back from Afghanistan.
Nick, thanks so much for joining us. This is an explosive exposé, to say the least. Can you lay out more about what you found? You even make the point that one of the survivors, who was shot in the chest, was treated at Walter Reed outside of Washington, D.C., yet the Pentagon continues to deny anyone was injured by bullets.
NICK PATON WALSH: That’s correct. We obtained the hospital records from an evacuee, an Afghan survivor who ended up in Walter Reed Hospital — and can’t say much, to protect their identity here, but, yes, there is an explicit entry in their hospital records of a gunshot wound to the left chest.
And this feeds into a pattern of paperwork we obtained, or hospital statements, one from the large Emergency hospital, Italian-run, in Kabul, which received nine patients, they said, dead on arrival after the blast, seven with what they said were gunshot wounds, judging by the appearance of the wounds, to the head and to the chest. We heard records — we retained records, too, for two other individuals who said they were shot.
And then, of course, there were survivors. You just heard from Morsal Hamidi there, a fairly clear witness, who said that she was OK after the explosion and has a medical record saying she then received a bullet wound in her face, one of a number of eyewitnesses who describe a scene of carnage, certainly, after the blast, but then are aware of a secondary period in which more people are injured. So, you mentioned the 19 there. We spoke to dozens of witnesses to the actual events. It was those 19 who quite specifically said they saw people shot in front of them or were shot themselves.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Nick, could you explain why it is that CNN decided to conduct its own investigation of the attack?
NICK PATON WALSH: Some of this emerged from conversations that my colleague Sandi Sidhu and our other colleagues had been having with Afghan civilians in the aftermath of other incidents who were saying, “Look, something doesn’t add up with what occurred at Abbey Gate.” And initially after the blast, there were reports in the local media and other media organizations that — people reporting that people had been shot. And there subsequently was denials of that. There’s been a changing narrative we’ve heard over the past months from the Pentagon itself.
But there was certainly doubt in my mind as to how a single suicide bomber could be responsible for possibly as many as 200 deaths, certainly in excess of 180 deaths. And so that initially sparked our interest. We began asking forensic blast experts whether they could agree with the idea that one suicide bomber could potentially be responsible for that many deaths. And subsequently, that grew to talking to the families of those lost in this awful incident, and then doctors and then survivors themselves. So, I would say probably the north of a hundred interviews carried out for this investigation.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what these forensic blast experts told you, two of them said that so many people couldn’t have been killed by a suicide attack carried out by only one person. But you spoke to many more forensic blast experts, and it seemed as though there wasn’t consensus on whether that was the case.
NICK PATON WALSH: That’s true. The experts we spoke to, they were divided as to whether a device of that size — and I have to tell you, too, the size of the device is purely one divined by the U.S. military from looking at the video and the hallmarks of the blast and comparing it to test explosions done. They assessed, from comparing those test explosions, that the device was probably 20 pounds in size. In fact, their EOD team only got to the site 13 hours after the blast happened, and accepted in a briefing I had at the Pentagon in January that their ability to gather data or gather evidence had been limited by that. So we don’t know as much, clearly, as — the Pentagon don’t know as much as they’d like to know about the device.
But one forensic analyst we took to the scene, Chris Cobb-Smith, who is a war crimes investigator, who used to be a U.N. weapons inspector, who’s got 38 years of experience looking at these things, he saw the damage that the bomb had done. You can still see the charring of an awning behind where the device went off. You can see pockmarks in the concrete around where the device went. His assessment was that the level of damage done to the concrete infrastructure there would suggest that the device could not have been big enough to kill 180 people.
Now, that consensus — as I said, there wasn’t a consensus. Other experts we spoke to, who didn’t go to the scene, looked at pictures and assessed, well, maybe it could have, in certain conditions, killed that many. Another expert we spoke to looked more at historical comparable incidents and said that this, for a single person-borne IED, explosive device, would have made it most effective by a factor of about four, compared to any other historical comparable. So, there is certainly a divided opinion here, but the expert we took to the scene was quite clear, from what they saw there, that it would be “impossible,” to quote, for that bomb to have killed all the people.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the Pentagon held their news conference last Friday, February 4th, hours after ProPublica and Alive in Afghanistan released their report that had similar findings. Then you released your report. And during a press briefing yesterday, your colleague, Oren Liebermann, asked Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby whether the Pentagon should further investigate what happened after the Kabul airport suicide bombing in light of your report. This is Pentagon spokesperson Kirby’s response.
JOHN KIRBY: The investigation, we believe, was comprehensive, it was credible, and it was quite definitive. And, Oren, I think you were here in the room when the investigating team came up here and laid it out for you over the course of an hour or more. Pretty detailed work. And as they said — and I’m, quite frankly, quoting from their work — the investigation found no definitive proof that anyone was ever hit or killed by gunfire, either U.S. or Afghan. And I think I’d leave it at that.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Pentagon spokesperson Kirby responding to CNN. So, Nick Paton Walsh, you have, on the 26th, this suicide bombing, and the question is whether the U.S. soldiers opened fire, killing many, wounding others, or, as the Pentagon says, no, everything was as a result of the suicide bombing and that these doctors are confusing ball bearings with bullets. Three days later, you have the U.S. drone strike, that the Pentagon was forced — after an enormous number of international journalists said they targeted the wrong guy and they ended up killing 10 people, including seven children. That was three days later. Can you talk about that sequence and the fact that the Pentagon did not speak with — admitted themselves — a single Afghan?
NICK PATON WALSH: Yes, they admitted to us, during the two months of conversations we had with them about our findings, that they had not spoken to a single Afghan civilian and none of the doctors in the hospitals, none of the survivors. This is not an abnormal set of events. And I think it’s fair to say that so many of the civilian casualty investigations are often hampered by the fact that the U.S. military activity takes place in an area that’s often hostile, so they cannot go back to the scene, look at what occurred from an objective standpoint, interview people around and gather that testimony. That is often left to journalists. And so, the U.S. investigation, when they look at those allegations, often relies on video, open-source testimony, open-source video, and interviews with their own personnel. And that’s certainly what occurred here.
And, look, there is a stark difference between what we heard from speaking to Afghans who were there, Afghans who treated the patients, Afghans who pulled bullets out of four patients — one Afghan doctor, I should say — their conclusions about how this came about and then the conclusions of a three-and-a-half-month investigation done by the Pentagon in which they interviewed their own personnel, it seems some British personnel, too, though we’ve not been able to see exactly what those British personnel said, and some other civilians, too, who were involved, it seems, in the treatment of people injured there on the actual airport base itself. So, very different sets of evidence here and very different conclusions. And that is not something, I think it’s fair to say, when we’ve looked at previous civilian casualty incidents in the past, that is particularly abnormal, because of the nature of how U.S. investigations proceed, what they’re able to do, and then what journalists do on the ground in the places where those events have occurred.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Nick, were you able to — in your conversations with civilians at the scene, Afghans, were you able to determine why it is, if it is the case, that U.S. troops opened fire in such a way that they hit so many civilians?
NICK PATON WALSH: I think it would be wrong for me at this stage to try and ascribe motives to what occurred here. In our investigation, we were very much just trying to establish the facts of what people had seen. But, of course, you can imagine a scene of some chaos in the aftermath of the explosion. And, indeed, if it was the case that troops at the scene did open fire, then I am sure there would have been multiple emotional reasons why that could have occurred. But, as I say, our investigation was focused on the facts of what happened, what people had seen, and we didn’t look at motivations.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much for —
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And —
AMY GOODMAN: Oh, Nermeen, you have a last question?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Just last. What survivors — you spoke to survivors. What are they calling for? What would they like to see happen?
NICK PATON WALSH: They’d just like the truth of what occurred, I think, to be recognized. Many of them are still scared. Many of them were reluctant initially to speak about this. Many of them are still living with the fear of the Taliban in the society that is now Afghanistan. And so I think they simply wanted the recognition of the truth of how the people, often close to them, who they saw die, died, and also for recognition to what they say they witnessed themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: Nick Paton Walsh, we want to thank you for being with us and for this investigation, CNN senior international correspondent, award-winning investigative reporter. We’ll link to your report at democracynow.org, as well as the reports of ProPublica and Alive in Afghanistan.
People who've been taken into custody related to cases of illegal entry into the United States, sit in one of the cages at a detention facility. (photo: AP)
A Border Patrol agent logged welfare checks that didn’t happen. Only one medical professional was caring for 200 sick migrants. The government hasn’t said whether anyone is being punished.
A government investigation into the 2019 death of a Guatemalan teenager in Border Patrol custody has found serious problems with the agency’s handling of sick detainees.
The findings echo the conclusions of a ProPublica investigation from two years ago that revealed how the government failed in taking care of Hernandez.
Hernandez had been detained by Border Patrol agents in May 2019. After being in custody for a few days at an overcrowded processing facility, the Guatemalan migrant had been diagnosed with the flu and was running a 103-degree fever. A nurse practitioner who treated Hernandez wrote that he should be checked again in two hours and taken to the emergency room if his condition worsened.
Agents noted in log books that they regularly checked on the boy after he was moved to another Border Patrol station that housed sick migrants. But video surveillance of his cell showed no sign of it, the report said.
The government report said that agents never went inside Hernandez’s cell that night as he lay ill. It wasn’t until the morning, when Hernandez’s cellmate woke up and found him unresponsive, that agents finally entered the cell.
Falsifying federal records to impede administration of an agency’s function is a crime. But the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas declined to prosecute anyone in Hernandez’s death, the report said. The U.S. attorney declined ProPublica’s request for comment on the decision.
The report is by the Office of Inspector General, which is the internal watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security. The government issued a press release in September about the general findings, but the report itself was not released. Most of the report was provided to ProPublica in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
The report still leaves many questions unanswered, including whether anybody involved in the case has been disciplined.
The government also did not provide the full report to ProPublica. The inspector general’s office said it was releasing 164 pages of documents, but it has provided only 104. The agency hasn’t responded to numerous inquiries about the discrepancy.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, declined to comment on whether any agents have faced discipline stemming from Hernandez’s death or whether any changes had been made as a result of the inspector general report.
The agency said it is continuing an internal investigation, 32 months after Hernandez died and four months after receiving the inspector general report.
The Texas Civil Rights Project, which represents Hernandez’s family, also declined to comment on the report.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the report identified several failings. It “confirms a concerning lapse in care for the health and well-being of Carlos, as well as the importance of appropriate training and resources for personnel caring for children in custody. CBP must do better,” the Mississippi Democrat said.
The report found that only one health care worker was on duty when Hernandez died the night of May 19, even though more than 200 sick migrants were housed in a makeshift ward.
A pediatrician who reviewed the case for investigators wrote that agents should have noticed that Hernandez was in trouble. The doctor noted that videos showed Hernandez using the bathroom an “extraordinary” number of times. The doctor said it was “especially worrisome” that agents’ logs of Hernandez’s last hours noted no problems even as the boy, the doctor wrote, “was lying motionless on the bathroom floor.”
The doctor, whose name is redacted from the report, stated that Hernandez probably would have died even if he had been watched more closely. In addition to the flu, Hernandez had sepsis and a severe immune disorder, according to an autopsy report.
But Dr. Alia Sunderji, a pediatric emergency medicine physician who has researched the deaths of migrant children in Border Patrol custody, said the inspector general report hadn’t properly framed its question about Herndandez’s illness.
“I would say that the question shouldn’t be, or isn’t, ‘Might he have died anyway?’ The question is, ‘Might he have lived?’” said Sunderji, who has reviewed autopsy reports and Border Patrol medical records of Hernandez’s care at our request. “That answer is yes, there is a possibility that with prompt treatment he could have lived.”
Dr. Judy Melinek, a San Francisco-based pathologist who has reviewed Hernandez’s autopsy report and Border Patrol medical records, said she believes his immune disorder was caused by his untreated illness.
“It can occur in overwhelming untreated sepsis,” said Melinek.
Hernandez was the fifth child to die either in Border Patrol custody or shortly after release between December 2018 and May 2019. Three of them died of the flu.
Hernandez and his 18-year-old sister were among almost 133,000 migrants taken into custody at the southern border that May, the highest total in 13 years.
His sister was allowed to travel to New Jersey to be with another brother while immigration courts decided her status. Hernandez was held by the Border Patrol because he was a minor and was supposed to be turned over within three days to the agency responsible for finding placements for unaccompanied children.
But the large numbers of children crossing the border had created delays. Hernandez was still in Border Patrol custody in McAllen, Texas, six days later when he got sick.
He was moved that afternoon, May 19, to another Border Patrol facility in the nearby town of Weslaco, which was serving as a makeshift isolation ward for sick migrants.
Hernandez was seen by a nurse practitioner that evening, his last contact with a health professional.
Health care workers and Border Patrol agents told investigators that it was common to have only one or two medical staffers on duty at the Weslaco station. The report said the workers, employed by a contractor called Loyal Source Government Services, repeatedly raised concerns about low staffing levels. (Company officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
The inspector general said Loyal Source’s policies didn’t set a ratio for medical staff to detainees. The report said the Border Patrol rushed to provide medical staffing at detention centers after two children died in custody in December 2018 but “did not ensure adequate oversight procedures were in place.”
The inspector general report also found a breakdown in required welfare checks of detained migrants. The lead Border Patrol agent at Weslaco on the midnight shift the night of Hernandez’s death told investigators he had been instructed to check on each person hourly but had never received training on how to do the checks.
The lead agent told investigators that he made hourly checks of Hernandez’s cell but didn’t remember seeing anything that raised concerns.
He also told investigators that it was common practice for lead agents to “check the ‘select all’ tab in the [logging] system and press enter, reporting all detainees received an hourly welfare check.”
The agent’s name is redacted in the inspector general report released to ProPublica. But Border Patrol log records previously obtained by ProPublica from the Weslaco Police Department showed that Agent Oscar Garza logged welfare checks at 2:02 a.m., 4:09 a.m. and 5:05 a.m.
Closed-circuit video showed that Hernandez’s last movement was at 1:41 a.m., as he lay beside the toilet in his cell. A pool of blood was visible on the floor near his concrete bed.
Garza told investigators he hadn’t noticed any problems. He did not respond to requests for comment.
A vigil for slain journalists in Mexico. (photo: Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images)
The Oaxaca state prosecutor's office said that two suspects in the killing were in custody and a gun had been recovered from them.
Rodolfo Canseco Gutiérrez, director of the online news site RCP Noticias and a longtime friend of López's, said the journalist covered crime and police news.
Witnesses said that around 6:30 p.m., López was in his office when a white vehicle carrying two men pulled up in front, Canseco Gutiérrez said. One man got out, walked into the office and shot López, he said.
Canseco Gutiérrez said he had just had breakfast with López on Wednesday. He said his friend had never told him he'd received threats, but he didn't doubt the killing had to do with his work.
López's murder follows those of four journalists in January.
On January 31, Roberto Toledo, a camera operator and video editor for the online site Monitor Michoacan was shot by assailants as he prepared for an interview in Zitacuaro, Michoacan.
In the border city of Tijuana, crime photographer Margarito MartÃnez was gunned down outside his home January 17. On January 23, reporter Lourdes Maldonado López was found shot to death inside her car, also in Tijuana.
Reporter José Luis Gamboa was killed in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz in an attack on January 10.
Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said on Twitter: "The first six weeks of 2022 have been the deadliest for the Mexican press in over a decade."
Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar sent his condolences to the families of the journalists killed this year in a tweet in late January, reiterating the U.S. government's "support for the Mexican forces as they fight impunity."
But as CBS News correspondent Enrique Acevedo reported from Tijuana earlier this month, many in Mexico are asking for more than thoughts and prayers.
A report by the U.S. Department of Justice found that as many as 70% of all the guns used in violent crimes in Mexico are traced back to the U.S.
Mexico's government filed a lawsuit in August 2021 accusing gun manufacturers in the U.S. of "actively facilitating the unlawful trafficking of their guns to drug cartels and other criminals in Mexico."
Thirteen U.S. states and Washington, D.C. have expressed support for the lawsuit brought by the Mexican government.
A worker mixes chemicals, which will be sprayed on a field. (photo: David Bacon/Report Digital-REA/Redux)
Researchers at George Washington University analyzed the 2001 to 2014 results from the annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for 14,395 people across the U.S. ages 6 and older. In 2001 to 2002, they found evidence of about 17% human exposure. For 2011 to 2012, human exposure increased to 39.6%, the highest level of human exposure recorded for this herbicide.
“Further study must determine how rising exposure to 2,4-D affects human health – especially when exposure occurs early in life,” Melissa Perry, senior author of the paper, told The Guardian. “Children and other vulnerable groups are also increasingly exposed to other pesticides and these chemicals may act synergistically to produce health problems.”
The 2,4-D herbicide was first created in the 1940s and was popular until Roundup, or glyphosate, became the norm. Despite health and environmental concerns, use of 2,4-D has increased again.
From 2012 to 2020, use of 2,4-D has increased nearly 70%, and this is expected to continue rising, especially with the approval to use Enlist Duo. Enlist Duo is an approved chemical for genetically modified crops that contains both 2,4-D and glyphosate.
According to The Guardian, about 600 products used in industrial agriculture contain 2,4-D, which is easily absorbed through the skin or ingested in the mouth and nose. High levels of exposure to 2,4-D have been linked to various cancers, leukemia in children, birth defects, and reproductive issues. While it’s not entirely known how much damage lower levels can do, exposure can disrupt the endocrine system.
“Agricultural use of 2,4-D has increased substantially from a low point in 2002 and it is predicted to increase further in the coming decade,” the study says. “Because increasing use is likely to increase population level exposures, the associations seen here between 2,4-D crop application and biomonitoring levels require focused biomonitoring and epidemiological evaluation to determine the extent to which rising use and exposures cause adverse health outcomes among vulnerable populations (particularly children and women of childbearing age) and highly exposed individuals (farmers, other herbicide applicators, and their families).”
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