19 November 21
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It's time to change the way we think about public policy
You’re going to hear a lot in the next day or two about the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of the cost of Biden’s Build Back Better plan, along with how much of it will be covered by proposed taxes. Beware. Putting aside the accuracy of these estimates, the exercise omits the cost of doing nothing.
Tackling climate change will be expensive, but doing nothing about climate change will cost far more. If we don’t adopt ambitious measures, untold numbers of lives will be lost and trillions will be spent coping with the consequences of our failure.
Expanding Medicare would be costly, but the price of not doing so will be in the stratosphere. The nation already pays more for health care per person and has worse health outcomes than any other advanced country. (It’s estimated that Medicare for All would save $450 billion and prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths every year.)
Investing in universal childcare, universal pre-K, and public higher education will be expensive, too, but the cost of not making these investments will be astronomical. American productivity is already suffering, and millions of families can’t afford decent childcare or college.
It’s not just official bean counters who are failing to assess the cost of doing nothing. The media also focuses on the costs of tackling big problems without mentioning the costs of doing nothing about them. Journalists wanting to appear serious about public policy routinely rip into progressives for the costs of their proposals but never criticize so-called “moderates” for the costs of doing nothing or too little about the same problems.
The frequently-asked question “how are we going to pay for it?” is similarly nonsensical without an assessment of the costs of doing nothing. Even if taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations were to cover only a fraction of the costs of tackling a large worsening problem, so what? As long as the costs of tackling it are less than the future costs of not doing so, it makes logical sense to tackle it.
Republican administrations have repeatedly doled out gigantic tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthy without first announcing specific cuts in public spending or other tax increases to pay for them because -- despite decades of evidence to the contrary -- they claim that the cuts will generate economic growth that will more than make up for any lost revenue. Yet when progressives propose ambitious plans for reducing verifiable costs of large and growing public problems, they’re skewered for not having ways to pay for them.
Finally and relatedly, I’m often barraged by conservatives claiming that progressive proposals are just too big. This argument might be convincing if the problems were growing slowly. But experts on climate change, the state of the nation’s health, and childcare and education are nearly unanimous in their view that all these are worsening exponentially.
Cautious incrementalism is wise under most circumstances. But where headwinds are turning into gales, incrementalism drives us backwards. Calling progressives “extremists” or “radicals” is absurd when they’re seeking to remedy problems that are themselves extreme and will radically harm Americans if left unattended. The status quo is not sustainable. (In my experience, young people understand all this, perhaps because they’ll live longer than the rest of us and bear the brunt of the cost of inaction.)
We can no longer pretend that climate change, a wildly-dysfunctional health care system, lack of childcare, deteriorating schools, and unaffordable higher education pose small or insignificant challenges. Doing nothing or too little about these problems has made all of them worse — and will make them far worse if we continue to do nothing or too little.
Obsessing about the costs of addressing them without acknowledging the costs of failing to address them is dangerously irresponsible.
Your thoughts?
The so-called Freedom Caucus. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
How the far-right Freedom Caucus has turned into the pro-Trump, pro-insurrection wing of the GOP.
Perry got elected as the new chairman of the Freedom Caucus this week, inheriting the job created by its founder, a then-North Carolina congressman named Mark Meadows. Yup, that’s the same Mark Meadows who went on to become Trump’s White House chief of staff and who this week refused to comply with a subpoena from the January 6 select committee to tell what he knows about Trump’s coup attempt.
The Freedom Caucus was once the place where 40 or so right-wing lawmakers like Meadows and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan made trouble for GOP leaders, messing with bills over conservative leverage issues like abortion and immigration. They got powerful enough to oust Speaker John Boehner in 2015, and he’s had a few things to say about them since. Today, the Freedom Caucus is Trump’s most loyal power base in Congress, where messianic messengers like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar gather to push lies about a stolen election and to help recast the deadly Jan. 6 riot as a patriotic cause.
In the weeks after Trump’s 2020 loss, Perry leaned on DOJ officials to investigate bogus fraud claims in Pennsylvania and recruited other Justice officials into the effort to overturn election results coordinated from the White House, according to a Senate investigation. As such, he’s a potential witness, if not a possible actor, in the investigation of the coup plot.
With those qualifications, Perry is now the point man for the Freedom Caucus as it boosts violent tweets against Democrats and threats against fellow Republicans who vote for bipartisan bills. Next year, when GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy will probably become Speaker under Republican control, it’ll be Perry’s job to act as an enforcer, making sure McCarthy, or whoever the speaker is, doesn’t stray from the Trumpist doctrine of retribution and election damage.
It flew under the radar this week, but there are signs that McCarthy already has a head start. Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy, of Texas, blasted McCarthy for failing to prevent a few Republicans from voting for an infrastructure bill. Roy was annoyed that he had to explain that to angry constituents.
McCarthy shot back that he often has to explain Roy’s votes, too. More than one person noticed that Roy, a staunch Trumpist conservative, voted to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6. That makes him an outlier among his Freedom Caucus friends. If that was McCarthy’s point, what you see there is the probable future Speaker of the House using a member’s vote to certify a fair election as a weapon against them.
That, along with the Paul Gosar episode, tells us a lot about the kind of future—and the kind of accountability—McCarthy, Perry, and the Freedom Caucus are building for when they have real power.
The McCarthy test
About a dozen Freedom Caucus lawmakers gathered in solidarity behind Rep. Paul Gosar as he stood in the well of the House to face a rare censure this week. He was there because of the video his office tweeted depicting him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Gosar made sure to say on right-wing media outlets that he’s not sorry for the violent video, while mainstream outlets dutifully carried the message that he expressed “regret.” There was little to expect from Gosar, who has a track record of supporting the insurrection and consorting with white supremacists. What was important was what GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy had to say.
Up until the censure vote, McCarthy hadn’t criticized Gosar. Would he, the likely future Speaker of the House, who had condemned Trump immediately after the Jan. 6 insurrection and blamed him for inciting it, only to quickly retreat, use the spectacle of the censure vote to unmistakably condemn political violence?
Nope! Instead, McCarthy offered a litany of familiar attacks against Democrats, and a general, non-specific condemnation of violence. For Gosar, and his actions, he had no criticism at all.
Trump’s Freedom Caucus soldiers spent the earlier part of the week vowing retribution on anyone seeking accountability for the violent Jan. 6 riot and parallel coup attempt. Meanwhile, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made clear she was monitoring McCarthy for signs of weakness.
Bannon loves a fight
Mark Meadows is one of the people closely watching what happens to Steven Bannon for blowing off the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoenas. Last week I wrote about what’s at stake as prosecutors decide whether to charge Bannon with contempt.
A week later, Bannon pleaded “not guilty” to two counts of contempt of Congress. Bannon appeared outside the federal courthouse, where he stood flanked by Trump’s (second) impeachment lawyer, David Schoen, and vowed to “go on offense” against his enemies.
VICE News Tonight’s Liz Landers caught up with Bannon outside the courthouse to ask the question Bannon won’t answer for Jan. 6 investigators.
Still, it’s vital to remember that Bannon’s biggest fight here isn’t the legal one over his contempt. David Frum of The Atlantic has an important piece explaining how Bannon is likely to use his court battle and the spectacle around it to wage his real war. Ever hear of the Chicago 7? “The prosecution was doing law; the defense countered with politics,” Frum writes.
Flynn’s Pentagon plot
Lest you think the Justice Department, Congress, and state governments were the only places where Trump and his allies tried to pull off their 2020 election takeover, we learned this week that Trump acolytes also tried to mobilize the military to aid in the coup attempt. Turns out General-turned-National-Security-Advisor-turned-admitted-felon-turned-QAnon-conspiracist Michael Flynn reportedly called on a former subordinate still serving at the Pentagon to “get orders signed” to seize election ballots and stop Biden from being declared the winner. It all comes from ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl’s new book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” which hit stores this week.
Karl also details how lawyer Sidney Powell, now infamous for getting herself sanctioned and sued over “Kraken” lawsuits about voting machines, tried to enlist the same DOD official, Ezra Cohen, in a crackpot QAnon conspiracy theory. The idea was that then-CIA Director Gina Haspel had been injured and taken into custody while on a secret election-manipulation mission in Germany. Karl reports that Cohen argued with Flynn and reported Powell’s “out of her mind” call to the acting secretary of defense.
Karl writes his mind was “boggled’ by the depredations he discovered interviewing Trump for the book. And he got a tough review from the New York Times’ Jennifer Szalai, who wondered how a journalist of Karl’s experience could have been so late to the realization that Trump and his authoritarian strategies were a threat to democracy.
Rocky Mountain ouster
Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney was already on the outs with her state’s Republican Party when she voted to censure Gosar for his office’s tweets depicting him killing AOC. Earlier in the week, Wyoming GOPs voted to no longer recognize Cheney as a Republican, after she committed the dual sins of voting to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 mob and joining the select committee investigating the insurrection.
The narrow 31-29 vote telegraphs the ugly fight Cheney faces to stay in Congress in 2022 with Trump and his loyalists against her. A Cheney spokesperson called the idea that his boss isn’t sufficiently conservative “laughable.” Of course, it’s not her conservatism that’s the issue but her lack of loyalty. Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hagemen, Trump’s endorsed primary challenger, said Cheney “broke with where we are as a state” when she went against Trump.
That’s a real Shaman
The guy who became the global face of the Jan. 6 insurrection by parading through the Capitol in Viking horns and face-paint on behalf of Donald Trump got nearly three and a half years in prison this week. Jacob Chansley, aka the “QAnon Shaman,” was sentenced to 41 months behind bars, including 10 months he’s already served. That’s the toughest sentence for any Jan. 6 rioter to date, and a weird scene in the ongoing weirdness Chansley and his lawyers manufactured after the insurrection.
Chansley climbed on the dais in the Senate, where prosecutors said he scrawled a note for Mike Pence that said "It's Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming.”
Chansley delivered a long, at times contrite statement to Judge Joyce Lamberth, but Lamberth still stuck him with a relatively long sentence. Prosecutors say Chansley was among the first few rioters to enter the Capitol, that he carried a spear into the building, and that he rallied other rioters to bring out lawmakers from inside.
A Mile High with QAnon — There’ve been more and more stories of local officials acting out their QAnon fantasies on the very real elections we’re supposed to trust them with.
This week the FBI raided the home of a Republican Colorado election official who’s accused of facilitating leaks that ended with QAnon figures posting the contents of voting machine hard drives online. VICE News’ David Gilbert has the story on Tina Peters, an official from Mesa County, who, along with three others, got an early-morning visit from the feds Tuesday.
Peters turned up at the August “Cyber Symposium” hosted by MyPillow CEO and leading Trumpist election conspiracist Mike Lindell, and VICE News Tonight was there to document the scene, including a pretty nutso interview with Lindell:
Pro-Insurrection 2020 Check-in — Meet the Virginia state senator who gave a speech at the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally, praised rioters as "patriots," supported calls for martial law to overturn the election, then played a key role in electing businessman Glenn Youngkin governor. She's Amanda Chase, and she's running for Congress.
American Radicals — Who exactly were those bedraggled Michigan guys who plotted to abduct, hog-tie, and execute Gov. Gretchen Whitmer? Journalist Nina Burleigh has this don’t-miss look into the militiamen who called themselves The Watchmen, how they got radicalized in a Facebook-fueled haze of anti-government Christianity, and how an informant with guts blew up the plot. When you read it, you’ll wonder how many more of these guys are out there waiting for the signal to strike.
Savior of the Republic… Pat Toomey? — If you don’t know who Pat Toomey is, don’t feel bad. He’s a not-super-famous GOP senator from Pennsylvania. And according to some new research, he’s the man who can convince Republicans the election wasn’t stolen.
Researchers at Stanford University wanted to see whether statements from “elite” political figures could knock people (especially Republicans) off the idea the 2020 election was stolen. They showed subjects a bunch of clips of Republicans and Democrats stating that the election was secure, and, it turns out, a significant number of Republicans actually responded. One of the guys who worked: Pat Toomey.
It’s good news, according to the researchers, because it suggests GOP elites can sway public opinion against Big Lie BS. Aaaaand here’s the problem: This stuff worked under laboratory conditions, but in the real world, Toomey is retiring from the Senate, after years getting trashed by Trump. So much for our experimental heroes.
An Election Plotter on the Election Board — You know the one where the bank robber is put in charge of vault security? A lawyer who’s on tape trying to help Trump muscle Georgia officials into stealing the 2020 election was appointed to a federal election integrity advisory committee, it was reported this week. Attorney Cleta Mitchell got named to the Board of Advisors for the federal Election Assistance Commission, which makes recommendations on election security and best practices.
Mitchell was on the line when Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, trying to get Raffensperger to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia. She can be heard tossing out a lot of theories at the official, trying to get him to decertify election results. Mitchell was appointed back in August, but no one noticed until she joined the board earlier this month.
Rickia Young, a 29-year-old nurse's aide said, "I still ache every day," she said of her injuries. "I can barely play with my son." (photo: Aaron Ricketts/NBC News)
Protesters filled streets around the world after George Floyd’s killing. For some, the scars of that summer run deep.
“The cops were banging and yelling, ‘Get the f--- out of the car!’” Young recalled. “They were trying to bust all of the windows out. I was yelling, ‘My son’s in the car, stop! Stop!’ Then I felt my face on fire from the mace. From that moment, I was fighting to live.”
She was driving through West Philadelphia early on Oct. 27, 2020, to pick up a family friend who was out among demonstrators protesting the killing of Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man who had been shot by police responding to a 911 call a day earlier. She was attempting to make a U-turn through the rowdy crowd when Philadelphia police officers approached her car, broke the windows, dragged her from the vehicle and beat her. She became separated from her son amid the attack. The city of Philadelphia recently agreed to pay Young a $2 million settlement for the attack in September. Young, whose son is now 3, has also sued the police union over the photo, which she claims was misleading. The lawsuit is pending. However, she said neither the settlement nor the lawsuit can undo what happened.
“I still ache every day,” she said of her injuries. “I can barely play with my son. If I try to run, my back will hurt. I can barely do everyday things. I can’t even hold a baby for a long time because my arm will give out on me. I never thought in a million years that my body would feel so old so soon. It’s really been hard.”
Later, the nation's largest police labor union,the National Fraternal Order of Police, posted a Facebook photo showing Young's son in the arms of a female Philadelphia police officer just after the incident. In the post, officials said the officer rescued the lost child from the “complete lawlessness” of the protest, writing, “WE ARE the only thing standing between Order and Anarchy.”
Young was never charged with a crime.
Young is among many Americans who say they were severely injured by police in the turbulent months after George Floyd’s death on Memorial Day 2020. Amid what has been called the broadest protests in U.S. history, with thousands of people showing up at hundreds of locations across the country to protest police violence and advocate for Floyd, Wallace, Breonna Taylor and other victims, dozens of demonstrators left marches with broken bones, cuts, bruises and more permanent injuries like blindness.
Many officers arrived at the protests dressed in tactical gear and deployed crowd-control agents like pepper spray and tear gas, as well as “less-lethal” weapons (known as kinetic impact projectiles) like rubber bullets and bean-bag rounds, on the primarily peaceful protesters.
At least 115 protesters across the country were shot with these crowd-control weapons in the neck or head from May 26 to July 27, 2020 according to a report from Physicians for Human Rights.
Hospital stays, lawsuits and calls for police accountability ensued. A year later, many like Young are still struggling to recover, and others fear there’s no healing for them at all.
Young said she suffered torn ligaments in her shoulder, an injury to her back, bruising on her right leg, and lacerations to her face. She was handcuffed and separated from her then 2-year-old son for several hours.
“They treated me like an animal,” said Young, who still lives with her mother.
“He’s got years worth of recovery in front of him.”
Dounya Zayer, 22, said this is certainly true for her. She said she suffered four herniated discs, two pinched nerves, a sprained ligament in her back, and a concussion when a New York City police officer allegedly shoved her violently to the pavement during a protest on May 29 in Brooklyn.
“I catch myself in pain so frequently,” Zayer said. “It was a single moment this man made this decision. He walked away from it, but he ruined my life.”
Zayer said she is still undergoing physical therapy. She said she has stopped driving because she fears being pulled over by police and facing abuse because of the publicity surrounding her injury. The officer Zayer alleged to have smacked her cellphone out of her hand and pushed her, Vincent D’Andraia, was initially arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault. Over a year later, D’Andraia remains on modified duty, an NYPD spokesperson said, and it is unclear what penalties he will face. Zayer testified at a virtual public hearing regarding NYPD misconduct and has filed a lawsuit against the city, as well as the NYPD, D’Andraia and others.
A former gymnast, Zayer said she fears her days of mobility and flexibility are over. Zayer said she quit her job as a teacher because of her injuries and briefly tried working as a nanny to make ends meet, but that proved too painful. Now Zayer remains unemployed and is struggling to live by herself.
“Living alone is impossible. I have to reach out to people for help with almost everything,” she said. “If I want to set my air conditioner up, if I want to carry my groceries up my stairs, if I want to clean my cat litter. If I stand to do my dishes for more than 15 minutes, I’m in pain.”
Police violence against protesters last year was widely documented, but it’s unclear just how many people endured injuries because not everyone sought medical attention or even reported their attacks. Zayer is one of scores of protesters whose injuries were captured and posted on social media. For others, their severe injuries were all the evidence they had of the violence.
Argelio Giron underwent emergency surgery to remove a ruptured testicle after police shot him in the groin with a rubber bullet during a May 31 protest in Sonoma County, California. On June 4, Martin Gugino, who is in his 70s, suffered a fractured skull and concussion after police in Buffalo, New York, pushed him to the ground at a demonstration. Randy Stewart alleged in a damages claim that a Los Angeles police officer shot him in the back of the head with a rubber bullet, causing a brain hemorrhage, tinnitus, speech and vision trouble, and more.
After the protests died down, those injured by police were left with pain, doctors visits and mounting medical bills. Victims filed lawsuits and sought accountability from the police departments responsible for their injuries.
Giron received $200,000 in a settlement from Santa Rosa, California, according to The Press Democrat. The city of Eugene, Oregon, paid $45,000 to settle a lawsuit from a Eugene Weekly reporter, Henry Houston, who was tear-gassed and shot with pepper balls while covering a protest. In Minneapolis, the City Council approved a $57,900 settlement to Graciela Cisneros, whose eye was injured when an officer fired a projectile at her as she and her partner left a demonstration, The Star Tribune reported.
Five protesters were awarded a total of $1.9 million by Santa Rosa as a result of police-inflicted protest injuries. One plaintiff, Marqus Martinez, is still recovering after being hit with a sting ball grenade in his face on May 31 as he recorded the police on his cellphone. His mouth was split up to his nose; he also suffered a broken jaw and concussion, according to the suit. Video of the incident showed the small blast, and Martinez is heard groaning in pain.
“The explosion blew his face open and knocked all of his teeth in, propelling a couple of them into his mouth,” said Izaak Schwaiger, who represented Martinez and the others in the lawsuit. “He’s got years worth of recovery in front of him.”
It is rare for police to face consequences for such violence. No one was charged in relation to Martinez’s injury. But Sgt. Mike Clark of the Santa Rosa Police Department was suspended without pay for 20 hours after a police investigation found he was the one who fired the grenade launcher that injured Martinez.
Prosecutors charged officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe with felony assault for Gugino’s injury, but a Buffalo grand jury this year dismissed the charges. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office refiled assault charges against former Officer Joseph Bologna after a judge cleared him of hitting a Temple University student with a baton.
And a Portland, Oregon, grand jury only recently indicted Officer Corey Budworth on an assault charge after he was caught on camera appearing to hit a protester in the head in August 2020.
Crowd-control agents like rubber bullets can be dangerous and sometimes lethal
Crowd-control agents like rubber bullets and bean-bag rounds are meant to be a less lethal approach to policing protests. But experts say they’re still quite dangerous, and in rare cases can be deadly. For example, bean-bag rounds are packed with lead shotgun pellets, according to KFMB. A shot from such a round has been said to deliver “the equivalent of a punch from Mike Tyson.”
“People think that rubber bullets just bounce off people like a Nerf gun, but they don't,” said Dan Maxwell, a lecturer at the University of New Haven and 25-year police veteran. “They hurt. Eighty percent of people hit with these end up with bruises or abrasions, and occasionally they’ll penetrate.”
It took Abigail Rodas, 23, weeks to eat and talk again after a Los Angeles officer allegedly shot her with a rubber bullet last June during a police violence protest, mangling the lower half of her face. Doctors stitched her mouth back together and inserted a permanent metal plate to repair her fractured jawbone.
“My whole face was swollen. I wasn’t able to talk. I had to adjust with texting or a white board, writing things down for my family,” Rodas said. “I dropped like 12 pounds because I could only have liquids like broths and juices. I couldn’t move my jaw because I had screws in my gums to keep me from opening it too wide.”
The pain and side effects from medications made going to school impossible, so Rodas dropped out. Today, she works various art jobs for a living. She lives with permanent scars on her lips and chin and often suffers painful spasms in her head, she said. Rodas sent a complaint to the Los Angeles Police Department and, more than a year later, the agency sent a response declaring her allegations “unfounded,” her attorney Jorge Gonzales said.
Rodas is one of several plaintiffs named in a class-action lawsuit over the department’s crowd-control tactics. Los Angeles police officials said they could not comment on pending litigation.
Projectiles aren’t the only harmful crowd-control weapons, though.
Chemical weapons like tear gas are banned from being used in international warfare under the 1925 Geneva Protocol, but police departments in the U.S. are allowed to use them as a method of riot control. Tear gas can cause irritation to the eyes, mouth, throat, skin and lungs. When used in an enclosed area, these weapons can have long-term effects like eye problems, asthma and even respiratory failure leading to death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 50 plaintiffs are named in a class-action lawsuit claiming Charlotte, North Carolina, police trapped them in a parking garage during a June 2020 protest and tear-gassed them, shot them with projectiles and threw flashbangs, a less-lethal explosive intended to disorient people.
Police maintain that crowd-control agents are essential for quelling rowdy protests. “They are safer. They give us a standoff distance. If you take these tools away from us, we’re defaulted to batons or firearms. There’s nothing in between,” said Lt. Travis Norton, a member of the California Association of Tactical Officers and an officer with California’s Oceanside Police Department.
But critics say the “riot agents” aren’t as harmless as law enforcement agencies let on.
The U.S. began using rubber and plastic bullets for crowd control during Vietnam War protests but stopped using them in protest settings in the 1970s after a fatality, according to the report from Physicians for Human Rights. They later became a staple among local law enforcement agencies in the ’80s after a Supreme Court decision renewed American interest in nonlethal methods.
Dr. Rohini Haar, an emergency physician, medical adviser with Physicians for Human Rights and an adjunct professor at University of California, Berkeley, described these projectiles as “military weapons” commonly used on oppressed groups. Haar said she saw several injuries from crowd-control weapons during the Floyd protests.
“Seeing things like broken bones or someone hit in the eye is not rare,” Harr said, referring to projectiles. “They’re dangerous when fired up close and they’re dangerous from far away. They’re indiscriminate. This is really not what we should be using when policing crowds.”
Policies may change but physical damage is permanent
Rules on using crowd-control agents vary among the nation’s law enforcement agencies.Last June, 13 U.S. senators urged the Congress’ investigative entity, the Government Accountability Office, to investigate misuse of rubber bullets and bean-bag rounds against protesters. Some cities and states are examining how police departments use these weapons. Since last summer, authorities in Denver; Dallas; Austin, Texas; San Jose, California; Los Angeles; and Seattle have issued orders to curb the use of crowd-control agents amid the protests.
Even so, reports show that some officers violated their own department’s rules during the protests. Two Santa Rosa Police Department officers were disciplined for protest control tactics, including Officer Noel Gaytan, who allegedly shot Giron with an unauthorized rubber bullet.
Any policy change comes too late for Shantania Love, 30, who is now permanently blind in one eye because of a projectile. Love, of Sacramento, said she believes she was struck in the eye by a rubber bullet when police began firing at a crowd of protesters at a demonstration on May 29.
“It was probably the worst pain I’ve ever felt. It felt like I got hit in the face with a bowling ball. The entire left side of my head hurt. It was intense,” Love said. Her eye was swollen shut for two days before she went to the hospital. There, doctors told her she’d never be able to see out of her left eye again.
“I just sat there and I cried,” she said. “It was traumatic. I’ve had multiple surgeries and doctors’ appointments. I had lived 29 years being able to see out of both eyes and now this happens.”
Love is still adjusting to the disability a year later: dealing with severe pain and migraines and struggling with daily tasks like preparing meals and walking at home. She says she often bumps into objects due to her skewed depth perception and has only recently begun driving again. She said she was out of work as a medical assistant for 11 months and couldn’t afford to cover her medical bills. What’s worse, she said, playing with her 6- and 8-year-old daughters is harder than ever.
“They’ll try to show something to me, or throw something to me on the left side, and they forget, ‘Mommy can’t see over there,’” she said. The Sacramento Police Department did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
The physical pain and financial hardship are only compounded by the psychological stress of enduring police violence, those who were injured say. Love said she suffers from depression and severe panic attacks as a result of her injury.
Rodas, whose jaw was permanently damaged during protests in Los Angeles, is working through her intense depression with a therapist.
“I feel like a lot of me was taken away. My personality changed a lot,” Rodas said. “Mentally and physically, it’s hard to see myself in a different way. I don’t look like myself anymore. I’m like, ‘Who is this?’ The depression has been intense. I had thoughts of ‘they should have just killed me.’”
Meanwhile, Cerise Castle said she tries to keep her mind off of her injuries for fear of falling into a deep depression.
Castle, 28, a freelance journalist in Los Angeles, suffered internal bone bruising on her right ankle and a laceration to her arm after she was shot with a rubber bullet and fell to the ground while covering a protest on May 30 in Los Angeles.
“My ankle will never be the same,” she said. “I struggle to accept that. I like skateboarding. … That’s something I’m probably not going to be able to do anymore. I’m not going to be able to come back from this.”
Castle lost her job after her injury and spent six months bed-ridden. She turned her attention to police accountability and devoted her time to writing a report exposing deputy gangs within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. This, she said, is the silver lining to her battle with police violence.
“I can’t think of a better thing I could have done with my time,” Castle said. “I’m proud of myself for taking something that was an unfortunate situation and turning it into something that can help my community and make some change.”
Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the "alt-right" march down East Market Street toward Emancipation Park during the Unite the Right rally on Aug. 12, 2017, in Charlottesville. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Jury expected to begin deliberations in trial of civil lawsuit alleging two dozen conspired to commit violence
The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Friday in the trial of a civil lawsuit alleging that two dozen white nationalists, neo-Nazis and white supremacist organizations conspired to commit violence during two days of deadly demonstrations that rattled America’s conscience.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs showed the jury dozens of text messages, chatroom exchanges and social media postings by the rally’s main planners, including some peppered with racial epithets and talk of “cracking skulls” of anti-far-right counter-protesters.
“We sued the people who were responsible – the leaders, the promoters, the group leaders, the people who brought the army, the people who were the most violent members of the army. Those are the people who we ask you to hold accountable today,” said attorney Karen Dunn.
Hundreds of emboldened white nationalists descended on Charlottesville in August 2017, ostensibly to protest the city’s plans to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee. Americans watched in horror as white nationalists surrounded counter-protesters, shouted “Jews will not replace us!” and threw burning tiki torches at them during a night march on the University of Virginia campus.
There followed a day of horrific clashes around the park where the statue was located, before it was removed in the summer of 2021.
Then in a terrible denouement, neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr rammed his car into an anti-white-supremacy protest, killing 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer and injuring others.
Donald Trump, still in the early stages of his presidency, caused uproar by saying there were some “very fine people on both sides” of the protests.
Fields is serving life in prison for murder and hate crimes for the car attack. He is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which seeks monetary damages and a judgment that the defendants violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.
Roberta Kaplan – a lawyer for the plaintiffs famous for advancing same-sex marriage and reportedly counseling New York’s then governor Andrew Cuomo on sexual assault allegations against him – told jurors that if they find the defendants liable for the violence, it is up to them how much to award in damages.
She suggested a range of $7m to $10m for each of the four plaintiffs who were injured in the car attack and $3m to $5m for plaintiffs physically harmed in street clashes or emotionally injured by witnessing the violence. Kaplan did not suggest a specific range for punitive damages.
The lawsuit is being funded by Integrity First for America, a non-profit civil rights organization, and is part of a legal offensive to weaken the far right.
“The bottom line is all of these traditional legal theories are tools to make people answer for their conduct, bring them out of the shadows, expose them for what they are and ultimately show they have less power than they think,” David Dinielli, the deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), previously told the Guardian.
Some defendants in the case used their closing arguments to distance themselves from Fields.
While conceding that the plaintiffs’ lawyers have shown the defendants said “ridiculous” and “offensive” things, the defense has argued that their clients’ use of racial epithets and that their blustery talk in chatrooms before the rally is protected by the first amendment.
“They’re racists, they’re anti-Semites. No kidding. You knew that when you walked in here,” said attorney James Kolenich, who represents Jason Kessler, the lead organizer of the rally.
“What does that do to prove a conspiracy?”
Kolenich said that when the defendants talked about violence before the rally, they were referring to fistfights, pushing and shoving, not plowing into a crowd with a car.
“None of these defendants could have foreseen what James Fields did,” Kolenich said.
Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who coined the term “alt-right” and represented himself at trial, told the jury he had no role in planning the events and did not commit acts of violence. Plaintiffs’ lawyers have portrayed Spencer as the leader of the torch rally.
“The last thing in the world that I wanted by agreeing to speak at Unite the Right was an event that became a catastrophe, that involved the tragic death of a young woman, that involved the injuries to the plaintiffs and that will forever remain a stain on the cause that I sincerely believe in,” Spencer said.
He also reminded the jury about Trump’s comments after the rally, when he failed to immediately denounce the white nationalists and said there were “very fine people on both sides”. That drew a warning from Judge Norman Moon, who said Trump’s remarks were not evidence in the case and could not be used.
Spencer was warned again by the judge when he began to talk about Jesus, whom he described as a radical who was executed for his views.
The white nationalist turned again to the jury.
“Your task – and it’s a difficult one – is to apply the law fairly and precisely,” he said. “Even to those who you might despise.”
The F35 fighter jet is made by U.S. company Lockheed Martin. (photo: Brittanis Pederen/DPA)
The Heritage Foundation has received considerable donations from the arms industry. And now it’s trying to shield that industry from climate regulations targeting military contractors.
The regulation in question was first proposed in an executive order in May. It would require federal contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and their “climate-related financial risk,” and to set “science-based reduction targets.” In other words, companies like Lockheed Martin would have to disclose how much carbon pollution its F‑35 aircraft and cluster bombs actually cause.
In October, the Biden administration started the process to amend federal procurement rules to reflect these changes. “Today’s action sends a strong signal that in order to do business with the federal government, companies must protect consumers by beginning to mitigate the impact of climate change on their operations and supply chains,” Shalanda Young, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said at the time.
The Department of Defense is the world’s biggest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and a bigger carbon polluter than 140 countries. Yet its emissions (and those of other armed forces) are excluded from UN climate negotiations, including the recent COP26 talks. The Biden administration itself supports a massive military budget, initially requesting $753 billion for the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, a number that has since ballooned, with the Senate set to vote on a $778 billion plan. Organizers and researchers argue that, to curb the climate crisis, it is necessary to roll back U.S. militarism and dismantle the military budget.
But according to the Heritage Foundation, even this modest proposal is a bridge too far. Earlier in November, Maiya Clark, research associate in the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, wrote an article blasting the proposed changes as harmful to the “defense industrial base” of the United States. “The additional expense of measuring, reporting, and reducing contractors’ greenhouse gas emissions would in turn be passed along to their customer: the Department of Defense,” she writes in the article, co-published in the conservative Washington Examiner. As a result, Clark argues, the Department of Defense wouldn’t be able to afford the items it needs to fortify itself, threatening America’s war-fighting ability.
“Defense industrial base” is a buzzword that has picked up steam during the pandemic: It sends the message that, whatever happens with the economy and pandemic, we need to make sure we are in “fighting shape” — by keeping military contractors afloat. This concept was invoked to explain why, at the beginning of the pandemic, factories that produce bombs and tankers should be allowed to stay open, even amid the outbreak risk to workers. And it was also used to justify subsidies to contractors during the hardship of the pandemic.
Clark’s framing could lead one to believe that the Department of Defense is forced to resort to bake sales to afford its F‑35s. In reality, the United States has the largest military budget in the world by far — greater than the next 11 countries combined. And that trend is poised to remain as Congress moves to pass another mammoth military budget. As Lindsay Koshgarian, program director for National Priorities Project, a research organization, tells In These Times: “The idea that the military industrial complex is in danger is laughable. This is an industry that took in $3.4 trillion in public funds in the last ten years, more than half of all military spending during that time. That kind of funding should at the very least come with some accountability.”
Ultimately, Clark’s piece argues that the regulations are unfair to companies. Clark writes that “adding burdensome regulations to the already onerous Federal Acquisition Regulation would create a difficult or even impossible task for contractors, leading some firms to simply exit the defense market. The largest defense contractors for the biggest programs, like Lockheed Martin for the F‑35 or Huntington Ingalls for the Ford-class aircraft carrier, would somehow have to collect emissions data for their tens of thousands of subcontractors and suppliers.”
Clark leaves unexplained why the financial well-being of a company that manufactured the bomb that killed 40 Yemeni children in a school bus in 2018 should be weighted more heavily than modest regulations aimed at staving off humanity-threatening climate change. What’s more, Lockheed Martin is doing just fine financially, and has received considerable help from the government during the pandemic.
Most importantly, Clark leaves out this critical detail: Lockheed Martin is just one of numerous weapons manufacturers that has directly funded the Heritage Foundation. According to a report by the think tank Center for International Policy (CIP), the Heritage Foundation ranks ninth among the top think tanks that received funding from military contractors and the U.S. government from 2014 to 2019. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon were two of those major funders, both of which are among the largest weapons companies in the world and would be impacted by the new regulation.
Ben Freeman, author of the CIP report, says, “Unfortunately, since that report was published, Heritage has moved towards full secrecy on donors, and doesn’t publish any specifics,” but adds he is “100%” certain the think tank still receives funding from the weapons industry. “If they had suddenly stopped, I’d be shocked,” he tells In These Times.
The Heritage Foundation did not respond to a request from In These Times for information about its funding sources, but even under the unlikely scenario that the Heritage Foundation decided to drastically halt its cash stream from weapons companies, the documented donations are recent enough that, likely, the programs or staffers that money funded are still around. Regardless, the article raises questions about what kind of advocacy the weapons industry might be doing behind closed doors. And the fact that it name-checks the hardships imposed on Lockheed Martin, which we know has provided funding to the Heritage Foundation, certainly raises eyebrows.
This case provides a window into the murky world of think tanks, which are often viewed as academic and above-the-fray institutions but operate more as lobbying outfits. If Lockheed Martin were to run its own public relations campaign against the Biden administration’s climate regulation, the public might rightfully be skeptical of a company that markets weapons; an influential and prominent think tank, with its long history of influencing government, is better positioned to take up such a cause.
Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation exerted significant power over the Reagan administration, which adopted a vast swath of the think tank’s recommendations, from tax policy to military spending. The Heritage Foundation would go on to influence the Tea Party movement and the Trump administration, claiming credit for Trump’s imposition of work requirement rules for food stamp recipients. Arguably, the Heritage Foundation’s top policy priority is opposing unions and social programs for the poor, but it also shows consistent opposition to climate actions, however meager, arguing that climate diplomacy toward China is too conciliatory and that new research and dire warnings about the consequences of climate change from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change aren’t a “blank check for green policies.”
The Washington Examiner, which co-published Clark’s article, is a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, known for its extremely conservative bent. So this isn’t the kind of article meant to appeal to liberals. Rather, the article sends a message to the business community and conservative groups that the Heritage Foundation is taking a position against even modest regulation.
Until December 14, the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council is soliciting public comment as it considers making regulatory changes to reflect the new rule and “ensure that major Federal agency procurements minimize the risk of climate change.” Clark’s article appears timed for this period of public input, though it remains unclear whether the Heritage Foundation’s opposition, with its weapons-industry backers, will influence regulators.
As the climate crisis brings increasingly catastrophic storms, droughts, flash floods and heat waves, the stakes of these kinds of shadow advocacy efforts are monumental. The latest United Nations report warns that dramatic action to curb greenhouse gas emissions must be taken immediately — on a global scale — to stave off worst-case scenarios, which would likely see mass death events and entire countries swallowed into the sea.
In the words of Koshgarian: “Climate change is the single biggest existential threat we face, and the military itself is a significant source of emissions. So no, we shouldn’t stick our heads in the sand about how much the military industrial complex is emitting.”
Victims of forced sterilizations protest in Lima, Peru, in 2014. Public hearings to uncover this dark chapter of the Fujimori dictatorship began in January. (photo: Ernesto Benavides/Getty)
The Peruvian dictator sought to reduce poverty rates in his country by curbing the birth rate of low-income people.
"Martinez's attitude shows that the judiciary power does not prioritize the case," the defense lawyer Milton Campos stated, recalling that the Attorney's General Office tried to archive the investigation in 2009, 2014, 2016, and 2018.
"Our voices are dry of telling thousands of times what the dictatorship did to us. If Martinez determines that there are not sufficient reasons to investigate the case, our attorneys will appeal his decision," forced sterilization's victim Victoria Vigo stated.
Between 1996 and 2000, Fujimori organized countless "health festivals" in remote villages, in which fireworks were thrown to attract, deceive, and sterilize women without informed consent. This strategy sought to reduce poverty rates in the country by curbing the birth rate of low-income people.
To guarantee this policy's effectiveness, Fujimori awarded three travel tickets to health workers who accumulated the highest number of sterilizations performed in a day and even threatened to fire them if they refused to carry them.
The far-right politician, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for his mediate authorship in the murders of 25 Peruvians, has not ruled on the case. Neither has done his daughter Keiko, who was the first lady during Alberto’s presidency.
President Pedro Castillo promised justice to sterilized women and recalled that his own farmer family suffered forced sterilizations. "The pain of the victims of these atrocious practices is also mine," he stressed.
The jaw bomb detonates when bitten. Elephants that survive the blast die a slow and painful death from either infected wounds or starvation because they can no longer eat or drink. (photo: Department of Wildlife Conservation)
This young elephant was yet another victim of “jaw bombs” — an improvised explosive device concealed in fodder bait that detonates when bitten. Its local name is hakka patas: jaw exploder.
Hakka patas are typically targeted at wild boars and other wildlife for bushmeat, which they kill instantly. Elephants are much bigger, so while the explosives don’t kill them right away, they inflict gruesome mouth injuries and a long-drawn-out death from infection or starvation.
The first reported cases of Sri Lankan elephants (Elephas maximus maximus) killed by hakka patas came in 2008. A decade later, these explosives have become the number one killer of this endangered species. Sri Lanka has consistently recorded more than 200 elephant killings a year for the past three years, one of the highest rates per capita of any country with a wild elephant population.
Easy-to-make explosives
The elephant calf at the Weheragala reservoir last year was the first reported case of a hakka patas being used in Wasgamuwa National Park, an ostensibly protected area. So the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society (SLWCS), an NGO that works closely with villagers to help minimize human-elephant conflict, sought to explore a little more this now-dominant threat to the country’s elephants.
“We conducted covert investigations and found that some farmers have started to use this horrible method of killing animals since June and July of 2020” said Ravi Corea, founder and president of the SLWCS.
Corea and his team tried to identify the perpetrators and raise awareness among villagers to discourage them from resorting to this inhumane method of dealing with elephants. But over the course of the next year, more elephants fell victim to the jaw bombs, showing an increase in the use of the explosive bait.
Hakka patas are easy to make. Gunpowder is mixed with gravel and metal scraps that serve as the shrapnel, and the mixture is tightly packed together. It’s then balled up with fodder and left in areas frequented by animals.
“As the trade in wild boar meat has become a huge business in some of the villages around Wasgamuwa, it also has become the most common meat consumed by villagers” Corea told Mongabay.
Corea learned through SLWCS’s local network that the explosive baits are manufactured by just a few people in the area, who sell them for around 1,500 rupees ($7.50) apiece.
Pop pop crackers, the kind that explode when thrown against a hard surface, provide the ideal ingredient that make jaw exploders work, says SLWSC researcher Chandima Fernando. In Sri Lanka, firecrackers are mainly used in April for the traditional Sinhala-Hindu New Year celebrations take place, and villagers typically keep a few packets on hand throughout the year to shoo away crop-raiding elephants and other wildlife.
But the widespread availability of pop pop crackers now means it’s easy for anyone in the community to make jaw bombs, Fernando said.
The hunters
“Villagers know who the hunters in the area are and who sets the jaw bombs,” says Deepani Jayantha, a community worker from the Hambegamuwa community near Udawalawe National Park, a known hotspot for poachers. The community was struck by tragedy in 2016 when a 10-year-old boy was killed when a hakka patas that he found while playing exploded.
The hotspot for hakka patas use against elephants appears to be Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka’s North Central province, along with parts of Eastern province. The Galgamuwa region in Anuradhapura is particularly famous for its dense elephant population. Susantha Punchi Banda, not his real name, is known within the community here for his ability to make potent jaw exploders.
“I’ve been hunting using this method for nearly 10 years” Banda told Mongabay. “I set up jaw bombs inside the forest patch at the edge of the village and collect the victims later. After making the explosives, we cover it with dried fish particles and this draws the wild boars. There are instances that other animals also bite on these explosives, including the occasional jackal.”
Banda said he was not aware of any elephants taking his bait, “but I have seen a number of elephants suffering due to biting on jaw bombs set up by others, as our village is full of hunters like me.”
He added, “I feel sorry for the elephants as they do not die instantly like other animals, but it is the fate of the beast.”
Banda used to hunt wildlife with a gun, before a colleague taught him how to make hakka patas, a method he found much easier for hunting.
“It is dangerous and if the device gets unnecessarily crushed, it can prove disastrous,” Banda said, recalling an instance when one of his colleagues lost fingers while trying to make a jaw exploder.
“It is not hard to learn, but I do not teach others. Those who hunt know how to make it, but farmers come to buy jaw exploders from me to protect their crop,” he said.
Banda also said that some farmers deliberately target elephants with jaw bombs, often out of a vengeful response from extensive damage to their crops or home. The bait of choice when targeting elephants is a pumpkin, he added.
Source of explosives
Hakka patas only get attention when elephant deaths are reported, but plenty of other wildlife fall victim to these explosives, largely unnoticed, according to veterinary surgeons at the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC).
Due to the widespread use of hakka patas, some environmentalists say it’s possible the jaw bombs are being manufactured for commercial purposes centrally and distributed throughout Sri Lanka through a covert network, though there’s no evidence yet to substantiate this allegation.
What is known is that hakka patas are made by a handful of people at the local level and sold on order, which means the industry could be considered a commercial enterprise at the local level, Corea said.
If they were manufactured in factories and sold covertly through secret networks, then these factories would most likely be linked to fireworks manufacturers or people who work for them, given the need for a reliable supply of gunpowder.
For now, there’s no evidence of any such practice.
But conservationists warn that with the COVID-19 pandemic bringing the fireworks industry to a grinding halt, it’s possible that job losses in the industry might push some people to transfer their skills into producing jaw exploders. The risk is always there, they warn, which underscores the need for better surveillance.
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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