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Showing posts with label H-2B VISAS. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

MASSTERLIST: The brewing fight over COVID mandates

 




By Chris Van Buskirkwith help from Keith Regan and Matt Murphy

12/21/2021

The brewing fight over COVID mandates

Happening Today
 
 

9 a.m. | Gov. Charlie Baker and Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders hold a press conference to provide "a COVID-19 update to discuss measures to support the healthcare system."

9:30 a.m. | Law Enforcement Body Camera Task Force meets.

10:45 a.m. | Secretary of State William Galvin hosts a holiday concert outside the State House featuring Maynard High School Chorus.

11 a.m. | Administration and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan, House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz and Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues invite economists and budget experts to testify on what they expect to see in fiscal 2023 from state tax collections.

 
 
 





 
Today's News
 
 
Programming Note: MASSterList will not publish on Friday, Dec. 24. We'll be back in your inbox on Monday, Dec. 27. Happy holidays and stay safe!
 
 
Boston looks to proof of vax requirement to curb cases
 

There's another fight brewing over COVID policies and mandates.

This time it's centered around Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's new order requiring proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, theatres, sports venues, and gyms that kicks in next month. The mandate extends to city workers, who will need to have at least one jab by Jan. 15 and two doses by Feb. 15.

The requirement will likely draw legal challenges, with Boston Herald's Erin Tiernan reporting that unions for city employees are in talks with attorneys and reviewing legal options. An organizer for Boston First Responders was blunter, saying the organization is ready to "take this to court if we have to."

The legal question is interesting and we'll be watching closely for any action in court. It is important to note here that there is an already ongoing legal battle at the federal level with President Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 employees or more.

A ruling in November had blocked the mandate but a federal appeals court in Cincinnati reinstated the measure last week. There are already calls from Republicans and businesses across the nation asking the United States Supreme Court to halt the order.

Even here in Massachusetts, a challenge from a State Police union to Gov. Charlie Baker's vaccine mandate for executive employees was dismissed by the Department of Labor Relations earlier this month.

As to how much precedent all of that sets for any potential legal challenges here in Massachusetts, we'll have to wait and see. But what we do know is that requiring proof of vaccination to enter establishments isn't a new tactic.

New York City put one in place months ago and released a proof-of-vaccination app where residents could virtually store their vaccination card and ID. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker even teased a digital COVID-19 vaccine passport his administration is developing in conjunction with a dozen states.

Digital infrastructure is crucial when pushing out a policy like this. Will there be a Boston app like the one in New York? If so, will the city have the capacity to develop one in a timely manner that lines up with the start of the mandate? And will that app have the bandwidth to support at least a good majority of the city?

State House News Service's Katie Lannan reports that the Wu administration plans to develop a proof-of-vaccination app like the one in New York. Officials from Boston have been in touch with counterparts in New York to help move the process along.

As we wait for more details, we're reminded of the orange octopus that plagued so many peoples' computers as the state rolled out their VaxFinder website.

 
 
Spilka reveals she had a 'mild stroke' in November
 

After five weeks of absence from the State House, Senate President Karen Spilka took to the chamber Monday morning. The reason for her leave? In an interview with NBC10 Boston, Spilka said she experienced a "mild stroke" on Nov. 15, the same day she was scheduled to travel to the White House for the signing of a $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure bill. The trip was called off that Monday and the Senate president was not seen in the building in for weeks.

"I had what my doctors diagnosed as a mild stroke. I'm fine. In fact, I'm feeling great now. But I wanted to speak out because I think it's really important for people to hear about what happened to me from me," Spilka said in the interview. "I was very tired. I was very fatigued afterwards. And my doctor said to rest, that was his prescription to me."

 
 
Good news
 

We have some good news for the MASSterList community! Two weeks ago we told you about a shortage of toys for ABCD's annual winter holiday toy drive. Well, because of you and many others, the organization managed to reach their toy drive goal of 6,000 toys.

"With the pandemic still impacting the families we serve in Boston and the Mystic Valley region – with jobs lost and soaring prices – many parents had very limited resources for buying gifts for their children this year," said ABCD President and CEO John Drew. "We knew we had to help them put smiles on their children’s faces after this difficult year, as the ABCD Toy Drive has done for more than 50 years."

 
 
'Exponential rise of omicron'
 

Omicron is starting to create a deluge of cases in New England. Specialists with the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness warned that the new variant is leading to a surge in cases all around the region. Boston Globe's Travis Andersen reports that the consortium is led by Harvard Medical School and officials there are cautioning of an "exponential rise of omicron everywhere" in New England.

Boston Globe
 
 
Virus upends holiday plans
 

The virus is infecting holiday plans. Associated Press' Philip Marcelo and Jill Lawless report that organizers of the New Years Eve party in downtown Los Angeles canceled the event while a mask mandate took effect yesterday in Rhode Island. That came at the same time Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced the indoor proof of vaccination requirement.

Associated Press
 
 
Lawmakers crack open deal on egg bill, send it to Baker
 

A list minute deal helped usher a bill to Gov. Charlie Baker's desk that could stave off a shortage and price increase of eggs in Massachusetts. State House News Service's Chris Lisinski reports that lawmakers agreed to a compromise that tweaks sections of a 2016 law setting standards for housing hens and regulations around selling pork products sources from cruelly confined animals.

More from Lisinski: "Lawmakers said they believe the bill will help stave off shortages in available eggs and pork products that could stem from the new law, even as senators drew a line in the sand on enforcing cruelty standards to protect pigs."

State House News Service
 
 
'Near-universal protection'
 

A new report from the state Department of Public Health finds that even though cases of COVID-19 are climbing among vaccinated people, the effects are not leading to serious illness. MassLive's Noah R. Bombard reports that DPH says 97 percent of all breakthrough COVID cases have not resulted in hospitalization or death.

MassLive
 
 
Case against Southcoast Health CEO dismissed
 

Case dismissed. Southcoast Health President and CEO Keith Hovan was facing a charge of assault and battery until a district court judge dismissed it during a minutes-long bench trial Monday morning. New Bedford Light's Anastasia Lennon reports that Hovan was arrested on Nov. 6 and charged with domestic assault and battery against his wife.

More from Lennon: "Hovan’s wife was present with her own attorney and invoked her spousal privilege (pleaded the Fifth) in declining to testify as a witness against Hovan. As a result, the commonwealth could not prosecute the case, the judge said."

New Bedford Light
 
 
A look inside a New Hampshire hospital grappling with COVID cases
 

What's it like at the epicenter of surging COVID-19 cases? WBUR's Anthony Brooks takes listeners into Monadnock Community Hospital in southwest New Hampshire where doctors are having trouble finding beds for all patients.

More from Brooks: "On a recent day, [Dr. Eric Lasky] treated a 38-year-old woman who was having trouble breathing. He put her on high-flow oxygen and said she was very close to needing intubation. There was no beds free in the rest of the hospital, so Lasky and his team kept her in the ER. They weren't sure whether she would survive."

WBUR
 
 
Help is coming: Cape businesses hail plan to boost seasonal worker visas
 

U.S. Rep. William Keating delivered some much-needed good news to Cape and Island businesses that scrambled to fill job vacancies this year, announcing the Department of Homeland Security will lift the cap on visas awarded to international seasonal workers, Doug Fraser of the Cape Cod Times reports. Keating says as many as 40,000 additional visas will be available in 2022.

Cape Cod Times
 
 
Russian national extradited to U.S. to face charges in global scheme
 

A scheme using IP addresses hosted at a data in center in Boston was worth millions of dollars before law enforcement stepped into the ring. Boston Business Journal's Lucia Maffei reports that Acting U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Mendell announced the extradition of a Russian national to the United States to face charges in what has been described as a global scheme.

More from Maffei: "Vladislav Klyushin, 41, of Moscow, Russia, was extradited from Switzerland and charged with conspiring to obtain unauthorized access to computers, and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, and with obtaining unauthorized access to computers, wire fraud and securities fraud, according to prosecutors."

Boston Business Journal
 
 
Under wraps: Danvers says it will stop informing public of “minor” hate speech inciden
 

Problem “solved.” Officials in Danvers say they will no longer make public announcements every time an incident of hate speech occurs in town, saying they don’t want to encourage copycats who want attention. Paul Leighton of the Salem News reports the new policy applies only to “minor” incidents and not larger controversies such as those that have engulfed the local high school hockey and wrestling teams.

Salem News
 
 
Pitching in: State police provide backup after half of Dalton’s department contract Covid
 

State police from the Cheshire barracks are helping to patrol the streets of Dalton, where half of the town’s police force – including its chief – is on the sidelines after testing positive for COVID, Larry Parnass of the Berkshire Eagle reports.

Berkshire Eagle
 
 
Wicked good: Hudson earns national honor for its downtown
 

Downtown Hudson has been named the best Main Street business district in the country after beating out some 200 other communities for the title in a national contest – results that local businesses say is the result of decades of reinvestment in the area. Lillian Eden of the MetroWest Daily News has the details.

MetroWest Daily News
 
 
Today's Headlines
 
Metro
 

Here’s the list of indoor spaces where Boston will require proof of COVID-19 vaccination - Boston.com

Lynn and Salem expected to follow Boston's lead on Covid - Lynn Item

 
Massachusetts
 

Judge hears arguments regarding damages in Telegram & Gazette, Worcester police records lawsuit - Telegram & Gazette

Hudson earns title of ‘Best Main Street in America’ beating out more than 200 other locations in nationwide competition - MassLive

 
Nation
 

Biden to announce 500 million COVID-19 at-home test buy - The Hill

Jan. 6 panel seeks interview, records from Rep. Scott Perry - Associated Press


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RSN: Norman Solomon | The Pentagon's 20-Year Killing Spree Has Always Treated Civilians as Expendable

 


 

Reader Supported News
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American soldiers wait to board helicopters at Kandahar airbase ahead of an operation in Afghanistan on 19 May, 2003. (photo: AFP)
RSN: Norman Solomon | The Pentagon's 20-Year Killing Spree Has Always Treated Civilians as Expendable
Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "Top U.S. officials want us to believe that the Pentagon carefully spares civilian lives while making war overseas."

Top U.S. officials want us to believe that the Pentagon carefully spares civilian lives while making war overseas. The notion is pleasant. And with high-tech killing far from home, the physical and psychological distances have made it even easier to believe recent claims that American warfare has become “humane.”

Such pretenses should be grimly laughable to anyone who has read high-quality journalism from eyewitness reporters like Anand Gopal and Nick Turse. For instance, Gopal’s article for The New Yorker in September, “The Other Afghan Women,” is an in-depth, devastating piece that exposes the slaughter and terror systematically inflicted on rural residents of Afghanistan by the U.S. Air Force.

Turse, an incisive author and managing editor at TomDispatch, wrote this fall: “Over the last 20 years, the United States has conducted more than 93,300 air strikes -- in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen -- that killed between 22,679 and 48,308 civilians, according to figures recently released by Airwars, a U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group. The total number of civilians who have died from direct violence in America’s wars since 9/11 tops out at 364,000 to 387,000, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project.”

Those deaths have been completely predictable results of U.S. government policies. And in fact, evidence of widespread civilian casualties emerged soon after the “war on terror” started two decades ago. Leaks with extensive documentation began to surface more than 10 years ago, thanks to stark revelations from courageous whistleblowers and the independent media outlet WikiLeaks.

The retribution for their truth-telling has been fierce and unrelenting. WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is in a British prison, facing imminent extradition to the United States, where the chances of a fair trial are essentially zero. Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning spent seven years in a military prison. Former U.S. Air Force analyst Daniel Hale, who revealed murderous effects of U.S. drone warfare, is currently serving a 45-month prison sentence. They had the clarity of mind and heart to share vital information with the public, disclosing not just “mistakes” but patterns of war crimes.

Such realities should be kept in mind when considering how the New York Times framed its blockbuster scoop last weekend, drawing on more than 1,300 confidential documents. Under the big headline “Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes,” the Times assessed U.S. bombing in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan -- and reported that “since 2014, the American air war has been plagued by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and imprecise targeting and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children.”

What should not get lost in all the bold-type words like “failure,” “flawed intelligence” and “imprecise targeting” is that virtually none of it was unforeseeable. The killings have resulted from policies that gave very low priority to prevention of civilian deaths.

The gist of those policies continues. And so does the funding that fuels the nation’s nonstop militarism, most recently in the $768 billion National Defense Authorization Act that spun through Congress this month and landed on President Biden’s desk.

Dollar figures are apt to look abstract on a screen, but they indicate the extent of the mania. Biden had “only” asked for $12 billion more than President Trump’s last NDAA, but that wasn’t enough for the bipartisan hawkery in the House and Senate, which provided a boost of $37 billion instead.

Actually, factoring in other outlays for so-called “defense,” annual U.S. military spending is in the vicinity of $1 trillion. Efforts at restraint have hit a wall. This fall, in a vote on a bill to cut 10 percent of the Pentagon budget, support came from only one-fifth of the House, and not one Republican.

In the opposite direction, House support for jacking up the military budget was overwhelming, with a vote of 363-70. Last week, when it was the Senate’s turn to act on the measure, the vote was 88-11.

Overall, military spending accounts for about half of the federal government’s total discretionary spending -- while programs for helping instead of killing are on short rations for local, state and national government agencies. It’s a destructive trend of warped priorities that serves the long-term agendas of neoliberalism, aptly defined as policies that “enhance the workings of free market capitalism and attempt to place limits on government spending, government regulation, and public ownership.”

While the two parties on Capitol Hill have major differences on domestic issues, relations are lethally placid beyond the water’s edge. When the NDAA cleared the Senate last week, the leaders of the Armed Services Committee were both quick to rejoice. “I am pleased that the Senate has voted in an overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to pass this year’s defense bill,” said the committee’s chair, Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island. The ranking Republican on the panel, Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma, chimed in: “This bill sends a clear message to our allies -- that the United States remains a reliable, credible partner -- and to our adversaries -- that the U.S. military is prepared and fully able to defend our interests around the world.”

The bill also sends a clear message to Pentagon contractors as they drool over a new meal in the ongoing feast of war profiteering.

It’s a long way from their glassed-in office suites to the places where the bombs fall.



Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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Trump Sues New York Attorney General in Attempt to Halt Inquiry Into His CompanyDonald Trump. (photo: Getty Images)

Trump Sues New York Attorney General in Attempt to Halt Inquiry Into His Company
Mariana Alfaro and Jonathan O'Connell, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Former president Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday in his latest attempt to halt her civil investigation into his business."

Former president Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday in his latest attempt to halt her civil investigation into his business.

In the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Upstate New York on behalf of Trump and his real estate company, the former president alleges that James’s inquiry into his business practices has violated his constitutional rights.

“Her mission is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent,” Trump claims in the suit.

News of the lawsuit was first reported by the New York Times.

James’s civil investigation is looking into whether Trump’s company committed financial fraud in the valuations of properties to different entities, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the Monday lawsuit, Trump refers to the investigation as a “witch hunt,” a term he frequently used during his time in the White House to describe the investigation into his 2016 election campaign, and accuses James of abusing her powers “to target her political adversaries and advance her career.”

“Since taking office, she has tirelessly bombarded [Trump], his family and his business, Trump Organization LLC, with unwarranted subpoenas in a bitter crusade to ‘take on’ the President,” the suit claims.

In a statement, James said neither Trump nor his company “get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions.” James noted that Trump has “continually” tried to slow down her investigation and said the new lawsuit is a “collateral attack” against her work.

“Our investigation will continue undeterred because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump,” James said.

Trump, in a statement, claimed his lawsuit is “not about delay” but “about our Constitution.”

“Despite many years of investigation that nobody else could have survived even if they did things just slightly wrong, [James’s] is just a continuation of the political Witch Hunt that has gone on against me by the Radical Left Democrats for years,” he said.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Alina Habba, an attorney for Trump and his company, doubled down on his criticism of James and claimed that she is targeting Trump “with a callous disregard for the ethical and moral obligations she swore to abide by when she became Attorney General.”

“By filing this lawsuit, we intend to not only hold her accountable for her blatant constitutional violations, but to stop her bitter crusade to punish her political opponent in its tracks,” Habba said.

The lawsuit comes less than two weeks after James signaled that she is seeking a deposition from Trump early next year as part of her investigation. She requested to take his testimony on Jan. 7 at her New York office. An attorney for Trump said then that the former president would fight the request in court.

Executives at Trump’s company earlier made an issue out of James’s criticism of Trump while campaigning for the attorney general post and claimed that she has threatened a lawsuit to score political points.

James’s investigation, which began in March 2019, is separate from a criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. Vance’s investigation, which earlier this month entered a crucial phase, is looking into whether Trump defrauded lenders by giving widely different valuations for the same property at the same time. James’s office is assisting with this criminal investigation.

Because James’s is a civil investigation, she can file a lawsuit against Trump over her findings but can’t file criminal charges against him. However, Manhattan prosecutors — led by Vance — have convened a new grand jury to consider potential criminal charges related to the company’s financial practices, according to the people familiar with the investigations. Vance, who is set to retire at the end of the month, has not signaled whether he will bring criminal charges against Trump.

Earlier this month, James announced that she was ending her bid for governor and would run for reelection instead, saying she wanted to continue her work as attorney general and “finish the job” on several “important investigations and cases.”


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Progressives' Biggest Fear About the Build Back Better Act Has Come to PassJoe Manchin. (photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Progressives' Biggest Fear About the Build Back Better Act Has Come to Pass
Li Zhou, Vox
Zhou writes: "There's a reason they wanted the social spending bill tied to infrastructure."

There’s a reason they wanted the social spending bill tied to infrastructure.


For members of “the Squad,” a group of staunch progressives in the House, Sen. Joe Manchin’s statement opposing the Build Back Better Act didn’t come as a surprise. They’d long warned it was just a matter of time before Manchin derailed the bill if a vote on infrastructure legislation, which he supported, was held first.

It turns out they were right.

Manchin has previously voiced a variety of concerns about the massive climate and social spending bill, and has repeatedly demanded it be trimmed down. In an attempt to pressure the moderate senator to support the measure, progressives lobbied Democratic leaders to keep it linked to a vote on a massive infrastructure package known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, as that latter bill was seen as a priority for Manchin.

The bills were coupled for weeks but were eventually separated due to pressure from House moderates and an assurance from President Joe Biden that he’d secure a yes vote from Manchin on the Build Back Better Act. Most House progressives voted in favor of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework; in the end, the six House members in “the Squad” were the only ones within the Congressional Progressive Caucus who voted against it. At the time, they reiterated fears that passing the infrastructure bill first would give up any leverage they had to pressure moderate lawmakers like Manchin to consider the Build Back Better Act.

Just over a month after that vote, Manchin has told Fox News he’s “a no” on Build Back Better.

“We have been saying this for weeks that this would happen,” Squad member Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) said in an MSNBC interview on Sunday. “Having [the infrastructure bill and Build Back Better] coupled together was the only leverage we had. And what did the caucus do? We tossed it.”

Bush’s stance was echoed by other Squad members, like Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and it’s now clear these progressives were correct to be worried. Although it’s uncertain how open Manchin might be to a different version of the Build Back Better Act, his position has effectively doomed the current version.

Democrats are attempting to pass Build Back Better via a process known as budget reconciliation, which allows legislation to pass the Senate with a simple majority. They need all 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus on board to approve it — a fragile unity that’s impossible to achieve without Manchin’s vote. That fact has given Manchin, the bill’s largest detractor in the Senate, a lot of say over its fate. Over the past few months, he’s shown he’s more than willing to make full use of that influence. He did so again Sunday, shaking what little faith many progressives had left in him.

“Maybe they’ll believe us next time. Or maybe people will just keep calling us naive,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted on Sunday.

Progressives have long feared that moderates would abandon Build Back Better without the infrastructure bill

For months, the Congressional Progressive Caucus emphasized that it wouldn’t move along the bipartisan infrastructure bill without a concurrent vote on the Build Back Better Act. Members worried that moderates including Manchin would potentially abandon the social spending legislation once infrastructure passed. They were able to issue this ultimatum because the House also has a thin Democratic majority and the Congressional Progressive Caucus has the numbers to keep any bill without Republican support from passing.

At the start of November, however, as pressure to pass the infrastructure bill grew from both the White House and impatient moderates, most members in the progressive caucus agreed to a compromise. Armed with a written agreement from House moderates agreeing to consider the Build Back Better Act once the Congressional Budget Office released a cost estimate, as well as Biden’s promise that he would get Manchin’s support, progressives allowed the infrastructure vote to move forward.

“The president’s word is on the line here, and I do still believe that he is going to do what he told me and what he told our caucus and what he told the country he would do,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the chair of the Progressive Caucus, said in an MSNBC interview last week. Manchin “made a commitment to the president, the president made a commitment to us, and I believe we’re going to get it done.”

The White House said Manchin was still participating in negotiations as recently as Tuesday, and that Manchin had brought the president a more limited version of the bill he could support. (As Vox’s Andrew Prokop has explained, Manchin’s statements do not explicitly indicate whether he’s closed the door to negotiating on a different version of the Build Back Better plan.)

“If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki wrote in a statement Sunday.

Jayapal, in the MSNBC interview last week, said she did not regret the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s decision to vote for the infrastructure bill when it did.

“I don’t regret it because I think our leverage was at the maximum point,” Jayapal said. “Had we not done that, I think we would have lost even more on Build Back Better.”

It’s impossible to say exactly what would have happened had progressives not chosen to put their trust in the president’s ability to seal a deal.

On one hand, questions have been raised about how much leverage progressives actually had throughout this process. Although Manchin helped negotiate the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, it was never clear whether he wanted it to pass so badly that he’d be willing to overlook his concerns about the size of the Build Back Better Act and many of its programs. It’s possible he would have been willing to vote down the social spending legislation even if that meant jeopardizing infrastructure legislation, too.

On the other hand, it did appear that the infrastructure legislation was a proposal that Manchin was invested in. He has long emphasized his support of bipartisanship and commitment to a measure addressing much-needed funding for roads and bridges that could garner both Democratic and Republican support. For that reason, the Squad is among those who now believe Democrats made a major miscalculation — one that not only potentially squandered a chance to pass Build Back Better quickly, but that has also put Democrats in a position in which further negotiation will be exponentially more difficult.

Manchin’s statement has damaged trust

Democrats are where they are now because of trust.

Progressives made a number of concessions on the Build Back Better Act, agreeing to a $3.5 trillion framework after initially proposing a $6 trillion option. Then they agreed to winnow it down further to $1.75 trillion, cutting some of their key priorities, including Medicare expansion of dental and vision coverage.

Throughout this process, willingness to move forward has relied on a sense that Manchin was participating in talks in good faith. And there was a sense that Biden, who has often touted the power of his personal relationship with Manchin, could find a way to get the senator to vote yes. For the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Manchin’s new statement seems to have shattered that trust.

“Today, Senator Manchin has betrayed his commitment not only to the President and Democrats in Congress but most importantly, to the American people,” caucus chair Jayapal said in a Sunday statement. “He routinely touts that he is a man of his word, but he can no longer say that.”

Now it will be more difficult to move forward. Progressives may feel less willing to compromise on provisions that remain outstanding in the bill, like drug pricing and Medicaid expansion, feeling that further compromise won’t net them anything from Manchin.

Manchin has also created confusion about what he wants, making it difficult for Democratic leaders to know where they should restart negotiations. It’s unclear if he simply doesn’t like the current shape of the Build Back Better Act and would be willing to vote for the proposal he brought to Biden recently, or if he’s now a no on any more spending.

The senator has placed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a tough position as well. Schumer is under increasing pressure from his caucus to simply bring a vote on the Build Back Better Act to the floor of the Senate, in hopes of forcing Manchin to vote yes.

The weeks to come will reveal if Manchin is willing to consider a version of the legislation that takes his concerns into consideration, or if he’s willing to walk away from it altogether. In both respects, however, his statement has made it tougher for progressives to trust that he will engage with this legislation seriously moving forward.

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How 2021 Changed the Death PenaltyDeath penalty states have had trouble obtaining the drugs that were long part of the standard lethal injection protocol. Now they have turned to new, often untested drugs and drug protocols. (photo: imago images/blickwinkel/Reuters)


How 2021 Changed the Death Penalty
Austin Sarat, Slate
Sarat writes: "Now more than ever there are two distinct worlds of capital punishment in the United States."

Now more than ever there are two distinct worlds of capital punishment in the United States. It has long been the case that the death penalty has flourished in some regions of the country and in some states more than in others. And the release of the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) annual report for 2021 makes clear that the distance between those two divergent paths rapidly increased last year.

“The death penalty in 2021 was defined by two competing forces: the continuing long-term erosion of capital punishment across most of the country, and extreme conduct by a dwindling number of outlier jurisdictions to continue to pursue death sentences and executions,” The DPIC report noted. Capital punishment increasingly is used in just a few idiosyncratic locales and offers another fault line in this country’s fragmented political, legal, and cultural life.
As in many other areas of American life, supporters and opponents of the death penalty regard each other as enemies, not just as opponents. They see the world in fundamentally different ways and think of the political struggle over the death penalty as a struggle over fundamental values and different ways of life.

As Emory University historian Daniel LaChance explains, “These days, support for capital punishment is concentrated among whites, Protestants, and Republicans—key demographic constituencies of the conservative side of the late twentieth century culture wars…. Support for the death penalty is not only a tool for controlling crime, but also an expression of allegiance to values—personal responsibility, the sacredness of innocent life, and the firmness of a nation’s convictions—that they feel have degraded in the United States since the 1960s.”
Progressives, in contrast, see America’s continuing use of capital punishment as unjust, barbaric, and a sign of moral backwardness.

As a result, we can expect death penalty politics to grow more, not less, bitter and more intense, as the two worlds of capital punishment come to terms with new realities.
What are these new realities?

In one of the worlds of capital punishment, abolitionists have made great progress and the death penalty is in retreat.

This year, Virginia became the eleventh state to have abolished capital punishment since 2007 and the 23rd state overall not to have the death penalty. It became the first southern state to abolish that punishment in recent memory. In Oregon, to cite another example of progress against the death penalty noted by the DPIC, the supreme court effectively ended that state’s use of capital punishment last October.

At the federal level, the Biden Justice Department announced a moratorium on federal executions.

During 2021, the United States imposed the fewest death sentences and carried out the lowest number of executions in decades. Eighteen people were sentenced to death, “tying 2020’s number for the fewest in the modern era of the death penalty, dating back to the Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia that struck down all existing U.S. death-penalty statutes in 1972. The eleven executions carried out during the year were the fewest since 1988.”
But in the other world of capital punishment, things look quite different.

Donald Trump’s gruesome execution spree exemplified the desire to take the lives of those convicted of horrible crimes that still exists on the other side of the death penalty divide. Trump himself captured the flavor of the cultural chasm when he said during his 2016 campaign, “Death penalty all the way. I’ve always supported the death penalty. I don’t even understand people that don’t.”

While many political conservatives now oppose capital punishment, then Attorney General William Barr observed after the first of the federal executions last year that Americans “have made the considered choice to permit capital punishment for the most egregious federal crimes, and justice was done today.”

Looking at only the states which carried executions last year, the names are quite familiar to any student of the death penalty, with Texas and Oklahoma leading the way, followed by Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri.

“All but one prisoner executed this year had serious impairments, including brain injury or damage, mental illness and intellectual disabilities, or had histories of gruesome childhood neglect and abuse,”according to a report in The Guardian,

That report quotes Ngozi Ndulue, DPIC’s deputy director, as saying that the states which continue to use the death penalty do not use it for “the worst of the worst, but the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.”

In this other world of capital punishment desperate measures have been required to keep the machinery of death running.

States have ratcheted up the regime of secrecy surrounding the death penalty. They refuse to disclose the precise drugs used when they put someone to death by lethal injection or to identify the suppliers of those drugs. Such refusal makes it very hard for journalists to inform the public about the killings that are carried out in its name or for condemned inmates to vindicate their rights under the Eighth Amendment.

Because death penalty states have had trouble obtaining the drugs that were long part of the standard lethal injection protocol, they have turned to new, often untested drugs and drug protocols. Or they have revived previously discredited methods of execution, as South Carolina did in May of this year when it brought back the electric chair and the firing squad to its inventory of execution methods.

In the world where the death penalty still lives, states have compiled a troubling record of problems and mishaps in their execution chambers, like the horror that unfolded last October when Oklahoma severely botched the execution of John Marion Grant.

As the DPIC’s Robert Dunham notes, “The handful of states that continue to push for capital punishment are outliers that often disregard due process, botch executions, and dwell in the shadows of long histories of racism and a biased criminal legal system.”
And, as a strange case from Alabama reveals, death penalty states go deep into their bag of tricks to keep governmental officials in line. In that case, Jefferson County Judge Tracie Todd was suspended without pay for 90 days for, among other things, deciding that state’s death penalty system, which still allows judges to override jury decisions and impose death sentences was unconstitutional.

Such punishments are almost unheard of except when judges are guilty of the most serious derelictions of duty. But in Alabama it seems that a judge who points out the irrationality, cruelty, and injustice that is pervasive in its death penalty system has committed just such a dereliction.

This year ends with the two worlds of capital punishment intact, but with the sense that the United States is on the way toward abolition. Yet the road forward will not be easy nor is the result assured.

What the political philosopher Michael Walzer once said about all journeys toward justice seems apt as a way to think about capital punishment as this year comes to a close. This journey will be, as he says, “very slow, a matter of two steps forward, one step back.”

But that is still progress. We should not miss the fact that in 2021 there was more forward movement than setbacks on the way to ending America’s death penalty.


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US Expands Guest Worker Program for Haiti, Central AmericaA migrant carries a child during a protest in favour of migration in Mexico City on Thursday. As the number of migrants at its southern border rises, the US has expanded its guest worker programme for low-skilled labourers. (photo: Toya Sarno Jordan/Reuters)

US Expands Guest Worker Program for Haiti, Central America
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The number of H-2B visas will increase by 20,000, including 6,500 for Central America and Haiti, as migration spikes."

The number of H-2B visas will increase by 20,000, including 6,500 for Central America and Haiti, as migration spikes.


The United States is expanding its guest worker programme with an additional 20,000 visas available for seasonal, non-agricultural guest workers, as the number of migrants hoping to enter the country spikes at its southern border.

The extra H-2B visas would be in addition to the annual allotment of 66,000 visas for the fiscal year, a US official told the Reuters news agency on Monday. A formal announcement on the increased number, including 6,500 visas for workers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti through March 31, is expected later in the day.

The expansion of the H-2B visa programme, used to employ landscapers, housekeepers, hotel employees and construction and carnival workers, among others, comes as the US labour market continues to face shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The White House has touted efforts to create legal pathways for migrants to come to the US as record numbers of migrants have been arrested at the southern border under the administration of President Joe Biden.

Even if all 6,500 visas are used, this represents just a fraction of the migrants trying to reach the US. US Border Patrol arrested more than 700,000 migrants from those four countries in the fiscal year 2021.

The additional 20,000 visas are a slight drop from the 22,000 made available for the second half of the fiscal year.

The Biden administration earlier this month struck an agreement with the Mexican government to reinstate a controversial Trump-era policy that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their US court hearings.

The US Department of Homeland Security said the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), dubbed “Remain in Mexico”, restarted on December 6. Once it is again fully operational, the programme will see people returned to Mexico via seven border crossings in the US states of California, Arizona and Texas.

Some 70,000 people, including children, were sent back to Mexico under MPP, which Biden had initially sought to end as part of his pledge to reverse some of his predecessor Donald Trump’s most hardline, anti-immigration policies.

Following criticism from rights groups, the Biden administration set aside 6,000 H-2B visas for the three Central American countries during the second half of the fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30, but fell short of filling all of those slots.

The addition of Haiti follows Biden’s decision to deport some Haitians after thousands arrived in southern Texas in September. The country has faced political instability and violence following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July as well as natural disasters.

The news comes following a deadly truck crash earlier this month in southern Mexico, which killed 54 migrants and injured 54 others.

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Leftist Millennial Gabriel Boric Wins Election as Chile's Next PresidentPresidential candidate Gabriel Boric, of the 'I approve Dignity' coalition, takes selfies with supporters outside a polling station during the presidential run-off election in Punta Arenas, Chile, Sunday, Dec. 19, 2021. (photo: Andres Poblete/AP)

Leftist Millennial Gabriel Boric Wins Election as Chile's Next President
Patricia Luna and Joshua Goodman, Associated Press
Excerpt: "A leftist millennial who rose to prominence during anti-government protests was elected Chile's next president Sunday after a bruising campaign against a free-market firebrand likened to Donald Trump."

A leftist millennial who rose to prominence during anti-government protests was elected Chile’s next president Sunday after a bruising campaign against a free-market firebrand likened to Donald Trump.

With 56% of the votes, Gabriel Boric handily defeated by more than 10 points lawmaker José Antonio Kast, who tried unsuccessfully to scare voters that his inexperienced opponent would become a puppet of his allies in Chile’s Communist Party and upend the country’s vaunted record as Latin America’s most stable, advanced economy.

In a model of democratic civility that broke from the polarizing rhetoric of the campaign, Kast immediately conceded defeat, tweeting a photo of himself on the phone congratulating his opponent on his “grand triumph.” He then later traveled personally to Boric’s campaign headquarters to meet with his rival.

Meanwhile, outgoing President Sebastian Pinera — a conservative billionaire — held a video conference with Boric to offer his government’s full support during the three month transition.

Amid a crush of supporters, Boric vaulted atop a metal barricade to reach the stage where he initiated in the indigenous Mapuche language a rousing victory speech to thousands of mostly young supporters.

The bearded, bespectacled president-elect highlighted the progressive positions that launched his improbable campaign, including a promise to fight climate change by blocking a proposed mining project in what is the world’s largest copper producing nation.

He also promised to end Chile’s private pension system — the hallmark of the neoliberal economic model imposed by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

“We are a generation that emerged in public life demanding our rights be respected as rights and not treated like consumer goods or a business,” Boric said. “We know there continues to be justice for the rich, and justice for the poor, and we no longer will permit that the poor keep paying the price of Chile’s inequality.”

He also gave an extended shout out to Chilean women, a key voting bloc who feared that a Kast victory would roll back years of steady gains, promising they will be “protagonists” in a government that will seek to “leave behind once and for all the patriarchal inheritance of our society.”

In Santiago’s subway, where a fare hike in 2019 triggered a wave of nationwide protests that exposed the shortcomings of Chile’s free market model, young supporters of Boric, some of them waving flags emblazoned with the candidate’s name, jumped and shouted in unison as they headed downtown to join thousands who gathered for the president-elect’s victory speech.

“This is a historic day,” said Boris Soto, a teacher. “We’ve defeated not only fascism, and the right wing, but also fear.”

At 35, Boric will become Chile’s youngest modern president when he takes office in March and only the second millennial to lead in Latin America, after El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Only one other head of state, Giacomo Simoncini of the city-state San Marino in Europe, is younger.

His government is likely to be closely watched throughout Latin America, where Chile has long been a harbinger of regional trends.

It was the first country in Latin America to break with the U.S. dominance during the Cold War and pursue socialism with the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. It then reversed course a few years later when Pinochet’s coup ushered in a period of right-wing military rule that quickly launched a free market experiment throughout the region.

Boric’s ambitious goal is to introduce a European-style social democracy that would expand economic and political rights to attack nagging inequality without veering toward the authoritarianism embraced by so much of the left in Latin America, from Cuba to Venezuela.

It’s a task made more challenging by deepening ideological divisions unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic, which sped up the reversal of a decade of economic gains.

Kast, who has a history of defending Chile’s past military dictatorship, finished ahead of Boric by two points in the first round of voting last month but failed to secure a majority of votes. That set up a head-to-head runoff against Boric.

Boric was able to reverse the difference by a larger margin than pre-election opinion polls forecast by expanding beyond his base in the capital, Santiago, and attracting voters in rural areas who don’t side with political extremes. For example, in the northern region of Antofagasta, where he finished third in the first round of voting, he trounced Kast by almost 20 points.

An additional 1.2 million Chileans cast ballots Sunday compared to the first round, raising turnout to nearly 56%, the highest since voting stopped being mandatory in 2012.

“It’s impossible not to be impressed by the historic turnout, the willingness of Kast to concede and congratulate his opponent even before final results were in, and the generous words of President Pinera,” said Cynthia Arnson, head of the Latin America program at the Wilson Center in Washington. “Chilean democracy won today, for sure.”

Kast, 55, a devout Roman Catholic and father of nine, emerged from the far right fringe after having won less than 8% of the vote in 2017. An admirer of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, he rose steadily in the polls this time with a divisive discourse emphasizing conservative family values and playing on Chileans’ fears that a surge in migration — from Haiti and Venezuela — is driving crime.

As a lawmaker he has a record of attacking Chile’s LGBTQ community and advocating more restrictive abortion laws. He also accused Pinera, a fellow conservative, of betraying the economic Pinochet. Kast’s brother, Miguel, was one of the dictator’s top advisers.

In recent days, both candidates had tried to veer toward the center.

“I’m not an extremist. ... I don’t feel far right,” Kast proclaimed in the final stretch even as he was dogged by revelations that his German-born father had been a card-carrying member of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party.

Boric’s victory likely to be tempered by a divided congress.

In addition, the political rules could soon change because a newly elected convention is rewriting the country’s Pinochet-era constitution. The convention — the nation’s most powerful elected institution — could in theory call for new presidential elections when it concludes its work next year and if the new charter is ratified in a plebiscite.

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How Capitalism Stole Christmas (and Killed the Planet Along the Way)People skate in New York City's Central Park on Dec. 26, 2002, after five inches of snow fell on Christmas day. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

How Capitalism Stole Christmas (and Killed the Planet Along the Way)
Our Changing Climate
Excerpt: "The holiday season is upon us and with it, a deluge of new tech, trinkets, and advertisements convincing us to indulge. But of course this torrent of consumption is nothing new, especially in the free-market capitalist consumerist nation of the United States."

The holiday season is upon us and with it, a deluge of new tech, trinkets, and advertisements convincing us to indulge. But of course this torrent of consumption is nothing new, especially in the free-market capitalist consumerist nation of the United States. Every year, the holiday shopping season, spanning across November and December, sees massive monthly profits for corporations, employees crushed by inhuman workloads, and environmental destruction. And every year, the connections from consumerism to capitalism to the climate crisis are once again laid bare. Today we dive into the holidays and the manufactured desire for more to understand how capitalism is driving the climate crisis. But it’s not enough to just critique, we will also try to understand what will dismantle our current system and develop an ecologically sound and ethical world in its stead.

Underneath the bright glitz of Christmas lights and shrouded under the cover of wrapped presents, lies the stark reality of the holidays in the imperial core. Starting with the celebration of colonial genocide in Thanksgiving, followed immediately by the capitalist schemes of Black Friday and Cyber Monday that bleed into a month of Christmas celebrations foregrounding extensive gift-giving ceremonies, holidays have been co-opted by corporations and the relentless drive for profit and growth. Gift giving has been present in the ethos of winter holidays for hundreds of years, a tradition which some scholars point towards 19th century New York City aristocrats for starting as a way of shifting December holidays from a season when “poorer people could demand food and drink from the wealthy and celebrate in the streets'' to one of cozy celebration in the home encouraging gift giving to children. But the amount of gifts were generally small in the 1800s, and it wasn’t until the rise of advertising around the turn of the 20th century, that retailers, especially toy retailers, saw the potential of the holidays for profit and capital accumulation. By the 2000s, US retail sales during the holiday season reached $416.4 billion and have only gotten bigger. Of the many factors driving the US shopper to spend an average of $1000 on presents every year, advertising is definitely making a mark. Advertisements make us feel good about something we know, deep down, is either unethical, useless, harmful, or all three. They are the rose tinted glasses that make the things in our home seem necessary when they are actually not. So, for a moment, let’s pull off those rose tinted glasses and understand the impact of the capitalist model on ourselves, our planet, and our holidays.

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