27 December 21
Need to Pull a Rabbit From the Hat Today
We are down but not out. As bad as it looks right now, we absolutely positively can do this if we get on a roll.
The key is “you,” not someone else.
Donate folks, we are running out of time.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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26 December 21
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Democrats must close it. Now's the time.
Well, if Democrats are willing to take another stab at tax reform, I’ve got just the candidate: Get rid of the “carried interest” loophole that lets private equity managers – among the wealthiest people in America – pay a tax rate lower than most Americans. The “carried interest” loophole is huge, and it’s a pure scam. Private equity managers get this tax break even though they invest other peoples’ money. They don’t risk a penny of their own.
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all promised to get rid of it. They didn’t.
Hell, even Donald Trump promised to get rid of it. He didn’t, either. “I don’t know what happened,” said Larry Kudlow, the conservative economist who crafted Trump’s tax plan. “I don’t know how that thing survived,” he said, adding, “I’m sure the lobbying was intense.”
You’d think that the carried interest loophole would be high on the Democrats’ list of revenue-raisers. After all, closing it could raise $180 billion over the next decade from among the richest Americans. That’s $180 billion that could go toward supporting vulnerable Americans and investing in America’s future.
Think again. The loophole – which treats the earnings of private equity and hedge-fund managers as capital gains, taxed at a top rate of just 20 percent, instead of personal income, whose top tax rate is 37 percent – remains as big as ever. Bigger.
Astonishingly, some influential Democrats, such as House Ways and Means Committee chair Richard Neal, defend the loophole. They say closing it would hobble the private equity industry, and, by extension, the US economy.
This is pure rubbish. In fact, private equity firms generate huge social costs. They buy companies they see as ripe for “turnarounds” – a polite way of saying that once they buy these companies they’ll cut wages, outsource jobs, strip assets, and then resell what’s left, often laden with debt.
Look no further than the strike by Alabama’s Warrior Met Coal mineworkers that’s been underway since April 1st. Warrior Met is owned by a group of private equity firms led by New York-based Apollo Global Management. Mineworkers gave up their pension plan, retiree health care and wages to make Warrior Met’s mines mines profitable, as Apollo and other private equity investors siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves in special cash dividends.
Since the pandemic began, private equity has been using the flood of cheap money to buy companies at a record pace, and then squeeze them (and their workers) dry. 2021 has been private equity’s biggest ever — reaching a record $1.1 trillion in deals.
So why are Democrats subsidizing private equity’s predatory behavior with this tax loophole? How did the loophole survive the Clinton and Obama administrations when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress? Why isn’t it even on the current list of tax reforms Democrats went to use to pay for the Build Back Better package, if they can resurrect it in January?
What’s the dirty secret?
“This is a loophole that absolutely should be closed,” said Biden adviser Jared Bernstein. But “when you go up to Capitol Hill and you start negotiating on taxes, there are more lobbyists in this town on taxes than there are members of Congress.”
Last year 4,108 individual lobbyists formally registered to lobby Congress and the executive branch on taxes. The private equity industry alone has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to congressional campaigns – $600 million over the past decade, according to a New York Times analysis earlier this year.
But here’s the thing. Most of these campaign contributions (bribes) have gone to Democrats. Nearly 60 percent of campaign donations from partners in the private equity industry during the 2020 election went to Democratic candidates for federal office. During the 2020 election, Biden’s presidential campaign received over $3 million from people working in private equity and related investment funds, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Biden was the top recipient of campaign money from this industry.
The dirty secret is Democrats have depended on campaign funding from private-equity partners — hugely wealthy people who are shafting workers across the land. Back in 2010, some courageous House Democrats squeaked through a tax plan that closed the loophole, but Democrats who controlled the Senate wouldn’t go along. Senator Charles Schumer was among those who argued against closing it. The United States, he said, “should not do anything” to “make it easier for capital and ideas to flow to London or anywhere else.” Oh, please. As if Wall Street needed billions in annual bribes to stay put.
When I publicly criticized Schumer for this, he explained to me that he didn’t think it fair to close the loophole for private equity and hedge fund partners but to leave it in place for other partnerships, such as housing developers.
Well, one person’s view of fairness may differ from another’s. But I don’t think there’s any question that the carried interest loophole is unfair to everyone except the fabulously rich who benefit from it.
Democrats must close this loophole. Now.
Your thoughts?
James O'Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year. (photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Conservative group accused newspaper of violating attorney-client privilege after legal memos were obtained
The decision Thursday by state supreme court justice Charles D Wood in Westchester county, released Friday, comes in a defamation lawsuit Project Veritas filed against the Times in 2020.
Months after the lawsuit was filed, the newspaper reported that the justice department was investigating Project Veritas in connection with the theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter.
In that story, the Times quoted the memos, leading Project Veritas to accuse the newspaper of violating attorney-client privilege.
Wood upheld his earlier order preventing the Times from further publishing the memos, and also ruled that the newspaper must turn over physical copies of the documents and destroy electronic versions.
The newspaper reported it would appeal the ruling and seek a stay in the meantime.
Publisher AG Sulzberger decried the ruling as an attack of press freedoms and alarming for “anyone concerned about the dangers of government overreach into what the public can and cannot know.” He also said it risked exposing sources.
“In defiance of law settled in the Pentagon Papers case, this judge has barred The Times from publishing information about a prominent and influential organization that was obtained legally in the ordinary course of reporting,” Sulzberger said in a statement reported by the Times that also asserted there was no precedent for Wood’s decision.
Project Veritas bills itself as a watchdog, often of media. It’s known for using hidden cameras and hiding identities to try to ensnare journalists in embarrassing conversations and to reveal supposed liberal bias.
In a statement Friday, Project Veritas lawyer Elizabeth Locke hailed the ruling as “a victory for the first amendment for all journalists and affirms the sanctity of the attorney-client relationship”.
Wood denied that the order endangered press freedoms, writing in his ruling that “steadfast fidelity to, and vigilance in protecting first amendment freedoms” can’t infringe on the fundamental rights of attorney-client privilege or privacy.
He wrote that while aspects of Project Veritas, including its journalistic methods, may be of public interest, its attorney-client communications are not.
News organizations, including the Associated Press, supported the Times and asked the court not to impose what they called an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech.
January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol. (photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP
Three Hours Of U.S. Capitol Surveillance Video at the Tunnel from Jan. 6, 2021
The assault on the Lower West Terrace was one of the most violent confrontations between Capitol Police and the crowd. Officers held the line until the building was cleared without letting rioters inside. Some officers have since said they did not know the Capitol had already been breached in other areas.
The video, taken from a Capitol security camera, does not have sound. It starts as officers retreat, helping each other as they stumble inside and washing their eyes out with water from chemical spray. Rioters crowd in behind them, coordinate efforts to attack and push through in infamous moments that have haunted the public, and officers, ever since.
The Justice Department released the videos after CNN and other outlets sued for access. It is the longest video from the riot released by the government thus far.
The assault
Once rioters invaded the platform built for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, every officer on it retreated into the tunnel to make their stand, shooting projectiles at rioters as they begin to enter. Members of the crowd climbed on top of each other, swinging fists and poles at the police. Brawls broke out throughout the assault, with rioters punching and kicking at officers on the front line.
Inside the tunnel, rioters pushed police further back, jabbing at them with flag poles and hitting them with a baton, spraying pepper spray, taking riot shields and crushing an officer in a door all while banging against the walls and cheering as they filmed the assault on their phones.
Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone was pulled out of the police line and into the crowd by a rioter who had his arm around his neck. The video shows Fanone eventually falling down and disappearing into the mass of rioters, where he said he was tased in the neck, beaten with a flagpole and heard rioters screaming "kill him with his own gun." Fanone said he suffered a heart attack and fell unconscious during the attack.
Police were able to push the rioters to the edge of the tunnel's entrance over half an hour into the assault, using pepper spray and their batons against the crowd. Still, after a long standoff with police, the rioters began a second attack on the line of officers.
At the entrance of the tunnel, rioter and QAnon supporter Rosanne Boyland lay on the ground. She had died of an accidental overdose, according to DC's chief medical examiner. Heeding her friends' call for help, prosecutors say two officers waded into the crowd to help Boyland.
The two officers were knocked down and dragged into the mob where they were viciously beaten with an upside-down American flag and other weapons. The attack landed one officer in the hospital with staples in his head to stop the bleeding, and the other with injuries to his face and shoulder according to court documents.
Weapons used by rioters
In the grueling attack, rioters not only used weapons but also whatever they could get their hands on to attack the police, jabbing them with metal poles, throwing furniture and an audio speaker, spraying a fire extinguisher and pepper spray, using crutches to hit the police, and assaulting the officers with fists and feet.
The rioters also used items taken from the police, including riot shields which they continued to pass up their ranks to push against the officers, and batons which they assaulted police with. At one point in the video, a person can be seen even throwing a firework at the line of officers.
Arrests
Prosecutors have arrested and charged dozens of rioters for their part in the grisly battle inside the Lower West Terrace tunnel.
Robert Morss, who prosecutors allege planned to start his own militia, is being held in jail until he faces trial after a judge slammed him for using his training as an Army Ranger to help organize and lead the mob inside the tunnel. Morss is charged with eight other men, including Patrick McCaughey, who was captured in a viral video crushing Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges in a door, and Federico Klein, a former Trump State Department official. All nine have pleaded not guilty.
Albuquerque Head, who allegedly dragged Fanone out into the crowd, has also been charged in the attack. So has Daniel Rodriguez, who prosecutors say tased Fanone in the neck. They, too, have pleaded not guilty.
Jeffrey Sabol, Jack Whitton and Ronald McAbee are part of an indictment with six other rioters who allegedly worked together to drag officers into the crowd. Whitton later boasted to friends, saying that "I fed him to the people," referring to the officer, according to court filings. They haven't yet entered a formal plea.
Two of the defendants who were part of the tunnel scene have already been sentenced. Devlyn Thompson, who admitted to throwing a speaker at police officers and hitting an officer in the hand with a baton, was sentenced to nearly four years in jail. Robert Palmer, who used a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole to attack police, was sentenced to more than five years in prison. Both pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon.
Demonstrators holding signs protest outside Long Beach Convention Center to urge the release of immigrant children from ICE detention centers in Long Beach, California, on May 8. (photo: Ringo Chiu/AFP/Getty Images)
Immigrants in ICE custody are already at high risk
Now they’re even more vulnerable as the highly transmissible omicron has become the most common coronavirus variant in the US — and advocates say it’s another factor that adds to the already compelling case for releasing them from detention.
Since the outset of the pandemic, more than 31,000 cases of Covid-19 have been reported at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, with an infection rate more than three times as high as the overall US infection rate. Cases peaked in May 2021 at around 2,000 cases at a given time and have since declined to just under 300 active cases among 21,000 people in detention as of December 20. Some of the worst outbreaks have occurred in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia.
An ICE spokesperson told Vox that as of December 19, a total of 46,772 people in detention have received Covid-19 vaccinations. But it’s not clear what share of the detained population over time that number represents given that people are constantly being booked in and released. It’s also not clear what kind of vaccine those people have received and whether they have received one or two doses or a booster shot. (ICE does not release that information publicly and did not respond to a request for that data.) That makes it hard to measure the efficacy of the agency’s vaccination campaign.
Absent an aggressive vaccination and booster campaign and efforts to reduce the population in immigration detention, it’s only a matter of time before omicron spreads through ICE facilities.
“So many of the people who are being held are people who do not pose threats to their communities, were detained for nonviolent crimes, who have a lot of community support, who have all the kinds of mitigating factors that the Biden administration has said should be included in assessments around release,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, a senior campaign organizer with the immigrant rights organization Mijente. “With the surge of omicron, these mitigating factors should be weighed even more.”
ICE hasn’t had a coordinated national vaccination campaign
The ICE spokesperson said the agency provides information in numerous languages about the vaccine to people in detention during the intake process and prior to vaccination. There are also educational posters displayed in different languages around the facilities, they said.
“US Immigration and Customs Enforcement remains committed to applying CDC guidance and providing vaccine education that ensures those in our care and custody can make an informed choice during this global pandemic,” they added.
But lawyers representing immigrants in detention say that, in practice, access to vaccination and educational programs around the vaccine have varied widely across detention centers in the absence of a coordinated campaign from ICE headquarters. Some deliver presentations on the vaccines and have a doctor on-site to answer questions about them. Others print out flyers and others hand out copies of the fine-print medication package insert, which can be difficult for people to read if they don’t know English.
“We’ve litigated in dozens of detention facilities across the country. And it almost seems like each detention facility is coming up with their own educational materials and protocols for people in detention,” said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
It seems that vaccine access has improved since July, when some detention centers weren’t offering vaccination at all, Cho said. But even some medically vulnerable immigrants have fallen through the cracks.
That includes Israel Arrascue, a detainee at the Northwest Detention Center outside of Seattle. Gonzalez, who has been working with Arrascue’s family to push for his release, said that he has chronic asthma and has developed other health risk factors during his two years in detention, including prediabetes, high blood pressure, and hypertension. He did not receive the vaccine and contracted Covid-19 earlier this year, likely from a guard in the detention facility who refused to be vaccinated and tested positive. He has since suffered post-coronavirus complications, including gallstones, which required him to be hospitalized.
Access to booster shots also remains limited, even if a detained person affirmatively requests it. Cho said that in a recent NGO debrief with ICE and the staff of its health corps, an official admitted that the agency had no nationwide plan to identify detained people who are eligible for boosters, to offer boosters to all detainees, or to educate them about boosters.
That’s especially concerning given that ICE has relied heavily on the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is significantly less effective than the two-dose vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. As of October 21, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started recommending booster shots for all people who received the J&J vaccine just two months after the initial shot, compared to six months for the other vaccines. That means there are likely many detainees who are eligible for a booster but may never have been offered one.
Cho said that in some facilities, detainees have reported asking for boosters, but they have been told that none are available or they would have to wait until a certain number of people requested them in order for them to be administered. Others have not responded with a plan to administer them at all. And some detainees don’t even know what a booster shot is or why they should get it.
“ICE has no coordinated strategy to ensure that detained people can receive COVID-19 booster shots, despite urgent need and ample notice,” the ACLU wrote in a letter to ICE on December 15. “ICE’s inadequate provision of COVID-19 vaccines, including its clear failure to administer booster doses, endangers the health and safety of detained people, in continued violation of their constitutional rights.”
Advocates are demanding that the Biden administration release more immigrants
The population of immigrants in detention has grown about 45 percent since President Joe Biden took office. That has made it difficult for detention centers to enforce social distancing measures. And until every immigrant in detention who wants the vaccine and a booster can get it, they will be at risk.
The ICE spokesperson said that the agency continues to evaluate its detained population based on the CDC’s guidance for people who might be at higher risk for severe illness from Covid-19 to determine whether they should be released. The agency has also recently unveiled new immigration enforcement priorities that focus on detaining people who pose a threat to “national security, public safety, and border security.”
Those new priorities outline a slew of mitigating factors that might justify an immigrant’s release, including whether they have lived in the US for a long time, whether they have health conditions requiring treatment, and the potential impact on their family in the US. But in practice, few have been released from detention under the policy so far.
In Arrascue’s case, he committed a nonviolent crime, suggesting that he isn’t a risk to public safety, and was sentenced to serve two months. He was then transferred to ICE custody to await deportation proceedings, where his family, including his teenage daughter, has not been allowed to visit him for two years due to the pandemic. Despite all of that and his myriad health risks, ICE denied his request for release on December 10.
At the same time, the Biden administration continues to fight a court order that required it to release detainees at high risk of complications from Covid-19, suggesting that it has no intention of releasing immigrants en masse. In fact, it has recently opened a new 1,800-bed facility in Moshannon, Pennsylvania, and intends to expand capacity at its Folkston ICE Processing Center in southern Georgia.
“The truth is, there are many opportunities for [Biden] to release people, but instead, they’re really doubling down on detention right now,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, which advocates for the abolition of immigration detention. “They have full discretion to release all of these individuals.”
Wally Korona and Gail Korona join protesters in April, in Great Falls, Mont., objecting to a health-care system's requirement that workers get coronavirus shots. (photo: Nora Mabie/Great Falls Tribune/USA Today)
Republican lawmakers pass laws to restrict the power of health authorities to require masks, promote vaccinations and take other steps to protect the public health.
The city line between Columbus and suburban Hilliard crosses right through the strip mall, Mill Run Square. In Columbus, where the Lowe’s Home Improvement Store lies, the city council early in the coronavirus pandemic created a mask requirement that remains in place. In Hilliard, where Hales is located, the city council has not imposed a mask rule, despite entreaties from the top county health official as coronavirus cases spiked.
Under a new law in Ohio — one of at least 19 states this year that have restricted state or local authorities from safeguarding public health amid the coronavirus pandemic — Franklin County’s health commissioner Joe Mazzola can no longer intervene. The county health department was stripped of its power to compel people to wear masks even as the omicron variant fuels a fifth coronavirus surge in the United States.
“We’ve not been able to put in place the policy that would protect our community,” Mazzola said.
The number of states that have passed laws similar to Ohio’s is proliferating fast, from eight identified in one study in May to more than double that many as of last month, according to an analysis by Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Research. And around the country, many more measures are being debated or being prepared for legislative sessions to start early in the new year.
These laws — the work of Republican legislators — inhibit health officers’ ability to require masks, promote vaccinations or take other steps, such as closing or limiting the number of patrons in restaurants, bars and other indoor public settings. Often, the measures shift those decisions from health experts to elected officials at a time when such coronavirus-fighting strategies have become politically radioactive.
A new Indiana law gives city councils and county commissions power to overrule local health officials if their efforts to tame the pandemic are more stringent than rules in effect statewide. Tennessee lawmakers have taken away health officials’ ability to decide whether public schools should be closed in an emergency, giving that authority to school boards while also allowing the governor to order all schools to teach students in person.
And in Arkansas, a statute forbids any state or local official from compelling masks. As the delta variant was racing around in August, the state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, said he regretted the measure and summoned legislators into a special session to rethink it. The law stayed in place.
Conservatives frame this wave of legislating as a matter of individual liberties. Ohio state Sen. Terry Johnson (R), one of the main sponsors of that state’s new law, said last spring that its purpose is “restoring reasonable checks and balances” and “giving the people of Ohio a voice in matters of public health.”
Over the decades, critics have sought to persuade lawmakers to soften or remove safety measures, such as tobacco regulations, or requirements to wear seat belts or motorcycle helmets.
“But for them to go after the basis of public health authority is pretty new,” said Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
Health officials say the new laws, targeted at coronavirus-fighting strategies, often carry unintended consequences stretching far beyond the pandemic to thwart health departments'’ longtime roles, such as maintaining food safety.
The Ohio law, Senate Bill 22, slows health department’s ability to shut down a restaurant to protect customers from a foodborne disease outbreak, several health commissioners there said. Officials now can issue an order only after a person who ate there gets a documented diagnosis of such an illness — not simply after health inspectors discover unsanitary conditions.
Researchers and health officials also predict such laws will get in the way of dealing with future health crises of unforeseen origin. But as the coronavirus pandemic persists, with omicron having arrived as the most transmissible variant so far, the laws’ impact already is clear.
In May, Montana, which has several new statutes narrowing health officials’ powers, became the first state to prohibit discrimination based on vaccination status. It applies to any vaccine, not just shots to protect against the coronavirus. It means that employers may ask staff members whether they have been immunized against the virus, but they cannot punish or lay off employees who refuse to disclose their vaccination status or to get the shots. It makes an exception for nursing homes — but not for hospitals or clinics.
When the law took effect May 7, most Montana hospitals were watching the pace of the vaccine rollout and debating whether they needed to make shots essential for their workers. But just east of the Rocky Mountains, Benefis Health System, with two hospitals in Great Falls, had sent a companywide email in April announcing that, unless they had a medical or religious reason, all employees had to receive at least one shot by May 1.
Community members staged protests. With the law imminent, Benefis backed off its mandate, according to health-care experts in the state. Benefis declined to comment on its decision.
For all 62 hospitals in the state, the law creates a bind, according to Rich Rasmussen, president of the Montana Hospital Association.
The state’s restrictions collide with what the federal government is ordering hospitals to do. The Department of Health and Human Services created a rule that hospitals and other health facilities with patients insured through Medicare or Medicaid must require their employees to have had at least a first coronavirus shot by Dec. 5.
“Hospitals were moving forward with their compliance” with the federal rule, Rasmussen said, because they feared jeopardizing $2.1 billion that flows into the state in Medicare and Medicaid payments, and most hospitals “felt a federal requirement trumped state law.”
A standoff has been averted for now, because two federal courts in November temporarily blocked the HHS requirement as part of lawsuits objecting to the federal rule. Meanwhile, a health system, a few doctors’ practices, several patients and the Montana Medical Association have filed their own lawsuit trying to restore the ability of hospitals and other health providers to compel workers to be vaccinated.
Montana’s hospitals argue they must be able to provide safe environments for their workers and patients.
“If you are providing care to neonates, you want to ensure everyone … is vaccinated,” Rasmussen said.
Many Montana employers hold a different view.
Nick Checota, a restaurant owner and music promoter who runs KettleHouse Amphitheater, a 4,500-seat outdoor venue on a river bank near Missoula, said his concert policy is to encourage patrons to wear masks and to get vaccinated or tested before attending an event. It is not required. A few bands have canceled because of the lack of vaccine verification, Checota said.
But he said, “If I’d asked my staff [to be vaccinated], half my employees would have quit. … Individual rights in Montana are very important to people.”
The political moves against vaccine requirements are spreading. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) in November signed a law that forbids employers from requiring workers, job applicants or customers to prove they have been vaccinated. Six days later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed four bills that prohibit employers and educational institutions from requiring workers or students to be vaccinated against the coronavirus and removes the state health officer’s ability to order vaccinations in a public health emergency.
In Ohio, House Republicans last month passed a bill that would block employers, schools and colleges from requiring workers and students to get vaccinated if they object for “reasons of personal conscience.” Some Republicans in the state Senate are reticent, contending that businesses should be allowed to decide on vaccine policies for themselves.
Senate Bill 22, the Buckeye State’s law in effect since June, splintered the party, pitting lawmakers against Ohio’s GOP governor Mike DeWine. A year ago, DeWine vetoed another bill that would have limited the state’s coronavirus-fighting powers by handing lawmakers power to stop a governor’s public health order and tightly limiting the state health department’s ability to impose quarantines.
The bill contains those features and added restrictions on local health departments. In March, DeWine vetoed that bill, too, saying it “strikes at the heart of local health departments’ ability to move quickly to protect the public from the most serious emergencies Ohio could face.”
This time, the legislature overrode the governor’s veto on S.B. 22 the following day.
Since the law took effect, health commissioners around the state said they often have felt thwarted.
In Franklin County, which includes Hilliard, the local board of health dates to 1919, the time of a global flu pandemic that killed millions. In July 2020, as the coronavirus spread, the board ordered people to wear masks indoors, except at home. It lifted the rule the following May, weeks before the state law took effect and shortly after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said people who were fully vaccinated no longer needed to wear a mask.
By late summer, cases were surging again.
“We wanted to be able to put a masking requirement in place for our jurisdictions,” said Mazzola, the Franklin County health commissioner, who works for the board.
Under the new law, only local governments can make that decision. The Franklin health district covers 14 cities, 17 townships and 10 villages. “We called on our city managers, city councils, mayors,” Mazzola said. Two of the cities, Bexley and Whitehall, reinstated mask rules. The others did not. The villages and most of the townships do not have authority to create such rules. Four townships do; they did not require masks.
“That’s really an unfortunate outcome here,” Mazzola said. “It creates mixed messaging.”
The new law also means the Franklin County health department no longer can create uniform rules for all school systems within its area.
When the school year opened, after a year of classes mostly online, 5 of the 17 districts required masks for students and teachers in every grade, according to Ayaz Hyder, a researcher in Ohio State University’s College of Public Health who has been tracking the pandemic in nearby public schools. The first weeks of the year, the districts with universal masking had on average significantly fewer cases of the coronavirus than the rest, Hyder found.
At Hale’s Ales & Kitchen, just over the Hilliard line where there is no mask requirement, patrons are asked to wear a face covering voluntarily if they haven’t been vaccinated, workers there said. Chris Hale, the owner, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Even when Ohio’s elected municipal officials have stepped in to adopt public health strategies of their own, controversies sometimes have swirled.
In August, the village of Gambier, home to Kenyon College, approved a temporary mask requirement for public buildings, including schools, with a $25 fine for violators. The county sheriff posted on his Facebook page that he had spoken with the mayor “and informed him that deputies will not be citing anyone for violations.”
Sheriff David Shaffer’s Facebook announcement drew more than 700 replies, mirroring the fevered views that divide the nation over public health during the pandemic.
“So … you are elected to decide which law to enforce?” one woman wrote.
Many praised the sheriff. “The more you protect our God-given freedoms,” one man wrote, “the greater my respect for you. … Please continue to defy tyrants who are trying to destroy our freedom.”
Such sentiment — and the Ohio law it yielded — leave the state’s health officials feeling impotent as each pandemic wave arrives.
In September, Jack Pepper, administrator of the Athens City-County Health Department, worried as his southeastern Ohio jurisdiction, which contains both historical Ohio University and rural poverty, suffered the largest surge in coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths of the pandemic so far.
“It would have been nice,” Pepper said, if the department could have limited the number of patrons in restaurants, as it had when establishments reopened after a pandemic shutdown early on. “Those powers are all gone.”
“In a perfect world,” Pepper said, “we would be able to do what we think is best, but that’s not our reality. So we deal with the hand we’ve been dealt.”
Smoke and flames billow from vehicles in Myanmar's Hpruso township on Friday. Government troops rounded up villagers, fatally shot more than 30 and set the bodies on fire, a witness and other reports said Saturday. (photo: KNDF/AP)
Myanmar's military is reported to have stopped, attacked and burned three vehicles in the country's eastern Kayah State, killing 38 people, including women and children.
Save the Children said in a statement that their two staff members who were returning from conducting a humanitarian response, are believed to have been "caught up in the incident."
"We have confirmation that their private vehicle was attacked and burned out. The military reportedly forced people from their cars, arrested some, killed others and burned their bodies," said the organization.
Due to the incident, Save the Children said it will be suspending operations in Kayah Chin as well parts of Magway and Kayin, though the group said it remained "committed" to helping Myanmar's children.
“Save the Children condemns this attack as a breach of International Humanitarian Law. We are horrified at the violence carried out against innocent civilians and our staff, who are dedicated humanitarians, supporting millions of children in need across Myanmar. Investigations into the nature of the incident are continuing but attacks against aid workers cannot be tolerated," said the organization.
The military junta claimed that the vehicles failed to stop for inspection as ordered and “terrorists” among them began shooting, causing the military to return fire The New York Times reported. The military did not make mention of burning the cars.
In a statement on Twitter, the U.S. Embassy to Burma wrote, "We are appalled by this barbaric attack in Kayah state that killed at least 35 civilians, including women and children. We will continue to press for accountability for the perpetrators of the ongoing campaign of violence against the people of Burma."
Wolf in greater Yellowstone. (photo: Franz Camenzind/CounterPunch)
The Wilderness Act defines Wilderness as a place where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by humankind, retains its primeval character and where natural conditions are preserved. Simply stated, Wilderness is meant to exist with minimal human interference. Yet within the vast majority of Wilderness areas, the wolf, the apex species with profound ecosystem influence, is now absent—an absence due entirely to the relentless killing by humankind.
We need look no farther than Yellowstone National Park to witness the influence wolves have on an ecosystem. The park’s wolves were exterminated by the early 1900s, ostensibly to protect the park’s favored elk herds. What followed was not surprising—an overabundance of elk which led to deleterious impacts to vegetation, particularly lower elevation riparian and willow communities.
Since the reintroduction of wolves to the park in the mid-1990s, elk numbers have dropped to levels most ecologists agree resemble something near carrying capacity. Similarly, park wolf numbers stabilized around 100, after initial highs of 150-170. With the wolf’s return, the park ecosystem is showing signs of reaching a dynamic equilibrium beneficial to all components. It’s not an exaggeration to say that wolves were instrumental in returning the park’s wildlands nearer to their primeval conditions.
Wolves hold apex status, in part, because of their far-ranging hunting behavior. Yellowstone-area wolf packs hunt in territories ranging from 185-310 square miles. Besides being smaller, the Yellowstone elk herd is more dispersed and spends less time in the lower elevation meadows and riparian-willow communities.
Most ecologists agree that the wolf’s collective impact on elk is contributing to the resurgence of the willow communities, which in turn is witnessing an increase in avian biodiversity and density. The revitalization of Yellowstone’s northern range willow communities has also enabled an increase in the beaver population, leading to positive changes to stream ecology, thus benefitting aquatic invertebrates and the fisheries.
Many of the ecological changes brought about by the wolf’s return may take years if not decades to recognize and fully understand. But one thing is clear, today’s Yellowstone and the Wildernesses harboring robust wolf populations more closely resemble their primeval character than those lacking wolves. Wolves may just be nature’s best wilderness stewards.
Three states now account for the majority of the west’s wolves: Idaho (1,556), Montana (1,220) and Wyoming (347). Another 351 are tallied for Washington (178) and Oregon (173). Mexican Gray Wolves occur in two states: New Mexico (114) and Arizona (72). Combined, approximately 3,660 wolves currently reside west of the 100th meridian—a number that pales to the 250,000 to 2 million estimated to have resided in the entire United States before the European invasion. However, the current numbers are better than the few dozen residing in northwest Montana three decades ago, which were a result of wolves immigrating from Canada.
Today’s bad news is that wolves in Idaho and Montana are once again facing the vigilante actions of the 1800s. Both state legislatures recently passed draconian legislation with the stated objective of reducing wolf numbers to near 150—the number at which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) will take over wolf management as per the states’ wolf management agreements in effect since Endangered Species Act protections were taken away from wolves.
The new legislation authorizes the state commissions to allow wolf-killing by pretty much any means imaginable: the use of traps and snares, unlimited quotas, extended hunting and trapping seasons, and in Idaho, night time hunting, aerial gunning and killing pups in dens. Idaho also designated $200,000 dollars to “cover expenses incurred” by private individuals while killing wolves—essentially imposing a bounty on wolves.
Idaho’s and Montana’s aggressive wolf-killing legislation has been temporarily dampened a bit by the states’ wildlife commissions which have some leeway when setting annual wolf hunting and trapping regulations. For instance, this season, Montana is limiting the open-ended quotas written into their legislation. But the intent and goals remain unchanged—it may just take a few more years to achieve those goals. Ironically, that means more wolves will be killed because each year the survivors will produce young, thus replenishing their numbers, resulting in “a need” to kill more wolves to reach the 150 goal.
State wildlife agencies manage wolves by the numbers, ignoring the fact that wolves are one of the most social species on the planet, and function and survive not as individuals, but as members of highly structured packs. Consequently, intense, random killing can cause packs to break up, resulting in diminished hunting efficiency and pushing wolves toward easier prey, such as livestock.
Today, wolves and the wilderness ecosystems they inhabit are imminently threatened by these irresponsible state efforts to kill upwards of 90 percent of their wolf populations, including within Wilderness. A weakened or removed apex species inevitably results in a weakened ecological system. If this barbaric killing is allowed to proceed, ecosystem function and wilderness protection will be pushed back decades.
Wilderness Watch continues to fight for Wilderness and its wolves. On December 6, Wilderness Watch and a dozen allies filed a lawsuit and a motion for a temporary restraining order/preliminary injunction against the State of Idaho over its barbaric new wolf-killing laws. This followed a June 2021 Notice of Intent to sue Idaho and Montana for their new anti-wolf statues. We’ve petitioned the US Department of Agriculture to promulgate rules or issue closure orders preventing certain killing methods, hired killers, and paying bounties in Wilderness. Wilderness Watch also joined a petition authored by Western Watersheds Project to relist wolves under the Endangered Species Act in light of the new, aggressive wolf-killing statutes. In response, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it will undertake a status review of the gray wolf over the next 12 months.
A Wilderness denied of its wolves is a wounded Wilderness. If wolves can’t be allowed live in Wilderness, where can they live? Wilderness Watch will continue to do all it can to protect this critical, symbiotic relationship and the ecological integrity of Wilderness itself.
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