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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Saturday, January 16, 2021

Hot again: 2020 sets yet another global temperature record (AP) Earth’s rising fever hit or neared record hot temperature levels in 2020, global weather groups reported Thursday. While NASA and a couple of other measurement groups said 2020 passed or essentially tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, more agencies, including the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, said last year came in a close second or third. The differences in rankings mostly turned on how scientists accounted for data gaps in the Arctic, which is warming faster than the rest of the globe. All the monitoring agencies agree the six warmest years on record have been the six years since 2015. The 10 warmest have all occurred since 2005. Temperatures the last six or seven years “really hint at an acceleration in the rise of global temperatures,” said Russ Vose, analysis branch chief at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

A siege on the U.S. Capitol, a strike against democracy worldwide (Washington Post) As the Trump administration sought to drive Venezuelan autocrat Nicolás Maduro from power, activist Jorge Barragán embraced the effort as the good and moral crusade of the world’s greatest democracy. Then came the siege on the U.S. Capitol. The 22-year-old student activist watched “in shock” from his hometown in western Venezuela last week as a mob inspired by President Trump invaded Congress to attempt to overturn an election loss. Barragán could not pull away from the YouTube images showing the pro-Trump marauders acting very much like Maduro’s colectivos—the extraofficial thugs that keep opponents in check and a dictator in charge. “Our main ally in the fight for democracy has tumbled,” Barragán said. “What does that mean for us?” Four years of Trump had already dimmed the United States’ democratic bona fides. From Egypt to Honduras to Saudi Arabia to North Korea, Trump signaled tolerance for human rights abuses. Analysts now warn of a herculean task ahead for Biden. Global inequality, historic migration and deep polarization have driven satisfaction with democracy to disturbing lows. Biden could be weakened by the millions of Trump voters who still say his victory was illegitimate. Meanwhile, any attempt to preach the rule of law to [other nations] could draw calls to get his own house in order first.

Biden Outlines $1.9 Trillion Spending Package to Combat Virus and Downturn (NYT) President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue package to combat the economic downturn and the Covid-19 crisis, outlining the type of sweeping aid that Democrats have demanded for months and signaling the shift in the federal government’s pandemic response as Mr. Biden prepares to take office. The package includes more than $400 billion to combat the pandemic directly, including money to accelerate vaccine deployment and to safely reopen most schools within 100 days. Another $350 billion would help state and local governments bridge budget shortfalls, while the plan would also include $1,400 direct payments to individuals, more generous unemployment benefits, federally mandated paid leave for workers and large subsidies for child care costs. It is unclear how easily Mr. Biden can secure enough votes for a plan of such ambition and expense, especially in the Senate.

Mexico declines to prosecute ex-Defense Minister Cienfuegos on drug charges (Washington Post) Three months after Mexico’s former defense minister was arrested in Los Angeles on drug-trafficking charges—a shocking move that would strain U.S.-Mexican relations—the case came to a close on Thursday night, after Mexican authorities decided not to pursue charges against Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos. The U.S. Justice Department had initially billed the case against Cienfuegos as a blockbuster. The retired military leader was arrested on Oct. 15 on arrival at the Los Angeles airport on charges he had helped the H-2 cartel send thousands of kilos of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines to the United States. But weeks later, after intense pressure from the Mexican government, the Justice Department made the highly unusual decision to drop the charges and send him home for investigation. The case illustrated the power of Mexico’s military, which has become the main force fighting the country’s criminal cartels. Under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the armed forces have also assumed a variety of other roles—running ports, delivering vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic, and building airports and other infrastructure projects. Many senior military officials were outraged at the detention of Cienfuegos, whom they viewed as an honest leader. They feared the U.S. arrest might lead to future investigations against other members of the armed forces, according to analysts and officials. Stung by the anger among the military and Mexican politicians, López Obrador threatened to limit anti-drug cooperation with Washington.

UK has ‘largest population fall since the Second World War’ (The Independent) Up to 1.3 million immigrants have left the UK—the largest population fall since the Second World War—with coronavirus the likely cause, a study says. In London alone, almost 700,000 foreign-born residents are believed to have moved out, leading to a potential 8 per cent shrinking of the size of the capital, it argues. The study, by the government-funded Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE), draws a clear link with the devastation inflicted by the pandemic on sectors such as hospitality. “It seems that much of the burden of job losses during the pandemic has fallen on non-UK workers and that has manifested itself in return migration, rather than unemployment,” the authors concluded. “It seems that much of the burden of job losses during the pandemic has fallen on non-UK workers and that has manifested itself in return migration, rather than unemployment,” the authors concluded. Brexit is not being pinpointed as a cause of the sharp decline, but could yet have implications for filling jobs when the economic recovery comes.

Dutch government resigns over childcare subsidies scandal (Reuters) Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced the resignation of his government on Friday, accepting responsibility for years of mismanagement of childcare subsidies, which wrongfully drove thousands of families to financial ruin. The resignation follows a parliamentary inquiry last month that found bureaucrats at the tax service had wrongly accused families of fraud. The inquiry report said around 10,000 families had been forced to repay tens of thousands of euros of subsidies, in some cases leading to unemployment, bankruptcies and divorces, in what it called an “unprecedented injustice”. Many of the families were targeted based on their ethnic origin or dual nationalities, the tax office said last year.

Spain rejects virus confinement as most of Europe stays home (AP) While most of Europe kicked off 2021 with earlier curfews or stay-at-home orders, authorities in Spain insist the new coronavirus variant causing havoc elsewhere is not to blame for a sharp resurgence of cases and that the country can avoid a full lockdown even as its hospitals fill up. The government has been fending off drastic home confinement like the one that paralyzed the economy for nearly three months in the spring of 2020, the last time Spain could claim victory over the stubborn rising curve of cases. Unlike Portugal, which is going on a month-long lockdown Friday and doubling fines for those who don’t wear masks, officials in Spain insist it will be enough to take short, highly localized measures that restrict social gatherings without affecting the whole economy.

Merkel’s CDU Gathers to Choose New Leader (Foreign Policy) The next chair of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and possibly the next leader of the country, will be decided over the next two days, as 1,001 party delegates meet virtually to select a successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel as party leader. No matter who wins, they will not only have to live up to German expectations, but the world’s too. For the third year running, Germany topped a Gallup poll where respondents were asked to rate their approval of a country’s leadership. A Pew poll of 14 countries, taken in the summer, showed confidence in Angela Merkel was at all time highs.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan cut to 2,500, lowest level since 2001 (Washington Post) The Pentagon has reduced the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 2,500, according to a statement Friday, completing a previously announced rapid drawdown despite a Congressional prohibition of the move and rising levels of violence in the country. “This drawdown brings U.S. forces in the country to their lowest levels since 2001,” said Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller in the statement. Miller also said “the United States is closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war and welcoming in an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led peace process to achieve a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire.” But violence is increasing in many parts of Afghanistan, and peace talks in Qatar have made little progress since they were launched in September.

N.Korea holds huge military parade as Kim vows nuclear might (AP) North Korea displayed new submarine-launched ballistic missiles under development and other military hardware in a parade that underlined leader Kim Jong Un’s defiant calls to expand the country’s nuclear weapons program. State media said Kim took center stage in Thursday night’s parade celebrating a major ruling party meeting in which he vowed maximum efforts to bolster the nuclear and missile program that threatens Asian rivals and the American homeland to counter what he described as U.S. hostility. During an eight-day Workers’ Party congress that ended Tuesday, Kim also revealed plans to salvage the nation’s economy, hit by U.S.-led sanctions over his nuclear ambitions, pandemic-related border closures and natural disasters that wiped out crops. Kim’s comments are likely intended to pressure the incoming U.S. government of Joe Biden, who has previously called the North Korean leader a “thug” and accused Trump of chasing spectacle rather than meaningful curbs on the North’s nuclear capabilities. Kim has not ruled out talks, but said the fate of bilateral relations depends on whether Washington abandons its hostile policy toward North Korea.

Indonesia quake kills at least 42, injures hundreds (Reuters) A powerful earthquake killed at least 42 people and injured hundreds on Indonesia’s island of Sulawesi on Friday, trapping several under rubble and unleashing dozens of aftershocks as authorities warned of more quakes that could trigger a tsunami. Thousands of frightened residents fled their homes for higher ground when the magnitude 6.2-quake struck 6 km (4 miles) northeast of the town of Majene, at a depth of just 10 km, shortly before 1.30 a.m. The quake and aftershocks damaged more than 300 homes and two hotels, as well as flattening a hospital and the office of a regional governor. The heightened seismic activity set off three landslides, severed electricity supplies, and damaged bridges linking to regional hubs, such as the city of Makassar. Heavy rain was also worsening conditions for those seeking shelter.

Palestinians announce first elections in 15 years, on eve of Biden era (Reuters) Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced parliamentary and presidential elections on Friday, the first in 15 years, in an effort to heal long-standing internal divisions. The move is widely seen as a response to criticism of the democratic legitimacy of Palestinian political institutions, including Abbas’s presidency. It also comes days before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, with whom the Palestinians want to reset relations after they reached a low under President Donald Trump. According to a decree issued by Abbas’s office, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, will hold legislative elections on May 22 and a presidential vote on July 31. Hamas, the Islamist militant group which is Abbas’s main domestic rival, welcomed the announcement. But veteran West Bank analyst Hani al-Masri was sceptical that the elections would happen. He cited internal disagreements within Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas, and likely U.S., Israeli and European Union opposition to any Palestinian government including Hamas, which they regard as a terrorist group.

CNN’s correction of the week (Business Insider) After a tumultuous week in the US, most Americans could likely use a little humor. And they got it in the form of an amusing correction from CNN regarding what Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California grabbed during the Capitol siege. “CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated that Rep. Ted Lieu grabbed a crowbar before leaving his office. He grabbed a ProBar energy bar,” a correction for a CNN story states.

#headlines #news

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inescapcble · 5 years ago

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This isn’t really an intro as much as an UPDATE featuring a biography and some changes I’ve realised as I’ve gotten to know Leah’s character better, but given that I’d still recommend y’all give this a once over. Thanks to everyone for getting involved with her and my other characters, and I’m excited to do so much more with her. <3

BASIC INFO ;

Name: Leontine Artemisia Morgan

Nicknames: Leah (by select friends & family only), Madam Prez (slang)

Gender & Pronouns: cis female, she/her pronouns

Age & DOB: Forty | 14 February, 1980 | Anchorage, Kentucky

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius

Orientations: Bisexual / biromantic (with a lean towards women)

Relationship Status: In a ( secret ; open ) relationship with Princess Ivana of the Netherlands ( @ofivana )

Nationality: American

Religion: Agnostic

Neuroses: Undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome (note: I, the mun, have diagnosed Asperger’s!)

FAMILIAL ;

Hometown: Anchorage, Kentucky

Father: Kenneth Morgan, CEO of Morgan Financial

Mother: Candace Morgan (d. 2019)

Siblings: Bocephus ( @hxll-0 ) and Elise ( @ofchampagnetears ) Morgan (b. 1992)

OTHER ;

Languages Spoken: English, Latin, French, Italian, German (incl. Swiss, Austrian and Bavarian German), Spanish, Portuguese

Educational Background: Institut Le Rosey, Harvard University, John Hopkins University

Occupational History:

1. Intern / Political Assistant at Capitol Hill (2002-06)

2. Representative for Maryland’s 2nd District (2006 special election — 2010)

3. Junior Senator for Maryland (2010-2016)

4. 45th President of the United States of America (20th January, 2017—)

Achievements: Youngest and first female president of the United States; shortest initiation in Society history. If I listed her political achievements we’d be here a while, folks.

THE SOCIETY ;

Codename: Adrasteia

Meaning: Adrasteia means “the inescapable,” which I chose as her label. It’s another name for Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution, which i found quite fitting because she’s always managed to rise above people and attain what she wants, even if it is through using her parents’ money and power to her advantage at least in part. And now she’s the defender of the free world, in the most powerful office in the world — don’t make an enemy of the inescapable, for the inescapable will always get you.

Traditionalist or Reformist: Leah struggles to shoe-horn herself into either camp, but she supposes in general due to her own ideas that she’s some kind of reformist, even if that reform doesn’t include party islands and hedonistic displays. She prefers more power for women within the Society; more space for non-established families and for people to get in on their talent alone.

Goals In The Society: Her own advancement. To make her rowdy siblings see their own potential, and perhaps find a bond with them that feels less like she’s that cousin you don’t see often and don’t know very well. Ultimately, to be the Grand Archon, where she can make the most positive change. To use the Society to get rid of the Twenty-Second Amendment so she has more time to create further equally positive change for America.

Opinion On The Society: It’s something she was always meant to be part of, but something that needs to be tweaked to fit the time that it’s in. Some people’s definition of ‘tweak’ is too far, but ultimately the most important thing is that she’s in it. Certainly she values it as an honour.

PERSONALITY ;

MBTI: ENTJ-A

Enneagram: Eight, with a Seven wing

Temperament: Choleric

Hogwarts House: Slytherin

Inspirations: Birgitte Nyborg (Borgen) | Kidz & SOS (Take That songs, inverse) | Peggy Carter (Marvel Cinematic Universe) | Official Secrets (film)

Tropes: The Ace, Armour-Piercing Question, America Saves The Day, The Chessmaster, Contemplative Boss, Married To The Job, Workaholic, Badass In Charge, Brainy Brunette, Deadpan Snarker, Iron Lady

YOUR MUSE AS ;

A piece of art: The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

A song: Under The Ladder by Mélovin

A book: How To Use Your Enemies by Baltasar Gracián

A movie: Official Secrets

A TV show: Borgen

A historical era: Ancient Greece if she had to choose one, but she’s more one to look to the future than the past.

A historical figure: Artemisia of Caria

A colour: Royal blue

An animal: Lioness (she’s got the name for a reason.)

YOUR MUSE’S DREAM ;

JOB: She’s sat in the Oval Office, folks, she’s doing it.

VACATION: Leontine doesn’t have time for vacations, especially not if she’s attending Society events, but if she did, she’d like to go to the Acropolis.

DAY: One day where Bo and Elise are calm; getting to go on a real date with Ivy and be proud of it.

AS A CHILD: To be President of the United States.

LAST NIGHT: I can’t tell you, because she didn’t sleep long enough to reach the appropriate stage and dream.

THAT THEY GAVE UP ON: She’s never given up on a dream. Never once, not unless she realises it was wrong in the first place. She’s not someone who gives up.

THAT THEY HAVE RIGHT NOW: Constitutional change; getting her siblings into the Society

BIOGRAPHY ;

TWELVE years — that was how long Leontine Artemisia was the sole daughter of Kenneth and Candace Morgan, but also how long it took them to forget why. Through generations of the Morgan bloodline the same issue had persisted; a work-ethic that was either partly or entirely based upon an unattainable ideal of perfection.

Which, in itself, led to relationships like the parents’ own. Lacking in healthy emotional expression ( particularly on the side of the born Morgan, less so in his softer-hearted wife ) and with at least some business element regarding a ‘practical’ or ‘advantageous’ match. It wasn’t an arranged marriage, not quite, as they had found each other — mostly — alone, but neither could it be said to be a ‘love match’ the likes of which fill the daydreams of any hopeless romantic.

And then, from there, they hadn’t realised how it would impact any child of theirs until it was too-little, too-late to do anything about it. When the nifty Morgan motto had already taken hold, dug itself into the young girl, going deeper with every comment Kenneth made about how she could be ‘better,’ or ‘how do you expect to be like me or your grandfather?’

It became Candace’s — being the far more empathetic parent, the one who was there when Leah fell and who had attached herself to her first-born in a way she would not attach quite the same with inevitable additions — goal to get her as far away from her husband’s influence as possible, so that she might have half a chance at coming fully into her own. Except, prior to achieving that goal, the terrors ( I’m sorry, the twins, but they were, and are, terrors ) came into the trio’s lives, and Leah was both no longer alone, and more alone than ever.

Which suited her fine, or at least she said it did. After all, she was still her mother’s favourite, anyone could see it. Could feel it, where Kenneth had turned his attention to the young babes to see which child would offer him the legacy he craved; because Leah’s goal — politics; the highest seat in the land, even then, regardless if she had to claw her way up there with her nails or not — didn’t particularly interest him at the time ( Morgan Financial needed an heir, and he was consistently frustrated at his eldest daughter’s disinterest ) and would interest him even less after she came back with European ideas from her next destination: the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, where she would meet a whole host of future A-Listers and members of the Society, including one Étienne de Polignac.

When she returned from Le Rosey at the age of eighteen, her next destination was already settled: the famed Harvard University, to study political science. Of course, she could be nothing but the hardest worker, something she would not let her university boyfriend — as much as she loved him at the time — get in the way of; it was clear Kenneth’s message had gotten through to her ( too well, as she would never feel good enough, always striving to impress him, when it was impossible ) when she chose career over her love life upon graduation.

Because from a young age she had set her eyes upon the White House desk, organised her life around that ultimate dream; pursued law and civics, and abandoned the healthy social lives of others her age. While other members of her family could have been considered high-society socialites, all she knew was her own ambition. Quickly Leah herself became the pedestal for her siblings to follow — except, not her politics, as Kenneth would indicate by sending the twins to Phillips Exeter rather than Le Rosey — and was a point of pride when her parents decided she ought to go to public events; after all, she had to learn how to relate to people, didn’t she? Her first motto, and a tattoo she has that’s always hidden by her clothing, is: change your stars, if you try, you’ll succeed.

Leontine moved to Maryland after Harvard, where she worked as a political advisor at Capitol Hill for one of the Democratic representatives ( whilst balancing a second degree, in international relations, at Johns Hopkins University due to its proximity to Capitol Hill ) until she was of constitutional age to stand for election in the House. She won Maryland’s second district — rather than standing in her birth / home state of Kentucky — and then, upon turning thirty, became the junior senator for the state; however, these early political years were all overshadowed by one event: the war in Iraq, with which she vehemently disagreed, and which has continued to influence her strong anti-war stance throughout the rest of her political career.

‘The rest’ of her political career including her run for President in the 2016 election, resulting in the thirty-six year old defeating Republican nominee Donald Trump in the most resounding fashion since the Nixon landslide. And even then the opponent managed to win Massachusetts; not so here.

She grew up privileged, of course she did, and she’s found her balance between being at peace with and being very aware of what led her to where she is today: the Oval Office, the young trailblazer wherever she went. Leah Morgan’s ‘brand’ is record-breaking, perhaps ( after all, she very quickly charmed people to her favour to admit her into the society as a 25-year-old initiate, a Societal record that still to this day stands. )

Leah’s mother Candace, however, was killed in a ‘car crash’ last Thanksgiving, a tragedy which she has not processed; she hasn’t any understanding of how to deal with grief — none of the Morgans do — so, at some point, it’s all going to come back to her.

But she was raised on ‘this is good, but you can always do better,’ and that shows more than anything in this woman with a lot of dreams and even more ambition.

#gilded:intro

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xtruss · 4 years ago

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Police unions have spent decades amassing influence. They have often used it to combat what Patrick Lynch, the head of New York City’s P.B.A., calls “pro-criminal advocates.”Photograph by Natalie Keyssar for The New Yorker.

How Police Unions Fight Reform

Activists insist that police departments must change. For half a century, New York City’s P.B.A. has successfully resisted such demands.

— Dept. of Law Enforcement | August 3 & 10, 2020 Issue

— By William Finnegan | July 27, 2020 | The New Yorker

In May, just days after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, Lieutenant Bob Kroll, the bellicose leader of the city’s police union, described Floyd as a violent criminal, said that the protesters who had gathered to lament his death were terrorists, and complained that they weren’t being treated more roughly by police. Kroll, who has spoken unsentimentally about being involved in three shootings himself, said that he was fighting to get the accused officers reinstated. In the following days, the Kentucky police union rallied around officers who had fatally shot an E.M.T. worker named Breonna Taylor in her home. Atlanta police staged an organized sick-out after the officers who killed Rayshard Brooks were charged. Philadelphia police sold T-shirts celebrating a fellow-cop who was caught on video clubbing a student protester with a steel baton. The list goes on.

Along with everything else about American society that was thrown into appalling relief by Floyd’s killing, there has been the peculiar militancy of many police unions. Law enforcement kills more than a thousand Americans a year. Many are unarmed, and a disproportionate number are African-American. Very few of the officers involved face serious, if any, consequences, and much of that impunity is owed to the power of police unions.

In many cities, including New York, the unions are a political force, their endorsements and campaign donations coveted by both Republicans and Democrats. The legislation they support tends to get passed, their candidates elected. They insist on public displays of respect and may humiliate mayors who displease them. They defy reformers, including police chiefs, who struggle to fire even the worst-performing officers. In an era when other labor unions are steadily declining in membership and influence, police unions have kept their numbers up, their coffers full. In Wisconsin, the Republican governor, Scott Walker, led a successful campaign to eliminate union rights for most of the state’s public employees. The exceptions were firefighters and police.

Police unions enjoy a political paradox. Conservatives traditionally abhor labor unions but support the police. The left is critical of aggressive policing, yet has often muted its criticism of police unions—which are, after all, public-sector unions, an endangered and mostly progressive species.

In their interstitial safe zone, police unions can offer their members extraordinary protections. Officers accused of misconduct may be given legal representation paid for by the city, and ample time to review evidence before speaking to investigators. In many cases, suspended officers have their pay guaranteed, and disciplinary recommendations of oversight boards are ignored. Complaints submitted too late are disqualified. Records of misconduct may be kept secret, and permanently destroyed after as little as sixty days.

With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, criticism of the police has become less muted. Calls resound to defund police forces, and to abolish the unions. But the United States has eighteen thousand nonfederal police agencies in its hyperlocalized system, with more than seven hundred thousand officers represented by unions. They will not be easily dislodged.

The Police Benevolent Association of New York City, which represents rank-and-file officers in the N.Y.P.D., is the largest municipal police union in the country, with twenty-four thousand dues-paying members. When the P.B.A. was founded, in the eighteen-nineties, it was a feeble thing, dedicated to raising money for the widows of fallen officers. The job was brutal then. Officers were badly paid, untrained, overworked—and thrown out of their jobs every time political power changed hands. They could plead for a living wage or an eight-hour day, but the rising labor movement wanted nothing to do with them. Cops were strikebreakers or worse; the first unionists killed in the American labor struggle, in 1850, were tailors clubbed to death by the New York police, at Ninth Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street.

After the First World War, the American Federation of Labor began issuing charters to police locals—in Cincinnati, St. Paul, Boston, Los Angeles. Management was horrified. Police were not ordinary workers, the argument went; they were more akin to soldiers or sailors, and unions would divide their loyalties, undermining the chain of command. The Boston Police Strike of 1919, when the nascent union demanded recognition from the city, forced a reckoning. There was extensive looting and reported rape; eight people were killed by the state militia. President Woodrow Wilson called the strike “a crime against civilization,” and most of the city’s policemen were fired. The fledgling unions in other cities were destroyed, and the cause of police unionization was set back for generations. It didn’t help that, in 1937, Chicago cops fired on striking steelworkers and their families, killing ten.

In the early sixties, white racial anxiety helped strengthen the unions’ position. The civil-rights movement was gathering force, street crime was increasing, and white flight was transforming cities. Public-sector unions were also flourishing. In New York, the teachers’ union secured the right to collective bargaining in 1961—a major victory. The city’s police were next. In 1963, Mayor Robert Wagner, Jr., a progressive, signed an executive order granting them collective-bargaining rights. Other cities followed, and police unions were eventually accepted in much of the country.

The N.Y.C.P.B.A. reassured politicians by promising not to strike or to affiliate with any other union, but it quickly asserted its power in other ways. The next mayor, John Lindsay, a Kennedyesque Republican, came into office vowing to establish a strong civilian complaint-review board, to provide police oversight. The P.B.A. mounted an overwhelming campaign against the plan. One poster showed a young middle-class white woman emerging from the subway onto a darkened street, looking frightened, with an accompanying text that read, “The Civilian Review Board must be stopped! Her life . . . your life . . . may depend on it.” A TV commercial surveyed damage from rioting in Harlem in 1964, with a voice-over intoning, “The police were so careful to avoid accusations that they were virtually powerless.” The P.B.A. leadership was, if anything, blunter. The president, John Cassese, said, “I am sick and tired of giving in to minority groups, with their whims and their gripes and shouting.” In a citywide referendum, Lindsay’s side was defeated, by a margin of nearly two to one, and New York’s mayors have been on notice ever since.

In the city’s large, and largely segregated, Black community, police brutality had been a first-order issue for decades. The 1964 riots had been sparked when an off-duty policeman killed a fifteen-year-old Black student, James Powell. Activists, led by the N.A.A.C.P. and by Black newspapers such as the Amsterdam News, had been calling for more police accountability since at least the twenties, and for civilian oversight since the forties. Another frequent demand was for the hiring of more Black officers. One of the less-remembered lines in Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s soaring speech at the March on Washington, in 1963: “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”

When Mayor David Dinkins sought to install a civilian review board, in 1992, the P.B.A. staged a ferocious protest at City Hall, with ten thousand off-duty officers, virtually all white and many carrying guns and drinking alcohol. Demonstrators waved racist placards—“Dump the Washroom Attendant”—attacked reporters and bystanders, vandalized City Council members’ cars, stormed City Hall, and overflowed onto the Brooklyn Bridge, where they stopped traffic and jumped on occupied cars. It was a wild performance of police impunity, and the on-duty officers did nothing to stop the mayhem.

Jimmy Breslin was there, reporting for Newsday, and he described a scene of toxic racism. “The cops held up several of the most crude drawings of Dinkins, black, performing perverted sex acts,” he wrote. Newsday had more. A city councilwoman, Una Clarke, who is Black, was prevented from crossing Broadway “by a beer-drinking, off-duty police officer who said to his sidekick, ‘This nigger says she’s a member of the City Council.’ ” As the rally surged, Rudolph Giuliani, a former prosecutor, stood on a car, leading obscene chants through a bullhorn. He defeated Dinkins the next year and went on to two terms as mayor.

By the end of the sixties, a racialized law-and-order ideology had emerged as a sort of unexamined American consensus, and it has basically prevailed since then, providing the political context in which police unions thrive. In the N.Y.P.D. today, with the arc having bent toward inclusion, people of color constitute slightly more than half the uniformed force. And yet the unions—there are five, for various ranks, with the P.B.A. the largest by far—give a different impression. Their leadership, their politics, and their occasional mass protests, not to mention the N.Y.P.D.’s riot squads, still read as overwhelmingly white. White cops, Black and brown suspects: that remains the dominant paradigm.

Patrick J. Lynch is the president of the N.Y.C.P.B.A. He is fifty-seven, and was recently elected, unopposed, to a sixth four-year term. Lynch, who grew up and still lives in Bayside, Queens, is a cop’s cop, banty and brash, clean-shaven, with hair gelled straight back. He’s wound tight, and has a commanding shout that he can sustain for long periods at no-questions-taken press conferences. Outrage is his default mode. His officers are never wrong. Anybody who criticizes them is wrong. Mayors are the enemy. Police brass are the near-enemy. Recently, Lynch said, “Pro-criminal advocates have hijacked our city and state. Law-abiding New Yorkers are suffering, and the police officers who protect them are under attack.” That was in March, but it could have been anytime in the past twenty years. “Pro-criminal” seems to be code. Lynch says it a lot.

Lynch and the P.B.A. deliver solid contracts for their members, with generous pay, especially for overtime, and good benefits. New York cops often retire after twenty years of service, with pensions that, according to a 2018 analysis by the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission, average $74,500, and with plenty of time to start a second career, typically in security. The union—with its hefty political budget, its ability to launch fierce media campaigns, and the fear it can inspire in every politician who does not want to be painted as soft on crime—has also delivered when it comes to public policy. In the sixties, the N.Y.P.D. dropped a longtime requirement that its officers live in the five boroughs, and the P.B.A. has fought off every suggestion that the requirement be revived. And so a majority of its white members live on Long Island or in other suburbs. Dinkins ultimately succeeded in installing a civilian complaint-review board, but its disciplinary recommendations to the department are rarely followed. In public, the union trashes its every step.

The N.Y.P.D. is not the most insular, lawless police department around. It is, in fact, one of the least violent police agencies in the country’s hundred largest cities. During the past seven years, according to a database built by a group called Mapping Police Violence, the police in St. Louis have killed fourteen times more civilians, per capita, than New York police have. In New York, police kill Black civilians at 7.8 times the rate of white civilians. In Chicago, the factor is 27.4.

In June, Lynch denounced George Floyd’s killing as the “murder of an innocent person.” But, even in New York, police killings have gone unprosecuted to an extraordinary extent. In 2014, the Daily News looked at the hundred and seventy-nine killings committed by on-duty N.Y.P.D. officers in the previous fifteen years and found that all those deaths had produced only three indictments and one conviction—which brought no jail time. The reluctance to indict stems partly from the close relationships between the police and local district attorneys—many of whom take campaign donations from the unions—but also from prosecutors’ awareness that juries tend to believe police officers.

Lynch’s time at the N.Y.P.D. has coincided with a spectacular decline in violent crime. His first assignment when he joined the force, in 1984, included the Ninetieth Precinct, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Ninetieth was a bad neighborhood then, with dozens of rapes and murders and more than a thousand robberies a year. Today, it’s . . . Williamsburg. The causes of what is often called the New York Miracle are complex and hotly debated; violent crime has fallen in nearly every major American city. New York’s police claim credit. Young, white, middle-class protesters, fired up by Black Lives Matter and chanting “I can’t breathe,” tend not to acknowledge that their gentrified neighborhoods owe something to the cops behind their polycarbonate riot shields.

A sense of being unthanked runs deep in the N.Y.P.D. People protesting police brutality, according to Lynch, “obviously do not appreciate the risk and sacrifice we make for them.” Mike O’Meara, who heads the transit-police union, scolded state officials at a recent rally, shouting, “Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect!” In February, after Mayor Bill de Blasio expressed his sympathies to two police officers who had been shot, the Sergeants Benevolent Association tweeted, “Mayor DeBlasio, the members of the NYPD are declaring war on you! We do not respect you, DO NOT visit us in hospitals. You sold the NYPD to the vile creatures, the 1% who hate cops but vote for you.” The S.B.A. was also responsible for doxxing the Mayor’s daughter, Chiara; after she was arrested during a peaceful demonstration in late May, it published the police report, including her height, weight, and address, on Twitter. The City Council member Ritchie Torres described the S.B.A. as “a hate group masquerading as a labor union.”

Lynch, for all his choler, is more strategic. He frames every question, whether it’s officers’ salaries or police violence, as a simple binary. “This is not an issue that’s Republican or Democrat,” he told a crowd on the City Hall steps last year, about a contract demand. “This is a right-and-wrong issue.” At the same event, Justin Brannan, a progressive city councilman, offered another binary: “Don’t tell me you’re a union guy if you don’t support the cops and the P.B.A.”

For members, it’s possible to appreciate the work the unions do while deploring their rhetoric. Kirk Burkhalter comes from a police family. His father grew up poor, in the South, and joined the force young. Burkhalter joined at twenty-one, a few years after his brother. “It was all I knew,” he told me. He was always grateful for the unions’ bargaining power: “If it wasn’t for that legislative lobby, I wouldn’t have grown up with all the benefits I did, the health care, the pension.” He started as a patrolman in 1984, the same year that Lynch joined, made his way to detective first grade, and served as a union delegate. He went to college and law school on his own time and, after retiring, became a professor at New York Law School. “It pains me to see what’s going on in the Police Department now,” he told me. “Those are some of my best friends, the people I grew up with.” He says that he understands the unions’ defensiveness, but not their vitriol: “Imagine a nurses’ union that hated patients, that went on TV and talked about how much trouble the patients give them.”

Police unions are prohibited from striking, but they impose themselves through illegal work slowdowns—a tactic known as the “blue flu.” New York has staggered through many of them, including at least one directed at de Blasio. It is a protest, typically, against a perceived injustice to the police, but also a taste of the lawlessness to which police could subject their city. How do you like a languid, foot-dragging response to your 911 calls? Feeling unappreciated, officers may even consider deserting their posts entirely. In June, police in Buffalo shoved an elderly demonstrator to the ground with enough force to crack his skull, and then marched past him, expressionless, as he lay bleeding. After the two officers who did the pushing were suspended, pending an investigation, all fifty-seven members of an élite Emergency Response Team resigned in solidarity.

The gradual departure of beat cops, who knew everybody in the neighborhood and whom everybody knew, at least in sentimental memory, has been a big step toward the alienation between police and civilians that one can feel in nearly every big American city. Cops today, sequestered in their patrol cars, are anonymous, minatory, and much more heavily armed than their predecessors. But the good old days of the beat cop were in many ways not so good. One of New York’s most famous policemen in the nineteenth century was Alexander (Clubber) Williams, who claimed to have bludgeoned hundreds of miscreants into submission, and was celebrated as a hero in Harper’s Monthly in 1887. Violence was—and is—part of the job.

In other developed nations, there is nothing comparable to the rate of police killings that we experience—or, in richer communities, countenance. In England and Wales, three or four civilians die at the hands of police in an average year. The U.S. population is larger, of course, but not three hundred times larger.

According to Paul Hirschfield, a Rutgers sociologist who has written about international law-enforcement practice, the difference is partly in the basic work environment. “American police encounter conditions that are more like Latin America than northern Europe,” he told me. “These vast inequalities, the history of enslavement and conquest, a weak social safety net. The decentralization. Police are more likely to encounter civilians with firearms here. We don’t have the levels of police corruption they do in Mexico, but we are not like other developed countries. The legal threshold for the use of force is lower.” Another difference is training. In some Western European countries, police academies are as selective as a good American college. Recruits in Germany study for a minimum of three years, with professors who are experts in their fields. Officers in the U.S. often start work with as little as eleven weeks of training, mostly in firearms and survival. Burkhalter has proposed that existing training be replaced with a two-year curriculum that includes courses in a range of subjects—law, sociology, psychology—and that not all classes be taught, as is current practice, by law-enforcement personnel. “A clear understanding of the nature of the society they will serve, and all its complexities, is fundamental to any member of a service profession,” he has written.

Police work is indisputably difficult. Patrol officers are often confronted with people at their worst and their most trying; in a country that has more firearms in private hands than it has citizens, the threat of being shot is real. But, statistically, law enforcement does not make the list of the ten most dangerous jobs in America. Commercial fishing is worse, as are roofing and construction. Studies of patrol officers’ service calls have shown that less than five per cent are related to violent crimes.

Seth Stoughton, a former police officer who now teaches law at the University of South Carolina, argues that law enforcement’s “warrior problem” begins in the first days of training. “Would-be officers are told that their prime objective, the proverbial ‘first rule of law enforcement,’ is to go home at the end of every shift,” he wrote in the Harvard Law Review in 2015. “But they are taught that they live in an intensely hostile world. A world that is, quite literally, gunning for them. . . . As a result, officers learn to be afraid.” This message is then drummed into young cops on the job. The only way to survive is by hypervigilance, addressing civilians in a tone of “unquestioned command,” and identifying those who don’t readily accede to authority as enemies.

In June, three N.Y.P.D. officers bought milkshakes downtown and didn’t like the taste. After they mentioned the incident to their sergeant, they were rushed to Bellevue Hospital. The Detectives’ Endowment Association tweeted out an “urgent safety message”: “Tonight, three of our fellow officers were intentionally poisoned by one or more workers at the Shake Shack at 200 Broadway.” The union went on to excoriate the cowards and criminals and pandering elected officials presumably behind the attack. The P.B.A. also got into the act. The officers “discovered that a toxic substance, believed to be bleach, had been placed in their beverages,” the union tweeted. “We cannot afford to let our guard down for even a moment.” Sean Hannity expressed his horror.

Upon further investigation, there was no poison in the milkshakes. Maybe there had been some residual cleaning solution in the shake machine. It happens. The officers were fine, the unions deleted their tweets, and the terrorized Shake Shack workers shrugged it off. The cops reportedly got vouchers for free food and drinks. Police hysteria about fast-food workers tampering with their orders is not limited to the N.Y.P.D.; it has been spreading across the country, to Kansas and Indiana and Georgia. So far, it’s all been imaginary.

In less agitated times, police have a more banal reason to be wary of restaurants. “Cops avoid eating in public because they don’t want to pick up jobs,” Lieutenant Edwin Raymond, of the N.Y.P.D., told me. “People come up to you, want to complain about their landlord, get you involved, when you just want to eat.”

Traditionally, the galvanizing issue for social critics of the police was corruption—straight-up graft. Patrick Lynch was first inspired to run for union president by a corruption scandal, involving the P.B.A.’s lead negotiator and crooked lawyers, which sent several people to jail. He was elected, at thirty-six, on a reform ticket. The only serious competition he has faced came in 2015, after a faction of officers was unhappy with his weak defense of the miscreants in a ticket-fixing scandal in the Bronx. They wanted more solidarity around corruption. They lost.

Brutality is different. If we ask for stronger regulation, we’re siding with the bad guys. Last year, Lynch told City & State magazine that anti-brutality protesters didn’t actually want “reform” (his scare quotes): “Their goal is the end of any law enforcement in New York City, period.” Bill de Blasio got crosswise with the police during his first campaign for mayor, when he promised reform. In office, he hastened the end of a stop-and-frisk policy that was rife with racial profiling, and sharply reduced the city’s jail population. He also talked about warning his biracial son, Dante, about the perils of being a young man of color navigating police stops—a bit of paternal realism that police received as a slight. But it was the Eric Garner tragedy that really blew up de Blasio’s relationship with the N.Y.P.D.

On July 17, 2014, on Staten Island, Garner was allegedly selling loose cigarettes to passersby. Police regarded him and the other cigarette sellers on Bay Street as a quality-of-life problem—a “broken window” that needed to be fixed. Garner was a big man, a Black man, and he shied away from police who came to arrest him. He had done nothing wrong, he said. His friend Ramsey Orta began to film the encounter; without his video, we would not know Garner’s name. Officer Daniel Pantaleo, in plain clothes, seized Garner, drove him to the ground, and put him in a choke hold. On the video, we hear Garner cry “I can’t breathe” eleven times, as Pantaleo and four colleagues take their time cuffing him. By the time they finished, Garner was inert. An hour later, he was pronounced dead at a hospital. After an autopsy, the city’s medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, caused in part by the choke hold.

Patrick Lynch maintains that it was not a choke hold but a “seatbelt”—a non-strangling takedown, which is permitted by the N.Y.P.D. The arrest report filed by Pantaleo’s partner said, falsely, that no force was used. On Staten Island, a grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo. Witnesses who had been called to testify later described the proceedings as focussed less on police malfeasance than on what Garner had done. Pantaleo remained on desk duty. The city rebuffed calls by activists and lawyers for the Garner family to release the officer’s disciplinary record. The department slowed its own investigation to allow a federal civil-rights investigation to proceed. This was evidently a political decision, to let passions cool. The Department of Justice took four and a half years to examine the case, and then, after William Barr was installed as Attorney General, quashed it.

But passions had not cooled. In December, 2014, a drifter with a long criminal record came to New York and murdered two police officers, purportedly to avenge Garner and others, before killing himself. Lynch was incensed. He had been feuding with de Blasio, whom he considered “anti-police.” Now he encouraged on-duty cops to turn their backs on the Mayor when he came to the hospital in Brooklyn where the officers had been taken. At the officers’ funerals, hundreds of police again turned their backs on de Blasio. Polls showed that most New Yorkers disapproved of this display, and many officers apparently felt it was disrespectful of the dead, but none would say so publicly. At a televised news conference, Lynch said that the officers’ deaths had left blood on many hands, but “that blood starts on the steps of City Hall, in the office of the Mayor.”

De Blasio’s enthusiasm for police reform seemed to vanish that night. The rank and file followed up with a two-week slowdown, during which arrests fell by fifty-six per cent. Lynch continued to defend Pantaleo. “He’s a model of what we want a police officer to be,” he told CNN. “He literally is an Eagle Scout.” Pantaleo’s disciplinary record was eventually leaked, and showed a high number of what are called substantiated complaints, including two that helped lead to a lawsuit, which the city was obliged to settle.

After the Justice Department quit the case, in 2019, the N.Y.P.D. finally completed its investigation. That August, more than five years after Garner’s death, the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, fired Pantaleo. Firing an officer is very rare, even on a force of thirty-six thousand. Lynch’s response: “The job is dead. Our police officers are in distress. Not because they have a difficult job, not because they put themselves in danger, but because they realize they’re abandoned.” Pantaleo is now suing, with the P.B.A.’s support, to get his job back.

Pro-police analysts always talk about bad apples; it’s only a few cops who misbehave—ten per cent, tops. But the problem is that the other ninety per cent inevitably know about their misconduct and thus are made complicit. Why don’t they come forward? Everybody hates a rat, and everybody mentions the Blue Wall of Silence, or something called “police culture.” Frank Serpico, the N.Y.P.D.’s best-known whistle-blower, got shot in the head during a drug raid, under disputed circumstances.

The Wickersham Commission, the first of many Presidential commissions set up to study and explain lawlessness and civil disorder, observed, in 1931, “It is an unwritten law in police departments that police officers must never testify against their brother officers.” In what modern urban police officers experience as an increasingly hostile environment, both in the workplace of the low-income neighborhood and in the crosshairs of constant criticism by clever academics and articles like this one, it should not be a surprise that cops feel that they have no choice but to cover for one another. No one else has their backs.

Kirk Burkhalter does not see reform as the responsibility of the unions alone. “Police culture,” he says, is the product of a “symbiotic relationship” between the police and prosecutors and legislators, and the practice of “putting handcuffs on everyone for every little thing” does not originate at street level. “The officer does not have discretion on whether to arrest in many cases,” he told me.

At times, the code of secrecy spreads to elected officials. In Chicago, in 2014, an officer named Jason Van Dyke shot a teen-age boy named Laquan McDonald sixteen times. The police report said that McDonald had advanced on officers with a raised knife. More than a year later, after an activist and a freelance journalist sued under the Freedom of Information Act, the city released a dash-cam video, which showed McDonald not advancing with a knife but walking away. This coverup wasn’t perpetrated by the police alone. City leaders knew what was on that video. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, though he denied having watched it, fought for thirteen months to prevent its release.

In the modern labor movement, police unions are outliers, their politics well to the right of even the Teamsters and the building trades. They can make common cause with the movement when union-killing legislation looms, as it briefly did in New York State a few years ago. But when they know they will be spared, as in Wisconsin, they stay quiet even while teachers and nurses and sanitation workers are being squashed.

For the left, one problem with hammering police unions is that the right is doing the same thing. National Review and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page recognize the problems with police unions and accountability, and they duly extend the argument to teachers’ unions and municipal workers. Their sentiment is: bust them all. Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School, points to new data showing that, when police have greater access to collective bargaining, it correlates with a long-term increase in police killing of civilians, specifically nonwhite civilians. Strong union towns like Chicago often have a more dangerous police culture than cities with weak labor laws do. In Dallas, for instance, the main police union is not the sole bargaining agent. Several different groups, including fraternal organizations of African-American and Latino officers, sign off on union contracts. The result is both more transparent and markedly less violent policing.

Ben Brucato, a sociologist at Rhode Island College, argues that police unions are crucially different from other labor unions. “These organizations function as lobbies to both resist accountability legislation and shield implicated officers,” he writes. A public-sector union is distinct from its private-sector counterparts; its negotiations necessarily include, at least morally, a third party—the public, the taxpayer. And yet many police unions, in their contracts and their ideology, seem to make no provision for this invisible third party. They defend their members against the public, and punish whistle-blowers with even greater zeal than management does. Police unions “represent hundreds of thousands of people, and, except in a very few states, have the ability to organize without any opposition from government,” Brucato told me.

Brucato believes that the solution is to abolish police unions. He has a list of ten steps toward that end, including cancelling contracts, mass firings in the event of illegal slowdowns, and federal prosecutions for persistent obstruction of justice. Other abolitionists want to see major labor federations, such as the A.F.L.-C.I.O., sever ties with police unions. Sachs agrees that there is an urgent need for reform, but he suggests considering more procedural steps: limiting collective bargaining to non-disciplinary matters; opening bargaining sessions to the public; encouraging departments to have multiple unions, representing more diverse views. Many analysts emphasize the need for new use-of-force protocols that are known to save lives but that the unions reject.

All of this would require political will of a kind that until very recently seemed unthinkable. In 1994, Senator Joe Biden worked closely with the police unions to help get his big crime bill written. He later gave full credit to the National Association of Police Organizations: “You guys sat at that conference table of mine for a six-month period, and you wrote the bill.” (The unions abandoned Biden during the Obama years, when they saw him working on criminal-justice reform.) And who can forget President Trump’s performance in 2017, when he leeringly told a law-enforcement crowd on Long Island that he personally didn’t mind if they bumped some suspects’ heads on car-door frames. The officers applauded. Trump knew his audience. During the 2016 campaign, the Fraternal Order of Police, a national union with three hundred and fifty thousand members, had formally endorsed him. In 1968, it endorsed George Wallace.

In early June, something remarkable happened in New York. As the city erupted in protests against police brutality, the N.Y.P.D. responded with vivid displays of more police brutality. Much of the violence was caught on video. Officers were injured by thrown bricks and bottles, and often seemed tactically confused. They managed the perimeters of some protests calmly, and charged others with batons and pepper spray. Many had tape over their names and badge numbers. Whole lines of police in riot gear seemed to be white. De Blasio, confronted with video of two police S.U.V.s driving into a throng of protesters, blamed the protesters for crowding in. When serious looting broke out for three nights in midtown and lower Manhattan, the police seemed to vanish. One heard that they were told to stand down but not why.

They had been busy elsewhere, certainly, arresting some twenty-five hundred people. Charges ran the gamut. At some point, reflecting the Justice Department’s interest in what Attorney General Barr called “outside agitators,” the F.B.I. got involved in the questioning of detainees. As the demonstrations entered their second week, an 8 p.m. curfew, the first imposed in New York since the Second World War, gave police a wide field in which to make arrests, some of them seemingly arbitrary, others clearly targeting protest organizers. In the Bronx, police singled out legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild.

In Albany, though, a momentous shift occurred. Civil libertarians, police reformers, and their allies had been trying for years to repeal a state law, known as Section 50-a, that sealed police disciplinary records, making it impossible to know if an officer had a history of misconduct. The public’s right to know if its armed employees were abusing their monopoly on violence seemed indisputable, but the police unions had fought hard to keep 50-a on the books. It had never even come up for a vote in committee. Politicians like de Blasio agreed that it should be repealed, but did nothing about it. Antagonizing the police unions just wasn’t worth it. Michael Sisitzky, the head of a police transparency and accountability project at the New York Civil Liberties Union, worked on the issue for years. “We didn’t know how to frame it,” he told me. “It just sounds so wonky—‘Repeal 50-a.’ Then, suddenly, we started seeing banners at the protests, ‘Repeal 50-a.’ ”

The ideals of Black Lives Matter were now in the political mainstream. Governor Andrew Cuomo said that he would sign any reform bill that state legislators sent him, and a few days later they sent him the 50-a repeal, a new ban on choke holds, and more. He signed. Activists like Sisitzky had prepared the legislation, and the families of those killed by the police, including Eric Garner, had advocated tirelessly; the Legislators of Color caucus had given it a crucial final push. But, Sisitzky told me, “what moved those bills was the massive outpouring of people into the streets demanding action.”

For many years, the P.B.A. and its fellow-unions argued that opening police-misconduct records would endanger not only officers but also their families. This was fearmongering: misconduct records would not include home addresses or phone numbers. After these reform bills passed, the unions held a rally under the highway on Randall’s Island. Lynch and O’Meara raged, backed by rows of glowering police. After all their service, all their sacrifice, they could not believe that they didn’t even get a seat at the table.

I asked Sisitzky about that. “No seat at the table?” he said. “They’ve always been represented in ways that other organizations can only dream of.” Anyway, it wasn’t as if they were going away. “The unions will try to reassert themselves, of course.” He was right. In July, the P.B.A. sued New York City to block the release of misconduct records, and a federal judge quickly granted a temporary restraining order. Sisitzky’s office was barred from releasing records it had already obtained.

But Kirk Burkhalter felt that, at least for the moment, the momentum toward reform was strong enough that the unions should consider compromise. “There’s no need for this rift between the unions and the Black community,” Burkhalter, who is Black, said. “Black Lives Matter and the P.B.A.—they can each get some of what they want. It’s not zero-sum.” But time may be running out for the unions, he said: “How long are these lifelong benefits going to last in this climate? You better get on your horse and insure the public has confidence in you, because that’s going to be the first thing to go.”

After the victory in Albany, New York’s police reformers took a couple of days to party, pandemic style, and then turned their attention to City Hall. The city’s fiscal 2021 budget would be submitted on July 1st, and the consensus goal among reformers was a billion-dollar cut in the N.Y.P.D.’s six-billion-dollar budget. De Blasio said he was in favor, but nobody trusted him. People camped in the little wedge of park outside City Hall, trying to turn up the pressure.

Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform, a long-running campaign to end discriminatory policing in New York, was a key leader in the effort to repeal 50-a. Kang has fought the police unions and the N.Y.P.D. for years, trying to get even the names of officers responsible for killings. “People really should have the right to know who’s patrolling their streets,” she said. “Really, though, egregious police killings are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s the daily humiliation, the daily abuse of authority.”

Now she had turned her full attention to the city budget. “This is a direct challenge to the outsized power that the police unions have had,” she said. “This movement to decrease N.Y.P.D. funding? That’s what they’re really scared of.” She and the other activists took a hard line with de Blasio. “We don’t want to see any funny math,” she told me. “This is the time to think about what sort of city we want to be.”

When the Mayor and the City Council reached a budget deal, the activists were keenly dissatisfied. The deal purported to redirect a billion dollars from police into social investments, but it was full of funny math. It set a thoroughly unrealistic cap on overtime, promising to reduce last year’s estimated expenditures of eight hundred and twenty million dollars by two-thirds. It eliminated the N.Y.P.D.’s payments to cops in schools, but only by making the Department of Education cover them. It lacked an across-the-board hiring freeze—even as other municipal agencies were having their budgets slashed, to address covid-era shortfalls. To the activists’ disappointment, many Black elected officials supported the deal. Kang suggested that the council members who voted for it would face progressive opposition. “These councilpersons are going to have races in 2021,” she said.

The police unions, already aggrieved by the state-level reforms, were further provoked by a set of New York City statutes passed the following week, which provided new restrictions on choke holds and surveillance and supported the public’s right to film police activity. A frightening spike in violent crime—as of late June, murders in the city were up twenty-three per cent over last year—inspired a fierce round of finger-pointing. It was de Blasio’s fault. (Lynch to Hannity: “The city has given our streets back.”) It was cops not doing their jobs. (Arrests were down dramatically, and morale was said to be low.) It was the bail-reform law, and pandemic mitigation, emptying the jails. It was the judicial backlog. It was the disbanding of a plainclothes “anti-crime unit”—Pantaleo’s old crew.

In July, Dermot Shea, the police commissioner, decided to go full Patrick Lynch. In a speech to senior commanders, he said, “People that don’t have a clue about how to keep New Yorkers safe suddenly think they know about policing.” He called the city’s leaders “cowards who won’t stand up for what’s right.” He declared, “We’re not giving this goddam city back to criminals.”

De Blasio’s response was timid. He said that, while Shea’s choice of words was not “constructive,” his frustration was understandable. Meanwhile, N.Y.P.D. officers were voting with their feet. Since the protests began, more than five hundred officers have filed for retirement—almost twice the figure from the same period last year. The chief of the lieutenants’ union told the Post that the police were feeling “demoralized and abandoned.” Another possible factor: many officers had earned huge amounts of overtime, between working the protests and covering pandemic sick days, and their pensions, based on their final year’s salary, were as lucrative as they’d ever be. The office that handles retirements was so swamped that it was seeing people only by appointment.

On a warm recent afternoon, I found myself in colloquy with a half-dozen police officers stationed outside the front entrance of the American Museum of Natural History. They were there for the duration, they said, unhappily. Their assignment was looming above us, in the form of the Teddy Roosevelt statue that has stood in that spot for eighty years.

It’s one of the great problematic monuments. Roosevelt sits astride a horse, both of them extra-muscular. He has a pistol on each hip, and a resolute gaze, too noble by half, fixed on the horizon. On either side, and slightly behind him, is a gun-bearer on foot. One is a Native American, in a feathered headdress, his lower half covered by a blanket—you hear him called a “generic Plains Indian.” The other is a generic East African, naked, carrying a shield on his back and a blanket over one shoulder. In the revolutionary spirit of the moment, the museum had decided to remove the statue, and the cops were there to prevent its being removed prematurely by a mob. Things were quiet up and down Central Park West. Still, the mood was sour.

“You ever read ‘1984’?” one officer asked. He was fleshy and fair, late thirties, with a Long Island accent.

He nodded at the statue, the closed-down museum, the whole situation.

“Nah,” his colleague said. “This is ‘Animal Farm.’ ”

“Nah,” the first cop said. “It’s the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Wipe out the past, act like none of it ever happened.” He sounded disturbed, disgusted, sad.

“Even the blue whale?”

“Yeah, everything,” he said.

Change is coming, and everybody knows it. But Trump and the more reactionary police-union leadership have something in common: they all seem to have missed the last boat out of the bad old days. Patrick Lynch, certainly, is a relic of mid-century policing, when cops were always right and usually white and could take a free hand in Black and brown neighborhoods. The social license of that model of policing has expired. A new generation of officers, mostly not white, waits to take power at the unions.

In New York, the percentage of African-American officers is in decline, as the first big generational cohort retires. But the numbers of Latino and Asian-American officers are still growing. Though it is impossible to generalize, officers of color seem less enthusiastic than their white colleagues about the union leadership. Each one I’ve asked has described a feeling of not being represented. A fraternal organization of Black officers, called the Guardians Association, has long dissented from the union’s hostility to civilian oversight.

I was struck by a coincidence in telephone interviews with two Black N.Y.P.D. officers, one of them retired. In both conversations, we ended up discussing the latest local police scandal, in which an officer was caught on video applying a choke hold to someone on the boardwalk in the Rockaways. The officer, David Afanador, had previously been tried for felony assault—he pistol-whipped an unarmed, unresisting sixteen-year-old, breaking his teeth—but he was acquitted at trial. In the new case, he was quickly suspended and indicted for “attempted aggravated strangulation,” with no discussion of a grand jury. Both interviewees called my attention to the same detail in the Afanador video: a second officer urging him to ease up. That was what excited them. It was a complicity breach—a small but perhaps indicative case of the ninety per cent reining in the ten. “That’s what we want to see,” the retired officer said. “That guy’s an actual hero.” ♦

— Published in the print edition of the August 3 & 10, 2020, issue, with the headline “The Blue Wall.”

— William Finnegan has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1987. His book “Barbarian Days” won the

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douglasacogan · 4 years ago

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Mixed messages on mandatory minimums from executive branch in New Jersey witrh a retroactive kicker

In this post last month, I flagged the debate in New Jersey where the Governor was threatening to veto a bill to repeal mandatory minimums for certain non-violent crimes because it repealed too many mandatory minimum sentences. Sure enough, that veto happened yesterday, but so too did an interesting related action from the NJ Attorney General. This Politico piece, headlined "Murphy vetoes mandatory minimum bill as Grewal unilaterally eliminates some sentences," provides these details (with some emphasis added):

Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday vetoed a bill that would do away with mandatory minimum prison terms for non-violent crimes, excising sections that would eliminate the sentences for corruption offenses. At the same time, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued a directive requiring that prosecutors make use of a provision in New Jersey law allowing them to set aside mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes.

“I am particularly troubled by the notion that this bill would eliminate mandatory prison time for elected officials who abuse their office for their own benefit, such as those who take bribes. Our representative democracy is based on the premise that our elected officials represent the interests of their constituents, not their own personal interests,” Murphy wrote in his veto message, which also took a shot at former President Donald Trump. “I cannot sign a bill into law that would undermine that premise and further erode our residents’ trust in our democratic form of government, particularly after four years of a presidential administration whose corruption was as pervasive as it was brazen.”

The two executive actions are the culmination of an eight-month political fight between the Murphy administration and the Democrat-controlled Legislature over what began as benign legislation that followed exactly the recommendations of the New Jersey Criminal Sentencing & Disposition Commission. The commission, in a November 2019 report, recommended eliminating mandatory sentences for a wide swath of mostly drug and property crimes with the aim of reducing racial disparities among the incarcerated.

Murphy’s conditional veto essentially returns the legislation, NJ S3456 (20R), to its initial form — which did not address corruption offenses — before state Sen. Nicholas Sacco began a successful effort to change it. Grewal’s directive may help allay the concerns of criminal justice advocates who did not want to see mandatory minimum sentences upheld over a political fight, leading some to throw their support behind the legislative effort. The directive goes further than the legislation would have, applying retroactively to prisoners serving mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. The directive does not apply to mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent property crimes, and it was not immediately clear how many inmates are serving time under those laws.

“It’s been nearly two years since I first joined with all 21 of our state’s County Prosecutors to call for an end to mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug crimes,” Grewal said in a statement. “It’s been more than a year since the Governor’s bipartisan commission made the same recommendation. And yet New Jerseyans still remain behind bars for unnecessarily long drug sentences. This outdated policy is hurting our residents, and it’s disproportionately affecting our young men of color. We can wait no longer. It’s time to act.”

New Jersey Together, a coalition of criminal justice reform advocates, said in a statement that “ending mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug crimes prospectively and for those currently incarcerated will be a huge step in the right direction.” “Now, the work should begin with the governor and the Legislature to make this permanent and to end mandatory minimum sentencing as a whole,” the group said.

Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU-NJ, said in a statement that even though Grewal’s directive takes “significant steps to mitigate the harms of some of the most problematic mandatory minimums,” his group is “disappointed” because “our state falls short by failing to enact legislation that can promote justice for thousands of New Jerseyans.” Sinha urged the Legislature to concur with Murphy’s veto....

Grewal’s directive allows prosecutors to seek periods of parole ineligibility “when warranted to protect public safety based on the specific facts of the case.” Advocates have long sought to repeal mandatory minimum sentences, especially those that came about as part of the “War on Drugs.” For instance, New Jersey imposes harsh mandatory sentences for those caught selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school, a crime far more likely to harshly punish dealers in denser urban areas and who are more likely to be Black and Hispanic. At the time of a 2016 report by The Sentencing Project, New Jersey incarcerated white people at a rate of 94 per 100,000 compared to 1,140 for Black and 206 for Hispanic people.

A bill that mirrored the recommendations of the New Jersey Criminal Sentencing & Disposition Commission was nearing the final stages of the the legislative process when Sacco (D-Hudson) quietly requested an amendment to eliminate the mandatory minimum sentences for official misconduct. Sacco later acknowledged to POLITICO that he requested the amendment. Walter Somick, the son of Sacco‘s longtime girlfriend, is facing several corruption-related charges, including official misconduct, over an alleged no-show job at the Department of Public Worker in North Bergen, where Sacco is mayor and runs a powerful political machine....

“I am cognizant of the fact that Attorney General‘s directives could be changed in a future administration by the stroke of a pen, and thus recognize that there is still a need to permanently codify these changes in statute,” Murphy said. “I remain hopeful that the Legislature will concur with my proposed revisions, which reflect the Commission’s evidence-based recommendations and its desire that these recommendations apply prospectively and retroactively.”

Because I generally view all mandatory minimum sentencing provisions for nonviolent offenses to be problematic, I am a bit disappointed by the veto of the legislative reform here. But because I generally favor retroactive reforms to enable excessive prior prison terms to be addressed, the retroactive relief made possible by the NJ AG is a comforting related development. The basics of the AG action is discussed in this official press statement and the full 11-page directive can be accessed at this link.

Prior related posts:

New Jersey commission releases big report recommending numerous big sentencing reforms

Will NJ Gov veto a bill to repeal mandatory minimums for certain non-violent crimes because it repeals too many?

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2021/04/mixed-messages-on-mandatory-minimums-from-executive-branch-in-new-jersey-witrh-a-retroactive-kicker.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

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brookstonalmanac · 4 years ago

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Events 5.2

1194 – King Richard I of England gives Portsmouth its first Royal Charter. 1230 – William de Braose is hanged by Prince Llywelyn the Great. 1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft. 1559 – John Knox returns from exile to Scotland to become the leader of the nascent Scottish Reformation. 1568 – Mary, Queen of Scots, escapes from Loch Leven Castle. 1611 – The King James Version of the Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker. 1625 – Afonso Mendes, appointed by Pope Gregory XV as Latin Patriarch of Ethiopia, arrives at Beilul from Goa. 1670 – King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America. 1808 – Outbreak of the Peninsular War: The people of Madrid rise up in rebellion against French occupation. Francisco de Goya later memorializes this event in his painting The Second of May 1808. 1812 – The Siege of Cuautla during the Mexican War of Independence ends with both sides claiming victory after Mexican rebels under José María Morelos y Pavón abandon the city after 72 days under siege by royalist Spanish troops under Félix María Calleja. 1829 – After anchoring nearby, Captain Charles Fremantle of HMS Challenger, declares the Swan River Colony in Australia. 1863 – American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson is wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering during the Battle of Chancellorsville. He succumbs to pneumonia eight days later. 1866 – Peruvian defenders fight off the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Callao. 1876 – The April Uprising breaks out in Ottoman Bulgaria. 1885 – Cree and Assiniboine warriors win the Battle of Cut Knife, their largest victory over Canadian forces during the North-West Rebellion. 1889 – Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, signs the Treaty of Wuchale, giving Italy control over Eritrea. 1906 – Closing ceremony of the Intercalated Games in Athens, Greece. 1920 – The first game of the Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis. 1933 – Germany's independent labor unions are replaced by the German Labour Front. 1941 – Following the coup d'état against Iraq Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah earlier that year, the United Kingdom launches the Anglo-Iraqi War to restore him to power. 1945 – World War II: The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin. 1945 – World War II: The surrender of Caserta comes into effect, by which German troops in Italy cease fighting. 1945 – World War II: The US 82nd Airborne Division liberates Wöbbelin concentration camp finding 1000 dead prisoners, most of whom starved to death. 1945 – World War II: A death march from Dachau to the Austrian border is halted by the segregated, all-Nisei 522nd Field Artillery Battalion of the U.S. Army in southern Bavaria, saving several hundred prisoners. 1952 – A De Havilland Comet makes the first jetliner flight with fare-paying passengers, from London to Johannesburg. 1963 – Berthold Seliger launches a rocket with three stages and a maximum flight altitude of more than 100 kilometres near Cuxhaven. It is the only sounding rocket developed in Germany. 1964 – Vietnam War: An explosion sinks the American aircraft carrier USNS Card while it is docked at Saigon. Two Viet Cong combat swimmers had placed explosives on the ship's hull. She is raised and returned to service less than seven months later. 1964 – First ascent of Shishapangma, the fourteenth highest mountain in the world and the lowest of the Eight-thousanders. 1969 – The British ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 departs on her maiden voyage to New York City. 1972 – In the early morning hours a fire breaks out at the Sunshine Mine located between Kellogg and Wallace, Idaho, killing 91 workers. 1982 – Falklands War: The British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sinks the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano. 1986 – Chernobyl disaster: The City of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the disaster. 1989 – Cold War: Hungary begins dismantling its border fence with Austria, which allows a number of East Germans to defect. 1995 – During the Croatian War of Independence, the Army of the Republic of Serb Krajina fires cluster bombs at Zagreb, killing seven and wounding over 175 civilians. 1998 – The European Central Bank is founded in Brussels in order to define and execute the European Union's monetary policy. 1999 – Panamanian general election, 1999: Mireya Moscoso becomes the first woman to be elected President of Panama. 2000 – President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military. 2004 – The Yelwa massacre concludes. It began on 4 February 2004 when armed Muslims killed 78 Christians at Yelwa. In response, about 630 Muslims were killed by Christians on May 2nd. 2008 – Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Burma killing over 138,000 people and leaving millions of people homeless. 2008 – Chaitén Volcano begins erupting in Chile, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,500 people. 2011 – Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man, is killed by the United States special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. 2011 – An E. coli outbreak strikes Europe, mostly in Germany, leaving more than 30 people dead and many others sickened. 2012 – A pastel version of The Scream, by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, sells for $120 million in a New York City auction, setting a new world record for a work of art at auction. 2014 – Two mudslides in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, leave up to 2,500 people missing.

#Events

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years ago

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Joe Biden names Kamala Harris as running mate to take on Donald Trump, Mike Pence in Nov

If Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris is met with a cold shoulder by some on the Left, she is likely to be embraced by Biden’s most important electoral constituency within the Democratic Party: Black voters

Joe Biden selected Senator Kamala Harris of California as his vice-presidential running mate Tuesday, embracing a former rival who sharply criticised him in the Democratic primaries but emerged after ending her campaign as a vocal supporter of Biden and a prominent advocate of racial-justice legislation after the death of George Floyd in late May.

Harris, 55, is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party, and only the fourth woman in history to be chosen for one of their presidential tickets. She brings to the race a far more vigorous campaign style than Biden’s, including a gift for capturing moments of raw political electricity on the debate stage and elsewhere, and a personal identity and family story that many find inspiring.

Biden announced the selection over text message and in a follow-up email to supporters: “Joe Biden here. Big news: I’ve chosen Kamala Harris as my running mate. Together, with you, we’re going to beat Trump.” The two are expected to appear together in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday.

After her own presidential bid disintegrated last year, many Democrats regarded Harris as all but certain to attempt another run for the White House. By choosing her as his political partner, Biden may well be anointing her as the de facto leader of the party in four or eight years.

A pragmatic moderate who spent most of her career as a prosecutor, Harris was seen throughout the vice-presidential search as among the safest choices available to Biden. She has been a reliable ally of the Democratic establishment, with flexible policy priorities that largely mirror Biden’s, and her supporters argued that she could reinforce Biden’s appeal to Black voters and women without stirring particularly vehement opposition on the right or left.

While she endorsed a number of left-wing policy proposals during her presidential bid, Harris also showed a distinctly Biden-like impatience with what she characterised as the grand but impractical governing designs of some in her party.

“Policy has to be relevant,” Harris said last summer in an interview with The New York Times. “That’s my guiding principle: Is it relevant? Not, ‘Is it a beautiful sonnet?’.”

In a Twitter post Tuesday, Harris said she was honoured to join Biden on the ticket. “Joe Biden can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us,” she wrote.

For all the complexity of Biden’s vice-presidential search, there is a certain foreordained quality to Harris’ nomination. She has been regarded as a rising figure in Democratic politics since around the turn of the century, and as a confident representative of the country’s multiracial future. Harris sought to capture that sense of destiny in her own presidential campaign, announcing her candidacy on Martin Luther King Jr Day in 2019 and paying frequent homage to Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s nomination.

Throughout her rise, Harris has excited Democrats with a personal story that set her apart even in the diverse political melting pot that is California: She is the daughter of two immigrant academics, an Indian-American mother and a father from Jamaica. Harris was raised in Oakland and Berkeley, attended Howard University and pursued a career in criminal justice before becoming only the second Black woman ever elected to the Senate.

Still, Harris was far from a shoo-in for the role of Biden’s running mate, and some of Biden’s advisors harboured persistent reservations about her because of her unsteady performance as a presidential candidate and the finely staged ambush she mounted against Biden in the first debate of the primary season. Jill Biden, the former second lady, called Harris’ debate stage remarks a “punch to the gut” at a fundraiser in March.

In the end, however, Biden may have come to see the panache Harris displayed in that debate — when she confronted him over his past opposition to busing as a means of integrating public schools — as more of a potential asset to his ticket than as a source of lingering grievance. Indeed, even in the bleaker periods of her presidential candidacy last year, Harris maintained an ability to excite Democratic voters with the imagined prospect of a debate-stage clash between her and President Donald Trump.

Minutes after the announcement, the Biden campaign released what they called a fact sheet — “Biden-Harris: Ready to lead,” read the subject line. Perhaps in recognition of the attention paid to tensions between the Biden family and Harris surrounding the debate stage attack, the release included a section titled, “Kamala’s partnership with Joe Biden”.

The document noted that she served as attorney-general of California when Biden’s son, Beau, was attorney-general of Delaware. “The two grew close while fighting to take on the banking industry,” read one bullet point. “Through her friendship with Beau, she got to know Joe Biden. From hearing about Kamala from Beau, to seeing her fight for others directly, Joe has long been impressed by how tough Kamala is.”

Biden’s choice drew immediate praise Tuesday afternoon from some of his former rivals for the Democratic nomination. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, herself a onetime candidate for the vice-presidential slot, called it a “historic moment” and praised Harris’ leadership, experience and character.

The Trump campaign responded to Harris’ selection with a statement branding her as “proof that Joe Biden is an empty shell being filled with the extreme agenda of the radicals on the Left”. Katrina Pierson, a spokeswoman for the campaign, attacked the policy stances Harris adopted during her own presidential campaign and highlighted her past attacks on Biden.

“Clearly, Phony Kamala will abandon her own morals, as well as try to bury her record as a prosecutor, in order to appease the anti-police extremists controlling the Democrat Party,” Pierson said.

After leaving the presidential race in December, Harris turned her attention back to the Senate and found new purpose amid a wave of nationwide protests this spring against racism and police brutality. She marched beside protesters and forcefully championed proposals to overhaul policing and make lynching a federal crime, often speaking with a kind of clarity that had eluded her in the presidential primaries on economic issues like health care and taxation.

Harris is likely, however, to face some scepticism from the Left — and attacks from Trump — over her record as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney-general of California. She has struggled in the past to defend her handling of some highly sensitive cases, including one involving a death-row inmate seeking to obtain DNA evidence for his case, as well as her decision to defend California’s death penalty in court despite her stated opposition to capital punishment.

In perhaps her worst moment of the 2020 primary race, Harris during a debate appeared entirely unable to rebut searing criticism from an obscure rival, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who demanded that Harris apologise for having prosecuted so many people for marijuana infractions. At other times, Harris struggled to articulate clear positions on litmus-test issues like single-payer health care.

But if Biden’s selection of Harris is met with a cold shoulder by some on the Left, she is likely to be embraced by Biden’s most important electoral constituency within the Democratic Party: Black voters.

Indeed, his choice reflects an emphatic recognition of the diversity of the Democratic political coalition and the foundational role that Black women in particular play within the party. Black women are among the most loyal Democratic constituencies, and without their overwhelming support Biden would have been unlikely to secure the Democratic nomination in the first place. By nominating a Black woman for national office, Biden appears to be acknowledging the immensity of that political debt.

He considered at least five Black women for the job, including Susan Rice, the former national security advisor to former President Barack Obama, and Representative Karen Bass, before ultimately settling on Harris. While Biden never described race as a central criterion in his decision-making, he stressed repeatedly throughout the process that he was reviewing a highly diverse group of candidates, including Latina and Asian-American candidates.

Biden faced only limited pressure from voters and Black elected officials to select an African-American running mate, and polls found that even liberals and Black voters themselves mostly believed that race should not be a factor in his decision. But the political atmosphere that took hold after the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis seemed to demand a running mate who could speak with great authority on matters of racism, law enforcement and social inequity �� and there is little doubt that Harris will be called upon to do just that.

Some Democratic leaders also urged Biden to choose a Black running mate for purely strategic reasons, arguing that an increase in Black turnout across the South and Midwest could improve both Biden’s chances of winning the Electoral College and his party’s odds of winning a majority in the Senate. Still, it remains an open question how much Harris will help Biden and his party in that respect: Last year, she never garnered strong support in the diverse primary states of South Carolina and Nevada, and opinion research conducted by Biden’s team in recent weeks suggested she was not especially compelling to Black voters.

The question of Biden’s potential running mate was an urgent issue even for his core admirers, some of whom supported him in the Democratic primaries because they believed he could win the election but worried about whether he would be able to generate passionate enthusiasm for his candidacy. Part of Harris’ task now may be to stir the energy of Biden’s coalition in a way he has seldom managed to do himself.

The immediate political impact of Harris’ selection could be relatively muted in a campaign shaped so heavily by forces of extraordinary scale, most of all a global pandemic that has claimed many tens of thousands of American lives and pushed the economy into a painful recession.

Yet it has been clear for months that Biden’s vice-presidential decision would have unusually weighty implications for the Democratic Party, and for national politics in general. If he wins in November, Biden would become the oldest president ever to hold the office, and few senior Democrats believe he is likely to seek a second term that would begin after his 82nd birthday.

As a result, when Democrats formally approve Harris as Biden’s running mate this month, they may well be naming her as a powerful favourite to lead their party into the 2024 presidential race.

Biden’s age — 77 — also may have heightened the importance of finding a running mate with thoroughly convincing political credentials. Biden himself seemed sensitive to that reality, reiterating often that he wanted a vice president who would be ready to assume the top job immediately.

“The first and most important attribute is, if something happens to me, the moment after it does, that that person is capable of taking over as president of the United States of America,” he said at a fundraiser in May.

The vice-presidential search was at once highly public — involving tryouts on television and in online campaign events for more than half a dozen candidates — and surprisingly discreet for a campaign that has weathered a sizeable number of leaks over the past 15 months.

Much of the process was carried out by a committee of four trusted advisors named by Biden in late April: Former Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Cynthia Hogan, Biden’s former chief counsel.

Aided by a team of lawyers, this group held interviews with a range of vice-presidential prospects and delved into their political records, personal finances and private lives before referring a smaller number of them for interviews with Biden.

The field of women considered was certainly the most diverse array of vice-presidential candidates in history, beginning with a pool of more than a dozen contenders that included governors, senators, members of the House, a former UN ambassador, the mayor of Atlanta and a decorated combat veteran. The group included two Asian-American women and the first openly gay person elected to the Senate. Dodd in particular is said to have pressed for a large list with some unconventional names on it, to give Biden maximum flexibility in his choice.

By the end of June, a smaller cluster of candidates had emerged as strong contenders, impressing the screening committee in interviews and reaching a point in the process that involved extensive document requests from Biden’s lawyers. Among that group were Harris, Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Representative Val Demings of Florida, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, Bass of California and Rice, the former national security advisor and UN ambassador.

Yet more than in any other recent vice-presidential process, it was also plain enough from the start that this one would be decided by one person, and one person alone, with an unusually well-developed sense of the vice presidency and firm convictions about how to do the job right. After all, Biden is the first presidential candidate in 20 years to choose a running mate after serving as the vice-president himself.

On the campaign trail, Biden constantly fielded inquiries about a possible vice-presidential pick, leading him to craft a well-honed answer about his criteria. In addition to being able to assume the presidency immediately, if necessary, Biden’s running mate must be “simpatico” with him on critical issues of the day, as well as on a broader vision for how to lead the nation.

Biden’s running mate should also balance him out with “some qualities that I don’t possess,” he has said.

Perhaps most importantly, he has emphasised the need to select a vice-president with whom he could have the same trusting, candid relationship that he had with Obama.

“We disagreed on some tactical approaches,” Biden recalled at a fundraiser in April, describing the lunches he and Obama had “where everything was on the table.” But, he went on, “It has to happen in private. You always have to have the president’s back.”

Alexander Burns and Katie Glueck c.2020 The New York Times Company

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wittypenguin · 4 years ago

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Looking at 1968 to Learn How to Survive 2020

It’s been suggested recently that this is the worst year in modern American history, which would make it worse than 1968, when both Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy were killed, plus a US Presidential Election brought to power Richard Milhous Nixon and the Uber-corrupt Spiro Theodore Agnew. This year we’ve already had COVID-19, the resurgence of the struggle for equal treatment under the law for People of Colour (which has been essentially ignored and left un-dealt with for well over a century), plus a complete nitwit of a President* who seems to be trying to create either a ‘Police State’ or an ‘untouchabe Emperor Structure of Governance,’ and we’re not even half-way through the year yet!

The Silent Parade was organized by W.E.B. DuBois on July 28, 1917 in New York to protest violence against African Americans nationally. Universal Animated Weekly, Vol 5, Issue 83, 1917. This clip was recovered in 1978 after having been buried in Dawson City, Yukon, for 49 years. pic.twitter.com/Hm7Nydgqcq

Check out the GIF through that link. See? That’s 1917. And that’s only what we have film of, and the first instance of human trafficking in what we now call the United States was in the early 1600s.

So… let’s take look at what people had to deal with in 1968, not with an eye to state we’ve got it so bad right now and to feel hard-done-by in comparison to the ‘Boomers,’ but to see what they dealt with, and then considering what we can learn about how they didn’t go insane while dealing with all the crap they had to. This way, we can protect our mental health in order to get through what we’ve got now.

I’ve grouped events to the end of May into three chronological blocks — Civil Rights (mostly U.S. events, but also elsewhere), General (political events of mostly non-North American locales), and the Vietnam War (including other formalized military events not directly part of the Vietnam conflict) — with the mid-March protests at Howard University being placed in both the ‘Civil Rights’ and ‘Vietnam’ categories, owing to both of those being fundamental to the causation of that particular event.

Civil Rights Events:

February 8: a civil rights protest staged at a white-only bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina is broken up by highway patrolmen; 3 college students are killed

February 13: civil rights ‘disturbances’ occur at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

March 1: the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 receives Royal assent in the UK [learn more about that here]

March 6: the then un-recognized nation of Rhodesia executes 3 black citizens, the first executions since unilaterally declaring its independence

March 19–23: students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. by staging rallies, protests and a 5-day sit-in; laying siege to the administration building; shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War; and demanding a more inclusive and Afrocentric curriculum

April 2: while filming an NBC television special, white British singer Petula Clark touches African American singer Harry Belafonte affectionately on the arm [read about the details of the filming here]

April 3: the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech in Memphis, Tennessee

April 4: the Rev Dr King, Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, casing riots in major American cities lasting for several days afterwards

April 6: a shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police results in several arrests and deaths, including the 17-year-old treasurer and the first Panther recruit Robert James "Lil’ Bobby” Hutton, who was walking towards the police bare-chested with his hands raised

April 8: Ms Clark’s television special is broadcast by NBC with high ratings, critical acclaim, a Primetime Emmy nomination, and is the first instance on American television of physical contact between a black man and a white woman

April 11: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968

April 20: English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, which criticised mass immigration, especially Commonwealth immigration to the UK of the variety which was blocked in March by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968

Events in General:

January 8: British Prime Minister Harold Wilson endorses the I'm Backing Britain campaign for working an additional half-hour each day without pay as an economic stimulus measure, causing rifts within his Labour Party supporters who see him as kow-towing to Big Business and un-doing decades of efforts by labour organizations

January 15: an earthquake in Sicily kills 380 and injures around 1,000

February 19: the Florida Education Association (FEA) initiates a mass resignation of teachers to protest state funding of education; in effect the first statewide teachers' strike in the USA

February 27: singer Frankie Lymon is found dead from a heroin overdose in Harlem. Mr Lymon was formerly the lead singer of the squeaky-clean doo wop group “The Teenagers,” noted for being one of rock music's earliest successes and being rock's first all-teenaged act

March 2: Baggeridge Colliery closes marking the end of over 300 years of coal mining in the Black Country of England (environmentally good, but little was done for workers’ job placement in new positions)

March 12: U.S. President Johnson barely edges out antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy [no, not that McCarthy] in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, a vote which highlights the deep divisions in the country, and the party, over Vietnam

March 15: the U.K. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party George Brown resigns after many months of public drunkenness and wide-spread unacceptable behaviour, culminating in him shouting incoherently at the PM in his office

March 16: U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination

March 22: eight French students occupy the administrative offices of the University of Nanterre, setting in motion a chain of events that lead France to the brink of revolution two months later

March 24: Aer Lingus Flight 712 crashes en route from Cork to London near Tuskar Rock, Wexford, killing 61 passengers and crew

March 28: Brazilian high school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto is shot by the police in a protest for cheaper meals at a restaurant for low-income students; being one of the first major events against the military dictatorship

March 31: President Johnson announces he will not seek re-election

April 2: bombs explode at midnight in two department stores in Frankfurt-am-Main; Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin are later arrested and sentenced for arson; months later, the two escape from prison and with other people form the anarchist/extremist group Red Army Faction (also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group)

April 6: a double explosion in downtown Richmond, Indiana, the first caused by faulty natural gas lines, the second caused inside the building above by a store of gunpowder; 41 are dead, 150 are injured, and a total of forty buildings are eventually condemned; given racial tensions of the time, some are understandably panicked

April 8: the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) is created under the Department of Justice, thereby codifying the racialization of the ‘War on Drugs’ we see today; [read this ACLU document]

April 10: the ferry TEV Wahine strikes a reef at the mouth of Wellington Harbour, New Zealand, with the loss of 53 lives, during Cyclone Giselle (still the windiest conditions ever recorded in New Zealand)

April 11: Josef Bachmann attempts to assassinate the most prominent member and unofficial spokesman of the left-wing student movement Außerparlamentarische Opposition (APO,) Rudi Dutschke, in Germany

April 11: the same day — also in Germany and unrelated to the above — German left-wing students blockade the Springer Press HQ in Berlin and many are arrested (one of them being Ulrike Meinhof; remember him?)

May 13: one million people march through the streets of Paris, sparking the period called “May 68,” which includes demonstrations, general strikes, the occupation of universities and factories, and causing both the brief cessation of a functioning government (after President Charles de Gaulle secretly fled to Germany) as well as the nation’s economy to come to a complete halt

May 16: just two months after opening, a 23 floor tower block in Canning Town, east London, called Ronan Point, partially collapses after a gas explosion, killing 5

Vietnam War (and others):

January 21: the Battle of Khe Sanh begins

January 21: a U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs

January 30: the Tet Offensive begins, as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam

January 31: Việt Cộng soldiers attack the US Embassy, Saigon

February 1: the Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém is executed by a South Vietnamese National Police Chief in the middle of the street, the event photographed by Eddie Adams as well as an NBC film crew, which makes headlines around the world, eventually winning the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and swaying U.S. public opinion against the war.

February 12: the Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất massacre

February 24: the nearly month-long Tet Offensive is halted; South Vietnam recaptures Huế

February 25: the Hà My massacre

March 7: the First Battle of Saigon ends

March 8: the Soviet ballistic missile submarine K-129 sinks with all 98 crew members, about 90 nautical miles (104 miles / 167 km) southwest of Hawai’i

March 10–11: the Battle of Lima Site 85, the largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members during the (at the time) secret war later known as the Laotian Civil War

March 14: nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, immediately killing 6,249 sheep over 30 miles away in Skull Valley, Utah, as well as necessitating the euthanisation of a further 1,877 after they are declared ‘unmarketable’ even for their wool

March 16: American troops kill scores of civilians in the My Lai Massacre, which will first become public in November 1969, helping to further undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam

March 17: a demonstration against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in London's Grosvenor Square leads to violence; 91 people are injured, and 200 demonstrators are arrested

March 19–23: Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S., with students staging rallies, protests, a 5-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building, shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War, and demanding a more inclusive and Afrocentric curriculum

April 23–30: student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university

April 26: the 1.3Mt nuclear weapon "Boxcar" is tested 1.16km underground at the Nevada Test Site in the biggest detonation of Operation Crosstie

May 17: Catholic activists called ‘The Catonsville Nine’ enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take 378 draft files, pour homemade napalm over them in the parking lot, and burn them, all as a protest against the Vietnam War; some of the Nine being out on bail after pouring human blood on draft cards the previous October

May 19: Nigerian forces capture Port Harcourt and form a ring around the Biafrans, contributing to a humanitarian disaster as the then surrounded population were already suffering from hunger and starvation

May 22: the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores

The next three weeks see the shooting and subsequent death of Robert Kennedy; the arrest of the American white supremacist, fugitive, and felon who assassinated the Rev Dr King, Jr. (their trial and conviction taking place the next year); the first round of the French elections to be held as a result of the protests the month before; and the official establishment of the CIA’s “Phoenix Program,” involving cooperation between American, South Vietnamese and Australian militaries.

So… that’s where they were at this point in the year. While I’m not about to list all of the things that have happened to us in the last five months (this has taken me a good five hours to assemble, for one thing), it’s probable that 2020 is a fair equal to 1968, if not actually surpassing the collective effect of the earlier year by this point in the calendar.

How did they get through it then? Good question! I’m gong to call my mid-70s-aged Father to find out. You should call someone at least 65 years old and do the same, as everyone copes in different ways. After reading all of this, at least you’ll have a common understanding of what they went through.

Good luck to us all.

#BlackOut #Coping #worst year ever #Know Your History #2020 vs 1968

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forsetti · 7 years ago

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On Progressive Politics: Bad Teammates

Political ideas that have no real shot at being implemented are worthless. This doesn't mean grand, idealistic policies shouldn't be discussed and worked towards. What it does mean is they need to be treated for what they are-wishful things that need to be worked towards often one step, one inch at a time with the realization due to uncontrollable variables and circumstances, the ideal may never be attained. When I was much, much younger, I wanted to play professional basketball. It was my dream. It was my passion. I practiced 4-6 hours every single day, 365 days a year from the time I was twelve until I was nineteen. I turned out to be a pretty good basketball player. Unfortunately, there were thousands of others my age who were much better than me who got college scholarships. No matter how much I wanted it or how hard I worked, playing in the NBA wasn't a realistic dream. However, I was able to use this dream to make myself, a musically gifted, non-athletic kid, a pretty good basketball player who could hold my own with a lot of college players. As much as I wanted to play pro, let alone college ball, I am not disappointed that I didn't reach my goal because I know I got the absolute most out of my talents as was possible. I moved the bar as far forwards as was possible.

If I would have had the mindset of many progressives, I would have quit playing ball in middle school and/or would be bitching and moaning today about how I was denied my dream. It doesn't matter how unrealistic the dream. It doesn't matter the context or circumstances or limitations, if the ideal cannot be reached and reached RIGHT NOW, it is okay to give up, make bad choices, pout, whine... anything other than doing whatever you can to make the most out of the hand you've been dealt (yes I know I'm mixing basketball and poker metaphors.)

Progressivism is about striving towards ideals. The very definition of 'progress' is: forward or onward movement toward a destination. Notice the definition isn't: reaching a specific destination. It is moving forward, towards a desired destination. Sometimes political progress is quick and large but it is mostly slow and small. As long as progress is being made that is what really matters. Even when progress is set back, it is important to look at the big picture and not a single snapshot of a particular moment in time. Think about how many political setbacks happened before women got the right to vote, before the Civil Rights Act was passed, before the Obergefell versus Hodges decision granted gays the right to marry. If people gave up because things weren't progressing like they wanted or because of setbacks, none of these progressive causes would have happened.

Working towards and seeing the big picture is what real progressives do. They don't get too down after a setback and certainly don't give up. They don't abandon the process and apparatus that was responsible for past progress. They sure as fuck don't attack the people who have dedicated their lives, given their hearts, sometimes even given their blood for progress because whatever their dreams happen to haven't been reached. A true progressive honors those how fought the battles before them picks up the battle where it was left off and fights on regardless of the stage of the battle. They also aggressively defend ground already won through the sacrifices and hard work of others.

I cannot even begin to count the number of people I know who claim they are dyed-in-the-wool progressives who spent the last year violating every single quality it takes to be progressive. I witnessed them attack progressives like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, John Lewis, Barack Obama... people who have spent a lot of time and energy fighting for progressive values. I listened to them go through mental and linguistic gymnastics that would make a Cirque du Soleil performer blush in order to rationalize their atrocious positions and strategies. I watched them be more than willing to allow decades of hard-earned progress on women's rights, gay rights, civil rights, voting rights, the environment... be cast aside because they felt progress wasn't happening fast enough and in the EXACT ways they wanted it. Context didn't matter. How government actually works didn't matter. History didn't matter. Nothing mattered to the bitchy progressives who didn't get the ponies they didn't do a damn thing to earn but demanded they get. The fruits of the participation trophy generation are rancid, poisonous, and unbelievably stupid. People whose total political effort is being a keyboard commando on social media are churning out ill-conceived and re-damn-fucking-diculous things they know nothing about to the point where the theory an infinite number of monkeys typing will replicate the works of Shakespeare has been disproved. They don't turn out Shakespeare. They turn out hot takes.

If you don't understand this, don't want to understand it or deny it, I really cannot consider you a progressive. At best, you are “progressive-lite.” You might talk the progressive talk but you aren't walking the progressive walk. Staying home during elections will NEVER FUCKING EVER move things forward. Voting for third-party candidates who have zero chance of winning and even if they did have no political clout will NEVER FUCKING EVER move things forwards. Every single person who believes not voting or voting third-party will lead to progress, let alone significant progress is either grossly misinformed, completely ignorant or arrogantly stubborn. What they aren't is progressive.

Making decisions based on the political system you WANT instead of the one that EXISTS is being a bad citizen and a horrible progressive. We don't have a parliamentary system where minority parties can have an influence on policies through aligning themselves with other parties. Like it or not, we have a bicameral system where two major parties exist and fight for elections and policies. WANTING this to not be the case will NEVER FUCKING EVER make it true. Teddy Fucking Roosevelt was one of the most popular presidents in our history but when he ran as a third-party candidate in 1912, all he did was divide the Republican vote and hand the election to Woodrow Wilson in a landslide. The only thing Ralph Nader and Jill Stein and their supporters every accomplished politically was to hand the presidency to George W. Bush and Donald Trump. The only thing so-called “progressives” ever accomplished was allowing a demographically limited party of conservatives take over the majority of state governorships, state legislatures, Congress, and the White House. This is where I stand up, sarcastically slow clap, and say, “Bra-fuckin-o.”

You don't vote for a candidate for the system you want but for the one that exists. To do otherwise is a sign of political ignorance and/or stunning selfishness. This doesn't mean your voice shouldn't be heard. There is a time and place for this-before and during the primaries. Primaries are when everyone gets a seat at the table to express their opinion about who they want to represent them and why. However, once the primaries are over and a candidate has been selected, your individual voice takes a backseat to the wants and needs of the whole. To be upset your preferred candidate didn't win the nomination is absolutely no reason to not vote or vote third-party. You know who will NEVER FUCKING EVER move the progressive bar forward? People you don't vote for and people who will never win and never have any power if they do. You know who will NEVER FUCKING EVER move the progressive bar forward? Conservatives who win elections because too many “progressives” are politically naive, ignorant or stubborn. Arguing against this, throwing temper tantrums about it, wishing it would be different will NEVER FUCKING EVER make it not true. What doing these will accomplish is keeping progress from happening and if done enough, will ensure past progress is lost.

This should be very easy to understand but the fact I have to constantly point it out to people who adamantly tell me they are “progressive,” is disheartening and tells me a lot about why we are in the current state we are in. Conservatives are not the only ones who can't pass basic civics. I expect conservatives to not give a damn about how government works because they believe the government is a bad idea except when it comes to having a military. I sure as hell expect people who believe the government is not only important but necessary for the betterment of its citizens to have a third-grade level grasp from how government works and elections occur to how laws are made.

Progressives keep telling me we need to be “united” against Trump and the Republican Party but many of the ones telling me this are the very same people whose direct actions are responsible for the situation we must all now “unite” in order to fight. We are in this position because they failed to be good progressives and they refuse to admit their ignorance and culpability. Instead, they are doubling down on their horrid political takes and strategies demanding the rest of us have to follow in order to have political success. Mind you these are people who haven't won a damn thing, wield no political power, have never shown any ability to win county drain commissioner but the entire Democratic Party must yield to their political “expertise.”

You know who did know how to win elections and hand conservatives their political asses? Barack Obama. With a working majority for less than a couple of months out of eight years, he was able to move the progressive bar forward a great deal. Every Democratic President since FDR tried to get major health care reform passed. They all failed. He expanded LGBT rights, environmental rights, consumer's rights... and progressives rewarded his efforts by pouting and sitting out the 2010 midterms which led to a GOP takeover of the U.S. House and many traditional blue state governments. It led to them doing the same in 2014, this time giving Republicans control of the U.S. Senate which ultimately ended up costing progressives a Supreme Court justice. Instead of following Obama's lead and heeding his pleas, too many progressives decided they know better how to win elections and get progress accomplished. So far, their record since 2010 is a whopping FUCK TON and zero. Yet, despite showing absolutely no ability to win county animal control officer, this group of progressives are adamant they know better than President Obama. It is unfuckingbelievable and insulting as hell. For all the excitement and energy many progressives exuded for Bernie Sanders, none of it has translated into any political wins. Not for Bernie. Not for Bernie supported candidates. Not for Bernie-aligned candidates. It's not like he is batting .500 or even .300. So far this wing of progressivism hasn't gotten a single hit. They are 0 for a lot. There are ball and towel boys in Single-A with better hitting stats. Anyone willing to step away from their emotional attachment to Bernie should be able to see that his “movement” isn't a political movement, it is a cult of personality. For whatever reasons, Bernie is able to attract a lot of attention and devotion. Personally, I have no idea how or why but I don't deny it happens. What is true is this devotion starts and ends with Bernie. Neither he or his supporters have been able to generate any meaningful energy and votes for anyone other than Bernie. That many progressives either don't or won't see this flaw is very troublesome to me. What is even more troublesome is these very same “progressives” are blaming the progressives who have devoted their lives, efforts, and blood to get the progress made the past fifty years for our current situation. Sorry, but the only response I will ever have to these people is, “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” There should be one and only one goal right now for anyone claiming to be a progressive-MAKE SURE CONSERVATIVES DON'T WIN ANY ELECTIONS FROM HOMECOMING KING/QUEEN TO THE PRESIDENCY. ANYTHING less than this, ANYTHING that takes attention away from this, ANYTHING other than this should be completely ignored. ANYONE who claims differently should be viewed suspiciously, their progressive cred seriously questioned, and progressive ID confiscated until further notice. For most of my adult life, Republicans have done everything they can to make government not function properly. In many ways, they have succeeded. However, the real damage they've done isn't to the government itself but to attitudes about government. People are jaded and upset about how the government has failed them. They don't blame those responsible for fucking up the system. They blame everyone in the system. The media is guilty of helping Republicans create this image. When Republicans fail to do something that polls strongly, it is never portrayed as “Republicans failed to do_______.” It is always, “Congress failed to do_______.” This portrayal is mimicked by the public, including progressives, to the point where it becomes gospel and is the impetus for most of the “Democratic Party has abandoned___,” “Democrats have forgotten____” stupid fucking hot takes. If progressives want a better, more functional government, all they need to do is make sure conservatives are the minority. If they want a very functional government, they need to make sure progressives have very large majorities. In order to accomplish these things, progressives need to do the following: 1-Get out and vote in every election for the progressive who has the best chance of winning regardless of your personal feelings about the candidate(s). 2-Never allow conservatives the opportunity to undo progress already fought for and won. 3-Learn how government actually works. 4-Stop parroting right-wing talking points about anything but especially about fellow progressives. 5-Understand voting is a personal responsibility but with societal consequences (it isn't about you.) 6-Come to terms with the fact our entire system of government was intentionally built to prevent quick, massive changes in policies. 7-Learn how to place blame where it belongs. 8-Realize progress can't be judged by looking at a single moment in time but rather by seeing long-term trends. 9-Understand we have a bicameral system and the only way progress be achieved is through one of the two parties. 10-Stop placing purity tests on candidates, especially ones in districts, areas, states...whose elections won't impact you. 11-Remember the worst progressive is always preferable to the best conservative by a wide margin. 12-Quit using terms like “establishment,” “pragmatism,” and “cooperation” as pejoratives. 13-Realize fake news isn't just something conservatives fall prey to. 14-Stop claiming that addressing economic issues will resolve racial ones. 15-Be a true ally of those are members of your base, especially people who are most vulnerable to conservative policies. To me, this list is pretty self-explanatory, commonsensical, and easy to do. Because I view it this way, I am having a real difficult time dealing with people who claim to want and value the same things I do, who argue and fight against this especially when the stakes are so high and the damage done by allowing conservatives to have power so devastating to the very things they claim are important to them. I'm having a really hard time being lectured about politics and political strategy by people whose entire political experience is bitching about it on social media. I'm having a hard time listening to people with no sense of self-reflection bitch about consequences that came about because of their action/inaction. I'm having a hard time listening to people tell me they are progressive but seem willing and sometimes eager to allow past progress to be rolled back. I'm having a hard time watching the hard work of progressives past be cast aside so easily by conservatives while so-called progressives myopically demand their pet progress be immediately addressed. I am having a really difficult time listening to people who told me for months that using the undoing of The Affordable Care Act, the seating of a conservative Supreme Court Justice, the allowing of the Dakota pipeline, the unraveling of Dodd-Frank, the screwing of Dreamers... as reasons to oppose Trump and vote for Hillary, turn around and bitch nonstop as these easily preventable consequences are becoming realities. Maybe a bigger person can overlook this. I'm not that person. I'm fifty-six years old. My entire life has been dedicated to doing whatever I can to help this country live up to its ideals of justice and equality. In my lifetime, I've gone from watching Civil Rights activists beaten and firehosed to the election of the first black president. I've gone from it being illegal for whites to marry blacks to gay marriage being the law of the land. I've gone from women not being able to have their own credit card to earning the most votes, by 3 million, in a presidential election. As great as all these progressive things and more have been, they could easily have been more if progressives had an ounce of fucking common sense and political acumen. Come back full circle to basketball, being a progress is like being on a team with the best coach and the best players but too many of the players are prone to unforced turnovers and are more concerned with their personal stats than the team's accomplishments. I hated having this type of player on my team. I still do.

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wastoon35 · 6 years ago

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General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States By Leah Askarinam

The Republican majority was at risk before Tuesday’s primaries and it’s vulnerable after the primaries. But a fresh crop of results in eight states narrows the crowded fields of candidates. Some results are not official, but this is where things are most likely headed.

Alabama

Governor. Gov. Kay Ivey (R) vs. Walt Maddox (D). Rating: Solid Republican. Democrats got their top choice to face Ivey in November, but it’s still an uphill climb for the Tuscaloosa Mayor, especially after Ivey won her GOP primary with a majority against two challengers.

2nd District. Rep. Martha Roby (R) vs. former Democratic Rep. Bobby Bright in the July 17 GOP runoff. Rating: Solid Republican. Roby has defeated Bright in a general election before, but now she has to prove she can do the same in a primary. If Bright, who lost the 2010 race as a Democratic incumbent but is now a Republican, does manage to make it to the general election, the race against Democratic nominee/minister Tabitha Isner could be worth watching.

California

Governor. Gavin Newsom (D) vs. John Cox (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. This race is important because Republicans were concerned about not having a statewide candidate to drive turnout down ballot. But unless something drastic happens in the next few months, Newsom will be California’s next governor.

Senate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) vs. Kevin De León (D). Rating: Solid Democratic. With about 60 percent of precincts reporting, Feinstein led the field with 44 percent, while De León received just 11 percent. Feinstein would ideally like to be over the 50-percent mark, but it’s still hard to imagine De León overtaking her in November.

4th District. Rep. Tom McClintock (R) vs. Jessica Morse (D). Rating: Likely Republican. The best-funded Democratic nominee, Jessica Morse, won the party nomination Tuesday. Morse, who worked for Barack Obama’s Department of Defense and State Department, enters the general election with almost as much money in the bank as the Republican incumbent. Morse had $648,000 on May 16th compared to McClintock’s $698,000.

10th District. Rep. Jeff Denham (R) vs. Josh Harder (D) or Ted Howze (R) Rating: Tilt Republican. In an unexpected turn of events, this district is the one we’re watching for Democrats to get locked out of. Democrat Josh Harder, a venture capitalist, is currently in second place, but veterinarian Ted Howze, a Republican, isn’t too far behind.

21st District. Rep. David Valadao (R) vs. T.J. Cox (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate had a competitive primary opponent, so no surprises here.

22nd District. Rep. Devin Nunes (R) vs. Andrew Janz (D). Rating: Solid Republican. Janz, whose fundraising benefited from national attention on the congressman, easily defeated the other Democratic candidates.

25th District. Rep. Steve Knight (R) vs. Katie Hill (D) or Bryan Caforio (D). Rating: Tilt Republican. It’s not yet clear who the Democratic nominee will be, but either Caforio or Hill would have the resources to wage a credible campaign.

39th District. Young Kim (R) vs. Gil Cisneros (D). Rating: Toss-up. After one of last night’s messier Democratic primaries, the DCCC got its favorite candidate into the top two. And while Republicans didn’t block Democrats from the ballot, their most competitive general election candidate won the most votes. (The Cook Political report projected that Cisneros would progress to the November ballot. At the time of publication, Cisneros had 19 percent while the Republican in third place had 14 percent.)

45th District. Rep. Mimi Walters (R) vs. Katie Porter. Rating: Lean Republican. GOP strategists believe that of the Orange County Republicans, Walters goes into the general election with the strongest footing. UC Irvine Law Professor Katie Porter looks like she’ll be the one to test that theory.

48th District. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R) vs. Harley Rouda (D) or Hans Keirstead (D) or Scott Baugh (R). Rating: Tilt Republican. Rohrabacher will definitely be on the ballot, but it’s still unclear whom he’ll be facing in November. It’s looking less and less likely that fellow Republican Scott Baugh will be on the ballot--he’s in fourth place--but Kierstead and Rouda had less than 100 votes separating them with 93 percent of precincts reporting.

49th District. Diane Harkey (R) vs. Mike Levin (D). Rating: Toss-up. In an anti-climactic finish, it looks like a Democrat will face a Republican in Rep. Darrell Issa’s open seat after all. Our friend Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report projected that Levin, an environmental attorney, will progress to the general election.

50th District. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R) vs. Ammar Campa-Najjar (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Josh Butner, a veteran who was endorsed by Rep. Seth Moulton, lost the nomination to Campa-Najjar, who was endorsed by the state party. Butner was the favorite early in the cycle, but Campa-Najjar has proven to be a good fundraiser, while Butner ran an imperfect campaign.

Iowa

Governor. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) vs. Fred Hubbell (D). Rating: Lean Republican. Fred Hubbell avoided a runoff and can self-fund, already putting $3 million into his campaign.

1st District. Rep. Rod Blum (R) vs. Abby Finkenauer (D). Rating: Toss-up. No surprises in the outcome here, but Finkenauer’s 67 percent in a four-candidate field was remarkable considering her campaign got off to a sluggish start. The Democrat who came in second place received less than 20 percent.

3rd District. Rep. David Young (R) vs. Cindy Axne (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Earlier this cycle, it seemed likely that the Democratic race would go to convention given the crowded field. But after Theresa Greenfield failed to gather enough valid signatures, the path for digital design firm owner Cindy Axne became a bit clearer.

Mississippi

Senate. Roger Wicker (R) vs. David Baria (D) or Howard Sherman (D). Rating: Solid Republican. Wicker had no trouble getting through his primary, while two Democrats--state rep. David Baria and venture capitalist Howard Sherman--will progress to a runoff.

3rd District. Republicans Michael Guest and Whit Hughes will compete for the GOP nomination in a runoff on June 26, which will likely determine the congressman in a district President Trump carried with 61 percent. Rating: Solid Republican.

Montana

Senate. Sen. Jon Tester (D) vs. Matt Rosendale (R). Rating: Tilt Democratic. Rosendale enters the election with an endorsement from Club for Growth, Sen. Ted Cruz, and will likely get a boost from President Trump.

At-Large District. Rep. Greg Gianforte (R) vs. Kathleen Williams (D). Rating: Likely Republican. As Roll Call’s Simone Pathe noted, Williams, a former state representative, entered the Democratic primary late, lagged in fundraising compared to her primary opponents, and enters the general election with just $90,000 compared to the congressman’s $1.1 .million.

New Jersey

Senate. Sen. Bob Menendez (D) vs. Bob Hugin (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. Given Menendez’s lackluster performance against a Democratic challenger with basically no campaign operation, we can infer that if Menendez remains the Democratic nominee through November, he will likely win the general election but it’s not because voters are in love with him.

2nd District. Jeff Van Drew (D) vs. Seth Grossman (R). Rating: Tilt Democratic. Van Drew managed to win the nomination, and comes in with a major advantage in fundraising over Grossman--Van Drew raised $632,000 through May 16 while Grossman raised just $23,000.

3rd District. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R) vs. Andy Kim (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate faced a primary opponent last night. No surprises here.

5th District. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D) vs. Steve Lonegan (R). Rating: Move from Lean Democratic to Solid Democratic. Steve Lonegan, while an imperfect candidate, had a path to victory--he carried the district in his 2013 Senate race and had already put $1 million in personal money into his campaign. But Lonegan lost on Tuesday, and the GOP path to victory is less clear with John McCann, an attorney with $46,000 in the bank as of May 16.

7th District. Rep. Leonard Lance (R) vs. Tom Malinowski (D). Rating: Tilt Republican. Tom Malinowski, who appears on the DCCC’s Red to Blue list, won the Democratic nomination, as expected.

11th District. Mikie Sherrill (D) vs. Jay Webber (R). Rating: Tilt Democratic. Webber is the second-best funded candidate in this race, but still trails Sherrill, who had $1.8 million on May 16. Sherrill initially planned to run against the incumbent, Rodney Frelinghuysen, providing extra momentum for the Democratic nominee. But Frelinghuysen is not seeking re-election, and Webber had $226,000.

New Mexico

Governor. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) vs. Rep. Steve Pearce (R). Rating: Lean Democratic. The Democratic congressman from the 1st District will face off against the Republican congressman from the 2nd District for Republican Gov. Susana Martinez’s open seat. We might see a similar Member vs. Member dynamic for GOP Sen. Jeff Flake’s open seat in Arizona, if GOP Rep. Martha McSally wins the nomination to face Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema.

Senate. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) vs. Mick Rich (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. Rich, a contracting company owner, ran unopposed to face Heinrich in November.

1st District. Deb Haaland (D) vs. Janice Arnold-Jones (R) Rating: Solid Democratic. Haaland’s victory in last night’s primary means that she’ll likely be the first Native American congresswoman. She faced a crowded primary and emerged with more than 40 percent.

2nd District. Yvette Harrell (R) vs. Xochitl Torres-Small (D). Rating: Lean Republican. Democrats have been hoping Torres-Small could gain traction in an open seat. But, while Harrell trails in cash on hand, she’s not too far behind in fundraising in a district that tends to favor Republicans.

South Dakota

Governor. Kristi Noem (R) vs. Billie Sutton (D). Rating: Solid Republican. Any Republican has the upper hand in this race, but some Democrats believe that Billie Sutton has the kind of profile that could make him a credible competitor.

At-Large District. Dusty Johnson (R) vs. Tim Bjorkman (D). Rating: Solid Republican. The primary was the main event for this seat, considering past Republican performance here. Dusty Johnson will likely be elected to Congress this November.

View Article at Inside Elections

https://ift.tt/2sJRycE

#General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

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dianehsaogue · 6 years ago

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General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States By Leah Askarinam

Alabama

California

21st District. Rep. David Valadao (R) vs. T.J. Cox (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate had a competitive primary opponent, so no surprises here.

Iowa

Governor. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) vs. Fred Hubbell (D). Rating: Lean Republican. Fred Hubbell avoided a runoff and can self-fund, already putting $3 million into his campaign.

Mississippi

Montana

New Jersey

3rd District. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R) vs. Andy Kim (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate faced a primary opponent last night. No surprises here.

7th District. Rep. Leonard Lance (R) vs. Tom Malinowski (D). Rating: Tilt Republican. Tom Malinowski, who appears on the DCCC’s Red to Blue list, won the Democratic nomination, as expected.

New Mexico

Senate. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) vs. Mick Rich (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. Rich, a contracting company owner, ran unopposed to face Heinrich in November.

South Dakota

View Article at Inside Elections

https://ift.tt/2sJRycE

#General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

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kevinbowman70060bxj · 6 years ago

Text

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States By Leah Askarinam

Alabama

California

21st District. Rep. David Valadao (R) vs. T.J. Cox (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate had a competitive primary opponent, so no surprises here.

Iowa

Governor. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) vs. Fred Hubbell (D). Rating: Lean Republican. Fred Hubbell avoided a runoff and can self-fund, already putting $3 million into his campaign.

Mississippi

Montana

New Jersey

3rd District. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R) vs. Andy Kim (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate faced a primary opponent last night. No surprises here.

7th District. Rep. Leonard Lance (R) vs. Tom Malinowski (D). Rating: Tilt Republican. Tom Malinowski, who appears on the DCCC’s Red to Blue list, won the Democratic nomination, as expected.

New Mexico

Senate. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) vs. Mick Rich (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. Rich, a contracting company owner, ran unopposed to face Heinrich in November.

South Dakota

View Article at Inside Elections

https://ift.tt/2sJRycE

#General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

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harriesatgarth · 6 years ago

Text

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States By Leah Askarinam

Alabama

California

21st District. Rep. David Valadao (R) vs. T.J. Cox (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate had a competitive primary opponent, so no surprises here.

Iowa

Governor. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) vs. Fred Hubbell (D). Rating: Lean Republican. Fred Hubbell avoided a runoff and can self-fund, already putting $3 million into his campaign.

Mississippi

Montana

New Jersey

3rd District. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R) vs. Andy Kim (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate faced a primary opponent last night. No surprises here.

7th District. Rep. Leonard Lance (R) vs. Tom Malinowski (D). Rating: Tilt Republican. Tom Malinowski, who appears on the DCCC’s Red to Blue list, won the Democratic nomination, as expected.

New Mexico

Senate. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) vs. Mick Rich (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. Rich, a contracting company owner, ran unopposed to face Heinrich in November.

South Dakota

View Article at Inside Elections

https://ift.tt/2sJRycE

#General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

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lloydfoster48212o · 6 years ago

Text

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States By Leah Askarinam

Alabama

California

21st District. Rep. David Valadao (R) vs. T.J. Cox (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate had a competitive primary opponent, so no surprises here.

Iowa

Governor. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) vs. Fred Hubbell (D). Rating: Lean Republican. Fred Hubbell avoided a runoff and can self-fund, already putting $3 million into his campaign.

Mississippi

Montana

New Jersey

3rd District. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R) vs. Andy Kim (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate faced a primary opponent last night. No surprises here.

7th District. Rep. Leonard Lance (R) vs. Tom Malinowski (D). Rating: Tilt Republican. Tom Malinowski, who appears on the DCCC’s Red to Blue list, won the Democratic nomination, as expected.

New Mexico

Senate. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) vs. Mick Rich (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. Rich, a contracting company owner, ran unopposed to face Heinrich in November.

South Dakota

View Article at Inside Elections

https://ift.tt/2sJRycE

#General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

0 notes

wargiry584 · 6 years ago

Text

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States By Leah Askarinam

Alabama

California

21st District. Rep. David Valadao (R) vs. T.J. Cox (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate had a competitive primary opponent, so no surprises here.

Iowa

Governor. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) vs. Fred Hubbell (D). Rating: Lean Republican. Fred Hubbell avoided a runoff and can self-fund, already putting $3 million into his campaign.

Mississippi

Montana

New Jersey

3rd District. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R) vs. Andy Kim (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate faced a primary opponent last night. No surprises here.

7th District. Rep. Leonard Lance (R) vs. Tom Malinowski (D). Rating: Tilt Republican. Tom Malinowski, who appears on the DCCC’s Red to Blue list, won the Democratic nomination, as expected.

New Mexico

Senate. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) vs. Mick Rich (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. Rich, a contracting company owner, ran unopposed to face Heinrich in November.

South Dakota

View Article at Inside Elections

https://ift.tt/2sJRycE

#General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

0 notes

yvonnsaebrown · 6 years ago

Text

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States By Leah Askarinam

Alabama

California

21st District. Rep. David Valadao (R) vs. T.J. Cox (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate had a competitive primary opponent, so no surprises here.

Iowa

Governor. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) vs. Fred Hubbell (D). Rating: Lean Republican. Fred Hubbell avoided a runoff and can self-fund, already putting $3 million into his campaign.

Mississippi

Montana

New Jersey

3rd District. Rep. Tom MacArthur (R) vs. Andy Kim (D). Rating: Likely Republican. Neither candidate faced a primary opponent last night. No surprises here.

7th District. Rep. Leonard Lance (R) vs. Tom Malinowski (D). Rating: Tilt Republican. Tom Malinowski, who appears on the DCCC’s Red to Blue list, won the Democratic nomination, as expected.

New Mexico

Senate. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) vs. Mick Rich (R). Rating: Solid Democratic. Rich, a contracting company owner, ran unopposed to face Heinrich in November.

South Dakota

View Article at Inside Elections

https://ift.tt/2sJRycE

#General Election Stage (Mostly) Set in Eight More States

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