Independent News
Parents are happy with their kids' schools, actually, despite what Fox News tells you
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Republicans are flogging a culture war focused on public schools, but it doesn’t seem to be landing with the parents of actual schoolchildren. A new NPR/Ipsos poll of parents of school-aged children finds people generally happy with their kids’ schools and teachers, and not foaming at the mouth over race and LGBTQ issues.
Education rated as the third-highest concern of parents in the poll, but 88% of respondents agreed with the statement, “my child’s teacher(s) have done the best they could, given the circumstances around the pandemic,” and 82% agreed that “my child’s school has handled the pandemic well.” Republicans have largely moved on from trying to whip up rage about how schools have handled the pandemic, though, focusing more on demonizing marginalized groups and arguing that parents should be allowed to micromanage the curriculum. (Right-wing white parents, anyway.) But that’s not getting a lot of traction, either.
RELATED STORY: From ‘critical race theory’ to ‘grooming,’ the real Republican agenda is ending public education
Three out of four of the parents polled agreed that “my child’s school does a good job keeping me informed about the curriculum, including potentially controversial topics.” Small minorities said the ways their children’s schools taught about the issues being pushed by Republicans actually conflicted with their own family’s values: 18% for gender and sexuality, 19% for race and racism, and 14% for U.S. history.
And those numbers, small as they are, don’t mean that 19% of people think their kid’s school is too liberal on race and racism or 14% on U.S. history—the people who said the schools’ teachings clashed with their family’s values were as likely to be Democrats as Republicans. A Native American parent in Texas, for instance, told NPR, “It’s more of a water-down effect … [the teachers] kind of whitewash the way that history is taught to their kids.” That parent wants his kid taught more about the French and Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, and about slavery during the Revolutionary War, NPR reports. By contrast, a white parent in Wisconsin who thinks the schools are too liberal on these issues cited her son being asked to identify his pronouns and a teacher making “snarky comments about white privilege.” Equally valid and serious concerns about the quality of education, amiright?
If you listen to Christopher Rufo, one of the right wing’s major gurus on waging culture wars in the schools, critical race theory is a “two to one issue,” a surefire winner for Republicans. Go figure, though: The main poll he cites was conducted by the right-wing Manhattan Institute. But what about Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in November after he campaigned against critical race theory? Well, recent data has suggested that Youngkin’s advantage came from senior citizens, not from the parents of school-aged children, and it’s not the first data undermining the narrative that enraged parents turned the election to Youngkin.
Demonizing LGBT people and foaming at the mouth that teaching about racism or the contributions of Black and brown people oppresses white kids by making them feel “humiliated” might energize the Republican base, but it’s not a majority message. Banning books because they have LGBT characters or depict slavery as the brutal system of kidnapping, torture, and rape that it was is not a majority message.
Republicans are attacking teachers. They’re attacking vulnerable kids. They’re trying to micromanage what all kids can learn according to their very specific values, to the active exclusion of all others. These things matter—they are actively harming people—and they’re also not the political winners Republicans are confidently portraying them to be. The media needs to internalize these things in shaping its coverage, rather than allowing the Republican operatives regularly billed as “concerned parents” in their Fox News appearances to define what the parents of schoolchildren look like or think. And equally, Democrats need to fight back, vigorously and boldly, because Republicans really are overstepping on this.
RELATED STORIES:
A look inside banned Florida math textbooks suggests Republicans simply lied about what’s in them
Citing ‘humiliated’ white people, Mississippi governor signs anti-critical race theory law
Forget CRT—new poll shows what Republicans really don’t want taught in schools
Democrats can gerrymander too, but should they?
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As a progressive, I hate gerrymandering on principle. The idea of elected officials drawing up legislative boundaries and putting one type of voter on one side of a line and a different type on the other side to benefit particular parties and/or incumbent candidates is antithetical to the notion of government based on the consent of the governed. As the saying goes, voters are supposed to pick their representatives in a democracy, not the other way around.
There are powerful reasons to get rid of gerrymandering, and Democrats in Congress are on record supporting a ban for federal elections. Unfortunately, a couple of senators (you know which two) won’t support the filibuster reform necessary to make it a reality. Furthermore, there’s a powerful argument for Democrats to simply wash their hands of the gerrymandering practice today and refrain from it 100%. But should they?
I abhor war. I hope our country never has to fight another one. What does that have to do with gerrymandering, you ask? Well, if another country’s tanks and planes come pouring across our border, I certainly don’t want my side to stand down. I want them to stand up and defend my community, just as Ukraine’s government and armed forces are doing right now. Then, after the other side has learned it can’t just steamroll its way to conquest, maybe we can talk peace, and maybe, someday, even mutual disarmament. But putting up an active defense has to come first in order to ensure survival. That makes it a moral imperative. Gerrymandering itself does not involve bloodshed, thankfully, but the analogy applies.
This isn’t a fight Democrats can win, unfortunately, by just setting an example and hoping we can win elections on the basis of our ethical superiority. If that was going to work, it’d have done so already given the vastness of Republican gerrymandering in the once-a-decade redistricting process that followed the 2010 census—that was the REDMAP (Redistricting Majority Project) plan, carried out to perfection. Voters in states that have seen the worst gerrymandering by Republicans have not expressed their revulsion by rising up to sweep them out of office in landslides that can overcome unfair district-drawing. I wish that would happen, but it hasn’t.
Democrats have to be able to do two things at the same time: 1) say that we want to ban gerrymandering across the board, and 2) say that we aren’t going to unilaterally disarm before that happens. I’m not arguing that gerrymandering is okay when our side does it, and Nancy Pelosi was right to condemn the practice as “unjust and deeply dangerous” back in 2019. I’m arguing that Democrats gerrymandering is terrible, but not doing it is even more dangerous.
And gerrymandering is terrible, for multiple reasons. The Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive policy institute, explained how gerrymandering works and described its corrosive effects. There are actually different ways to gerrymander. The party with control over drawing districts might choose to “pack” as many voters as possible from the other party into a single district, thus rendering multiple other districts easier to win. Another approach is to “crack” an area with lots of voters from one party into multiple districts so that each one still contains a solid majority from the other party.
Republicans have often engaged in so-called cracking and packing in order to dilute the power of communities of color—most often Black communities, who are most likely to be geographically concentrated for various reasons, including patterns of segregation and redlining. For an example of how the party of Fuck a l’Orange carried this out in three disproportionately African American counties in Ohio—Cuyahoga, Franklin, and Hamilton—check out this analysis (behind a paywall unfortunately). Additionally, Daily Kos’s Rebekah Sager covered this issue in Georgia, while Joan McCarter discussed how it is playing out in Alabama.
Sometimes, Republicans will pack Black voters into a district, virtually ensuring victory for a Black Democratic candidate, because it will reduce the number of Democratic victories in the state by removing those Black voters from surrounding districts. Republicans will tolerate Black faces in the legislature, as long as those faces are in the minority party and can’t pass legislation that, you know, actually helps Black communities.
To be sure, gerrymandering is not a new phenomenon. It goes back over two centuries—it’s named after Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who approved this monstrosity (above) of a district back in 1812. It has, however, become much more sophisticated in recent years. Exponentially so, as per the Brennan Center: “Intricate computer algorithms and sophisticated data about voters allow map drawers to game redistricting on a massive scale with surgical precision. Where gerrymanderers once had to pick from a few maps drawn by hand, they now can create and pick from thousands of computer-generated maps.”
So gerrymandering is wrong, and it’s only getting worse. How can we get rid of it? Well, the Supreme Court is no help, unfortunately, having decided in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) that they had no authority to intervene in the drawing of gerrymandered legislative districts by declaring them a violation of citizens’ right to an equal vote. The authority of the Voting Rights Act, which at one time could come into play if redistricting was found to discriminate racially, was gutted in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, which rendered it toothless on that front. The only way to get rid of gerrymandering is for those who want to ban it to gain enough power to do so through legislation—even if that means employing that very tactic in order to win such power.
Looking forward, Democrats were predicting that the decennial redistricting process taking place right now, after the 2020 census, would leave them even worse off than they had been. However, so far it’s going better than expected. The Brennan Center summarized the overall situation earlier this year:
Democrats have tried to counteract Republican gerrymandering with aggressive line drawing of their own, but the playing field is not level. Republicans control the drawing of 187 congressional districts in this redistricting cycle; Democrats just 75. If, in the end, the cycle does not end up a wholesale disaster for Democrats, this will largely be attributable to three factors: the unwinding of gerrymanders in states like Michigan with reformed processes, court-drawn maps in states where the redistricting process has deadlocked, and litigation in states where state courts, unlike their federal counterparts, will hear partisan gerrymandering claims.
That still doesn’t mean everything is hunky-dory. But it does show that unless Democrats fight back against extreme Republican gerrymandering, there’s little to no chance of getting a House of Representatives that accurately represents the will of the people—kind of important in a democracy, dont’cha think?
Perhaps the most aggressive Democratic line drawers are in my home state of New York (although Illinois is a close second at this point). Daily Kos’ David Nir provided a detailed breakdown of the changed legislative district lines (the, ahem, amateurs at The New York Times did so as well). Long story short: They gerrymandered the fuck out of them.
New York currently has a House delegation of 19 for Team Blue, and eight for Team TFG. The Empire State is losing a seat (by a schnozz, as they’d have avoided the loss if only 90 more people were counted as New Yorkers in the most recent census). Among the remaining 26, the new maps—passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul—would give Democrats a strong chance of picking up three more seats: on Staten Island (NY-11), Long Island (NY-1), and in Central New York (NY-24). Another Republican seat (NY-22), located upstate, would be the one to disappear. The delegation would likely end up 22-4 in favor of the Democrats.
New York has had, since 2014, a bipartisan commission tasked with redrawing the district lines after each census. However, the commission—composed of an equal number of members of both parties—failed to come together around a new map, throwing the process to the state legislature. The aforementioned outcome came as little surprise given that Democrats have control over both houses.
Even less of a surprise was the Republicans squealing like a stuck pig in response. At the New Republic Matt Ford went through the hypocrisy of Republicans complaining about Democratic gerrymandering being unfair, given their previous support not only for what they were doing in red states, but for the tactic in general. He wondered, facetiously, whether the GQP “suddenly had an epiphany about its corrosive, anti-democratic effects on American politics.” Not.
New York Republicans sued to block the new maps. The New York Times explained the grounds on which the suit rests:
Any court case would likely hinge on how judges interpret language included in the same 2014 constitutional amendment that created the defunct redistricting commission and how Democrats actually arrived at their lines. The language has not previously been tested in court and says that districts “shall not be drawn to discourage competition” or boost one party or incumbent candidate over another.
Jeffrey Wice, who serves as a senior fellow at New York Law School’s Census and Redistricting Institute, offered his take as to the likely outcome: “The question is whether the court will reject 50 years of precedent and reject the plan.” However, Wice turned out to be incorrect. In a 4-3 ruling, the New York Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision that threw out the Democrats’ map for violating the state constitution. In fact, courts have blocked aggressive gerrymanders in a number of states so far this cycle.
Some in the mainstream media—famous for bothsidesing issues left and right (no pun intended)—clutched their pearls and lamented that, heaven forfend, Democrats were actually playing hardball. Pat Kiernan, anchor on local channel NY1’s morning news, intoned solemnly that “Democrats have given up any high ground they had over Republicans on gerrymandering.” He’s talking about the moral high ground. Meanwhile, Republicans are charging ahead trying to claim the physical high ground, from which they can move forward to achieve total victory. Paul Waldman at The Washington Post opined that New York Democrats had acted “ruthlessly.” Unlike Kiernan, Waldman meant it as a compliment.
Most recently, Five Thirty Eight’s tracker finds that Democrats have been able to add seven seats that lean in their direction compared to the 2020 map, while the number of Republican-leaning seats has increased by one; the number of competitive seats has dropped accordingly. These numbers could become more favorable to the Democrats if Florida’s extreme Republican gerrymander—which saw Gov. Ron DeSantis override his own Republican colleagues in the state legislature—gets blocked or altered by state courts there.
Some states have moved toward truly independent redistricting commissions, the largest of which is California. Other states have different mechanisms that, to some degree, seek to take the process out of the hands of elected officials. In an ideal world, all districts would be drawn without regard to politics, with no party able to gain an advantage. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in right now.
Colorado Democratic Party chair Morgan Carroll told Russell Berman of The Atlantic that nonpartisan redistricting commissions are “the right thing to do.” However, it’s not as simple as that, he pointed out: “But as a matter of politics, if across the country every Dem is for independent commissions and every Republican is aggressively gerrymandering maps, then the outcome is still a Republican takeover of the United States of America with a modern Republican Party that is fundamentally authoritarian and antidemocratic. And that’s not good for the country.” Carroll added “If the result is that we have 10 years of Republican majorities under this current party, then I think the institution of Congress is dead.”
Independent commissions are great, and I look forward to the day when every state has a robust one that takes the drawing of districts out of the hands of elected officials. For more on both the strengths and potential pitfalls of independent commissions, please check out this terrific piece from Frances Nguyen at Prism. Overall, as per Nguyen: “advocates believe that public hearings provide the best forum for voters to influence the redistricting process, and commissions provided more direct access than legislatures did this cycle, for the express reason that their design intentionally provides for more public input.”
Let’s be clear: Gerrymandering is not good. It is toxic and encourages more and more extremes—on both sides in theory, although in particular among Republicans in practice—because it eliminates so many competitive districts. Marjorie Taylor Greene befouls the halls of Congress because extreme gerrymandering carried out by Republicans in Georgia enabled someone with her level of wackadoodlery to win a seat. We should absolutely get rid of it at the state and federal level.
There’s only one thing worse than both parties gerrymandering everywhere they can, and that’s when one party gerrymanders and the other doesn’t keep up. That’s what happened in the post-2010 round. At the state level, there are no state legislatures where Democrats used gerrymandering to lock in wide legislative majorities in states where they lost the popular vote, or even where it was closely divided—as Republicans have done recently in Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Although it’s not pictured in the graphic above, Wisconsin’s 2018 results represent the starkest example. The Democrats won 53% of the popular vote for state legislative elections, and just over 50% of the gubernatorial vote (and every statewide office), yet Republicans won 63 out of 99 seats in the state legislature. Even though some legislative races were not competitive, in a fair system Democrats should have come in at least within striking distance of a 50-50 legislature.
At the federal level, if only Republican-controlled states gerrymander, Congress will continue to tilt more in that party’s direction (as noted previously, gerrymandering affects state legislative district lines as well, a whole other issue). Don’t forget what North Carolina Republican Rep. David Lewis stated flat out about the district lines he helped draw in his state: “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”
The Brennan Center estimates that gerrymandering netted Republicans an extra 16-17 seats in the current U.S. House—whose legislative districts have been in effect since 2012. That harms democracy even more than when both parties gerrymander aggressively because voters’ voices are reduced only on one side, and in particular among voters from disadvantaged groups. This is why what Democrats in New York and elsewhere are doing is necessary.
Separate from the effect gerrymandering has, Congress already skews disproportionately Republican because white rural voters are overrepresented in both the House and the Senate. Look at the difference between the rural share of the U.S. population overall, at 25%, and the rural share in the average state, a whopping 35%. Since every state gets two senators, rural voters—mostly Republican—get a disproportionate share of power, and voters in big cities—more of whom are Democrats—get screwed. The rural bias also affects the House.
The Trumpist Republican Party uses the power it has gained at least in part through gerrymandering state legislative districts to pass laws at the state level that suppress votes among members of disadvantaged groups. Likewise, Republicans use that same power in Congress to prevent reforms that would ban the gerrymandering of congressional districts as well as protect voting rights—and damn Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for enabling them to get away with it. Republicans employ these tactics in order to win more power than they could in a truly fair election—and then subsequently use that power to make elections less and less fair.
Their actions only make it more imperative that Democrats do what they can within the law to ensure that the results in Congress look a little bit more like the actual will of the voters. Doing so is nothing more than basic political self-defense. They can and must gerrymander where they are able to, even while pushing hard to ban it across the board.
Disarming unilaterally in the middle of a fight is neither moral nor ethical. Doing so might just lead to the demise of our democracy.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)
Democratic leadership seizes on Warren's idea to fight price gouging by oil companies
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren has lots of plans for how Democrats can use the next 200 days before the election to fight for people. Congressional leadership is ready to take her up on one of them. Warren has advocated for legislation giving the Federal Trade Commission authority to investigate price gouging. Put the bill on the floor, she says, and “dare the Republicans to vote against it. A clean, simple bill.”
“Let’s put it to the Republicans. Do they care about price gouging from the perspective of helping the consumers? Or from the perspective of letting the big corporations continue to get away with it?” Democratic leadership indicated Thursday that they’re all for it.
“There’s no excuse for big oil companies to profiteer, to price gouge or exploit families,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. “Congress must do more to beef up the FTC’s ability to crack down on potential gas price manipulation and price gouging,” added Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Republicans will face a dilemma: Which side are they on?” Schumer said. “On the consumer and lowering gas prices? Or on the side of the big oil?”
Sen. Maria Cantrell (D-WA), who chairs the Commerce Committee, wants the FCT to have this power. She explained that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has authority to investigate and punish energy market manipulation—and has had for a few decades. That same regulatory power needs to exist for transportation rules, as well. “We need to make sure that there is a policeman on the beat,” Cantwell said. “It doesn’t seem right that we should have more transparency on a product like wheat or corn than we would on oil.’’
Draft legislation would create a unit within the FTC to monitor transportation fuel pricing and which would have the authority to levy fines and penalties. The idea in the draft is to double the maximum penalty for wholesale oil market manipulation to as much as $2 million/day for each violation.
While leadership didn’t say, moving forward with the bill will also force Joe Manchin to take a side, because his buddies in the industry are really unhappy with the idea. “Using the power of the FTC to undertake political investigations of American energy companies will not lower gas prices by a penny,″ Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, said of the proposal. “At a time of historic inflation and economic contraction, Americans deserve real policies that boost domestic oil and gas production,’’ she said.
Which is kind of a problem for them—why would they be protesting the idea so much if they weren’t right now engaged in price gouging? If they had nothing to worry about, why would they be worried about being investigated?
“Here’s the bottom line: They’re not using the money for domestic energy production,” Schumer said of the $77 billion in profits the big U.S. producers made last year. “They’re using it for stock buybacks. They’re using it to make their shares go up. We wouldn’t be here if the oil companies were using it to make the American consumer’s price cheaper.”
“Oil companies last year made record profits on these tragedies almost like vultures,” Schumer said. “We have the Ukraine tragedy. We have the COVID tragedy. And did they try to make things better? No, they come in and made record profits.”
“In this time of war and any time, there’s no excuse for big oil companies to pretend to profiteer, to price gouge or exploit families,” Pelosi added. “That is why Democrats are moving forward with forceful action that will stop and hold accountable oil and gas companies for profiteering and manipulating markets. This is a top priority for all of us.”
Related stories
Headlines start to catch up to the Republicans’ cynical strategy on Russia and gas prices
This week on The Brief: The geopolitical dangers of relying on rogue states for our energy needs
Ukraine update: Russia using 'depleted & desperate' units, still can't coordinate forces
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Friday was most notable in eastern Ukraine for the sheer lack of Russian attacks. Whether this was a result of the cascade of incoming overall commanders (Here comes Dvornikov! Here comes Gerasimov! Wait, here comes Putin!), a matter of being out of some sort of supplies (noticed all those burning ammo dumps lately?), or just giving the guys a break after weeks of throwing themselves on swords each day (which sounds very un-Russian), very little forward progress was even attempted.
Though artillery shelling of Ukrainian towns and villages continued Friday, it was hard to find any evidence of a genuine attempt at an advance. Anywhere. The result was daily summaries that contained the phrase “no change on the ground” in area after area. Only north of Kharkiv, where Ukrainian forces are slowly pushing Russian troops back from a series of villages just a few miles from the Russian border, was there any measurable change.
In their own daily update of the situation, the U.K. Ministry of Defense had something to say about the status of Russian troops. In their evaluation, Russia had been forced to redeploy troops who were “depleted and desperate” after their experience in the failed Battle of Kyiv. Those troops have now been pushed into the Donbas, often as part of patchwork units formed from the fragments of BTGs that remained after losses in the north. They’ve brought with them fear, exhaustion, and a big feeling of just being done-with-this.
The U.K. also noted that, despite the much shorter supply lines in the east—after all this whole area is not just adjacent to Russia, but to areas Russia has controlled for eight years—that doesn’t seem to have translated into more reliable supplies at the front line. Ukrainian attacks on supply locations and fuel depots may have played some role in that failure, but whatever the cause, Russia still isn’t getting ammo, fuel, and even food to the places where they are needed.
Russia is also still having issues with coordinating troops. That’s in spite of placing the focus of the war in a smaller area and piling on all that top brass. All those attacks that have been happening are still attacks by just one or two tactical groups.
Something unusual was reported on Friday night—an attempted night attack by Russian forces. Throughout the war, Russian forces have been completely lacking in night vision equipment. With NATO donations of exactly that kind of gear to Ukraine, attempting to move forces at night is something that Russia has rarely dared. However, updated tanks and othered armored vehicles often have their own built-in thermal or low-light vision system. So it seems that Russia did make a push Friday night along the line north of Popasna. It went this well:
Oh, and on Friday, Russia continued to bomb the fighters and civilians holding out in the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. It seems they can always find the energy for that.
The information on these images also indicates a time early on Saturday morning in Ukraine, but this seems to be a different location from the other vehicles that were reportedly lost in a night assault.
Did Russia conduct multiple “let’s see if it works better in the dark” probes on Friday night? Hard to tell. This equipment could have been sitting around for days and Saturday morning was just when the pics were snapped. Or this could have been another part of the same attack.
This tank may have been part of the same attack as the BMPs pictured above.
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Ongoing war in Europe, ongoing sedition revelations at home
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The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter
For years covering the White House was a kind of golden ticket in the media. Then came the Biden administration.
But during the age of Biden, a perch inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room has become something altogether different. It’s become a bore.
Andrew Sprung/American Prospect:
How the Texas Legislature Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ACA Marketplace
It’s all about pretending a boatload of federal cash helps the free market.
The Lone Star State, remember, is one of 12 states that have refused to enact the ACA Medicaid expansion, thus denying almost a million of its own residents health insurance funded almost entirely by the federal government. What’s more, until 2021, it was one of just three states to refuse to actively regulate its own ACA marketplace at all. That meant it ceded rate review (that is, scrutiny of insurers’ proposed annual premiums and authority to accept or reject them) to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
The Medicaid expansion is still dead in the water there. But last June, Texas’s legislature unanimously passed, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed, a bill (S.B. 1296) that not only established state rate review for the marketplace, but also effectively directed the Texas Department of Insurance to mandate that all insurers price their gold plans well below the price of their comparable silver plans, and also increase the margin by which bronze plans are priced below silver.
If that sounds bizarre, you are right. Texas is taking advantage of odd quirks in the Affordable Care Act’s design to get dirt-cheap exchange coverage for its residents. Other states could stand to learn from its example.
Charles Gaba/ACA Signups:
Not Joking: Texas Republicans Pass Law Which Dramatically Improves The ACA. CMS Should Follow Suit.
So what’s the point of Silver Loading?
Well, the key to this is that the formula for the premium subsidy tax credits (APTC) is based on the cost of the benchmark Silver plan…but the subsidies themselves can be applied to ANY plan.
Notice how the Gold plan is now priced LOWER than the Silver plan? That means that an enrollee can now get a Gold plan (which have lower deductibles/other cost sharing) for less than (or around the same as) a Silver plan instead. Even more important, it means that the APTC subsidies are increased, thus making Bronze plans free (or dirt cheap) for many subsidized enrollees…and even some Gold plans.
IS HUNGARY UKRAINE’S BIGGEST PROBLEM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?
The most controversial non-Western relationship that Orbán has cultivated is with Putin. Orbán ran on a platform of making utilities more affordable, and so securing cheap energy supplies was a major priority for his administration. When Hungary’s long-term gas contract with Gazprom expired in 2015, Putin personally went to Budapest to sign a new sweetheart gas deal that flew in the face of regional, European priorities to decrease energy dependence on Moscow. Orbán and Putin also signed a deal for Russia’s nuclear-energy giant Rosatom to finance and build a new nuclear power plant at Paks. Orbán also critiqued E.U. sanctions against Moscow in the wake of the annexation of Crimea, arguing that Europe “shot itself in the foot” by alienating Russia.
Cultivating close relations with China and Russia is key to Orbán’s mobilization strategy. As an illiberal populist, Orbán mobilizes his base with anti-Western and anti-European Union sentiment. Orbán is speaking to Hungarians who feel let down by the promise of European accession. While overall the quality of life in Hungary improved after it joined the European Union, the gap between Hungary and its Western neighbors on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s “Better Life” index and GDP per capita remain significant and, moreover, many rural voters have not enjoyed the same opportunities as the liberal elite in Budapest. For Orbán, China and Russia offer an alternative to the Western liberal democracy that he blames for stymieing Hungarian greatness.
WaPo:
DEVOURING THE RAINFOREST
Cattle ranching, responsible for the great majority of deforestation in the Amazon, is pushing the forest to the edge of what scientists warn could be a vast and irreversible dieback that claims much of the biome. Despite agreement that change is necessary to avert disaster, despite attempts at reform, despite the resources of Brazil’s federal government and powerful beef companies, the destruction continues.
But the ongoing failure to protect the world’s largest rainforest from rapacious cattle ranching is no longer Brazil’s alone, a Washington Post investigation shows. It is now shared by the United States — and the American consumer…
In the two years since Washington lifted a moratorium that was imposed on raw Brazilian beef over food safety concerns, the United States has grown to become its second-biggest buyer. The country bought more than 320 million pounds of Brazilian beef last year — and is on pace to purchase nearly twice as much this year. The biggest supplier is the beef behemoth JBS, whose fleet of brands stock some of America’s major retail chains and businesses: Kroger, Goya Foods, Albertsons (the parent company of Safeway, Jewel-Osco and Vons).
CNN:
New text messages reveal Fox’s Hannity advising Trump White House and seeking direction
CNN obtained Meadows’ 2,319 text messages, which he selectively provided in December to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. While the logs show Meadows communicating with multiple Fox personalities, as well as a number of journalists from other organizations, Hannity stands out with 82 messages. The texts, including dozens of newly disclosed messages, offer a real-time window into how Hannity, a close friend of Trump, was reacting to the election and its aftermath…
Hannity has said he is not a journalist, and Fox does not hold him to traditional journalistic standards. He is more akin to a GOP activist and entertainer, like some of his fellow Fox hosts. In addition to Hannity, Fox’s Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo and Brian Kilmeade all sent messages to Meadows as well.A spokesperson for Fox did not respond to a request for comment.
Jan. 6 committee aims for June hearings on Capitol attack. Will they affect the 2022 elections?
The Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol attack plans hearings in June and a report this fall, putting its findings in the middle of campaign season.
Members of the committee have acknowledged the urgency of their investigation into what led to the attack Jan. 6, 2021, what happened that day and how to prevent it from occurring again. But legal battles, including one from former President Donald Trump that went all the way to the Supreme Court, have delayed the committee’s work as new lines of inquiry emerged.
Holding weeks of hearings in the heart of the primaries could highlight partisan reaction to the results. But experts say the findings of a panel led by Democrats into Trump and his Republican supporters would be political whenever they are released.
“It’s always politics season,” said Peter Loge, a media professor at George Washington University and former chief of staff for a Democratic member of Congress.
Ukraine Update: To mobilize or not—Putin's lose-lose choice
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Today’s April 29 report really amounts to “zip.” A small village northeast of Kharkiv liberated by Ukraine was the only territory to change hands. On the main Donbas front, Ukraine General Staff reported repelling 14 attacks, none gained purchase. And yet again, we see Russia incapable of organizing a single, massive, coordinated push to crack Ukrainian defensive lines. It’s just more of the same we’ve seen all war—a slow grinding effort to erode Ukraine defenses by sending wave after wave of small, under-resourced attacks, except with more artillery prep. The tactic has had some successes! But at severe cost to the invaders.
And it’s slooooow going. Russia captured Izyum on April 1, and yet four weeks later, it has only managed to push out 30 kilometers (~19 miles). That’s about a kilometer a day. Only 5,000 more square miles to go! It doesn’t help that Russia is pushing in four different directions, as usual failing to concentrate its efforts in a single axis.
Russia’s wanted to parade Ukrainian victories at its May 9 victory, er, parade. Oh well, they can’t even claim the carcass of Mariupol, as Ukrainian resistance continues at the massive Azovstal steel factory and its surroundings:
(Note, you don’t actually see any of the injury, as it’s far from the camera. You do see Russians trying to help their fallen comrades, which might be a first and I found it strangely life affirming.)
Ukraine, aside from some tactical pickups here and there, seems content to chip away at Russian forces with artillery, guerrilla ambushes, and drones, trading ground for blood when absolutely necessary, but mostly holding firm in their extensive prepared defenses along the entire Donbas front. They just need to hold out a couple more months, to allow all that sweet new Western gear to arrive—drones, armored, and artillery, of course, but also body armor and helmets that will allow reservists to join the fight, and medical supplies that will save many lives. Also, lots and lots of armor.
The US has already committed to sending 170,000 155mm shells. That’s a lot of shipments from California and elsewhere. And now, with lend-lease authority granted by Congress, the US will keep supplying as many of these as Ukraine needs. The spigot is wide open to anything the Pentagon thinks will help push Russia entirely out of Ukraine. Russia’s defeat is official U.S. policy.
Ukraine has a near unlimited supply of soldiers and potential soldiers. Unlike Russia, their bottleneck isn’t willing volunteers, it’s equipment. With the U.S. fully committed to the war effort, the new bottleneck is training Ukrainians and shipping the equipment. That’s why the stalemate out east is such a blessing for Ukraine.
While Ukraine’s forces grow, Russia’s are a finite resource and attriting rapidly. They’ve run out of Donbas separatist cannon fodder, Syria never sent its promised 15,000 soldiers, none of Russia’s allies like Belarus are lending a hand, and Wagner mercenaries can’t fill the void. So Vladimir Putin has a difficult choice: whether to announce a general mobilization.
Many conscripts and contract soldiers have used Russia’s kafkaesque bureaucracy to get themselves out of deployment to Ukraine. All of that reportedly disappears with a declaration of war and mobilization. With 135,000 conscripts currently mobilizing, that alone would more than double Russia’s forces in Ukraine.
It’s curious that Russia hasn’t blamed Ukraine for the spate of attacks on fuel depots and other military infrastructure on Russian territory. Russia even pretends the sinking of their Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva was an accident. That doesn’t speak to a government whipping its populace up into a war fervor.
On the other hand, Russian state propaganda has been all about whipping up war fervor. Check out Julia Davis’ entire Twitter feed, but this is a taste:
The disconnect between state propaganda and the Russian government is stark, and creates genuine uncertainty about Putin’s direction. Yet his reluctance to mobilize thus far, despite Russia’s difficulties in Ukraine, signal fear of … something. Is Russia’s support for the war, supposedly in the 70-80% range, just skin deep—as long as it’s someone else’s skin in the game?
[Russian political scientist Sergei] Sazonov argued that Putin may be afraid of mobilization because it is difficult to organize logistics for a much larger Russian army. He may be also afraid of provoking a political disaster, with a majority of conscripts trying to evade the draft, Sazonov added.
Putin is reluctant to begin mobilization because people will be disappointed with their relatives’ deaths in Ukraine, [Russian political analyst Dmitry] Oreshkin said.
“Mobilization is like pension reform – it concerns everyone,” he said. “It would be bizarre if Putin resorted to mobilization for something he calls a special operation. It would mean he has admitted his failure in Ukraine. It would be his last resort.”
We may already be seeing anti-mobilization panic.
Even if Russia corrals more of its youth, then what? This is a great thread on the challenges: How will Russia train hundreds of thousands of new conscripts, when they’re already maxed out training the spring class of 135,000? How will these new soldiers be equipped given Russia is already scraping the bottom of the barrel in Ukraine, their reserves looted by rampant grift, and sanctions hindering the manufacture of new gear.
And will Putin really admit they are losing the war. Winners in a “special military operation” don’t need more troops. Sure, he’ll blame NATO, but “we’re losing, send me your sons” will be a tough sell.
Thus, Putin is damned if he calls a general mobilization and damned if he doesn’t. A week before the war I wrote what ended up being a war preview titled, “Putin has backed himself into a lose-lose corner. How much will the world have to pay as a result?” The story has held up surprisingly well, but the headline? Even better.
Mark Sumner had two great updates today:
Dept. of Defense acknowledges that logistics are limiting Russian advances
To execute a different strategy, Russia needs a different army
Also, there’s great community coverage in the Ukraine tag
And on a completely different subject, but holy shit, this is our dystopian climate change future:
Saturday, Apr 30, 2022 · 3:53:12 AM +00:00
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kos
Because we all need more flowers in our lives, but especially Ukrainians:
Saturday, Apr 30, 2022 · 3:57:45 AM +00:00
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kos
These are game-changing numbers.
Western tanks are a logistical nightmare, far more complex to maintain and repair than artillery. Using more of the same tanks they’re already familiar with, with some on-the-fly upgrades to optics, will match nicely with Western armored personnel carriers, artillery, and infantry mobility vehicles.
News roundup: Student debt; GOP war on children; Medicaid sunsets; Jan. 6 going to prime time
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Welcome Friday folks! The word on the street is that after freely giving billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine in their battle against Russian invasion, the Biden administration may honestly have a meaningful conversation about federal student debt relief. There is also a continued drumbeat for the Democratic Party to work to pass sections of their Build Back Better bill while they still have a slim majority, and much of that still depends on how much they can finesse the abjectly corrupt Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. But with relief for many people on programs like Medicaid “sunsetting” soon, the Democratic Party will have to act cohesively if they want to really help Americans in need.
All of this talk about what is actually happening behind the scenes is driving media outlets like Politico bananas as they have invested heavily in the concept of news as sensationalism and are finding that having a less outrageous person as president is less fun and more work. Maybe the folks over at Politico will just have to cover the GOP’s war on children and the moves being made to attack the most marginalized amongst us. Maybe they will be happy to hear that some of the Jan. 6 committee hearings might hit prime time television coverage.
Here is some of what you might have missed:
- Fox News wraith Laura Ingraham gets smashed by Twitter after heartless student loan tweet
- Politico complains that competence, transparency, and truthfulness is making their job too hard
- Black D.C. residents comprised 90% of the pregnancy-related deaths in the city, a study finds
- The Jan. 6 committee will hold hearings in June, some in primetime
- Medicaid matters a lot for 77 million people, and 15 million of them could soon fall off a cliff
- Thanks to Republican hate, Oklahoma is the first state in the nation to do a very bad thing
- New York man charged with hate crime after hitting Asian American woman with pool cue
- Boriqua activist offers classes for people of color to understand and decode ‘colonial mentality’
- Oath Keeper cries as he pleads guilty to seditious conspiracy charges; will cooperate
- Trump’s COVID-19 pandemic response was second-rate and deceitful, a new report shows
- Raskin tears apart the Putin Wing of the GOP
And from the community:
- 1.2 Billion people suffer through temperatures up to 122 F, with a likely staggering death toll
- I don’t think Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter
- Kos Diabetes Group: Diabetes and Alcohol
Trump Republicans are terrified of new government initiative to fight Russian misinformation
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The entire Republican brand has been built on a wobbly foundation of vile lies and exaggerations. It has to be. How else do you convince people that cruelly suppressing flows of immigrants to a country that faces both short- and long-term labor shortages is a good idea? Or that harassing gay and trans kids and the companies that support them somehow makes up for scuttling a child tax credit that would vastly improve the lives of tens of millions of parents in this country?
Without Russian lies and misinformation, it’s a safe bet Donald Trump would have spent recent years snorting Adderall out of his carpet until his brain bled, repeatedly bragging about passing dementia tests, and tweeting incomprehensible nonsense from his toilet. Which is pretty much what he did anyway, of course—but he would have been doing it on his own time, and in his own home, not forcing us to observe every lurid plot twist in his profane horror show. And his toilet would likely have been powerful enough to completely flush all his embarrassing errors and revolting secrets, up to and including Eric.
So it stands to reason that conservatives would freak about a new initiative to counter the disinformation upon which they rely.
It’s this news that has left the right shrieking:
The Department of Homeland Security is stepping up an effort to counter disinformation coming from Russia as well as misleading information that human smugglers circulate to target migrants hoping to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The spread of disinformation can affect border security, Americans’ safety during disasters, and public trust in our democratic institutions,” the department said in a statement Wednesday.
Okay, that’s brutally unfair. Countering lies about immigration with the truth? How are Republicans supposed to demagogue the issue? This is like stealing Thor’s hammer. Or Captain America’s shield. Or Trump’s steam-powered hydraulic girdle. And since Russian disinformation is now the lifeblood of the GOP, if they take that away, Trump is just a garden-variety traitor with 24/7 Secret Service protection.
The new board also will monitor and prepare for Russian disinformation threats as this year’s midterm elections near and the Kremlin continues an aggressive disinformation campaign around the war in Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly waged misinformation campaigns aimed at U.S. audiences to further divisions around election time and spread conspiracy theories around U.S. COVID-19 vaccines. Most recently, Russian state media outlets, social media accounts and officials have used the internet to call photographs, reporting and videos of dead bodies and bombed buildings in Ukraine fake.
The board will be headed by Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert who has researched online Russian misinformation campaigns. Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, no self-respecting American wants notorious war criminal Vladimir Putin sowing chaos among our citizens and tilting the playing field in favor of candidates he can more easily manipulate into supporting his diabolical plans, right?
Ha ha ha! You naif! These people do, of course.
Hmm, that video, originally posted in February, was actually kind of great. But Jankowicz parodied Mary Poppins, and Mary Poppins is a “groomer” now, so …
Despotic regime. That’s rich from Junior. Pot meet every other pot and kettle on the fucking planet.
I would be just as upset as Tom here is if, to Republicans, “radical leftist” didn’t simply mean any American who has yet to experience a horse-paste enema.
Of course, new Twitter Daddy Elon Musk felt compelled to get in on the act as well.
And then there was this nitwit:
What’s next? Space lasers, of course. It’s what Goebbels would have done if the technology hadn’t been monopolized by the Jews.
And in case the irony isn’t rich enough for you yet, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad apologist Tulsi Gabbard got in on the act.
And if that wasn’t quite enough irony to break your brain, well, this will pulverize it:
Of course, countering Russian disinformation is something all Western liberal democracies should be doing. It’s something Trump should have done while he could have done it. Instead, Trump stood onstage with Putin in Helsinki and gave him the green light to misinform all he wanted.
Trump was both the primary beneficiary and most eager domestic proponent of Russian disinformation. So if you’re in the Trump cult, you’ll naturally regard any attempt to stanch Russia’s dangerous, anti-democratic lies as an existential threat.
It’s obvious by now that they’ll just keep saying “Ministry of Truth” until it means something to their followers, even though it’s a safe bet very few of these philistines have actually read George Orwell’s1984 or even understand the reference. But the problem with the comparison is that the Ministry of Truth did nothing but tell lies. In other words, it was the 1940s version of Fox News’ “Fair and Balanced.”
Today’s conservatives aren’t about spreading the facts. They just want to spread manipulative (and manipulated) versions—and they own and operate the vast majority of this country’s manure spreaders. They like the current political landscape—with its endless hillocks of bullshit—just the way it is. So now they’ll ramp up their lies in order to keep the Russian lie pipeline open in the face of efforts to shut it down.
It’s what traitors do, after all.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
Boriqua activist offers classes for people of color to understand and decode ‘colonial mentality'
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Educator and activist Constanza Eliana Chinea explains that her decolonization lessons aren’t designed with white people in mind. Rather, the classes are for people of color; those who “have been colonized” and are “trying to move away from assimilation.”
Chinea was born in New York, then moved to her parent’s birthplace in Puerto Rico at around 8 years old. The family moved to Chicago when Chinea was a teenager, which she says helped her to understand the immigrant experience and the experience of “otherness.”
She says that she uses the Caribbean and Puerto Rico in her work as a kind of “landing path” to show her students the systemic ways in which colonization exists.
RELATED STORY: Legendary reproductive justice activist advises women to start talking openly about abortion
“I think a lot of people think we live in a postcolonial society, which isn’t true. Once we start to dismantle what colonization is and how it exists in ourselves and how we perpetuate it, then we can really start to talk about how we break it down systemically,” Chinea says.
Chinea says that when it comes to the theory of decolonization, it starts with the self, and with the mentality of colonization. Then it moves toward the action.
“I think a lot of times we think we have to become an activist. Anyone can be an activist because they’re taking action in the streets or they’re signing bills or they’re protesting. But it doesn’t mean they’re doing it in a decolonial way,” she says.
She explains that she starts with decolonial literacy and then begins the conversation about the systemic structure and how to change it and evolve from it.
“I’m working with people of color to really help them to understand what that means. Decolonization has really turned into a marketing tactic at this point. So I’m really trying to help people understand that it’s not about marketing. It’s not about just using the phrase as a throwaway phrase. It really is an actionable journey that you have to go through. And it’s very personal,” Chinea says.
Her clients are those who are on a journey. “They’re mixed folks who have been raised by white parents or have been adopted into white families … visibly Black and brown people who come to me wanting to reclaim Indigenous practices, but not sure how to start.” She adds it’s also for those looking to “unpack white supremacy and how that has affected them.”
She says colonial mentality is something that people of color absorb as adopting the practices of the oppressor, turning it into culture, turning into lifestyle by way of capitalism. “I think it really comes from a place of they’ve been traumatized, and they want to figure out how does that trauma manifest.”
Chinea’s students find her most easily via her website, her Patreon, and her free content on YouTube. She does offer paid private one-on-one consultation sessions.
Chinea warns that this work isn’t easy. Divesting from colonization means actively and thoughtfully putting your money, your vote, and your energy where your mouth is. Doing the research on the companies where you spend, where you travel, and what spaces you inhabit that support or deny colonization.
“This is the de-glamorized view of decolonization. … Divesting actually takes effort and it’s very uncomfortable. If we’re still looking at success through Western supremacist view, divesting is always going to be the last resort, because people don’t want that. [What] they want is to look like they’re successful; to have money, the big house, and be able to travel,” she says.
She explains that what people don’t understand is that you can get to a place of financial freedom through divesting.
“But it’s very uncomfortable at first because you have to divest. Even your thinking around, ‘How do I get financial freedom without investing in all of these colonized and capitalist ways?’”
One of the small ways Chinea suggests people can divest from our colonized society is to leave traditional social media platforms—although she herself has had to keep a presence on Instagram. But she did create a platform similar to Instagram called the Anti-Oppression Social Club.
“It’s a place for people, for myself to share decolonized news and politics and pop culture and kind of dismantle all of those things. It’s also a place for other activists and educators to post whatever it is that they want to post without fear of being censored or blacklisted or anything like that,” she says.
The Good Fight is a series spotlighting progressive activists around the nation: Those who are battling injustice in underserved communities and the folks fighting for democracy everywhere.
DeSantis vetoes wildly unpopular net metering bill that would have gutted solar incentives
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finally did something right: Of the nearly dozen bills that came across his desk this week, DeSantis vetoed the net metering bill that would have essentially gutted incentives for homeowners interested in using solar panels. HB741 would’ve drastically slashed the funds solar panel leasers and owners receive for the energy their panels generate, known as “net metering.” I even thought DeSantis, who received more than $30,000 from Florida Power & Light, would sign the bill the company’s lobbyists helped create. DeSantis refusing to adopt the bill actually goes against his own record, as he’s publicly said he’s against solar subsidies and even signed a law last year that prevents Florida cities from getting 100% of their power from renewables.
According to a veto letter obtained by the Miami Herald, DeSantis came to his senses because the bill would’ve been wildly unpopular for him as a politician. ““Given that the United States is experiencing the worst inflation in 40 years and that customers have seen steep increases in the price of gas and groceries, as well as escalating bills, the state of Florida should not contribute to the financial crunch that our citizens are experiencing,’’ DeSantis wrote in a statement about his decision. It’s been abundantly clear that a majority of Floridians support the practice of net metering. Nearly half of Floridians polled in February said they’d be less likely to reelect a lawmaker who stood in the way of those incentives and when it came down to it, DeSantis didn’t want to be that lawmaker his constituents turned away from.
There has been plenty that DeSantis has done wrong, especially as of late: the “Don’t Say Gay Bill,” his weird fixation with “Let’s Go Brandon” bullshit, his COVID policies—the list goes on and on. But listening, at least in this case, appears to be one of the few things the stubborn Republican actually got right. Industry advocates, fellow lawmakers, citizens, and pretty much anyone invested in a greener future spoke out in droves against HB741 and their constant pressure worked. Rep. Carlos Smith even noted it on Twitter when celebrating the veto, tweeting that “advocacy matters.” It’s worth noting that, of the 10 bills that did pass, two involved energy: HB481, which affects temporary underground power panels, and HB1411, which actually allows more places in Florida to host floating solar facilities that take underused bodies of water and generate power from them while also decreasing evaporation rates for those waters