A Sense of Doubt blog post #2251 - Racism is a Public Health Crisis - Weekly Hodge Podge 2104.17
Quick HODGE PODGE a day late with little to no curating.
More horrible news from the south, this time ARKANSAS being abominable to human beings.
But first, Juneteenth here in PORTLAND and the source of my theme for the week.
Juneteenth is now an Oregon holiday and Multnomah County declared racism “a public health crisis.” Juneteenth falls on June 19 and commemorates the day when enslaved people were told they were free in Galveston, Texas. Portland and Multnomah County have already adopted the holiday as a paid leave day.
- Related: The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners voted to formally recognize racism as a public health crisis last week and “now that county leaders have declared racial inequity a threat to public health, they will be obligated to look for ways to counteract racism in future,” according to a report from Willamette Week.
Biden Announces New Sanctions on Russia, Expulsion of 10 Diplomats, in Retaliation for Hacking and Election Interference (apnews.com)
Elizabeth Warren Slams Student Loan Servicer as Democrats Call for Debt Cancellation
Chairing her first student debt hearing, Warren told a panelist he should be fired.
But Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the chair of the Senate subcommittee that held the hearing on student debt—Warren’s first as the panel’s head—focused her questioning less on cancellation and more on the corporations who process the loans she’d like to cancel.
Her main target was Navient, one of the nation’s largest servicers of both federal and private student loan debt, processing the loans of more than 12 million borrowers nationwide. The company’s CEO, John Remondi, was on a panel of nearly a dozen speakers, from members of Congress to academics, who gathered virtually to discuss a wide-ranging set of issues related to student debt, including the proposal championed by Warren for President Joe Biden to forgive up to $50,000 of student loan debt via executive action.
Warren opened her questioning by highlighting the numerous state investigations and lawsuits directed at Navient, as well as the revelation that Navient overcharged the federal government for $22.3 million in student loan subsidies that the company has recently been directed to pay back.
“Mr. Remondi, if a person who worked at the Department of Education stole $22.3 million, they’d be fired,” she said. “Can you explain why your government contracts haven’t been canceled and why Navient has continued to reward you personally with nearly $40 million in compensation since 2014, even as these scandals pile up?” She called for the federal government to end its contracts with Navient—and said Navient should fire its CEO, while he listened. (Remondi said that some of the allegations raised by Warren aren’t true and repeated that his company’s goal is to help all borrowers.)
Later, Warren confronted James Steeley, the CEO of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), one of the largest servicers for the federal government’s embattled public service loan forgiveness program. She cited several lawsuits and Education Department audits that have accused the company of undercounting borrowers’ payments in assessing their eligibility for public service loan forgiveness—resulting in 98 percent of applicants to the program being denied forgiveness. Steeley claimed that these findings were incorrect but did not elaborate on how.
Both Navient and PHEAA have faced a number of lawsuits regarding their treatment of student borrowers. Warren noted that six states have filed suit against Navient, as has the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which alleges that Navient deceived borrowers, nudging them towards higher repayment amounts than they otherwise were eligible for. PHEAA recently settled a lawsuit filed by the attorney general of Massachusetts, agreeing to pay relief to borrowers in the state.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) also catalogued the lawsuits against Navient, asking Remondi how much he was paid across the three years in which the lawsuits were filed. Remondi’s total compensation during that time amounted to more than $20 million—a number that paled in comparison to the billions that Navient is accused of overcharging borrowers, according to Menendez.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) questioned PHEAA’s Steeley about the process that his company is using to review borrowers’ eligible payments for public service loan forgiveness. Steeley criticized the complexity of the requirements placed on the program by Congress. But Van Hollen responded that the 98 percent denial rate for forgiveness “is not due to complexity alone,” adding that borrowers haven’t gotten the guidance that they should have received from servicers like PHEAA who are administering the loans. PHEAA, he said, “has taken an admittedly complicated process and made it worse.”
For example, as Martti Tulenheimo, chief specialist at the Finnish Cyclists' Federation points out, Finland has a similar rebate which citizens have used to fund more than 2,000 ebikes, 1,000 new low emission cars, and 100 public transport tickets. Lithuania also offered such a scheme last year. The nation's Environmental Project Management Agency (APVA) offered residents $1,200 if they traded in their old cars. The money could then be used against anything from escooters, to ebikes, to public transport tickets. The scheme was considered a success with more than 8,500 people applying for the grant.
China Launches Hotline To Report Online Comments That 'Distort' History or 'Deny' Its Cultural Excellence (variety.com)
"For a while now, some people with ulterior motiveshave spread historically nihilistic false statements online, maliciously distorting, slandering and denying Party, national and military history in an attempt to confuse people's thinking," the notice said. "We hope that most internet users will play an active role in supervising societyand enthusiastically report harmful information." "Historically nihilistic" information, in official rhetoric, is content that incites doubt about the Party's account of the past.
It will accept four types of content complaints: distortions of history, attacks on the Party's "leadership, guiding ideology, principles or policies," the defamation of heroes and martyrs, and "denials of the excellence of traditional Chinese culture, revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture." The CAC notice did not explain what punishments would be in store for violators. China already frequently detains and jails people for online speech deemed politically inappropriate.
Although Mike Lindell is supposed to be launching his super amazing social media site that is going to be even bigger than all of the other social media sites on April 19th, he still has time to visit his friend Steve Bannon about once a week to complain about how no one else will let him go on their shows to talk about how Donald Trump actually won the election and Joe Biden stole it from him with the help of Dominion voting machines (pronounced, in Lindell-ese, dough-MIN-ion).
As has been widely reported, Dominion voting systems is currently suing Fox News for over a billion dollars for having had people on there claiming that they rigged the election for Joe Biden. Thus, they probably think it is a bad idea to have Mike Lindell on to talk about how Dominion rigged the election for Joe Biden. They also canceled Lou Dobbs' show, likely for the same reason.
And I will tell you, as grotesque as these election lies are, I actually have some reticence about these kinds of lawsuits because they can also be leveraged against legitimate news sources by bad corporations, which then creates an atmosphere where news sources without the deep pockets to fight these battles in court may not pursue important stories for fear of being sued, and that's not great for journalism. But regardless of how anyone feels about this lawsuit, it is happening, and that is obviously why Fox isn't having Mike Lindell on every other day. Because they don't want to be sued more than they are already being sued.
But that is not an answer Mike Lindell is willing to accept. He's convinced it goes much deeper, somehow, and told Steve Bannon in an interview Friday on Bannon's "War Room: Pandemic" show that he has even gone so far as to hire "private investigators" to find out why Fox won't have him on.
In a discussion about how the Murdochs are "tough hombres" but not as purely committed to the conservative cause as Roger Ailes was, Bannon asked Lindell about why he wasn't on Fox so much these days.
Why are the Murdochs — and correct me if I'm wrong, I think you're one of the biggest advertisers on there — I don't remember seeing you on Fox recently. Why are the Murdochs afraid of Dominion? Is there something about their case? Is there something about the facts? I mean the Murdochs are tough, they don't care. So why is Mike Lindell not on Fox and why do they seem to say, hey, when Dominion says something, we're just gonna shut up about it and talk about Biden's tax bill?
So weird to talk about actual news instead of the libelous pipe dreams of a pillow salesman.
Again, it seems relatively obvious why the Murdochs are "afraid" of Dominion. They are already being sued, they don't want to be sued for more money, and they don't think it's worth it to be sued for more money just to give Mike Lindell a platform for his bullshit. Because they're capitalists and their goal is to make more money for themselves, not lose it because the Pillow Guy wants to go on the air and tell lies that he thinks will somehow lead to Donald Trump being president again.
Lindell, however, is still waiting for those answers.
You know, I'm gonna have those answers soon, 'cause I've hired private investigators and I've spent a lot of money on them to investigate everything. Why are there bots and trolls, who's behind them? Why is Facebook involved, Wikipedia involved? And then the big question: why isn't Fox having people on? Why isn't Fox on there talking about Dominion and Smartmatic and the election fraud?
Bannon then asked an actual good question — "What if their response is 'Hey Mike, we saw the films, we've seen it, and we just don't think you've got the evidence?' [...] Could that be a response?"
"100 percent no," Lindell said, and then complained about how none of the mainstream media will have him on, even though he is willing to go on all of the mainstream media, even CNN, and none of them are interested. It's almost as if no one believes him, which would just be crazy. So it can't be that. Clearly, he's gotta get some private eyes involved to find out what is really going on.
It's not a bad idea. I may hire some investigators myself to find out why I do not have my own TV show and line of glamour capes. Also to find out why Jeff Goldblum is not my boyfriend. It would all be an obvious waste of money because it would be super weird of me to feel entitled to any of those things and also Jeff Goldblum is already married, but hey! Why not? If we're all hiring investigators to find out why we don't get to do all of the things we want when there are already extremely obvious reasons for why we don't have them, might as well.
In other news, Mike Lindell's website is supposed to launch on April 19th — and although Bannon and Lindell said we can all go ahead and sign up now, ahead of time, to beat the rush, that does not appear to be the case.
Disappointing!
A 23-Year-Old Coder Kept QAnon Online When No One Else Would (bloomberg.com)
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In fact, there'd been no conspiracy to take down the sites; they'd crashed because of a technical glitch with VanwaTech, a tiny company in Vancouver, Wash., that they rely on for various kinds of network infrastructure. They went back online with a simple server reset about an hour later, after the proprietor, 23-year-old Nick Lim, woke up from a nap at his mom's condo. Lim founded VanwaTech in late 2019. He hosts some websites directly and provides others with technical services including protection against certain cyberattacks; his annual revenue, he says, is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although small, the operation serves clients including the Daily Stormer, one of America's most notorious online destinations for overt neo-Nazis, and 8kun, the message board at the center of the QAnon movement, whose adherents were heavily involved in the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Lim exists in a singularly odd corner of the business world. He says he's not an extremist, just an entrepreneur with a maximalist view of free speech. "There needs to be a me, right?" he says, while eating pho at a Vietnamese restaurant near his headquarters. "Once you get to the point where you look at whether content is safe or unsafe, as soon as you do that, you've opened a can of worms." At best, his apolitical framing comes across as naive; at worst, as preposterous gaslighting. In interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek early in 2020, Lim said he didn't really know what QAnon was and had no opinion about Donald Trump. What's undeniable is the niche Lim is filling. His blip of a company is providing essential tech support for the kinds of violence-prone hate groups and conspiracists that tend to get banned by mainstream providers such as Amazon Web Services.
Source: France, CODE PENAL / commentaires imagés de Joseph Hémard (Paris : Editions Littéraires de France, 192u?), Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
The ongoing criminal trial against Derek Chauvin is a rarity; police officers are almost never even disciplined for their wrongdoings, much less criminally charged.
Prosecutors and cops don't like to investigate and charge other prosecutors and cops. Because of this, civil litigation often ends up being the only chance for victims of police brutality and their loved ones to have their day in court.
Unfortunately, qualified immunity stops most civil rights lawsuits in their tracks.
But that will no longer be the case in New Mexico, which this week became the second state to ban qualified immunity! This is a HUGE deal, especially considering that, in New Mexico, "officers have killed more people by population than in any other state three of the past four years." The Albuquerque Police Department, in particular, is known for its violence, killing 11 people in 2018 and 2019.
For decades, the doctrine of qualified immunity has stood as a barrier to justice in yet untold numbers civil rights cases. Qualified immunity was created by judges to protect government actors who have done bad things — and has been very good at doing just that.
The second question is what dooms most cases before they begin. Unless a case with the exact same facts has already said "YES THIS IS A CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION," the vast majority of cases are quickly dismissed.
In a decision granting qualified immunity last August, Judge Carlton Reeves recounted some decisions where courts granted qualified immunity:
Our courts have shielded a police officer who shot a child while the officer was attempting to shoot the family dog; prison guards who forced a prisoner to sleep in cells "covered in feces" for days; police officers who stole over $225,000 worth of property; a deputy who body-slammed a woman after she simply "ignored [the deputy's] command and walked away"; an officer who seriously burned a woman after detonating a "flashbang" device in the bedroom where she was sleeping; an officer who deployed a dog against a suspect who "claim[ed] that he surrendered by raising his hands in the air"; and an officer who shot an unarmed woman eight times after she threw a knife and glass at a police dog that was attacking her brother.
The New Mexico law is a little different from the bans on qualified immunity in other places. It applies to all government officials accused of violating someone's rights, where the Colorado and NYC laws are limited to police officers. Damages will be awarded against the relevant local government authority, not the individual actors (which is how these things go in 99.99 percent of cases anyway) and are limited to $2 million (which is actually a lot higher than the other caps on damages under New Mexico law).
Qualified immunity is one of those issues that can end up creating strange bedfellows — and that's a good thing, because it can help get major reform like this passed. In New Mexico, a coalition including the ACLU, Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity, Planned Parenthood, the Innocence Project, the Institute for Justice, the National Police Accountability Project, Ben & Jerry from the ice cream, and the libertarian Cato Institute.
Many congrats to everyone who helped make this law a reality. Like ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson said,
"Before today, New Mexicans had no means of accessing the lofty freedoms contained in our state Bill of Rights. Put simply, our rights were guarantees on paper, but not in fact. The passage of HB 4 ends that sad irony, literally breathing life into our cherished liberties. It's a truly monumental victory for fairness, justice, and equality."
Let's do this thing. Our people deserve justice.
[ HB 4 ]
For more rants, astute observations, and cat pictures, follow Jamie on Twitter!
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
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The story behind the viral clip of a GOP senator asking whether Kristen Clarke believed Black people are ‘genetically superior’
A cybersecurity expert who promoted claims of fraud in the 2020 election is leading the GOP-backed recount of millions of ballots in Arizona |
Chicago releases video of officer fatally shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo |
PANDEMIC
THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT
If you prefer your data in a visual format, here's the current map from COVID Exit Strategy, using data from the CDC and the COVID Tracking Project.
I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.
ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.
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Researchers Create Light Waves That Can Penetrate Even Opaque Materials (phys.org)
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2104.17 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2115 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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