Month: December 2020

What Happens When You Put a Fox in Charge of the Hen House

No Comments

An investigation by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that the certification of prisons in the United Sates by the American Correctional Association (ACA) is ineffective and corrupt.

This should surprise no one, the ACA is the primary lobbying organization for the prison industry.

Also, the entire fact that I am unironically using the term, “Prison Industry,” is an indication of just how morally bankrupt the current state of affairs is. 

Our carceral state needs to be reformed:

The organization responsible for accrediting US prisons, jails, and detention centers runs a “corrupt” process that puts a “rubber stamp” on dangerous facilities while taking in millions from the private prison industry, according to a scathing report from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), shared exclusively with Mother Jones.

The report, the result of a nearly 19-month investigation by the senator’s office, examined the American Correctional Association (ACA), a nongovernmental organization that acts simultaneously as a professional association and an oversight body for prison and detention systems. Federal, state, and local governments pay the ACA to audit the facilities where they keep people incarcerated and issue its stamp of approval on their operations. Qualifying facilities must meet the standards ACA spells out in its published manuals, covering everything from fire code compliance to officer gun training. Private prisons and detention centers, meanwhile, are often required to get accredited by the ACA to access lucrative government contracts, according to Warren’s report—and when scrutinized, they point to their accreditation status as a defense. After all, the ACA’s website says, accreditation is awarded to the “best of the best.”

The problem, Warren’s report found, is that the “best of the best” includes virtually every facility that pays its accreditation fees. The ACA currently counts over 1,200 accredited facilities; since 2007, only four have been denied accreditation. The groups provides three months’ notice and preparation tools for audits, “essentially providing the answers to the test in advance,” as the report puts it. And the ACA’s seal of approval lasts three years, with facilities conducting “self-reporting” in the interim.

“A review of available evidence suggests that that accreditation has little to no correlation with detention facility conditions and practices, and therefore little to no value whatsoever,” the report states. “The result has been the rubber-stamping of dangerous facilities and the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars.” Warren recommends that the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security stop paying the ACA for accreditation and instead establish a “rigorous, independent, and transparent” oversight process.

………

“The ACA’s private prison accreditation system is riddled with conflicts of interest, lacks transparency, and is subject to zero accountability even though millions in taxpayer dollars…flow to the ACA and private prison companies,” Warren’s report states. “These problems put the health and wellbeing of incarcerated and detained individuals, the staff and employees who work in those facilities, and our communities at risk.” (In his letter, Gondles wrote that criticizing the ACA for problems at accredited facilities “misunderstands” the purpose of its accreditation program: “ACA accreditation does not mean that there will never be an incident of violence, or that there will never be noncompliance with a health-related, safety, or other ACA standard,” he said.)

The report’s description of a lax ACA auditing process lines up with what my colleague Shane Bauer observed in 2015 while working undercover as a guard in a prison run by CoreCivic, then known as the Corrections Corporation of America:

………
 
But why is the system so broken? Warren’s report suggests that it all comes down to money. In addition to being “the closest thing we have to a national regulatory body for prisons,” as Bauer put it, it’s also a professional association that lobbies Congress on criminal justice issues and serves as a “voice for corrections.” That dual role presents an “irreconcilable conflict of interest” when the time comes to evaluate conditions inside prisons and detention centers, Warren’s report argues.

For one thing, the ACA gets nearly half its revenue from accreditation fees paid by the very entities it audits, including top private prison companies, her investigation found. Over a five-year period from 2014 to 2018, the GEO Group spent $1,429,599 on ACA accreditations, while CoreCivic spent $867,580, according to the report. The Management and Training Corporation, a smaller competitor, paid $501,850. The companies pay the ACA tens of thousands more in conference costs, certification fees, training, and for other services. Meanwhile, current or former private prison employees sit on each of the ACA’s governing boards and committees. (“The fact that one representative of a private correctional company sits on ACA’s Executive committee and two such representatives sit on the ACA’s Board of Governors and Delegate Assembly could not even begin to suggest that ACA is somehow beholden to those private interests or that the decisions of ACA’s governing bodies are driven by persons with conflicts of interest,” Gondles wrote in his letter to Warren, adding that the organization was governed by volunteers.)

Self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance.

If Only There Were Some Sort of Proxy for Value That We Could Offer Workers in Areas Where There Is a Shortage

No Comments

There appears to be much hand wringing over how immigration restrictions have created a shortage of teachers.

The very serious people (VSP) have been waging a war on teachers wages, benefits, working conditions, and job security for the past 4 decades, and now they have a problem finding teachers.

It’s pretty simple thing, if you don’t have enough teacher, pay them better, treat them better, and reduce the administrative barriers to entering the field.

Importing teachers is not a response to a shortage, it’s an exercise in labor arbitrage.

Who Knew that Minnesota Nice Meant, “Choking on Passive Aggressive Rage?”

No Comments

Congratulations @PeteButtigieg! From roads to rail, there is so much to be done and I’m looking forward to working with you! I know you will bring both your big ideas & your local government experience to the job. John & I look forward to welcoming you & Chasten to Washington.

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) December 15, 2020

Now this is an award worthy sub-tweet. 

I am amused.  It’s both a well deserved take-down, deeply nasty, and does not involve chucking office supplies at subordinates.

As I dislike both the author of the tweet and its subject intensely, I am simply amused.

I’ll Take Lightweights with a Horrible Track Record for $500, Alex

No Comments

In what is clearly a case of political payback for his yeoman duty slapping down Fox News dweebs, Biden has announced that he will appoint Pete Buttigieg as Secretary of Transportation.

He has no background in transportation, and his tenure as Mayor of South Bend was problematic, particularly with regard to race. 

I’m not sure if this is a throw away appointment, Transportation Secretary frequently is, or if Biden thought that he would be the guy to run a freeway through minority neighborhoods, but in either case, it kind of sucks:

President-elect Joe Biden will nominate onetime rival Pete Buttigieg to be his secretary of transportation and former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm to be secretary of energy.

The move elevates Buttigieg to a key role in the incoming administration’s expected push to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and economy and address climate change. Granholm, meanwhile, has been a strong voice for zero-emissions vehicles, arguing that the country must develop alternative energy technologies.

Biden also is tapping Gina McCarthy, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama and now leads a major advocacy group, to coordinate the new administration’s domestic climate agenda from a senior perch at the White House, according to three individuals familiar with the matter.

If you believe that personnel is policy, and I do, then this is yet more evidence that Joe Biden’s promise to his donors that, “Nothing will fundamentally change,” applies.

It is a formula for disaster.

Mexico Takes a Step Forward on the War on Drugs

No Comments

In a move for their own sovereignty, Mexico has removed diplomatic immunity from foreign law enforcement (US DEA) agents, and added statutory requirements that any foreign law enforcement share collected intelligence with local authorities.

I see this as an unalloyed good.

It will make the destructive pursuit of the “War on Drugs” more difficult, and will force US law enforcement to consider the impacts of their actions on the locals:

Mexico’s congress has approved a new national security law restricting the activities of foreign law enforcement officers, in a move which critics say will endanger intelligence sources and threaten the future of international anti-narcotics operations.

The law passed on Tuesday strips foreign agents of diplomatic immunity and requires foreign officials in the country to share any intelligence they have obtained with Mexican officials.

While not ostensibly targeting officials from any specific country, the new law would probably impact US agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which maintains a robust presence in Mexico.

………

The DEA works closely with Mexican security officials and creates much of the intelligence used in the so-called war on drugs. But US operations have sometimes caused a nationalist backlash, and despite billions of dollars in US military aid and attempts at judicial reform, Mexico’s militarised crackdown on crime has claimed more than 200,000 lives and left about 70,000 missing.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president, suddenly sent the bill to congress in early December after complaining of the way the DEA acts in Mexico.

“During other governments, they came into Mexico as if they owned the place. They didn’t just carry out intelligence operations, they went after targets. [Mexican] security forces launched the operations, but the decisions were made by these [foreign] agencies. That no longer happens,” he said.

………

Ricardo Monreal, senate whip with López Obrador’s ruling Morena party, called the law “an effort to reinforce the principle of reciprocity in matters of national security”.

I’d like to think that this will lead to a more constructive, and less punitive, drug policy in the US, but as Upton Sinclair pithily noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” and the elements of the US state security apparatus whose salaries are dependent on the “War on Drugs” are unlikely to understand.

I expect a lot of chest thumping and coercion coming from this side of the border.

I Need to Read His Books

1 Comment

I’m embarassed to admit that that I have never read a book by John le Carré. With the news of his death at age 89, I am feeling rather guilty about this. 

His spy novels were a marked contrast to the cartoonish James Bond:

John le Carré, who forged thrillers from equal parts of adventure, moral courage and literary flair, has died aged 89.

Le Carré explored the gap between the west’s high-flown rhetoric of freedom and the gritty reality of defending it, in novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, which gained him critical acclaim and made him a bestseller around the world.

On Sunday, his family confirmed he had died of pneumonia at the Royal Cornwall Hospital on Saturday night. “We all deeply grieve his passing,” they wrote in a statement.

Given the whole pandemic thing, I have some additional time to read.

Tweet of the Day

2 Comments

Vladimir Putin is personally directing a program of repeatedly using non-lethal doses of the world’s deadliest and unknown poisons on people, that are immediately taken up as causes célèbres by Western govs and media. Tight ship that guy runs.

— Denis Lavinski (@LavinskiDenis) December 15, 2020

Seriously.

This whole, “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be somewhat ill and become a major news story,” thing is getting kind of old.

Quote of the Day

No Comments

The Point of Economics as a Discipline Is to Create a Language and Methodology for Governing That Hides Political Assumptions from the Public.

—Matt Stoller

Mainstream economics, whether Freshwater or Saltwater, as Paul Krugman divides the discipline,* is constructed primarily to provide an intellectual gloss to the oligarchy.

Read the whole article.

*And I am using the term “discipline” VERY loosely.

Sock and Awe

No Comments

 12 years ago today:

12 years ago today. pic.twitter.com/g2W14AywFm

— Bhaskar Sunkara (@sunraysunray) December 14, 2020

A tip of the hat to Muntadhar al-Zaidi, a journalist’s journalist. 

Unfortunately, I could not find any games that came from this meme that still worked.  They were all done in Flash, which uninstalled itself from my computer a few months ago.

And yes, the “Sock and Awe” title is my own joke.

The Biggest Rat is Leaving the Sinking Ship

No Comments

The most corrupt attorney general ever™ will be resigning before Christmas.

There are basically 3 possibilities:

  1. Trump fired him.
    (I don’t think so, at least not explicitly)
  2. He’s trying to grease his way back the corrupt and venal DC society, by pretending that he is a man of principle.
    (My money is on this one.  Barr has gotten what he wants out of the deal.)
  3. Trump is planning something so extreme and immoral that Barr felt that he had no choice but to resign.
    (The man is completely immoral.  I literally cannot imagine him finding an action to unethical for him to sanction.)

If there is any justice in this world, there will be a flood of complaints to the Maryland, Virginia, and DC Bar Associations against him. 

It would be an obscenity for him to keep his law license after this.

Portly Performer’s Polyphonic Production Proceeds*

No Comments

The Electoral Collage has made it official. 

Biden is officially President Elect.

This does not mean that the rat-f%$#ery has ended.

I expect shenanigans from Trump and his  Evil Minions™ to fight this until January 20, when the US Marshals Service drags him out.  (They are responsible for evictions in the District).

Not out of the woods yet.

*The fat lady has sung.

Linkage

No Comments

Two Fisted Management from the Whitest Kids You Know:

A Good Start

No Comments

Congress just passed a bill requiring that shell companies detail who their beneficiaries are.

This means that the shenanigans like Wyoming corporations will hopefully be a thing of the past:

The U.S Senate on Friday passed a bill overhauling anti-money laundering rules and banning anonymous shell companies, a victory for law enforcement and rights groups which have long sought changes to make it easier to police illicit money flows.

The bill requires most companies to report their true beneficial owners to the government, allows greater information sharing between law enforcement and regulators, and authorizes the use of new suspicious activity monitoring tools.

Unfortunately, it does not make this information available to the general public, which it should, but it is a marked improvement on the status quo.

Some Good (Non-Brexit) News Out of Old Blighty

No Comments

MasterCard will be subject to a class action suit over anti-competitive and deceptive fees.

This may not seem to be a big deal to Americans, but this is a first in British jurisprudence, and marks a major change in consumer law:

The UK Supreme Court on Friday allowed a 14 billion pound ($18.5 billion) class action to proceed against Mastercard for allegedly overcharging more than 46 million people in Britain over a 15-year period in a landmark judgment.

The complex case, brought after Mastercard lost an appeal against a 2007 European Commission ruling that its fees were anti-competitive, could entitle adults in Britain to 300 pounds each if it is successful.

The court dismissed a Mastercard appeal, setting the scene for Britain’s first mass consumer claim brought under a new legal regime and establishing a standard for a string of other, stalled class actions.

………

The case will now be sent back to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), nominated in 2015 to oversees Britain’s fledgling, U.S.-style “opt-out” collective class actions for breaches of UK or European Union competition law.

………

The case centres on so-called interchange fees which credit and debit card companies say they levy on merchants’ banks to cover the costs of card services, security and innovation.

………

Anthony Maton, the global vice-chair of law firm Hausfeld, which is advising on other class actions, said: “This is a revolution in English law.”

This is indeed a big move, and a welcome one.

The Problem with the Democratic Party Establishment (There Is No Democratic Party Establishment)

No Comments

A good post mortem of how the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) made it impossible for Sara Gideon to beat Susan Collins.

Basically, it comes down to the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) selecting an uninspiring candidate, and then flooding the zone with so much money in negative ads, mailers, etc. that Gideon still has $14 million in campaign funds left over, (over $10 unspent for every man, woman, and child in Maine) that any she might have beyond the, “Collins is a Republican,” message was obscured.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) needs to be dismantled root and branch:

Democrat Sara Gideon’s bid to unseat Sen. Susan Collins was doomed the day after she announced she was running.

Gideon, a state legislator from Freeport who was then Maine’s Speaker of the House, formally announced her candidacy on Monday, June 24, 2019. The next day, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), a powerful political organization controlled by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top members of the party establishment, announced it was backing her campaign.

At the time, the DSCC’s endorsement was perceived as a huge boost for Gideon. It would ensure her campaign would be well funded and guided by the brightest political minds in the business.

In retrospect, it was the kiss of death — a guarantee her campaign would be ugly, uninspiring, obscenely expensive, and out of touch with local concerns. Despite spending nearly $60 million, twice as much as Collins’ campaign did, Gideon lost by over 8 percentage points, more than 70,000 votes, in a state where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by over 74,000.

………

Incessant negative advertising by outside groups helped make this race the most expensive in Maine’s history. It also made a mockery of Gideon’s oft-repeated pledge to “limit the influence of big money in politics.” Republicans were quick to call the DSCC’s endorsement proof that Gideon was a puppet of Beltway powerbrokers, and her two Democratic primary challengers were equally critical. “The DC elite is trying to tell Mainers who our candidate should be,” Betsy Sweet, one of those challengers, tweeted that summer.

But, crucially, the DSCC’s endorsement also limited the impact of Gideon’s positive messages, the campaign promises she made to improve the lives of everyday Mainers.

………

In the aftermath of Election Day, some top Democrats sought to blame progressives for the party’s poor showing in Senate and House races, but the DSCC’s record speaks for itself. Of the 18 Senate candidates endorsed by the committee, only four were victorious last month (two contenders, both in Georgia, failed to win on Nov. 3 but qualified for runoff elections next month).

As the campaign gained speed, the pandemic and the national uprising against police brutality gave Gideon two big opportunities to break from the moderate pack and distinguish herself from Collins, who denied that “systemic racism” is a “problem” in Maine, and whose Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a fraud-riddled failure. But Gideon’s position on racial justice was limited to training-manual adjustments like banning chokeholds and racial profiling, as well as further study of the problems that have plagued Black Americans since Reconstruction. Her credibility to criticize the PPP was compromised by the million or more dollars her husband’s law firm got from the program. And Republican critics took to social media daily to point out that, as far as anyone could tell, the House Speaker was doing practically nothing to help Mainers crushed by COVID-19.

While her constituents worried about keeping their jobs and homes, Gideon’s campaign bombarded them with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of ads, including pleas for them to give her money. The fundraising juggernaut engineered by her highly paid political consultants badgered Mainers for more cash till the bitter end.

………

Lisa Savage, a longtime Green Party activist and educator who ran as an independent in this ranked-choice Senate race and finished third, said a member of her team calculated how much each candidate spent per vote received. Savage spent $4.69 per vote, Collins about $65, and Gideon over $200.

………

“The model this cycle — and the model I am certain we’ll see repeated as Chuck Schumer continues on as Minority Leader — is that the party chooses a candidate they expect to bring in money, a candidate who will go along with corporate interests that fund the legions of Democratic campaign professionals that keep the machine running,” [Bre] Kidman [One of Gideon’s primary opponents] continued. “Mainers could smell the disingenuousness a mile away and, frankly, I don’t think the top-dollar, out-of-state consultants who worked on the campaign did anything at all to mask it.”

Gideon “didn’t have a single Maine person on her [communications] team,” said Savage. “Not one. They just don’t understand Maine.”

A review of the Gideon campaign’s finance filings reveals page after page of big payments to out-of-state consulting firms and media companies. DSCC executive director Mindy Myers personally received over $100,000 from Gideon’s campaign for consulting services. Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic ad agency that also worked for Biden this year, was paid over $8 million. Aisle 518 Strategies, a D.C. digital fundraising outfit, raked in over $6 million.

This is not political consulting, this is looting.


………

A key race for a Maine Senate seat this year illustrates how Gideon’s result may have been different had she run a less toxic and more responsive campaign. Democrat Chloe Maxmin, a progressive state lawmaker from the midcoast town of Nobleboro, challenged Republican Dana Dow, then the Minority Leader of the Maine Senate, and won. Maxmin ran a “100% positive” campaign “grounded in community values, not Party or ideology,” her website declared.

Maxmin and her local team created all their ads and adjusted content based on voter feedback. They knocked on over 13,000 doors in her rural, Republican-leaning district. The voters they encountered had no interest in the type of who-took-money-from-who sniping that characterized the U.S. Senate race. “The things I hear from people are, ‘We want good jobs here, we want to live in a rural place and make a good living,’” Maxmin said. “‘We want to know our children will have the same opportunity.’”

The goal of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is not to win elections, it is to profit from Democratic Party campaigns.

They are parasites.

So Nice that Pelosi Supported the Homophobic Campaign of Richard Neal

No Comments

Because after winning the primary, and the general, Ways and Means Chairman Neal is blocking surprise medical billing legislation, because he is owned by the hedge funds who have purchased medical practices, particularly emergency medicine practices, across the country to profit from massively overcharging people in emergency rooms:

A broad bipartisan effort to pass legislation protecting patients from massive “surprise” medical bills is now on life support as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) digs in on a separate proposal.

Democratic and Republican leaders of three committees in the House and Senate have been pushing for months to pass their measure, which would prevent Americans from unexpectedly getting hit with medical bills for thousands of dollars for common scenarios like treatment from a doctor outside their insurance network when they require emergency care.

Neal has been holding out for his own rival proposal and has not shown any willingness to budge despite concessions offered by top lawmakers on the three committees.

………

Supporters say they are extremely frustrated with Neal, given that lawmakers have been working on a bipartisan basis for two years to solve an issue many view as an especially egregious practice that should be low-hanging fruit for Congress. Lawmakers tried to pass the measure last December, but disagreements with Neal derailed the measure.

………

All sides agree that patients should be protected from getting massive medical bills through no fault of their own. But fierce divisions have emerged over how much the insurer would then pay the doctor or hospital once the patient is taken out of the middle.

The three committees — House Energy and Commerce, House Education and Labor and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions — have in general favored an approach called benchmarking, which sets the payment rate based on the median amount that insurers in that area already pay in-network doctors. That approach is backed by insurers, unions and consumer groups who say it will save both consumers and the government more money than Neal’s proposal.

Hospitals and doctors, on the other hand, warn that would lead to damaging payment cuts. They favor an alternative process where an outside arbiter would decide the payment, through arbitration. That’s the approach proposed by Neal and Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas), the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, with Neal touting the support of hospital groups.

Backers of the three-committee approach say they offered a range of concessions to Neal, including one that only used Neal’s preferred method — arbitration — but he still did not agree.

………

The fierce lobbying from powerful doctor and hospital groups has caused further problems. Private equity firms that own doctor staffing companies previously funded millions of dollars in ads against the three-committee legislation.

Surprise billing became an issue in Neal’s primary race earlier this year; his progressive challenger, Alex Morse, [Against whom Neal and the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) ran a viciously homophobic campaign] accused him of blocking surprise billing legislation because the private equity firm Blackstone is a major contributor to Neal. Neal ended up handily defeating Morse before going on to win reelection to Congress, where he has served since 1989.

Neal is now saying he wants to again delay the issue until next year, which backers of the three-committee approach take as a sign that he does not want to address the issue at all and is trying to delay it indefinitely.

Of course he is trying to delay it indefinitely.

He sees his job as to ensure that Blackstone and their Evil Minions™ get their vigorish so that he gets his campaign donations.

Have Some British Fighter Pr0n

No Comments

Not Exactly Pretty


I’m ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille


I don’t believe in the cost savings through tech


Hopefully, this will work better than the F-35


Does not appear to be variable cycle

The RAF and “Team Tempest” have released renderings of their next-generation fighter proposal at an online event.

It’s interesting, but based on prior performance, the F-22, the F-35, the Typhoon, and the Rafale, we are at least ¼ century from the aircraft being deployed operationally.

Rather a far cry from the 180 day interval between contract signing and first flight for the P-80 Shooting Star:

Team Tempest and the Royal Air Force recently held a virtual event to provide an update about the development opportunities of the new sixth generation aircraft to industry and government representatives from Northern Ireland, the first of a series of events to engage with industries across the UK. Within the press release there is also some new renderings of the aircraft which, we have to note, is not in its final shape as it’s being designed “from the inside out” and the airframe’s exterior design may change to reflect changes in the internal systems.

Of note is the details on propulsion, specifically the statement that thermal management will be an integral part of the engine.

This is likely in response to an issue with both the F-22 and F-35, which is that they are basically thermos bottles relying on fuel to cool mission and flight critical systems, which means that both aircraft need to carry additional fuel, and weight, for cooling.

The statement implies that the amount of fuel that needs to come back to base would be less, which would either lower weight, or increase range and endurance.

Rolls-Royce is working on the advanced combustion system technology that will power Tempest. The next-generation system is being designed to be hotter than previous ones to increase the efficiency of the engine, its range and speed, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Together with the higher-temperature combustion, there will be a new thermal management system that will use the turbine as a heat sink to recycle thermal energy, removing the need for overboard venting and improving the efficiency, and an increased electrical power production, reportedly in the order of one megawatt, that will be used to power all the aircraft’s subsystems.

This follows the assessment by Rolls Royce that future fighter aircraft will have unprecedented levels of electrical power demand and thermal load that need to be managed accordingly to maintain the airframe’s low observability. Being more specific, the company stated that they will integrate an Electrical Embedded Starter Generator that will function both as an APU and as an electrical generator after the engine is spooled up.

This is actually in some ways quite similar to what RR did with Trent 1000 for the Boeing 787, which is an all electric (no bleed air) design.

If you are into this, time to get your geek on.

Biden’s Worst Cabinet Choice So Far

No Comments

Biden has chosen Barack Obama’s Agriculture Secretary, Tom “Mr. Monsanto”* Vilsack (what a memable name) to reprise his role.

Given that his record as a lobbyist for big Ag, his steadfast refusal to address entrenched racism and sexual harassment in the Department of Agriculture in his last tenure, and his refusal to address anthropogenic climate change, there is a lot of outrage over this decision:

When President Barack Obama nominated Tom Vilsack, a two-term Iowa governor, to be secretary of agriculture in 2008, Vilsack was seen as a centrist who wouldn’t change much about how farming was done in America—for better or worse.

………

Fast forward to 2020, and Vilsack is poised to resume his role heading the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under President-elect Joe Biden, according to multiple outlets. This week, Vilsack emerged as a frontrunner ahead of two Democratic women: former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, who would have been the first Black woman to lead the agency.

The prospect was greeted with tepid enthusiasm by some and outright ire among others. Many in the food world, possibly eager to find something to praise, pointed to his previous stint in the job as a net positive, and proof he could hit the job running. Yet for environmental advocates, Black farmers, food safety champions, and critics of corporate agribusiness, a return to the status quo feels inadequate.

………

For many advocates of racial justice in the food system, Vilsack’s nomination is an affront that suggests the Biden administration has little interest in making the ag sector more equitable and remedying USDA’s notorious history of racial discrimination against Black farmers.

Much of the disappointment stems from both the agency’s practices under Vilsack’s watch and his own reported reluctance to repair the damage of systemic racism. As The Counter reported in a 2019 investigation, employees alleged that Vilsack’s USDA repeatedly ran out the statute of limitations clock on discrimination complaints, while attempting to foreclose on farmers whose cases hadn’t yet been resolved. Employees also said that USDA manipulated Census data to obscure a decline in Black farming, which in turn allowed Vilsack to paint a rosy but inaccurate picture of his tenure.

………
 
One particular scandal during Vilsack’s tenure stands out right now: the controversial ouster of Shirley Sherrod, a Black USDA official. Vilsack forced Sherrod to resign after the far-right website Breitbart disseminated a selectively edited video to suggest that she had discriminated against a white farmer. (After the full video came to light, Vilsack apologized for his treatment of Sherrod and reportedly offered to resign over the incident.)

I don’t blame Vilsack over this incident.

It’s clear that the cowardice and hypocrisy driving this incident came from Barack Obama, or those closest to him in the White House.

………

For women who have experienced sexual abuse while working for USDA’s Forest Service—an agency that employees say fostered a decades-long culture of sexual harassment—Vilsack’s nomination is a punch to the gut, according to Lesa Donnelly, former employee and current vice president of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees. Donnelly is a well-known advocate who has been calling on the agency to better protect employees from sexual abuse. According to her, Vilsack was part of the problem: He was “unwilling to investigate complaints properly and hold people accountable” during his tenure, Donnelly told news outlet Government Executive in 2016. The thought of his return to the agency is retraumatizing many of the women she advocates for, she told The Counter in an interview.

………

Numerous other organizations, including those representing Black farmers, have vocally opposed Vilsack’s nomination.

………

Indeed, rigorous environmental policies did not seem to be a priority for much of Vilsack’s term leading USDA. In one telling moment, then-Secretary Vilsack refused to take a stance on whether crop subsidies should be conditioned on farmers’ willingness to adopt basic conservation measures. “There were moments during his first tenure when Secretary Vilsack missed an opportunity to make the environment a priority,” said Scott Faber, vice president for governmental affairs at the Environmental Working Group, noting Vilsack’s unwillingness to challenge the status quo.

These aren’t the only Vilsack-supported policies that have raised eyebrows among environmentalists: He often boosted ethanol, a fuel additive that has long been unpopular with the green set because its production requires a lot of land and chemicals. He spent the past four years promoting dairy exports, indicating he’d be hesitant to back policies that curb production, such as limiting the construction of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). As recently as 2014, Vilsack appeared eager to shift the conversation about the climate crisis away from agriculture. At an event at Drake University, he said that “agriculture tends to take the brunt of criticism about climate change, but the industry contributes only 9 percent of the greenhouse gases blamed for a warming planet.”

………

“It’s very important—essential—that USDA be vigorous and engaged, and that this not become a private-sector exercise, where carbon markets take over the conversation,” Deeble said. “We’ve got good programs at USDA right now that an ambitious secretary would be able to repurpose or modify slightly to get focused on climate change.”
On food safety, Vilsack “defaults to what the big companies want”

The Department of Agriculture doesn’t just regulate farmers. It’s also responsible for the safety of the meat, poultry, and eggs on our plates—roughly 20 percent of the American food supply. Consumer advocates contacted by The Counter say they don’t expect a Secretary Vilsack to do much more to keep that food clean and disease-free.

In his first tenure, Vilsack backed a proposal that would have allowed some chicken plants to dramatically increase line processing speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175. He also supported drastically reducing the number of USDA inspectors in plants, instead asking the companies to essentially police themselves.

………

It’s not just line speeds. When Vilsack was the head of USDA, his department rejected a petition to recognize some strains of antibiotic-resistant salmonella as adulterants, and make it illegal to process and sell meat and poultry that could sicken the public. A similar petition was submitted earlier this year—and Corrigan expects Vilsack, once again, to reject it.

………

Farm groups responded to Vilsack’s likely nomination with cautious optimism, noting the former secretary’s experience as a boon. “It is hard to argue with the fact that the USDA has been significantly eroded over the last four years in terms of research capacity and administrative capacity—it’s dropped down the rankings,” said Deeble of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “Getting somebody who knows where all the switches and levers are is valuable if you want to fix that.”

Yet there’s reason for skepticism. At the beginning of President Obama’s first term, Vilsack embarked on a long listening tour to hear from small-scale farms about the impact of corporate consolidation within agriculture. The tour left many hopeful that the administration would overhaul regulations in the meatpacking industry and shift some market power back to small producers. Many years later, the administration advanced a watered-down version of the rules, which were then rolled back by the Trump administration.

………

Yet Vilsack spent the last four years as CEO for the U.S. Dairy Export Council, a group that represents some of the biggest dairy conglomerates which in turn hold a lot of sway over prices paid to small-scale farmers. Market control by the biggest player, critics argue, has been a contributing factor in the recent spate of small dairy failures. “Secretary Vilsack’s experience in the last four years does give us some cause for concern,” Stranz said. “But we also know, however, that as an administrator for a federal agency, he has the wherewithal and ability to work to advance policy goals that benefit farmers across the country.”

………

Some advocates hoped that the Biden administration would work to combat consolidation in agriculture and feel let down by Vilsack’s nomination. In particular, they take issue with his failure to prioritize policies that would have given farmers and ranchers more leverage with the industry’s meatpacking giants.

Take the Farmer Fair Practice rules—also known as the Grain Inspection, Packers, and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) rules—for example. As antitrust law advocates see it, Vilsack’s USDA dilly-dallied over the rules for too long, and by eventually introducing them in the final months of the Obama administration, it all but guaranteed that they would get axed by Trump. These rules would have made it easier for contract farmers to sue processors—who dictate almost all the terms of raising livestock—over unfair retaliation, such as terminating contracts of farmers who attempt to organize.

………

“He can’t work for industry if he’s governing the industry.”

Vilsack also accumulated fresh baggage in the last four years as president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, an organization tasked with generating overseas demand for U.S. milk and milk products. Vilsack has drawn heat for taking a nearly $1 million salary from his job, at a time when dairy farmers have struggled with low prices and bankruptcies.

 ………

It’s also important to note that since the Export Council counts some of the largest dairy suppliers in the country among its members, including Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), the nation’s biggest milk processor and cooperative. DFA has been the subject of numerous lawsuits alleging antitrust violations and price-fixing practices, which many dairy farmers say have led to declining revenue and even driven some out of business. Now, they’re worried that Vilsack’s affiliation could pose a “huge” conflict of interest should he be confirmed as secretary of agriculture again.

………

Ultimately, Vilsack’s record as agriculture secretary was spotty. He missed opportunities to prioritize environmental policies and backed off on reigning in monopolies in the meat industry. And his record on civil rights has only worsened since he left office, amid a steady trickle of revelations about his treatment of Black farmers and victims of sexual harassment. These failures have left deep scars—scars that are dealbreakers for some and, at minimum, caution flags for others.

This guy is a complete horror show, and epitomizes everything that was wrong, and corrupt with the Obama administration. 

Capitulation to corporate interests, partnering with entities who are the source of the party, and a steadfast push for market based solutions in the event of market failures.

Vilsack was bad in 2009.  He is even worse now.

*I’m not making this up. This what he is actually what called by his opponents.

Not Enough Bullets

No Comments

In the midst of rising Covid-19 cases, and an explosion of evictions, the CEO of Blackstone is crowing about jacking up rents across the country. 

Getting Wall Street and hedge funds out of real estate should to be a priority of the Biden and the Democratic Party.

It won’t be a priority, but it should be:

The world’s largest private equity firm has bankrolled campaigns against rent control and been accused by the United Nations of fueling a global housing crisis. Now, as millions are threatened with eviction during the pandemic, Blackstone’s top executive is openly bragging that the firm is making huge profits off of rent increases.

At the Goldman Sachs’ Financial Services Conference on December 9, Blackstone’s billionaire CEO Stephen Schwartzman boasted that after the 2008 financial crisis, his firm was able to cash in on the mortgage crisis. At the time, the company was able to buy up foreclosed homes and convert them into rental properties subsequently plagued by accusations of dilapidation and excessive fees — all while it received a big financial boost from the government. 

Schwartzman, a top Republican donor and close ally of President Trump, indicated his firm is positioning itself for a similar jackpot.

“You always have winners and losers — Blackstone was a huge winner coming out of the global financial crisis and I think something similar is going to happen,” he said.

Noting that about half of his private equity firm’s revenues are now from real estate, Schwarzman added: “We’re the largest owner of real estate in the private world. And that asset class has boomed with huge increases in rents, almost no occupancies, [and] rent collections from almost everyone.”

………

Blackstone has also been evicting residents during the pandemic, according to court filings compiled by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. And Blackstone has faced a legal showdown with New York tenants at one of the city’s largest rental complexes, which it owns. There, the company has been trying to exempt thousands of units from rent regulation laws. The company has reportedly even kept Manhattan units empty rather than face rent control regulations.

During the Goldman Sachs conference, Schwarzman seemed to insinuate that his firm may buy up even more residential real estate to try to squeeze even more revenue out of renters in the pandemic-ravaged economy.

Wall Street is the enemy of a good and just society, and it should be treated as such.

Trump’s Lawyers Are Not the Most Contemptible Attorneys of this Season

No Comments

Neither is it Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton whose plea for a pardon attempt to invalidate all the votes in 4 states was dismissed by the Supreme Court. 

In fact, the lawyer in question wasn’t working on the election at all.

Rather it was Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) stalwart and Clinton confidant Neal Katyal who aggressively supported the use of slaves by Nestle on chocolate farms, explicitly stating that companies that participated in the Holocaust should not be held to account for their actions.

Every one has a right to a lawyer, no mater how contemptible that client is, and the lawyer has an obligation to provide a competent and rigorous defense, but there is a ethical requirement that you not simply argue on behalf on evil.

Lawyers are not just advocates, they are officers of the court, and there is a requirement for basic human decency, and Neal Katyal has failed that test. (I need to note that I am an engineer, not a lawyer, or ethecist, dammit!*)

The United States has a political class that mistakes its professional norms for ethics. Mainstream political journalists mindlessly grant anonymity to professional liars. Elected officials put collegiality and institutional procedure over the needs and interests of their constituents. And as for lawyers, they have refined this tendency into what amounts to a religion of self-justification.

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution establishes that every American has the right to “the Assistance of Counsel” if they are prosecuted for a crime. This was a pointed rejection of English common law, which barred felony defendants from hiring counsel to represent them. Over time, the Assistance of Counsel clause came to mean that everyone prosecuted for a crime had the right to competent and effective representation, even if they could not afford it. From that right, the American legal community developed a core tenet: Everyone deserves representation.

But once the American legal community invented corporate law and the large firm, it continued developing that tenet until it became so divorced from notions of liberty or equality under the law that it now works as a kind of force field preventing lawyers from facing any social or professional repercussions for their actions on behalf of their clients. Everyone has a right to counsel, and every lawyer has a right to earn a buck.

It is that mutated creed that explains why Neal Katyal went to the Supreme Court last Tuesday to argue that children enslaved to work on cocoa plantations should not be allowed to sue the corporations that abetted their enslavement.

Katyal is among the most prominent and decorated attorneys in the country. He is a Democrat who has been in and out of government since Bill Clinton’s second term. He returned to his private firm, Hogan Lovells, after serving as acting solicitor general for Barack Obama’s Justice Department. He is omnipresent on television and newspaper op-ed pages as a voice of “The Resistance” to Donald Trump. He is about as close as you could come to the embodiment of Big Law’s connection to the institutional Democratic Party.

And last week he argued that because the corporation that supplied Zyklon B to the Nazis for use in their extermination camps was not indicted at Nuremberg, Nestle and Cargill should not be held liable for their use of child slave labor. In his argument before the court, Katyal espoused a view of corporate immunity so expansive that even the conservative judges seemed skeptical. If you took him at his word, he was effectively asking the Supreme Court to make it impossible for any foreigner to sue any company for any harm done to them, up to and including kidnapping and enslavement.

An argument that repulsive coming from such a high-profile attorney—someone who could very likely serve in the incoming Biden administration or end up a judge—naturally caught the attention of left-of-center critics of corporate power. Most of them were not very impressed with the argument and expressed some less-than-flattering opinions about the person making it.

As always, public criticism of a successful attorney led inevitably to the creation and publication of a new version of the inexhaustible opinion piece classic: It is simply unfair to criticize a lawyer for making any argument on behalf of any client.

………

The point is not that Katyal should be disbarred or something for representing a client. The point is that the cases Katyal chooses to take, the arguments he chooses to make, even the firm he chooses to work for, all speak to his values. He cannot separate his politics, whatever he thinks they are, and whatever he wants everyone else to think they are, from his decision to defend Nestle against the threat of potential lawsuits from enslaved children. That is a statement about how one believes the world should be organized and on whose behalf the legal system should operate.

To defend an accused murderer or rapist in a criminal trial is a straightforward endorsement of the idea of the presumption of innocence, not an endorsement of murder or rape. That’s the act enshrined in our Bill of Rights. To make a career out of defending and expanding corporate power at the expense of employee and consumer power, on the other hand, is simply to endorse those things.

………

Instead of continuing to argue about these ideas in public, the American legal community largely decided to close ranks around a highly ideological understanding of professionalism and independence that happens to support the right of an elite attorney to make a fortune. Now any time someone—take, for example, Richard Kahlenberg, who went to Harvard Law and wrote a book about how that institution turns would-be idealists into corporate stooges in training—broaches concerns like Berle’s, they are met immediately with derisive sneers from law professors about not understanding the majesty of the legal profession.

People like those law professors and Neal Katyal illustrate something I wish more professional Democrats understood: The professional norms of the political class are not only not a substitute for actual values, they are, frequently, actively harmful to the project of liberalism these people claim to be advancing.

………

Neal Katyal’s professional project—one that I believe to be sincerely ideological and not simply mercenary—has been to protect corporations from the consequences of harming consumers and workers. Liberals should find that horrifying. If you want to make a fairer society or more equitable economy, Katyal is not your ally, no matter how many good deeds he has done. The professional norms that allow people like Katyal to get a pass on their lucrative private sector work are not actually essential components of our political system; they exist because no one in revolving-door Washington wants to feel bad about how they pay the bills.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is a product of this amoral calculus.

They are subscribing to the philosophy of Ayn Rand crush William Edward Hickman, who said, “What is good for me is right.”

William Edward Hickman also  kidnapped a 12 year old girl, ransomed her, and dismembered her, which is pretty much what the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) has done to both the party, and the American people.

*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!