Chris Hedges's Blog, page 258

No Country for the Sick and Poor

On this extremely hot summer day, the ear-splitting siren screaming through New York’s streets is coming from the ambulance I’m in — on a gurney on my way to the ER. That only makes the siren, loud as it is, all the more alarming.

I fell. The pain, its location and intensity, suggests I’ve probably broken my hip.

The kind face of the emergency medical technician hovering above me asks questions softly and I confess that I’m in terrible pain. Other gentle hands are busy taking blood pressure and doing oxygen counts. These EMT workers, employees of the Fire Department, are good at what they do.

At the ER entrance, the gurney’s lifted out of the vehicle, wheels are dropped, and it’s rolled inside. Under a ceiling of bright white lights, it passes — and so I pass — one cubicle after another. I catch bits of voices, speaking in several languages.

My friend, who’s come with me to the ER, roots around in my purse for my insurance and then heads for the admissions office. Alone, I close my eyes to shut out the glare of the ceiling lights. I want one thing: relief from the pain. Oblivion would even be more appreciated.

My friend returns to my cubicle and asks, “Is this the only insurance you have?” I panic. Will they not accept me? But they have to! It’s the ER! That’s the reassurance I offer myself and then I tell her, “Yes, it’s all I have.”

She looks doubtful.

“What?” I ask desperately. “What?”

“Don’t you have some kind of supplemental?” And she begins to try to explain, but I can’t deal with this right now. All I want is relief from the pain. Any other moment, I’d worry about the money, but not now. I can’t! Instead, simply to remain half-calm, I remind myself that I have insurance, that I have a Health Maintenance Organization, or HMO, a plan that offers a wide range of healthcare services through a network of providers who agree to work with members.

After vital signs are taken, I’m moved to a hospital room and given pain meds that don’t offer oblivion, but do help. There, I learn what the X-rays show: a hip fracture. Surgery necessary. Operating rooms all taken. It may be two days before they can operate, the orthopedic surgeon tells me. My friend whispers that every extra day in the hospital will cost a mint. She then appeals to the staff to expedite the surgery. They can’t.

At that moment, I don’t care if the hospital costs a million dollars a day, I just want to get better. However, I, too, want the surgery to happen, within the hour if possible, since my leg is now frozen in a distinctly awkward position, thanks to the way I fell, and I realize that it won’t be straight until the operation’s over.

Two days later, after successful surgery, I develop an infection, pneumonia, and the days in the hospital begin multiplying into weeks. My doctors are so busy they can only visit once a day, if that, but the nurses, well… they’re the healers, the angels, though they themselves are desperately overworked.

Everyone’s so busy here. Hospitals have grown larger than ever in recent years as they’ve swallowed smaller hospitals and medical treatment centers. Given the overworked nature of the staff, I hire a healthcare aide to be with me several hours a day. My friend tells me that insurance won’t pick up this expense either, but I can’t worry about that now. I simply need to heal.

Finally, I’m discharged to months of physical therapy, three times a week. Fortunately, the therapy practice takes my insurance (not always a given). But on that first visit (as on every visit thereafter), they run my Visa card through their machine and I get charged a $40 co-pay. There’s nothing I can do about it. After all, my goal is to get back on my feet, literally as well as metaphorically. Still, that’s $120 a week for 16 weeks and so my out-of-pocket patient expenses begin to add up.

Back at home to recuperate, I find a stack of unopened mail, including notices from my insurance company alerting me to the bills that are to follow. Soon enough, they begin to arrive. They include out-of-pocket patient costs for the ambulance, the hospital, doctors, tests of all sorts, drugs of all sorts, and sundry other services. Those bills list both what insurance has paid for each service and the amount of money that I still owe.

And here I experience what must be common to so many Americans. I’m surprised and distressed to learn how much of the cost my insurance doesn’t pick up. The surgery, for instance, was $72,000, but my insurance only covers $67,000 of it. The other $5,000 is my co-pay. Add in the co-pays for everything from that ambulance to other medical services and my costs come to almost $13,000.

An Insurance System of Out-of-Pocket Disasters

I’m sharing my recent journey as a cautionary tale. And, yet, what am I warning against? That we are all somewhat powerless when sickness strikes, but that those of us who aren’t wealthy suffer so much more. The thought of being without insurance is frightening indeed, yet in our present system we pay in so many ways for the existence of those insurance companies. We pay in co-pay; we pay in not getting treatment we need if insurance deems it unnecessary (no matter what your doctor says); we pay yearly out-of-pocket fees whether we’re 20 or 80 years old. (For Medicare patients, a monthly payment comes out of Social Security.) For most American families with insurance, whether workplace-based or individually purchased, premiums go up regularly, if not annually. At present, we have no alternative to the existing health insurance system, yet it is actually failing us all in so many ways.

What do you do when sickness occurs, if you aren’t rich? Suffer the illness, for sure, and then suffer the out-of-pocket costs afterward. And keep in mind that tens of millions of Americans under age 65 don’t have any health insurance at all. (In the age of Trump, in fact, those numbers are on the rise.) Moreover, the persistent growth of income inequality to Gilded Age levels has had a decided effect on the health of many Americans. For low-paid wageworkers, the unemployed, and/or undocumented immigrants, getting sick or having any kind of medical mishap is a disaster of the first order. For them, paying out-of-pocket costs of any sort may simply be impossible, which means that they will often do without medical treatment or even medicine. To put this in perspective, 40% of Americans can’t afford an extra $400 even in a medical emergency. Imagine what $5,000 or $10,000 in expenses means!

After an illness, accident, or chronic disease hits, a startling number of those of us with health insurance find that we have to choose between paying for daily needs and paying our medical bills. Such expenses leave people even more impoverished and often in debt, which is tantamount to remaining unhealthy.

For the poor, Medicaid, the government program that helps those with limited or no incomes, can make a major difference, but many people don’t have Medicaid because their states don’t readily offer it. Even where it’s more easily available, many with incomes not much above the poverty line don’t qualify for it. And as Elizabeth Yuko pointed out in the New York Times recently, “Even if you are fortunate enough to have health insurance, that doesn’t mean that all of the members of your medical team — which may include out-of-network specialists — are covered by your plan.”

As I learned with my fractured hip, someone who is in great pain or out of it for any number of physical reasons can’t be expected to focus on that future bill. And even if you could, who would want to cancel any of the services needed to heal?

Though Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, helped significantly, there are still far too many people who will have to agonize over how to manage both an illness and the co-pays that go with it. Meanwhile, of course, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are working overtime to undermine Obamacare and deprive ever more Americans of any sense of a medical safety net.

What Medicare for All Would Mean

All the talk about making insurance affordable, under the present medical circumstances in this country, adds up to just so many wasted words. Unless something changes big time, insurance companies will continue to sell us their services at ever-higher prices because we can’t do without them. Since we lack alternatives, they remain indispensable. The result: out-of-pocket costs will continue to rise, no matter what any politician promises. And if the Republicans in Congress were ever to succeed in doing away even with Obamacare, the services that insurance companies now provide would no longer be guaranteed. What then?

With a single payer system, whether called Medicare for All or universal health care, everyone would be able to access health care; health would, that is, become a right. Most likely, such programs would be covered by a tax increase, yet they would cost each person so much less than what is now being paid out to insurance companies. With single payer or Medicare for All, there would be no more co-pays, no more premiums, no more refusals of non-doctors to pay for services recommended by medical specialists, no more bills arriving at a patient’s house.

Understandably, some might be reluctant to part with a familiar healthcare system, however flawed, in exchange for a new but untested universal program. Yet once implemented, any version of Medicare for All would be likely to cost less, be so much simpler to access, and ultimately save lives.

The present Medicare system is a good indicator of not only what’s possible, but of the ways in which health care can serve people’s needs. However, Medicare is offered only to those who are over 65. Nevertheless, Medicare and Medicaid prove the positive. Those programs work well for the elderly and the poor. Even with Medicare, however, insurance companies continue to handle many aspects of your services, should you opt for a Medicare Advantage plan (an all-in-one alternative to original Medicare), in which co-pays and other costs are still the patient’s responsibility.

According to Open Secrets, insurance companies, Big Pharma, and hospitals spent a staggering $143 million in 2018 alone in their lobbying efforts against any future Medicare for All plan. Nonetheless, as the National Nurses United Association has pointed out: “There has never been this much public support and momentum for Medicare for All. Eighty-five percent of democratic voters and 70% of all voters support it.” With significant administrative setups already in place, thanks to Medicare and Medicaid, the expansion of those health systems to include everyone seems doable; nor is it hard to imagine that many of the workers now employed by insurance companies would be able to shift to working for an expanding single-payer or Medicare for All program.

Truly decent health care is a necessity for a society in which people do more than just survive. Health is not a negotiable matter. You can decide not to buy a new coat and so shiver through another winter, but you really can’t decide to ignore sickness, disease, broken bones, or chronic illness, all of which can put lives on the line. How can any society function properly without health care available to all? How can any society survive in a reasonably decent way when so many millions of people are left with the choice of either being impoverished by illness or living with an otherwise treatable one?

Health care should be as much of a right as public education — the right to educate all children, that is — which was only won after its own set of lengthy struggles. After all, who can now imagine making all Americans pay for the first 12 years of schooling? Yes, we know that there are people wealthy enough to pay for whatever kind of education and health care they want, but they are hardly the majority of Americans.

Good health care must not only be affordable, but also provide easy access to medical services — to better nutrition, a healthier environment, and greater longevity. In this context, Medicare For All would be a literal lifesaver.

Finally, good health care is peace of mind, which, at present, our system does not deliver. In my case, the cost of recovery was far too high.

Is Late Capitalism Making Us Have Less Sex?

A new study conducted in the United Kingdom has found current generations of adults—in part due to the “sheer pace of modern life”—are having less sex than their predecessors.

In other words, the grind of late-stage capitalism is stripping humanity of one of its unique (though not exclusive) features: screwing for fun.

The study—among the largest of its kind ever undertaken—analyzed the sexual lives and habits of over 34,000 men and women ages 16 to 44 in the UK and found a dramatic drop in the frequency of sexual activity this century.

“Using data from the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal),” a summary of the report explained, “researchers found a general decline in sexual frequency in Britain between 2001 and 2012, with the biggest falls seen among over 25s and married or cohabiting couples.”

According to the summary:

Overall, the data showed declines in people having sex between 2001 and 2012. The proportion reporting no sex in the past month increased from 23% to 29.3% among women and from 26% to 29.2% among men.

The proportion reporting sex 10 or more times in the past month also fell during this time, from 20.6% to 13.2% among women and from 20.2% to 14.4% among men.

Declines in levels of sexual frequency were evident across all age groups for women, and for all but the 16-24 year old age group for men, but were largest among those aged 25 and over and those who were married or living together.

“Several factors are likely to explain the declines, but one may be the sheer pace of modern life,” said Kaye Wellings, the study’s lead author and a professor of sexual health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in a statement.

“It is interesting,” Wellings added, “that those most affected are in mid-life, the group often referred to as the ‘u-bend’ or ‘sandwich’ generation. These are the cohorts of men and women who, having started their families at older ages than previous generations, are often juggling childcare, work and responsibilities to parents who are getting older.”

In 2016, a study out of the London School of Economics showed that overall happiness in the modern economy would be more improved by less anxiety and love than increasing levels of income, but that doesn’t account for the manner in which the modern economy continues to mount financial anxieties on younger generations in terms of lower wages, increased debt, and few social services designed to alleviate stress or provide better health outcomes.

While Wellings acknowledged that the study was not intended to pinpoint the “cause” for these patterns of sexual behavior, nor did it determine any single reason for the drop in sexual activity among various age groups, she said the study does explore the intersection between happiness, stress, and sexual intercourse.

“What is important to well-being is not how often people have sex but whether it matters to them,” Welling said. “More than half of the men and women taking part in the study said they would prefer to have sex more often, which could partly stem from unfavourable comparisons with what they think is the norm.”

“Most people believe that others have more regular sex than they do themselves,” she explained, adding that she hopes the study will help to dispell some of those myths.

“Many people are likely to find it reassuring that they are not out of line,” she said.

Joe Biden Doesn’t Deserve Your Nostalgia

If there is one thing we can take away from the first two weeks of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, it’s that the former vice president is feeling nostalgic. Uncle Joe is longing for the good old days, before President Trump happened and before the Republican Party went completely off the rails. The days when Democrats and Republicans could be friends, when compromise wasn’t a dirty word, and when civility prevailed. The days when the center held strong, and pragmatic statesmen like him and his friend Dick Cheney could cut deals behind closed doors. The days, in other words, when things were normal.

As some have already pointed out, Biden is essentially running a backward-looking campaign of restoration based on Democratic nostalgia for the Obama years, which in itself will get him a long way in the polls (at least in the Democratic primaries). But it is also clear that Biden’s nostalgia goes much further back than the heyday of the Obama administration.

The former VP embodies a kind of baby boomer nostalgia for the era during which what is now called neoliberalism prevailed. That period started around the time Biden was elected to the Senate as a young man in 1972 (technically, Biden is a few years too old to qualify as a boomer, but he fits right in with that generation). That he harbors a certain romantic longing for the days of old, when the best and the brightest acted like adults and bipartisan centrism was the only game in town, is all one really needs to know about Biden in order to get an idea of how he will govern if elected president. Those who thought Barack Obama was too much of a centrist will miss him once Biden becomes president.

According to Biden’s own rhetoric, once he is elected, all will basically return to normal and, after a period of healing, the country will continue on its previous course. “Limit [Trump’s presidency] to four years,” he recently said in Iowa, and “history will treat this administration’s time as an aberration.” For good measure, Biden went on to defend Republicans from their own president (which they seem unwilling to do themselves): “This is not the Republican Party,” he remarked, before pointing to his “Republican friends” in Congress.

It is hard to imagine that the man who served as Obama’s second in command for eight years can’t seem to grasp that the current GOP is now, in fact, the party of Trump (and has been for a long time). Yet we have to remember that Biden served close to four decades in the Senate before he became Obama’s VP. Biden’s time in Congress obviously shaped who he is today far more than his time in the White House, and, contrary to what his apologists now say, that aspect of his background does matter. As a senator, Biden frequently sided with his Republican colleagues on major issues—from his championing of NAFTA, welfare reform and financial deregulation to his support for the Iraq War (and the war on drugs). Admittedly, Republicans and Democrats agreed on far more than they disagreed on during the ’90s, but this is exactly the problem that progressives are trying to correct today.

When we consider Biden’s neoliberal legacy in full, his current restoration campaign makes perfect sense. His nostalgia is ultimately based on the idea that, all things considered, we were headed in the right direction before Trump came along. He seems to believe that his generation (with the leadership of great individuals like him, of course) achieved unparalleled progress over the past 40 years, right up until the Orange Menace appeared out of nowhere and threatened to reverse it all.

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Joe Biden Unmasked



by Tangerine Bolen

This attitude was evident in a 2018 video clip that recently went viral, in which Biden criticizes millennials for complaining too much, while discussing the brave activism of his own generation. “The younger generation now tells me how tough things are—give me a break. No, no, I have no empathy for it, give me a break.” The clip didn’t fully show what Biden said next, which is, in some ways, even more revealing: “Because here’s the deal, guys. We [the boomer generation] decided we were going to change the world, and we did. We did. We finished the civil rights movement to the first stage. The women’s movement came to be.”

This isn’t just a classic case of an older, out-of-touch person disparaging youths and condescendingly telling them to toughen up without hearing a word they say. Biden goes further than that, essentially telling millennials to be grateful to members of his generation for all they did to make the world a better place. While there has obviously been progress in many areas over the past few decades, one has to be remarkably obtuse not to see how the past 40 years of neoliberalism have hurt the younger generations and left the very future of the planet in jeopardy (as David Wallace-Wells documents in his brilliant but depressing new book, “The Uninhabitable Earth”), and no generation bears more responsibility for this state of affairs than Biden’s does.

The real irony of Biden’s boomer nostalgia is that Donald Trump, that great enemy of progress, is the ultimate product of the self-absorbed boomer mentality that flourished in the late 20th century, concurrent with the rise of neoliberalism. Trump encapsulates all of the worst qualities of the Me Generation: his narcissism, his greed and crass materialism, his selfish disregard for posterity, his shallow hedonism. Contrary to what Biden says, Trump—the man and the political phenomenon—is not an aberration, but the natural outcome of political, economic and cultural trends of the past half-century.

Of course, focusing too much on Trump as an individual distracts us from the reality that his election was part of a much larger trend that has engulfed the entire planet over the past decade. It is no coincidence that the explosion of populism took place in the decade following the Great Recession, when the gaps between the rich and poor have grown even wider and the dire effects of climate change have become clearer. Populism is a direct response to the growing contradictions of capitalism and the failures of the status quo, and only those who have greatly benefited from this status quo can possibly think that Trump came out of nowhere (then again, Biden has never been much interested in causes, only in symptoms).

According to the latest polls, Biden has a strong lead in the Democratic primaries, and there’s no doubt that partisan nostalgia for the Obama years is the main reason for this. To take on Biden, the other candidates will have to make the case for why returning to the way things were is neither a viable nor desirable option. Currently in second place is Bernie Sanders, who has directly challenged the notion that Trump is some kind of anomaly. In a recent campaign email, Sanders’ campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, wrote that it is a mistake “to think that this election is simply about beating one man—an aberration of a president—and that everything will simply return to ‘normal.’ ”

“The reality,” Shakir continues, “is that ‘normal’ in our country before there was a President Trump still meant an immoral lack of health care, unlivable low wages, rampant corporate greed, a racist criminal justice system, and a corrupt political system.”

The rise of populism in America and elsewhere over the past decade represents a clear rejection of neoliberalism, but among many liberals and Democratic voters, there is a strong desire for normality. Political nostalgia, however, is ultimately a conservative and even a reactionary yearning, and while it may be true that the previous state of affairs was preferable to the current state, the latter would never have been possible if it weren’t for the failures of the former.

Florida Governor Signs Bill Allowing More Armed Teachers

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—More Florida teachers will be eligible to carry guns in the classroom under a bill Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Wednesday that immediately implements recommendations from a commission formed after the Parkland high school mass shooting.

DeSantis signed the bill in private and didn’t issue a statement afterward. But he made it clear he supports the changes made to the law enacted after a rifle-toting former student walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 people in February 2018.

The bill was one of the most contentious of the legislative session that ended Saturday. It expands the “guardian” program that allows school districts to approve school employees and teachers with a role outside the classroom, such as a coach, to carry guns. School districts have to approve and teachers have to volunteer. They then go through police-like training with a sheriff’s office and undergo a psychiatric evaluation and a background check.

The new law expands the program to make all teachers eligible regardless of whether they have a non-classroom role.

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A New Generation Takes On a War in America (Video)



by Chris Storm

Democrats spent hours arguing against the bill, saying it could lead to accidental shootings, or that a teacher could panic and fire during a confrontation with students. Republicans emphasized that the program is voluntary, and that law enforcement in some rural districts could be 15 minutes or more from a school if a shooter attacks.

Broward County, where the Parkland shooting took place, has rejected the program.

The measure also contains a number of other school safety measures, such as wider disclosure of certain student mental health records and mental screening of troubled students. It also mandates greater reporting of school safety and student discipline incidents and a requirement that law enforcement officials be consulted about any threats.

TV Pitches for Prescription Drugs Will Have to Include Price

WASHINGTON — TV pitches for prescription drugs will soon include the price, giving consumers more information upfront as they make medication choices at a time when new drugs can carry anxiety-inducing prices.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday the Trump administration has finalized regulations requiring drug companies to disclose list prices of medications costing more than $35 for a month’s supply.

“What I say to the companies is if you think the cost of your drug will scare people from buying your drugs, then lower your prices,” Azar said. “Transparency for American patients is here.”

Drug companies responded that adding prices to their commercials could unintentionally harm patients.

“We are concerned that the administration’s rule requiring list prices in direct-to-consumer television advertising could be confusing for patients and may discourage them from seeking needed medical care,” said the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the main trade group.

But one major firm — Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey — has already started disclosing the cost of its blood thinner Xarelto in TV advertising. And polls indicate many patients are not taking their medications as prescribed because of cost.

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Trump's Health and Human Services Nominee Has Background in Big Pharma



by Emily Wells

Drug pricing details are expected to appear in text toward the end of commercials, when potential side effects are disclosed. TV viewers should notice the change later this year, perhaps as early as the summer.

The government is hoping that patients armed with prices will start discussing affordability with their doctors, and gradually that will put pressure on drugmakers to keep costs of brand-name drugs in check.

Pricing disclosure was part of a multilevel blueprint President Donald Trump announced last year to try to lower prescription drug costs .

Democrats say it still won’t force drugmakers to lower what they charge, and they want Medicare to negotiate on behalf of consumers.

Leigh Purvis, a pharma expert with AARP’s research division, said disclosure will help dispel a “cloak of darkness” around prices and encourage more informed discussions between patients and their doctors. But she cautioned against expecting too much.

“The overall idea of reducing drug prices is something for which there is no silver bullet,” said Purvis. “This is just one step, one tool in what will have to be a very big arsenal.”

Other ideas from the Trump administration include regulations affecting Medicare and legislative proposals in Congress. With the cost of medicines a top concern for voters, Trump and lawmakers of both major political parties want accomplishments they can point to before the 2020 elections.

Drugmakers also complained that the price reveal will infringe on their First Amendment free speech rights by forcing them to disclose prices. It’s unclear if that will prompt a court challenge, but Azar points out that the government has for decades required carmakers to post their sticker prices on vehicles.

“Prices of automobiles are vastly less important to your health and affordability than drugs,” he said.

According to the latest government figures, the 10 most commonly advertised drugs have prices ranging from $488 to $16,938 per month or for a usual course of therapy.

The disclosure requirement will not apply to print or radio ads for the foreseeable future. It encompasses all brand name drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid, which is nearly all.

In a twist, enforcement of the rule will rely on drug companies suing each other over violations under a longstanding federal law that governs unfair trade practices.

“There are very large legal practices built on pharma companies suing each other,” Azar said, calling it a “quite effective mechanism.”

Most people count on lower-cost generic drugs to manage their health problems, but the advent of highly effective and extremely expensive medications for once-fatal or intractable diseases has put consumers on edge. Some genetic and cellular-based treatments can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, straining on the budgets of insurers and government programs.

A recent poll from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation found that 1 in 3 Americans said they haven’t taken medications as prescribed because of costs. People who take four or more medications, those who spend $100 a month or more on meds, patients in fair to poor health and middle-aged adults are more likely to report affordability problems.

Although most patients do not pay the full list prices that will be included in ads, experts say those are still important. Patient copays are often based on list prices. And many people who have high-deductible insurance plans pay list prices because their insurance doesn’t start covering until patients spend several thousand dollars of their own money.

In other economically advanced countries, governments negotiate drug prices to keep medications more affordable for patients. But the U.S. has held back from government-set prices.

Azar, who is leading Trump’s efforts on prescription drugs, is a former drug company executive. He held senior posts with Indianapolis-based insulin maker Eli Lilly and Co. after an earlier stint in government service during the George W. Bush administration.

The regulations will take effect 60 days after they’re published in the Federal Register.

All Hail the Ride-Share Strike

The ride-hailing company Uber is making its initial public offering (IPO) on Friday. Executives are hoping for a whopping $91 billion valuation, which The New York Times said would be one of the largest in tech-industry history. Uber says it has set aside about 3% of its shares for its drivers and will also be handing out “driver appreciation awards,” an obvious ploy to whitewash the poor conditions and wages under which drivers say they are forced to work.

Uber and Lyft drivers have been agitating for years to be recognized as direct employees rather than independent contractors. Los Angeles drivers have organized a 25-hour strike for May 25 to protest the 25% pay cut Uber recently announced. Workers in such cities as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Francisco are building on that action with a one-day strike on Wednesday, timed within days of Uber’s IPO.

James Hicks, a driver and organizer with Rideshare Drivers United-Los Angeles, told me in an interview that “we’re striking again because our demands were not met by Uber or Lyft, and so we’re going to put more and more pressure on them.”

The idea behind a strike—whether it is done by union or nonunion employees—is that workers use the greatest leverage they have to make their demands, which is the withholding of their labor. The point is inconvenience and a loss of profits for the employer. Hicks said that on March 25, there were longer wait times for rides because fewer drivers were on the roads.

Drivers are angry and eager to organize. In late March, Rideshare Drivers United had about 2,800 members. Today, according to Hicks, the L.A. group’s ranks have swelled to about 4,500. The drivers have joined forces over a set of demands they call the Drivers’ Bill of Rights. Their first demand is for fair pay. They want the standards that New York City drivers recently won: a base salary of $27.86 an hour, which works out to about $17 an hour after deducting expenses. Not only do drivers want to be paid for the time it takes them to reach riders, they want a 10% cap on the commission their employers take.

One could reasonably argue that for the service of connecting drivers and riders through an easy-to-use app, a 10% commission cap is eminently fair. As it stands now, according to Hicks, the companies are “stealing upwards of 40% to 60%” of fares. Rideshare Drivers United encourages drivers to post screen grabs of their receipts online to showcase the egregious Uber and Lyft commissions. One example showed a customer paying $41.18 for a ride for which the driver got only $3.52 after Uber’s cut. That’s more than a 90% commission rate. As Hicks concisely put it, “That’s price-gouging on the consumer side, but that’s also wage theft on the employee side.” Meanwhile, Uber’s top five executives made $143 million in salary and stock options last year alone.

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Uber and Lyft, Driving Taxi Drivers Into Poverty and Despair



by

The stock options for drivers Uber has been advertising ahead of its IPO are “just PR,” Hicks said. “The drivers being disgruntled is a huge problem for Lyft and Uber. They’re trying to give us 3% only as a means to shut us up, when what we really want is a living wage.”

Ride-hailing drivers are part of the so-called gig-economy that corporate America has sold as a better version of the American Dream. The idea that workers can be their own boss because they set their own hours was sold as a modern idea whose time had come. But the uncertainty of the work and low wages have turned gig-economy jobs into a nightmare. Added to the poor pay is job insecurity, because drivers can be dropped or “deactivated” without due process if a rider makes a complaint. Hicks told me about  a rider who complained that Hicks had been smoking marijuana while driving when he had done no such thing; Hicks had picked up an earlier rider who had smoked pot, bringing the distinctive smell into the car and leading the next passenger to assume that Hicks had been the one smoking. When Hicks was locked out of the app with no explanation, he had to beg to be reactivated.

Drivers are also demanding that Uber and Lyft enable them to see the potential fare and percentage of take-home pay from a ride before accepting it. And they want riders to be able to see the fare breakdown, so that the corporate commission is clearly visible to consumers. Both of these demands protect the dignity of drivers and riders.

Ultimately, drivers have a long-term goal in mind through their one-day strikes: to unionize. “We admire unions,” Hicks said. “Unions protect workers from greedy bosses; they protect us when we are injured or are terminated without cause.” He added, “Unions are very important to the foundation of the working class in America, and it’s time for us to have our own voice.”

In California, ride-hailing corporations are already operating in a legal grey zone by refusing to treat their workers as employees. California’s Supreme Court issued a ruling last year in the case of the , saying that companies have to treat their workers as employees rather than independent contractors.

That law applies to ride-hailing companies, too, Hicks believes. “They are both breaking the law,” he said of Uber and Lyft. “I know that’s strong language, but it’s true.” By insisting on counting drivers as independent contractors, the companies save money on mandatory benefits such as disability insurance. While the state is moving to embed the Dynamex court ruling into law, Uber and Lyft have rushed to sell stocks in their corporations, hoping to outrun labor laws.

The tide is turning, however. As ride-hailing becomes more ubiquitous around the country, the ranks of disgruntled drivers are growing and gaining the sympathy of consumers and politicians. California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, for example, who has authored the bill encompassing the Dynamex decision, said Uber and Lyft are unlikely to be exempted from its requirements. Gonzalez, who has shown her support for ride-hailing drivers, says she’s not worried about the corporations’ bottom lines.  “Am I concerned about the stock price of Uber and Lyft? No. It doesn’t keep me up at night,” she said. Perhaps it is the executives of the ride-hailing companies who are suffering from sleepless nights as drivers plan even more strikes until their demands are met.

Watch Sonali Kolhatkar’s interview with James Hicks about the ride-share strike (via “Rising Up With Sonali”):

https://player.vimeo.com/video/334751263” width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

A Grim Fate Awaits Most of Rural America

Since the Great Recession, most of the nation’s rural counties have struggled to recover lost jobs and retain their people. The story is markedly different in the nation’s largest urban communities.

I’m writing from Iowa, where every four years presidential hopefuls swoop in to test how voters might respond to their various ideas for fixing the country’s problems.

But what to do about rural economic and persistent population decline is the one area that has always confounded them all.

The facts are clear and unarguable. Most of the nation’s smaller urban and rural counties are not growing and will not grow.

Let’s start with my analysis of U.S. Commerce Department data.

Metropolitan areas consist of those counties with central cities of at least 50,000, along with the surrounding counties that are economically dependent on them. They make up 36% of all counties. Between 2008, the cusp of the Great Recession, and 2017, they enjoyed nearly 99% of all job and population growth.

What remained of job and population growth was divided among the 21% of counties that are called micropolitans, which have midsized cities with between 10,000 and 50,000 residents, and the remaining 42% of counties that are rural.

Nationally, 71% of all metropolitan counties grew between 2008 and 2017, but more than half of the remaining micropolitan and rural counties did not grow or shrank in population.

Regional Breakdown

Regional outcomes were also sharply divergent. The West and the South combined had 72% and 82% of the job and population gains, respectively, while the Northeast and the Midwest split the remainder.

Economic and population declines among micropolitan and rural areas were especially strong in the Northeast and the Midwest. Eighty-seven percent of the micropolitan counties contracted in the Northeast, as did 85% of their rural counties. In the Midwest, 61% of the micropolitans contracted, as did 81% of the rural counties.

Geographically, a large fraction of the nation is struggling to simply maintain the status quo. Yes, there are many struggling metropolitan regions, but there are many more midsized and rural counties wrestling with decline.

Bringing it back home, 69 of Iowa’s 99 counties have contracted since 2010, along with 10 of its 15 micropolitan counties. This ongoing struggle of midsized counties has negative economic and social consequences. Residents in surrounding rural areas depend on them for jobs, essential services, public goods and other commercial and recreational amenities.

There is, in short, a regional ripple effect. When micropolitan counties falter, neighboring rural counties that depend on them often falter, too. This is true in Iowa and evident as well across much of the U.S.

What’s Behind the Trends

Scholars and analysts have varying explanations for these outcomes.

The more rural areas are hollowing out the middle of the workforce. They contain lower percentages of people in the prime working ages of 25 to 54 because of persistent outmigration.

Others define the population losses in terms of widespread declines in demand for middle skill jobs due to automation and outsourcing in manufacturing, as well as technology advances in mining, forestry and agriculture.

Of late, manufacturing and technology firms claim that the woes of small urban and rural areas are due to skills gaps – that distressed economies could grow and their populations could stabilize if more people acquired more technical skills.

Fated to Dwindle

The U.S. has been consistently urbanizing, especially for the past 100 years. Technology advances in manufacturing, agriculture, mining, fishing and forestry accelerated migration from rural to urban areas.

Over time, incremental innovations in those original core industries required fewer workers, further boosting migration away from rural areas. Much of the blue-collar and middle-income shares of more rural economies dwindled as a result.

Small and medium-sized urban areas – and the rural counties that are linked to them – are left with transportation, public works, housing and commercial bases that they struggle to maintain. Inevitably, blight ensues. Most micropolitan and rural communities have no viable economic Plan B, so I believe that the majority of them are fated to dwindle until eventually reaching some level of stability.

Federal and state governments provide them fresh water and wastewater treatment assistance, health care access, subsidized transportation and workforce training, but none of that alters the underlying forces inhibiting their collective prospects for growth. Every core industry originally undergirding these areas continues to shed jobs.

Meanwhile, the nation’s metropolitan cities continue to accumulate greater opportunities for meaningful jobs, career advancement and enhanced qualities of lives.

As a researcher who has studied rural economies for more than three decades, I urge policymakers to seriously consider the fact that most rural areas will not grow. It is important to develop policies that assure access to necessary public services, connect rural residents to modern technologies for the sake of participating meaningfully in modern society and safeguard that which is good and appealing about these less populated places.

Academics are good at isolating the causes and the consequences of rural decline, but we have yet to figure out what to do about it.

David Swenson is an associate scientist of economics at Iowa State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

U.S. Has the Most Climate-Change Deniers of Any Rich Country: Survey

In the same week the United Nations released a shocking report showing that a million species are about to go extinct, in large part due to climate change, a YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project survey added insult to injury. According to the global survey, the U.S.—the wealthiest country in the world—has the largest number of climate-change deniers among the world’s richest countries. Or, as The Guardian puts it, “The US is a hotbed of climate science denial.”

Perhaps it’s unsurprising that 13% of the U.S. population—about 42 million people—think the climate crisis has nothing to do with human activity, while another 5% believe climate change doesn’t exist when the country’s leader, and several high-ranking officials in his administration, consider it a Chinese hoax. The same leader pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accord, is expanding offshore oil drilling, is leasing territory once designated part of national monuments to fossil fuel companies, is freezing car emissions standards—the alarming list goes on and on.

It’s not just Donald Trump’s fault, however. American media, led by cable giant Fox News, has played its part in making this hotbed we’re all lying in. While Fox News actively tries to discredit widely accepted climate science with both-sides-ism, as Rolling Stone points out, the rest of mainstream media outlets rarely mention climate change in their reporting, even when discussing disasters proven to be fueled by the phenomenon.

Of the 23 countries polled in the YouGov survey, the U.S. was behind only Indonesia and Saudi Arabia when it comes to climate-change denial. And the bad news doesn’t end there:

Americans also appear unusually prone to climate-related conspiracy theories, the YouGov data suggests. A total of 17% of those polled agreed that “the idea of manmade global warming is a hoax that was invented to deceive people”.

Belief in this conspiracy theory, which was previously invoked by Donald Trump, who falsely claimed climate change was made up by China, increases with age and also conservative political ideology. A total of 52% of Americans who described themselves as “very rightwing” to YouGov insisted global warming was a hoax. … wider denial of climate science is down to a concerted campaign of misinformation by fossil fuel interests and aspects of American character, according to Margaret Klein Salamon, a clinical psychologist who founded the advocacy group Climate Mobilization.

“The Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry have put billions of dollars into lying to the American public, even sending literature to science teachers in schools,” Salamon said. “They are so well organised and have managed to turn climate change into a controversial subject that gets shut down. It’s clearly working.

“There is also the issue of American individualism, remnants of manifest destiny, that don’t set us up well for understanding that we are part of the web of life. The American dream is quite self-involved. We need a new American dream.”

Might that new American dream look a bit like the goals outlined in New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal? Scientists who have analyzed the proposal certainly seem to think so. AOC, as the freshman member of Congress is often called, isn’t the only Democrat worried about climate change, but as the 2020 Democratic primary campaign kicks off, it’s becoming abundantly clear that many other Dems are sorely lacking in the climate policy department. As The Guardian points out, of the increasingly large group of people running for the Democratic candidacy, only a couple have actual plans to tackle the pressing catastrophe. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, in the United Kingdom, the British Parliament has voted to declare a climate emergency, responding to pressure from the Extinction Rebellion movement. If the U.S. were serious about national, let alone global, survival, it would do well to follow in the U.K.’s footsteps.

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As Climate Turns Deadly, Media Are Stuck in Denial



by Sonali Kolhatkar















Will 2018 Be the Year Americans Finally Face Up to Climate Change?



by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

While the prospect of Congress declaring a climate emergency in this political climate might be a long shot, there’s another poll that Americans who care about the planet’s future can take heart in: Even in our climate-change denial “hotbed,” awareness about the climate crisis is growing rapidly, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in December, which found that 35% of Americans see climate change as an “imminent threat.”

In other words, the panic Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg wants us to feel is spreading.

 

Are the Days of U.S. Hegemony Finally Numbered?

What follows is a conversation between Professor Richard Sakwa and Sharmini Peries of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

SHARMINI PERIES It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. Markets are still reeling from Trump’s declaration that tariffs will be increased from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion-worth of Chinese goods starting just this week. This is happening in the same week in which the US Navy destroyers sailed near the islands claimed by China in the South China Sea, and as the Pentagon published a report accusing China of conducting espionage in order to accumulate military knowledge and building an army capable of global intervention.

Chinese foreign policy, however, is currently focused not on the US, but rather westwards towards Central Asia and Europe as the One Belt, One Road Initiative advances in leaps and bounds. It appears to be a modern resurrection of the ancient Silk Road. President Putin of Russia was the guest of honor at a recently held forum of the Belt-Road Initiative. Now, some of you might have read about the growing Russo-Chinese relations being embodied in the two leaders, President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin, who met five times last year and even celebrated birthdays together. On to talk about all of this with me today is Richard Sakwa, who was recently in Beijing. Richard is a Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, and an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House, and has written several, many books on this topic of Russia, Eurasia, and so forth. Richard, so good to have you with us.

RICHARD SAKWA Hello.

SHARMINI PERIES All right, Richard. Currently, China has one offshore military base in Djibouti. Now with this One Belt, One Road Initiative, it plans on building another one in Pakistan. Is this, in your opinion, a legitimate move to secure trade, or is China using its trade advantage to expand its military influence among the countries who were involved in the One Belt, [One] Road Initiative?

RICHARD SAKWA Yeah. The Chinese would say about the Djibouti base that it isn’t actually a base, it’s a staging post. So they also compare their one or possibly two developing bases to the United States’ 600 scattered globally. What’s happening is that China is finally going global. You talk about the Belt and Road Initiative, which is in fact in some ways a synonym for Chinese foreign policy, the way that it’s leveraging its growing economic power into a network of relationships, which are spanning not just Eurasia all the way to Europe, but also in Africa. It’s say, it’s a step change and it’s a sign that China is not assertive as much, but it’s changing and it’s reflecting the growing multi-polarity, certainly, the multi-polarity in an international system. China is challenging not so much US primacy, but the way that it’s managed it in the past, which is an almost exclusive sense that the United States is the global leader. Well, those days are beginning to come to an end. They’re not ended, but they’re beginning to come to an end.

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China and Russia Aren’t Nearly as Dangerous as We’re Meant To Believe



by

You also mentioned Trump’s imposition of tariffs up from 10 to 25 percent. This is part of what US policy makers initially thought was a limited intervention. What Trump has done, certainly Trump wanted, very focused, to go in, as he often does, quite heavily and then, get to some sort of deal. But what he has inadvertently done, is opened up the whole issue of American policymakers who have been arguing for a long time about China needing to change its fundamental relationship between the state and business. So while Trump went in for certain relatively limited ends, he has now opened the door to a much larger issue about the very nature of Chinese political economy. And in short, it seems that he’s lost control of the agenda.

SHARMINI PERIES All right, Richard. Now off the top, I mentioned that the growing Russian-Chinese relation is intensifying. It’s embodied in the two leaders, Putin and Xi Jinping. And on top of that, recently, he was invited, Putin was invited to be the guest of honor at a Belt [and] Road Initiative forum. Tell us about that growing relationship and what this means.

RICHARD SAKWA This Belt and Road forum took place in Beijing. It was the second. The first one took place two years ago and they’re scheduled now every two years. And it was quite demonstrative that at all the major sessions, Putin and Xi Jinping would walk out together, and it was deliberate because these things in these countries are not staged by accident. It was a sign that even if pressure is coming from the United States and other powers—the European Union also has certain trade issues with China and in the United Kingdom, for example, a major scandal, of course, about the participation of Huawei, China’s leading electronics company, in 5G development. And as we know, there’s a big debate whether Huawei should be at the core of 5G development because the implication is that it may possibly be a backdoor to these systems, which Chinese security services could exploit. So, a lot of issues going on there.

The Russian-Chinese alignment is not an alliance, and it’s not a bloc, and it’s certainly not a military alliance, but the Russo-Chinese alignment is far deeper, far more extensive, and far more extensive than many Westerners have yet caught on. It’s an alignment in which Russia and China will not do each other any harm, they will support each other when it’s in their interests, and it’s a game changer. This is Kissinger in reverse. As you remember, in the early 1970s, Kissinger brilliantly managed to exploit the split between Moscow and Beijing to United States’ advantage. Today, the Beijing-Moscow alignment—not an axis, not an alliance— is far deeper. And when Trump came to power, he had, I think, a sensible idea, which was, I think, given to him by Kissinger to try to peel Russia away from this alignment with China, and to align Russia more closely with the United States. Of course, he was blocked in this because of Russiagate and various scandals, US domestic politics. And so, the exact opposite has happened, that this Belt and Road forum just recently demonstrated just how close Russia and China have become.

At the same time, another development in the Belt and Road is this, what used to be called the 16+1. That is, China and 16 European countries, about half a dozen of them in the European Union. Just recently, Greece has signed up to it, so it’s now 17+1. This has, in many ways, underestimated the enormity of the way that the geopolitical chess pieces, if you like, as Brzezinski used to call them. Speaking of Brzezinski, he used to call them realigning. Greece is now part of the European Union, of course. Yet, it’s funding—the Piraeus Port outside Athens is owned by a Chinese company and in fact, owned by Ningbo, the port where I was just a few weeks ago. It’s an enormous game changer and I’m not sure that the policy makers in Washington have fully come to terms with the way that the geo-tectonics at the global level are changing. And the Belt and Road Initiative is the prime example of that.

SHARMINI PERIES So Richard, on top of all of this that you are talking about, we have a situation where the relations with China and the US are deteriorating. The Pentagon’s report is alarming. The naval maneuver to send a destroyer ship to the South China Sea is all, of course, intensifying. Are these signs of the US trying to provoke some sort of response on the part of China? And will they respond to this kind of aggression on the part of the US?

RICHARD SAKWA I think the Chinese, just as much as Moscow, they understand perfectly well that they must not respond in a symmetrical manner. It would be disastrous for both. I mean, the talk in Moscow for years has been that— even I just read a recent article by some military people in the US who are arguing that they need to provoke Russia into a new arms race which would then, of course, be catastrophic economically. The same applies to China. So the United States sending these ships out there is obviously going to annoy the Chinese leadership. It won’t make trade talks any easier. But the Chinese, as with the Russians, they will not be provoked by this sort of saber-rattling at this point unless—neither side wants to escalate at this moment.

Of course, Venezuela is very much another fly in the ointment because both Russia and China have significant investments over Venezuela, and it’s not just the economic side of things. It’s also the political idea of deciding that you don’t like the regime. China has invested far more than Russia, about $70 billion, in Venezuela in recent years. Russia, about $17 billion, so it’s a different scale. Both are concerned that they will lose their investments if there is this regime change. But for them, of course, is most important, the principle of traditional sovereignty and the idea that the United States can change a regime when it feels, leaving aside the domestic issues, is uniting them yet again in a position against the United States.

SHARMINI PERIES All right, Richard. We will leave it there. I feel like we are somewhat aborting a conversation in which so much more could be said, but we are hoping that you will join us again very soon and we’ll be able to continue this discussion. Thanks for joining us today.

RICHARD SAKWA Thank you. Goodbye.

SHARMINI PERIES And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

What’s Happening at the Venezuelan Embassy Is an Outrage

Right here in Washington, D.C., an unprecedented showdown is unfolding. Venezuelan supporters of self-declared interim president Juan Guaido have been trying to take over the Venezuelan Embassy. This goes against international law, the wishes of the government in control in Venezuela, and the dogged determination of a group of U.S. citizens called the Embassy Protection Collective, who have been living in the Embassy since April 15.

A takeover of the embassy of a sovereign nation whose government holds power and is recognized by the United Nations would be illegal according to the 1961 Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations, which says that diplomatic premises are inviolable and the receiving State must protect the premises against any “intrusion, disturbance of the peace or impairment of its dignity.”

This has nothing to do with whether one likes Nicolas Maduro or considers the Venezuelan elections fair. My Saudi friends in Washington, D.C., hate Mohammad bin Salman—a man who has never been elected by anyone—but the US government would never let them take over the Saudi Embassy. Chinese dissidents say that “winners” of Chinese rigged elections—with only the Communist Party allowed to exist—should not be recognized by the rest of world, but they would never get access to the Chinese Embassies. Likewise for dissidents from Egypt, Honduras, Syria, Zambia, Congo, Romania, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc.—all countries with highly questionable elections, to put it mildly.

The inflammatory act of handing over the Venezuelan Embassy to Guiado supporters would also have the potential to dramatically escalate the conflict between the United States and Venezuela. If the Trump administration were to allow this, the Maduro government would likely reciprocate by taking over the US Embassy. This could be just what war hawks John Bolton and Elliot Abrams are looking for as a justification for a U.S. military intervention.

Determined to avoid another war, a group of U.S. peace activists sought and received permission from the legitimate Venezuelan government to form an Embassy Protection Collective. Since April 15, a group has been living in the Embassy, sleeping on couches and floors, while outside supporters have been providing supplies and joining them for meals and educational events.

At first the Venezuelan diplomats were still working in the building, but the State Department ordered them to leave the country by April 25. Since then, we have been alone, holding the embassy so that a diplomatic solution can be worked out similar to the situation with Iran, where U.S. Interests Section in Tehran has been operating under the Swiss Embassy and the Iranian Interests Section in Washington DC is operating under the Pakistani Embassy.

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On May 1, however, our peaceful presence was violently besieged by angry Guaido supporters. Designed to coincide with Guaido’s call for a May 1 uprising, his US representative Carlos Vecchio showed up for a press conference and quickly left, leaving behind an unruly, violent mob. This group has been surrounding the embassy since then, creating mayhem and not allowing food, medicines or supplies to the people inside.

Even more shocking, Secret Service, which is tasked with guarding embassies, has allowed this to happen. They have had a constant presence at the Embassy since May 1 but have stood by as this group damages the building and threatens the peace activists inside and outside. They have allowed the opposition to bang on the doors with sledgehammers to try to break in, post signs all over the property against the wishes of the legal owners, physically attack people trying to get food inside, and destroy and steal the property of the Embassy Protection Collective (food, placards, signs, canopy). In violation of the city’s noise ordinance, the mob has been blasting sirens all day long as decibels so high that even the Secret Service police have been wearing ear plugs. They block the sidewalks and all public passages. They have set up 10 canopies and 3 tents to surround the entire building. When we tried to set up a canopy, we were attacked by Guaido supporters, but it was our member, Tighe Barry, who was arrested and accused of pushing a Secret Service officer.

The Secret Service has a public statement saying that no individuals, medicine or food have been prevented from entering the building. We ask anyone who believes this to go to the Embassy and try to deliver a package to the people inside. Even packages sent by the U.S. Postal Service are not allowed in. Every entrance is blocked by opponents and the Secret Service does nothing to stop them. On the contrary, supporters who have tried to bring food have been arrested. This was the case of CODEPINK organizer Ariel Gold. When she found all entrances blocked, she threw bread into an empty ramp outside a door and was arrested for “throwing missiles.” When we tied a package to a rope to send food up through a window, three of us were physically assaulted and despite clear video evidence, the police refused to arrest our attacker.

Our people inside are without sufficient food and other critical supplies. They are not allowed to freely exit and enter the building. They sleep at night with a terrible sense of insecurity, worried that the angry mob will break in and attack. But we remain resolute, those of us on the inside and those of us supporting them on the outside, and we demand that our government respect U.S. and international law. The Secret Service must protect the Embassy and the people who are lawfully on embassy property until the two governments come to an agreement about their premises. At that time, the Embassy Protection Collective will happily dissolve and leave the embassy, happy because we can go back to our lives but happy, most of all, because we will have helped to give John Bolton and Elliot Abrams one less reason to drag our nation into another war.