Chris Hedges's Blog, page 327

Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Accused of Soliciting Prostitute

JUPITER, Fla.—Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, faces charges of soliciting a prostitute after he was twice videotaped in a sex act at a shopping-center massage parlor in Florida, police said Friday.

The 77-year-old Kraft denied any wrongdoing. The case comes amid a crackdown on sex trafficking from Palm Beach to Orlando in which police planted cameras in massage parlors.

Kraft was not immediately arrested. Jupiter police said a warrant will be issued and his attorneys will be notified. They said details about the misdemeanor charges against the owner of the Super Bowl champion team will not be released until next week.

Hundreds of arrest warrants have been issued in recent days as a result of the six-month investigation, and more are expected. Ten spas have been closed, and several people have been taken into custody on sex trafficking charges.

Jupiter Police Chief Daniel Kerr said he was shocked to learn that Kraft, who is worth $6 billion, was paying for sex inside a shopping-center massage parlor, the Orchids of Asia Day Spa. “We are as equally stunned as everyone else,” Kerr said.

Most people charged for the first time with soliciting a prostitute in Florida are allowed to enter a diversion program, said attorney David Weinstein, a former prosecutor. Kraft would probably have to perform 100 hours of community service and attend a course on the harmful effects of prostitution and sex trafficking, he said.

The arrest could also get Kraft in trouble with the NFL, which in a statement said only that it is “aware of the ongoing law enforcement matter and will continue to monitor developments.”

Under league policy, players, owners, coaches and other employees can be punished for “conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in” the NFL.

“Ownership and club or league management have traditionally been held to a higher standard and will be subject to more significant discipline,” the policy says.

The Patriots won the Super Bowl this month over the Los Angeles Rams for their sixth NFL championship in the past 18 seasons, making them the most successful team in pro sports during that span. Before the Super Bowl, several retired NFL players appeared in a public service announcement decrying sexual exploitation and human trafficking in Atlanta, the host city.

Kraft lives in Massachusetts and has a home in the Palm Beach area. Though he is a Democrat, he is friendly with President Donald Trump and a frequent guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. Kraft’s wife, Myra Hiatt Kraft, died in 2011. He has been dating 39-year-old actress Ricki Noel Lander since 2012.

“Well it’s very sad. I was very surprised to see it. He’s proclaimed his innocence, totally,” Trump said at the White House on Friday.

In a statement, Kraft’s representatives said they “categorically deny that Mr. Kraft engaged in any illegal activity.”

The spa Kraft allegedly visited is in a busy, upper-middle-class shopping center with neighbors that include a dentist, a real estate office, surf and bike shops and a Publix supermarket.

After hearing about the arrest, Brian Rubino, a Patriot fan who lives nearby, went by the spa wearing a team jersey. He said Kraft made a mistake, but he could see how it might happen.

“A 77-year-old man, lost his wife, who knows? I see how you can end up in a place like this,” Rubino said.

Vero Beach police Chief David Currey, whose agency has been involved in the sex-trafficking investigation, told reporters earlier this week that the prostitutes are victims who have been trapped into the trade.

“These girls are there all day long, into the evening. They can’t leave and they are performing sex acts,” Currey said, according to TCPalm. “Some of them may tell us they’re OK, but they’re not.”

The owner of Orchids of Asia Day Spa, 58-year-old Hua Zhang, was arrested Tuesday on 29 prostitution and related charges. Police in her arrest report said they watched video of her employees performing various sex acts with two dozen customers. Her attorney, Gennaro Cariglio Jr., had no comment.

Kraft, who made his initial fortune through a packaging company, bought the Patriots in 1994 for $172 million to keep the team from moving to St. Louis. He hired Bill Belichick as coach in 2000, and the team later drafted quarterback Tom Brady, launching its nearly two decades of success.

In 2007, the Patriots got in trouble for filming other teams’ signals. The NFL fined the team $250,000 and Belichick $500,000. In 2014, Brady was accused of deflating game footballs to gain a better grip. He served a four-game suspension, and the Patriots were fined $1 million.

Kraft was not implicated in either scandal.

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Spencer reported from Fort Lauderdale. AP sports writer Kyle Hightower in Boston and reporter Kevin Frekking in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Trump Vows Veto as Democrats Try to Block Emergency Order

WASHINGTON—Democrats controlling the House have teed up a vote next week to block President Donald Trump from using a national emergency declaration to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, accelerating a showdown in Congress that could divide Republicans and lead to Trump’s first veto.

The Democrats introduced a resolution Friday to block Trump’s declaration, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would vote on the measure Tuesday. It is sure to pass, and the GOP-run Senate may adopt it as well. Trump quickly promised a veto.

“Will I veto it? 100 percent,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Any Trump veto would likely be sustained, but the upcoming battle will test Republican support for the president’s move, which even some of his allies view as a stretch — and a slap at lawmakers’ control over the power of the federal purse.

Pelosi, D-Calif., said she’d honor her oath of office and uphold the Constitution, adding, “I wish he would have the same dedication to that oath of office himself.” Speaking to reporters in Laredo, Texas, she said, “This is a path I would not recommend he go down. I don’t expect him to sign it, but I do expect us to send it” to him.

House GOP leaders will urge rank-and-file Republicans on Monday to oppose the measure, Republican aides said. If all Democrats and at least 55 Republicans vote for it, it would pass by a veto-proof margin — a two-thirds majority. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity to describe leaders’ plans.

A staff aide introduced the measure during a short pro forma House session in which Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., presided over an almost-empty chamber.

“What the president is attempting is an unconstitutional power grab,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, the sponsor of the resolution, on a call with reporters. “There is no emergency at the border.”

Trump’s declaration of a national emergency gives him access to about $3.6 billion in funding for military construction projects to divert to border fencing. But the administration is more likely to tap funding from a federal asset forfeiture fund and Defense Department anti-drug efforts first.

Trump’s edict is also being challenged in the federal courts, where a host of Democratic-led states such as California are among those that have sued to overturn Trump’s order. The House may also join in.

For Democrats, the vote is another chance to challenge Trump over funding for a border wall, the issue that was central to the 35-day government shutdown. It also puts some Republicans from swing districts and states in a difficult spot, as many have expressed misgivings about Trump’s action despite their support for his border security agenda.

Should the House and the Senate initially approve the measure, Congress seems unlikely to muster the two-thirds majorities in each chamber that would be needed later to override a Trump veto.

Republicans who oppose the emergency declaration on the first vote might switch and rally behind a Trump veto. But an initial roll call with strong numbers of Republicans defying him would be an embarrassing show of GOP rifts.

The measure to block Trump’s edict will be closely watched in the Senate, where moderates such as Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., have signaled they would back it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is only a reluctant supporter of Trump on the topic.

Trump’s GOP allies promised they would uphold any veto denying Democrats the two-thirds votes required to overcome one.

“Democrats’ angst over Congress’ power of the purse is unwarranted, especially since the commander in chief’s authority to redirect military funds for a national emergency is affirmed in a law passed by their own branch,” said top House Judiciary Committee Republican Doug Collins of Georgia.

The battle is over an emergency declaration Trump issued to access billions of dollars beyond what Congress has authorized to start erecting border barriers. Building his proposed wall was the most visible trademark of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Congress last week approved a vast spending bill providing nearly $1.4 billion to build 55 miles (89 kilometers) of border barriers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley while preventing a renewed government shutdown. Trump had demanded $5.7 billion to construct more than 200 miles (322 kilometers).

Trump wants to use an emergency declaration and other authorities to gain access to an additional $6.6 billion for wall building. That money would be transferred from a federal asset forfeiture fund, Defense Department anti-drug efforts and a military construction fund. Federal officials have yet to identify which projects would be affected.

Two senior defense officials said Friday that it will take months for the Pentagon to assess a still-to-come Department of Homeland Security proposal to siphon anti-drug funds to build barriers, sign contracts and begin construction. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide information that has not yet been made public.

Castro, the resolution sponsor, said that he has already garnered support from most of the House and has at least one GOP sponsor, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan.

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Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant in Houston and Lolita C. Baldor and Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.

Trump Wants You to Be Afraid of Socialism

President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are reviving the Red Scare as a central tactic of his 2020 campaign to retain the White House. In Trump’s view, a socialist system is synonymous with poverty and despair, government coercion, domination and control. It is antithetical to liberty and independence. This approach might seem curious, given that interest in socialist ideas is at an-all time high in the United States, as ordinary people react to an out-of-control capitalist system designed to enrich the rich. Trump and his party are betting that good, old-fashioned American individualism will overcome any desire for greater collectivism and more government-funded social programs.

If there is any doubt that this is guiding his path to reelection, Trump’s President’s Day speech on Venezuela is Exhibit A. During his roughly 30-minute address, Trump used the words “socialism,” “socialist,” “communism” or “communist” 36 times—roughly 1.2 times per minute. He echoed simplistic platitudes in an attempt to associate socialism with tyranny (“Socialism is about one thing only: power for the ruling class”). Trump first uttered the words, “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country” during his Feb. 5 State of the Union address, receiving wild applause—from both sides of the aisle. He repeated a version of that phrase on Monday:

[T]o those who would try to impose socialism on the United States, we again deliver a very simple message: America will never be a socialist country.

An earlier instance of the Trump White House exploring this strategy can be traced to a document published Oct. 23, 2018, by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, titled, “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism.” The document anxiously refers to how “[d]etailed policy proposals from self-declared socialists are gaining support in Congress and among much of the electorate.” It points out that “[i]n a socialist system, the state decides the amount to be spent, how it is spent, and when and where the services are received by the consumer,” failing to mention that major monopolistic corporations often make such decisions for us in the current system.

The Republican Party has jumped on the anti-socialist bandwagon, fixating mostly on what it says are the enormous costs of progressive government programs (somehow never raising such questions about the bloated military budget), but also expressing horror at how “[f]or the first time in a lifetime, a wave of Democratic candidates are proudly calling themselves socialists.”

I have to admit it is a brilliant strategy. First, in conflating “socialism” with Venezuela, Trump makes the case that the U.S. is justified in rescuing Venezuelans from their government—fulfilling one of his latest foreign policy priorities. Second, demonizing “socialism” enables him and his party to denigrate the new, more progressive members of the Democratic Party who identify as democratic socialists. The GOP’s tactic is aimed at deepening an existing divide within the Democratic Party, which has long claimed progressive ideals but only recently begun to espouse them, thanks to the leadership of such self-described democratic socialists as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. And finally, by denouncing socialism, Trump and the GOP also undermine the socialist-style progressive policy proposals—such as Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal—that have gained steam in Congress and among the public.

There is a rich history of “the socialist” as a quintessentially American boogeyman. Irrational fears of socialists, communists, anarchists and pro-Soviet infiltrators overrunning the country destroyed many lives and careers in the 1920s and ’40s. There has never truly been a reconciliation or atonement for the two Red Scares, as they were called. Trump seems to be ushering in a third wave of anti-communist hysteria, to his political benefit. In fact, a newspaper editor in Alabama recently called for the Ku Klux Klan to engage in mass lynchings of Democrats because of the “socialist-communist ideology” prompting Democrats “to raise taxes in Alabama.”

This strategy puts left-leaning Democrats into the position of having to pick sides. Presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke have both asserted their allegiance to capitalism in recent days. Elizabeth Warren—widely seen as the best leftist alternative to Bernie Sanders, famously said a year ago, “I am a capitalist to my bones.” If the only politicians proudly claiming to be socialists are a handful of stalwarts like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, their most-favored policy proposals can be more effectively demolished in the political realm.

What none of the detractors of socialism (including those who claim to be leftist capitalists) likes to draw attention to is the fact that we already have a partially socialist country. Such programs as Social Security and Medicare, as well as our public schools, parks and libraries, are all products of a socialist style of government. The issue is not—as Trump likes to put it—whether we will become a socialist country, but how socialist can or should we be? We accept that elderly Americans—but not all Americans—deserve Medicare. The question of “why?” is always met with an answer involving affordability, never morality.

When pointing to examples like Cuba and Venezuela, critics of socialism hate to admit that U.S. policies aimed at isolating those nations have crippled their economies. There is less compelling evidence of the “evils” of socialism in such countries as Denmark, Norway, Sweden and other Scandinavian nations; free-market fundamentalist outlets like The Heritage Foundation engage in mental gymnastics to claim that those nations are not truly socialist. Or if they are, it is because they are first and foremost capitalist, or because their people want a socialist government—but Americans do not.

It is possible that Americans will fall for the Trump-GOP trick of using socialism as a political tool. As Trump has successfully demonstrated, if you repeat a lie often enough, to enough people, it begins sounding like the truth. Just as he has conned millions of his supporters into believing there is some sort of violent crime wave washing over our borders with Mexico, or that he is the focus of a “witch hunt” by the special counsel investigators, he can and will convince a significant faction of Americans that socialism is evil and that the U.S. could turn into Venezuela if a Democrat wins the White House in 2020.

But unlike the relatively abstract problems of immigrant crime and federal investigations, Americans know intimately the failures of our current economic system, as measured by their personal bank accounts and pocketbooks. Socialism does not cause medical bankruptcies, burdensome college debt, high housing costs, stagnant wages or any of those markers of economic insecurity and struggle we know all too well. Our current capitalist system does. Perhaps when Trump supporters and Republican voters see this year’s tax returns, they will understand just how their politicians conned them into thinking that the 2017 landmark “tax reform” law was yet another rigging of the economy to benefit the rich.

The most effective way to tackle Trump’s propaganda effort to deploy “socialism” as a dirty word is to counter with how capitalism has failed. Rather than defend the current system staunchly, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does (“We’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is”), or demand tweaks to a failed system, as Warren does, it is time to hammer home how bad the system is and demand much more from government.

After all, Americans overwhelmingly favor higher taxes on the rich. If implemented, such taxes could fund a Medicare-style health program for all Americans, or better public schools, broader welfare programs or a government green jobs program. It doesn’t matter what you called such a trend—socialist, democratic socialism or a social democracy. The fact is that unfettered capitalism is antithetical to the well-being of ordinary people, and our current system—rigged to favor the wealthy over the rest of us—proves that.

If Trump wants to associate socialism with Venezuela, his opponents would do well to simply and boldly associate the U.S. with capitalism—and all the ways it has failed us.

Robert Reich: Howard Schultz Is No Patriot

America is the only place in the world where any citizen over the age of 35 can run for president. No experience in government necessary. No support from a political party necessary. You don’t even have to have any ideas or policy proposals.

Take Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks whose most notable achievement to date has been the Mocha Frappucinno.

Last Tuesday, CNN made Schultz a Serious Presidential Candidate by giving him an hour-long “town hall” in which he fielded questions from an audience.

Why did CNN do this? Because Schultz is worth over $3.6 billion.

In today’s America, someone with this much money can buy so much advertising and self-promotion that he automatically becomes a SPC just by virtue of wanting the job and having the capacity to self-finance a campaign.

Ironically, CNN and other major media are giving Schultz free media now because he can afford an almost infinite amount of paid media later.

Years ago, political parties played the major roles in selecting presidential candidates. Candidates came up through the ranks. They had to convince party leaders across the nation they had what it took to be president. Conventions were the last step in the winnowing process.

Then, over the last several decades, the media took over the job of winnowing the pack. Winners were determined largely by campaign coverage, including presidential primary debates.

Donald Trump became a SPC in 2015 not only because of his billions but also his notoriety as the star of a popular reality TV show and, before that, decades in the tabloids where he learned the art of getting media attention.

Now, it seems, all you need to get the media to anoint you is the money to buy an infinite amount of media.

Part of the reason is the dramatic escalation in presidential campaign spending.

In the 2000 election, neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore spent more than $200 million, in today’s dollars. In 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the total spent by and for Barack Obama was $730 million. In 2016, total spending by Trump and Clinton came to around $1.16 billion.

At the same time, there’s more money at the top to spend on politics. Michael Bloomberg, another SPC, with his own media empire, makes Schultz look like a piker by comparison. Bloomberg is worth over $40 billion, of which he’s already pledged at least 1% – $400 million  – to defeating Trump.

It’s not clear if Bloomberg will run. If he does, he’ll run as a Democrat. But Schultz is planning to run as an independent, so he won’t even have to go through the gauntlet of primary battles.

Which means Schultz could deliver the 2020 election to Trump by siphoning off votes from the Democratic candidate.

Schultz cannot win, so why is he running? Not because he has any burning issue he wants to raise, or policy he wants to push. His interviews to date have been curiously anodyne.

Back in 2014, before anyone thought of Trump as a plausible candidate, Schultz berated the incivility he saw in American politics and called for business leaders like himself to “take the lead and do what we can to move the country forward”.

Is that it? He wants more civility?

It didn’t seem to occur to Schultz that America’s growing incivility might be related to the frustrations of people earning coffee grinds while those at the top run off with the Super Venti Flat White.

That same year, Starbucks paid its baristas an average of $9 an hour (it now pays $11, which, adjusted for inflation, isn’t much more). Schultz took home $149.8 million.

Under Schultz, Starbucks touted its so-called “social responsibility,” but it was for show.

Take, for example, the bracelets it sold for $5, whose proceeds were donated to banks and loan funds to support investment in poor communities. At the very same time, Starbucks kept some $1.9 billion offshore to avoid paying US taxes – representing hundreds of millions in lost tax revenues that might otherwise have helped poor communities.

Social responsibility my macchiato. Starbucks spends millions each

year lobbying the federal government, often seeking spending cuts along with the kind of tax breaks that continue to minimize Starbucks’s tax bill.

For Schultz, like Trump, it’s all about money and media.

Schultz is running because he thinks it will be a hoot – the capstone to his coffee career, the apex of his espresso.

But like many other billionaires of America’s New Gilded Age, Schultz doesn’t seem to give a damn about what his political escapades do to America.

Sealed Testimony Reveals Extent of Sackler’s Complicity in Opioid Crisis

This story is a collaboration between ProPublica and STAT.

In May 1997, the year after Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin, its head of sales and marketing sought input on a key decision from Dr. Richard Sackler, a member of the billionaire family that founded and controls the company. Michael Friedman told Sackler that he didn’t want to correct the false impression among doctors that OxyContin was weaker than morphine, because the myth was boosting prescriptions — and sales.

“It would be extremely dangerous at this early stage in the life of the product,” Friedman wrote to Sackler, “to make physicians think the drug is stronger or equal to morphine….We are well aware of the view held by many physicians that oxycodone [the active ingredient in OxyContin] is weaker than morphine. I do not plan to do anything about that.”

“I agree with you,” Sackler responded. “Is there a general agreement, or are there some holdouts?”

Ten years later, Purdue pleaded guilty in federal court to understating the risk of addiction to OxyContin, including failing to alert doctors that it was a stronger painkiller than morphine, and agreed to pay $600 million in fines and penalties. But Sackler’s support of the decision to conceal OxyContin’s strength from doctors — in email exchanges both with Friedman and another company executive — was not made public.

The email threads were divulged in a sealed court document that ProPublica has obtained: an Aug. 28, 2015, deposition of Richard Sackler. Taken as part of a lawsuit by the state of Kentucky against Purdue, the deposition is believed to be the only time a member of the Sackler family has been questioned under oath about the illegal marketing of OxyContin and what family members knew about it. Purdue has fought a three-year legal battle to keep the deposition and hundreds of other documents secret, in a case brought by STAT, a Boston-based health and medicine news organization; the matter is currently before the Kentucky Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, interest in the deposition’s contents has intensified, as hundreds of cities, counties, states and tribes have sued Purdue and other opioid manufacturers and distributors. A House committee requested the document from Purdue last summer as part of an investigation of drug company marketing practices.

In a statement, Purdue stood behind Sackler’s testimony in the deposition. Sackler, it said, “supports that the company accurately disclosed the potency of OxyContin to healthcare providers.” He “takes great care to explain” that the drug’s label “made clear that OxyContin is twice as potent as morphine,” Purdue said.

Still, Purdue acknowledged, it had made a “determination to avoid emphasizing OxyContin as a powerful cancer pain drug,” out of “a concern that non-cancer patients would be reluctant to take a cancer drug.”

The company, which said it was also speaking on behalf of Sackler, deplored what it called the “intentional leak of the deposition” to ProPublica, calling it “a clear violation of the court’s order” and “regrettable.”

Much of the questioning of Sackler in the 337-page deposition focused on Purdue’s marketing of OxyContin, especially in the first five years after the drug’s 1996 launch. Aggressive marketing of OxyContin is blamed by some analysts for fostering a national crisis that has resulted in 200,000 overdose deaths related to prescription opioids since 1999.

Taken together with a Massachusetts complaint made public last month against Purdue and eight Sacklers, including Richard, the deposition underscores the family’s pivotal role in developing the business strategy for OxyContin and directing the hiring of an expanded sales force to implement a plan to sell the drug at ever-higher doses. Documents show that Richard Sackler was especially involved in the company’s efforts to market the drug, and that he pushed staff to pursue OxyContin’s deregulation in Germany. The son of a Purdue co-founder, he began working at Purdue in 1971 and has been at various times the company’s president and co-chairman of its board.

In a 1996 email introduced during the deposition, Sackler expressed delight at the early success of OxyContin. “Clearly this strategy has outperformed our expectations, market research and fondest dreams,” he wrote. Three years later, he wrote to a Purdue executive, “You won’t believe how committed I am to make OxyContin a huge success. It is almost that I dedicated my life to it. After the initial launch phase, I will have to catch up with my private life again.”

During his deposition, Sackler defended the company’s marketing strategies — including some Purdue had previously acknowledged were improper — and offered benign interpretations of emails that appeared to show Purdue executives or sales representatives minimizing the risks of OxyContin and its euphoric effects. He denied that there was any effort to deceive doctors about the potency of OxyContin and argued that lawyers for Kentucky were misconstruing words such as “stronger” and “weaker” used in email threads.

The term “stronger” in Friedman’s email, Sackler said, “meant more threatening, more frightening. There is no way that this intended or had the effect of causing physicians to overlook the fact that it was twice as potent.”

Emails introduced in the deposition show Sackler’s hidden role in key aspects of the 2007 federal case in which Purdue pleaded guilty. A 19-page statement of facts that Purdue admitted to as part of the plea deal, and which prosecutors said contained the “main violations of law revealed by the government’s criminal investigation,” referred to Friedman’s May 1997 email to Sackler about letting the doctors’ misimpression stand. It did not identify either man by name, attributing the statements to “certain Purdue supervisors and employees.”

Friedman, who by then had risen to chief executive officer, was one of three Purdue executives who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of “misbranding” OxyContin. No members of the Sackler family were charged or named as part of the plea agreement. The Massachusetts lawsuit alleges that the Sackler-controlled Purdue board voted that the three executives, but no family members, should plead guilty as individuals. After the case concluded, the Sacklers were concerned about maintaining the allegiance of Friedman and another of the executives, according to the Massachusetts lawsuit. To protect the family, Purdue paid the two executives at least $8 million, that lawsuit alleges.

“The Sacklers spent millions to keep the loyalty of people who knew the truth,” the complaint filed by the Massachusetts attorney general alleges.

The Kentucky deposition’s contents will likely fuel the growing protests against the Sacklers, including pressure to strip the family’s name from cultural and educational institutions to which it has donated. The family has been active in philanthropy for decades, giving away hundreds of millions of dollars. But the source of its wealth received little attention until recent years, in part due to a lack of public information about what the family knew about Purdue’s improper marketing of OxyContin and false claims about the drug’s addictive nature.

Although Purdue has been sued hundreds of times over OxyContin’s marketing, the company has settled many of these cases, and almost never gone to trial. As a condition of settlement, Purdue has often required a confidentiality agreement, shielding millions of records from public view.

That is what happened in Kentucky. In December 2015, the state settled its lawsuit against Purdue, alleging that the company created a “public nuisance” by improperly marketing OxyContin, for $24 million. The settlement required the state attorney general to “completely destroy” documents in its possession from Purdue. But that condition did not apply to records sealed in the circuit court where the case was filed. In March 2016, STAT filed a motion to make those documents public, including Sackler’s deposition. The Kentucky Court of Appeals last year upheld a lower court ruling ordering the deposition and other sealed documents be made public. Purdue asked the state Supreme Court to review the decision, and both sides recently filed briefs. Protesters outside Kentucky’s Capitol last week waved placards urging the court to release the deposition.

Sackler family members have long constituted the majority of Purdue’s board, and company profits flow to trusts that benefit the extended family. During his deposition, which took place over 11 hours in a law office in Louisville, Kentucky, Richard Sackler said “I don’t know” more than 100 times, including when he was asked how much his family had made from OxyContin sales. He acknowledged it was more than $1 billion, but when asked if they had made more than $5 billion, he said, “I don’t know.” Asked if it was more than $10 billion, he replied, “I don’t think so.”

By 2006, OxyContin’s “profit contribution” to Purdue was $4.7 billion, according to a document read at the deposition. From 2007 to 2018, the Sackler family received more than $4 billion in payouts from Purdue, according to the Massachusetts lawsuit.

During the deposition, Sackler was confronted with his email exchanges with company executives about Purdue’s decision not to correct the misperception among many doctors that OxyContin was weaker than morphine. The company viewed this as good news because the softer image of the drug was helping drive sales in the lucrative market for treating conditions like back pain and arthritis, records produced at the deposition show.

Designed to gradually release medicine into the bloodstream, OxyContin allows patients to take fewer pills than they would with other, quicker-acting pain medicines, and its effect lasts longer. But to accomplish these goals, more narcotic is packed into an OxyContin pill than competing products. Abusers quickly figured out how to crush the pills and extract the large amount of narcotic. They would typically snort it or dissolve it into liquid form to inject.

The pending Massachusetts lawsuit against Purdue accuses Sackler and other company executives of determining that “doctors had the crucial misconception that OxyContin was weaker than morphine, which led them to prescribe OxyContin much more often.” It also says that Sackler “directed Purdue staff not to tell doctors the truth,” for fear of reducing sales. But it doesn’t reveal the contents of the email exchange with Friedman, the link between that conversation and the 2007 plea agreement, and the back-and-forth in the deposition.

A few days after the email exchange with Friedman in 1997, Sackler had an email conversation with another company official, Michael Cullen, according to the deposition. “Since oxycodone is perceived as being a weaker opioid than morphine, it has resulted in OxyContin being used much earlier for non-cancer pain,” Cullen wrote to Sackler. “Physicians are positioning this product where Percocet, hydrocodone and Tylenol with codeine have been traditionally used.” Cullen then added, “It is important that we be careful not to change the perception of physicians toward oxycodone when developing promotional pieces, symposia, review articles, studies, et cetera.”

“I think that you have this issue well in hand,” Sackler responded.

Friedman and Cullen could not be reached for comment.

Asked at his deposition about the exchanges with Friedman and Cullen, Sackler didn’t dispute the authenticity of the emails. He said the company was concerned that OxyContin would be stigmatized like morphine, which he said was viewed only as an “end of life” drug that was frightening to people.

“Within this time it appears that people had fallen into a habit of signifying less frightening, less threatening, more patient acceptable as under the rubric of weaker or more frightening, more — less acceptable and less desirable under the rubric or word ‘stronger,’” Sackler said at his deposition. “But we knew that the word ‘weaker’ did not mean less potent. We knew that the word ‘stronger’ did not mean more potent.” He called the use of those words “very unfortunate.”

He said Purdue didn’t want OxyContin “to be polluted by all of the bad associations that patients and healthcare givers had with morphine.”

In his deposition, Sackler also defended sales representatives who, according to the statement of facts in the 2007 plea agreement, falsely told doctors during the 1996-2001 period that OxyContin did not cause euphoria or that it was less likely to do so than other opioids. This euphoric effect experienced by some patients is part of what can make OxyContin addictive. Yet, asked about a 1998 note written by a Purdue salesman, who indicated that he “talked of less euphoria” when promoting OxyContin to a doctor, Sackler argued it wasn’t necessarily improper.

“This was 1998, long before there was an Agreed Statement of Facts,” he said.

The lawyer for the state asked Sackler: “What difference does that make? If it’s improper in 2007, wouldn’t it be improper in 1998?”

“Not necessarily,” Sackler replied.

Shown another sales memo, in which a Purdue representative reported telling a doctor that “there may be less euphoria” with OxyContin, Sackler responded, “We really don’t know what was said.” After further questioning, Sackler said the claim that there may be less euphoria “could be true, and I don’t see the harm.”

The same issue came up regarding a note written by a Purdue sales representative about one doctor: “Got to convince him to counsel patients that they won’t get buzzed as they will with short-acting” opioid painkillers. Sackler defended these comments as well. “Well, what it says here is that they won’t get a buzz. And I don’t think that telling a patient ‘I don’t think you’ll get a buzz’ is harmful,” he said.

Sackler added that the comments from the representative to the doctor “actually could be helpful, because many patients won’t get a buzz, and if he would like to know if they do, he might have had a good medical reason for wanting to know that.”

Sackler said he didn’t believe any of the company sales people working in Kentucky engaged in the improper conduct described in the federal plea deal. “I don’t have any facts to inform me otherwise,” he said.

Purdue said that Sackler’s statements in his deposition “fully acknowledge the wrongful actions taken by some of Purdue’s employees prior to 2002,” as laid out in the 2007 plea agreement. Both the company and Sackler “fully agree” with the facts laid out in that case, Purdue said.

The deposition also reveals that Sackler pushed company officials to find out if German officials could be persuaded to loosen restrictions on the selling of OxyContin. In most countries, narcotic pain relievers are regulated as “controlled” substances because of the potential for abuse. Sackler and other Purdue executives discussed the possibility of persuading German officials to classify OxyContin as an uncontrolled drug, which would likely allow doctors to prescribe the drug more readily — for instance, without seeing a patient. Fewer rules were expected to translate into more sales, according to company documents disclosed at the deposition.

One Purdue official warned Sackler and others that it was a bad idea. Robert Kaiko, who developed OxyContin for Purdue, wrote to Sackler, “If OxyContin is uncontrolled in Germany, it is highly likely that it will eventually be abused there and then controlled.”

Nevertheless, Sackler asked a Purdue executive in Germany for projections of sales with and without controls. He also wondered whether, if one country in the European Union relaxed controls on the drug, others might do the same. When finally informed that German officials had decided the drug would be controlled like other narcotics, Sackler asked in an email if the company could appeal. Told that wasn’t possible, he wrote back to an executive in Germany, “When we are next together we should talk about how this idea was raised and why it failed to be realized. I thought that it was a good idea if it could be done.”

Asked at the deposition about that comment, Sackler responded, “That’s what I said, but I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to be encouraging.” He said he really “was not in favor of” loosening OxyContin regulation and was simply being “polite” and “solicitous” of his own employee.

Near the end of the deposition — after showing Sackler dozens of emails, memos and other records regarding the marketing of OxyContin — a lawyer for Kentucky posed a fundamental question.

“Sitting here today, after all you’ve come to learn as a witness, do you believe Purdue’s conduct in marketing and promoting OxyContin in Kentucky caused any of the prescription drug addiction problems now plaguing the Commonwealth?” he asked.

Sackler replied, “I don’t believe so.”

New Election Ordered in Disputed North Carolina House Race

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s elections board Thursday ordered a new election in the nation’s last undecided congressional race after the Republican candidate conceded his lead was tainted by evidence of ballot-tampering by political operatives working for him.

The State Board of Elections voted 5-0 in favor of a do-over in the mostly rural 9th Congressional District but did not immediately set a date.

In moving to order a new election, board chairman Bob Cordle cited “the corruption, the absolute mess with the absentee ballots.”

The board action came after GOP candidate Mark Harris, in a surprising turn, dropped his bid to be declared the winner and instead called for a new election. He reversed course on the fourth day of a board hearing at which investigators and witnesses detailed evidence of ballot fraud by operatives on his payroll.

“Through the testimony I’ve listened to over the past three days, I believe a new election should be called,” Harris said. “It’s become clear to me that the public’s confidence in the 9th District seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted.”

At the same time, Harris denied any knowledge of the illegal practices allegedly used by those working on his behalf.

Harris left the hearing room without answering questions. It was not immediately clear whether he intends to run in a new election.

The Democrat in the race, Dan McCready, hailed the board decision as “a great step forward for democracy in North Carolina.”

“From the moment the first vote was stolen in North Carolina, from the moment the first voice was silenced by election fraud, the people have deserved justice,” McCready, the Harvard-educated founder of a solar energy company, said in a statement.

The decision could leave the congressional seat empty for months, perhaps until the fall, board attorney Josh Lawson said. New primaries will be held in addition to a new general election, with the dates set by the elections board.

Harris’ reversal and the board’s subsequent decision averted the possibility of a drawn-out court battle, had either candidate disagreed with the outcome of the hearing. The move also spared the new Democratic leadership of the House from having to intervene under its constitutional power to decide who can be seated as a member.

Harris led McCready by 905 votes out of about 280,000 cast last fall in a district that includes part of Charlotte and extends eastward through several counties along the southern edge of the state. But the state refused to certify the outcome as allegations surfaced that Harris political operative Leslie McCrae Dowless may have tampered with mail-in absentee ballots.

According to testimony and other findings detailed at the hearing, Dowless conducted an illegal “ballot harvesting” operation: He and his assistants gathered up absentee ballots from voters by offering to put them in the mail.

Dowless’ workers in rural Bladen County testified that they were directed to collect blank or incomplete ballots, forge signatures on them and even fill in votes for local candidates.

It is generally against the law in North Carolina for anyone other than the voter or a family member to handle someone’s completed ballot.

No criminal charges have been filed in the case.

Harris, former pastor of a Baptist church, testified that Dowless had assured him that he wouldn’t collect absentee ballots in violation of state law.

“I’ll never forget. He said it again and again. He said, ‘We do not take the ballot,'” the candidate testified. Harris also insisted: “Neither I nor any of the leadership of my campaign were aware of or condoned the improper activities that have been testified to in this hearing.”

Harris admitted hiring Dowless over his own son’s warnings. While Dowless was known for getting results, he went to prison in the 1990s for fraud and was dogged by suspicions of political chicanery in his get-out-the-vote efforts in 2016.

Harris appeared to tear up on Wednesday when his son testified that he warned his father not to do business with Dowless.

The congressional seat has been in Republican hands since 1963.

The board is made up of three Democrats and two Republicans.

Smollett Reactions Epitomize Polarized State of U.S. Politics

Democratic politicians and celebrities called it a shocking instance of Trump-era racism and hate. Republicans now depict it as yet another example of liberals and mainstream media rushing to judgment while disparaging the president’s supporters as bigots.

The case of “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett encapsulates the polarized state of political discourse in America.

With Smollett now accused of staging a racist, anti-gay attack on himself, the case seemed to inflame political tensions even more while creating potentially damaging consequences for genuine hate crime victims in the future.

“The danger is that it will cause people to respond with skepticism whenever they hear reports of hate violence, even though the overwhelming majority of those reports are completely true,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Smollett, who is black and gay, is accused of filing a false police report last month asserting that he was attacked in Chicago by two men who beat him, targeted him with slurs, and yelled “This is MAGA country” — an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Cory Booker were among those who sided with Smollett early on and called the incident a “modern-day lynching.” They soon found themselves under attack from the right as Smollett’s story began to fall apart.

Trump initially called reports of the attack “horrible.” On Thursday, he tweeted, “what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!?”

Editor and commentator Jarrett Stepman of The Daily Signal, an online publication of the conservative The Heritage Foundation, faulted left-of-center pundits and politicians for seizing immediately on Smollett’s claims in a bid to score political points.

“Instead of just treating this as a serious crime, it was used as a political bludgeon to malign large swaths of Americans,” he said. “There was a rush to find a story to attack half the country.”

However, Stepman said he shared concerns that the case might have unfortunate consequences for real victims who deserve support and compassion.

“Heinous hate crimes do exist in this country, but it’s the ‘boy who cried wolf’ thing,” Stepman said. “People become cynical, and that’s not a healthy thing for America society.”

Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson had a hard time holding back his frustration over the allegation that a gay black man like Smollett would concoct such a story given the real struggles in the city with racial divisions and hate crimes.

He expressed similar concerns about how hate crimes are handled in the future because of this case while recognizing how his city became a participant in a national political debate.

“Celebrities, news commentators and even presidential candidates weighed in on something that was choreographed by an actor,” said Johnson, who is black and grew up in Chicago.

In the debate over the Smollett case, critics of Trump have pointed out that hate crimes have soared since his election, but the statistics are nuanced.

The most recent official figures from the FBI show that there was a 17 percent spike in hate crimes in 2017. But that data isn’t complete because it’s based in part on voluntary reporting by police agencies across the country.

Non-government researchers have come up with a variety of findings. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in Cal State San Bernardino looked at hate crimes in the nation’s 10 biggest cities and found a 12 percent increase in 2017. There were similar annual increases during the Obama administration.

Shannon Minter said hate crimes already are underreported, and worried that the Smollett case would aggravate that problem.

However, Minter said he was heartened by some recent moves across the political spectrum to address racism and hate violence. He cited efforts by the Southern Baptist Convention, a generally conservative denomination, to acknowledge its past legacy of racism.

Robin Valeri, a psychology professor at St. Bonaventure University who has researched hate crimes, said the Smollett case reminded her of the 1987 case involving Tawana Brawley, a black teenager from New York state who falsely alleged that she was abducted and raped by a gang of white men.

“These cases make people skeptical,” Valeri said. “The assumption is going to be, ‘Oh, they’re just making it up.”

Among the black activists who championed Brawley’s case before it unraveled was civil rights leader Al Sharpton.

Speaking Thursday on MSNBC, Sharpton called the hoax claims against Smollett “horrific” and said the actor, if proven guilty, “ought to face accountability to the maximum.”

Alvin Tillery, a political science professor who directs Northwestern University’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy, said racial hoaxes — including the Brawley case — have a long history in the United States.

“The Smollett case is likely to have an even larger impact on our politics and culture than those infamous hoaxes because of Mr. Smollett’s celebrity status and our deeply troubling political climate,” said Tillery, who is black.

The wall-to-wall media coverage that the case generated also left some people frustrated.

“There’s a lot of racial and anti-Semitic violence in this country that we didn’t even know about,” said Heidi Beirich, who heads the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “It outweighs one sensational fake crime.”

The Chicago police chief began his news conference Thursday by acknowledging the throng of reporters in front of him and declaring, “I just wish that the families of gun violence got this much attention.”

Judge Imposes Gag Order on Trump Confidant Stone After Post

WASHINGTON — A federal judge issued a broad gag order forbidding Roger Stone to discuss his criminal case with anyone and gave him a stinging reprimand Thursday over the longtime Trump confidant’s posting of a photo of the judge with what appeared to be crosshairs of a gun.

She promised to throw him behind bars if he violates the court order in any way.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said that it would be “foolhardy” for her not to take any action over the Instagram post and that Stone would “pose a danger” to others in the case if the conditions of his release weren’t modified to include a gag order.

“Roger Stone fully understands the power of words and the power of symbols and there’s nothing ambiguous about crosshairs,” the judge said. “How hard was it to come up with a photo that didn’t have a crosshairs in the corner?” she quipped at one point.

Stone has pleaded not guilty to charges he lied to Congress, engaged in witness tampering and obstructed a congressional investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The charges stem from conversations he had during the campaign about WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that released material stolen from Democratic groups, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The political operative and self-described dirty trickster is the sixth Trump aide or adviser charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. He was arrested last month and has remained free on a $250,000 personal recognizance bond. Stone has maintained his innocence and blasted the special counsel’s investigation as politically motivated.

During Thursday’s tense and animated hearing in federal court in Washington, Stone took the witness stand to try to explain his Instagram post and apologize to the judge, repeatedly telling her he had made an egregious and inexcusable mistake.

“Thank you, but the apology rings quite hollow,” she shot back before instituting the gag order.

The judge said she doubted Stone had learned his lesson and it was clear he needed “clear boundaries” about what he can and can’t say to prevent potential jurors from being prejudiced.

She said she was not reassured by “the defense suggestion that Mr. Stone is all talk and no action and this is all a big mistake.”

Jackson told Stone that he made “deliberate choices” to post the photo of her and created a very real risk.

“No, Mr. Stone, I am not giving you another chance,” she said.

The 66-year-old Stone said the image had been selected by a volunteer who was working for him, though he couldn’t say who picked the photo or list the five or six volunteers who have been working for him when he was asked by prosecutors.

He said he had several photos to choose from and posted the image himself to his profile.

“You had a choice?” the judge interjected.

Stone said he picked the photo “randomly,” a suggestion the judge almost immediately dismissed.

“It was an egregious mistake. I obviously wish I could do it over again, but I cannot,” Stone said. “I recognize I let the court down, I let you down, I let myself down. … It was a momentary lapse in judgment.”

He has said the photo was “misinterpreted,” the symbol was actually the Celtic cross, not crosshairs of a gun, and he was not trying to threaten the judge.

Last week, Judge Jackson had implemented a limited order that prevented Stone from discussing his case near the courthouse and generally prohibited his lawyers, prosecutors and witnesses from making public comments that could “pose a substantial likelihood” of prejudicing potential jurors. But that order stopped short of imposing a broad ban on public comments, as Thursday’s order does.

After Stone posted and then deleted the photo on Instagram, the judge ordered him to return to Washington and appear in court for Thursday’s hearing. He and his lawyers filed a notice with the court that said they recognized the photo was “improper and should not have been posted.”

Stone’s lawyers argued, unsuccessfully, that placing any limits on his public comments would infringe on his constitutionally protected right to free speech.

His attorney, Bruce Rogow, said Stone’s post was inexcusable but argued his client should have another chance to comply with the judge’s initial gag order.

Special counsel Mueller’s team has been dwindling in recent weeks and lawyers from the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington were assigned to Stone’s case from the beginning, which could be an indication that Mueller is planning to hand off the investigation.

E-Scooters Are Giving Cities Headaches—and Worse

Electric scooters, while a delight to some, are disrupting cities in tech-centric California, as a battle rages over where they belong.

The rollout of the e-scooters—and the problems they have generated—caught city officials by surprise. Those who consider them intrusive complain that riders aren’t being mindful of the problems they cause by stepping into arenas where there are no existing regulations under the umbrella of “innovation” and by thumbing their noses at attempts to rein them in.

The rent-by-the-minute scooters, emblazoned with user-friendly brand names like Bird and Scoot, can reach speeds up to 15 mph. A prospective rider simply takes any free-standing scooter and uses an app to unlock it. Unlike rental bikes or car services, scooters don’t require a docking or designated parking station.

This is a key problem for nonusers, because in addition to blocking sidewalks and doorways, scooters abandoned inappropriately are tripping hazards. Worse, the number of accidents involving scooter riders and pedestrians is on the rise.

A  report from the UCLA School of Medicine reveals that about 250 people were treated at two Southern California emergency rooms for scooter-related injuries in the first six months after they hit the streets.

Injuries ranged from broken bones to head wounds, some requiring surgery and some very serious. Some patients had internal injuries, and one person suffered a compound fracture, in which a bone pierces the skin. Most riders who were injured were not wearing helmets.

In San Francisco, doctors have treated similar injuries. Christopher Colwell, chief of emergency medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, says his team has seen compound breaks, head injuries, patients requiring ventilation and more than one case of wounds so serious they required plastic surgery.

The UCLA study says its results most likely underestimate the number of e-scooter injuries, because it reviewed only emergency room visits, not those to urgent-care doctors or primary-care facilities.

Local laws on the use of e-scooters vary, with most cities prohibiting riding on sidewalks. But opponents point out that such laws are difficult to enforce. And although e-scooter companies generally recommend that riders be at least 18 years old and wear helmets, users often  disregard these guidelines.

In Los Angeles and San Francisco, scooters seemed to drop from the sky overnight in 2017, in the wake of smartphone app-based introductions of car- and electric-bike sharing, and the use of large passenger buses serving tech-sector employees.

The scooters quickly became very popular with users, but for opponents, they are yet another example of the seemingly elitist and privileged technology industry’s unwanted invasion into their lives.

In Southern California, scooters have been tossed off buildings, set on fire, smeared with feces and even dumped into the ocean. It is a clear expression of anger over tech companies foisting their lifestyle onto others as they jam public spaces, according to news reports. A social media group on Instagram, which screens videos of scooters on fire, has collected over 29,000 followers.

The vigilante-style anti-scooter backlash is significant, and it can cost the scooter companies thousands of dollars to repair and replace the vehicles. In addition, city employees spend time and money hauling scooters out of the ocean and removing those that have been vandalized and left on the sidewalks.

Scooter companies promote their product as being for the ultimate good, reducing the number of cars on the road and providing a green alternative to the burning of fossil fuel.

But opponents question whether the benefit truly extends to all when the use of public property—in this case, city streets and sidewalks—impinges on the rights of those who don’t use the scooters.

For many, the scooters are reminiscent of the “Google Bus” phenomenon, in which luxury buses also suddenly began showing up on city streets and freeways, carrying mostly white, mostly male, mostly young, highly paid tech workers up and down the San Francisco Peninsula to Google, Apple, Facebook and other tech companies. The buses utilized public bus stops without permission to pick up and drop off their riders.

The ensuing battles were loud and forceful. Hundreds of demonstrators blocked the buses from moving, and protesters confronted riders, challenging this use of public streets. In 2015, San Francisco addressed these issues by adopting a commuter shuttle program that reduced the number of private bus stops, collected payments for the use of public bus stops, and allowed only small buses on small streets, with larger buses allowed on major arteries only.

The issues aren’t resolved in San Francisco, however. Anti-tech activists continue to fight, ironically blocking the buses with scooters to demonstrate the frustration both types of vehicles impose on residents and pedestrians. Recently, a group of activists donned white overalls and face masks and blocked a bus in the Mission District, formerly a low-income and artist community that is transforming into a trendy, tech-driven, high-rent neighborhood.

“Rightly or wrongly, this is a fight against what is perceived to be a very arrogant, Gilded Age-style approach toward public space by tech companies,” says Jason Henderson, San Francisco State University professor and author of “Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco.”

Henderson says the city urgently needs better public solutions to its transportation crisis.

“With Uber and Lyft and with private buses, cities like San Francisco have fast-tracked extremely unequal and elitist transport. We need public regional buses, accessible to all people, and … special bus lanes … throughout the region. Not more private cars, not more private transit. We absolutely need more bicycles for short-distance trips, but by punting bike-share to the private sector, Bay Area political leaders have shown cycling is not a true priority. It’s just an afterthought. Were it a priority, they’d fund a vast and equitable regional cycling system,” Henderson says.

San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who has introduced legislation to create a regulatory permit program for scooters, agrees with Henderson’s take on tech culture. “Unfortunately, the tech companies are behaving like arrogant and elitist adolescents who want what they want without government interference. They don’t want any oversight. They are continuing the same approach with the debates over public space, inequality and tech-induced gentrification.”

Stanford University adjunct professor and Silicon Valley futurist Paul Saffo says two specific problems are generating frustration among scooter opponents: what he describes as “contention” and “free-rider.”

A “free-rider” amounts to an uncompensated taking of public property by a business, creating cost, safety and liability issues for local governments. “Contention” arises when scooters are in motion and in conflict with pedestrians and traffic.

There are no clear or easy solutions to these issues.

Saffo points out that forcing scooter companies to use racks would only take up more sidewalk space, and would limit the practical use of scooters to journeys that begin and end at an authorized rack. “This would diminish scooter popularity and thus any benefit to reducing auto trips,” he says.

“If driven on sidewalks, scooters are in contention with pedestrians, and if driven in the street or bike lanes, they are in contention with cars and bicycles,” he says. “Because scooters are faster than pedestrians, they are an annoyance—and a hazard—to walkers. And if the rider happens to be thoughtless, they are annoying and obnoxious. And because scooters are slower and more maneuverable than cars and bicycles, they are a hazard to the riders and a complication in traffic.”

Somehow, cities will have to figure out how to either give scooter riders their own lanes—which is unlikely—or find a way to blend them into bike lanes—which could be unsafe, according to Saffo.

He adds that bicyclists avoid the sidewalk—at least in theory—and in the long run, he believes that bicycle use will displace scooter use because cyclists already have some dedicated lanes and culturally agreed-upon operational norms.  But to allow for the rise in bicycle use, cities will have to greatly increase the capacity of bicycle lanes and riders will have to learn manners. Saffo says this is quite doable, pointing to cities like Amsterdam or Copenhagen, which are famous for their cyclist cultures. “To make this happen, American cities are in for years of safety and rudeness issues as we collectively go down the bicycle learning curve.”

In the long run, an increase in the number of transportation modes is a good thing, and it appears inevitable. More transportation surprises are waiting in the wings, from robotic microcars to electric-powered motorcycle follow-ons that look like something from a “Transformers” movie. We can also look forward to autonomous delivery bots in the street, on sidewalks and in the air. These changes are going to require a period of wild urban experimentation in which innovations will be proposed that cities and citizens will accept, adapt or reject.

Meanwhile, the majority of companies operating in the electric scooter market have similar business models. Dockless e-scooters or bikes are distributed across a city—basically just dropped off on sidewalks in busy areas. The bar to use the scooters is not high. Users download a mobile app to find the nearest free scooter. E-scooter rates typically are a $1 flat fee plus 15 cents per minute.

The San Francisco Bay Area Council, an organization that advises and supports pro-business initiatives, sees the scooters as a green alternative and a way to get people out of their cars. It is not as concerned about sidewalk ridership, suggesting that it is incumbent on the scooter companies to educate riders about appropriate use.

Rufus Jeffris, the council’s vice president for communications, says it supports sensible regulations and a focus on scooter safety. “Scooters are a complex problem, and it’s a challenge. It’s the same problem with cars and jaywalkers and bicycles. It’s about education,” he says.

Weighing in on the scooter safety issue is Walk San Francisco, an advocacy organization that promotes safe sidewalks for pedestrians. When the scooters first showed up, Walk San Francisco asked e-scooter operators to be “good corporate citizens” and adhere to California law that prohibits motorized vehicles on the sidewalks. “We called on these scooter companies to take immediate actions to keep people safe and keep our sidewalks clear,” says Jodie Medeiros, the group’s executive director. “We wanted people to know that we support alternative forms of transportation, especially if it means getting people out of cars. We came out strong, asking the companies to provide the education needed to get their riders off the sidewalks and inform their users where to park these motorized vehicles so they aren’t blocking the public right-of-way.”

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency issued a statement emphasizing that riding motorized scooters on sidewalks is illegal and unsafe for pedestrians, especially seniors and people with disabilities.

But, as Medeiros points out, the agency does not have the capacity to monitor scooters sufficiently. She believes the scooter companies must take action, and there must be steep consequences for users if they behave illegally.

For now, scooter enthusiasts continue to ride them illegally and without helmets, daring the fates. With millions of dollars invested in green transportation options, cities may choose to monitor the situation and patrol the sidewalks in hopes that fewer scooters occupying the same space as pedestrians will reduce the number of accidents.

However, just monitoring errant scooter riders won’t address the anger the scooters generate. Unlike the Google bus scenario, in which compromises were developed, it’s not clear if there is any kind of resolution scooter companies can offer to keep the scooters off the sidewalks, away from pedestrians and out of harm’s way on the streets.

Report: In 2018, Hate Groups Are More Popular Than Ever

In 2018, 11 people were killed at a synagogue. Two in a Kroger supermarket. Others at a yoga studio. And that was just one week in a year where extremist violence was at its highest in decades.

This year, the number of active hate groups rose for the fourth year in a row, to 1,020 according to a new report from The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks extremism in the United States. Hate crime murders, at least 40 in 2018, according to the SPLC, have more than doubled since 2017.

As Liam Stack writes in The New York Times’ coverage of the SPLC report, “That broadly echoes other worrying developments, including a 30 percent increase in the number of hate crimes reported to the F.B.I. from 2015 through 2017.”

It also comes on the heels of similar research from the Anti-Defamation League, which puts the number killed even higher than the SPLC, at least 50. The ADL also emphasized that these murders “were overwhelmingly linked to right-wing extremists,” and not jihadist groups. “White supremacists,” the ADL continues, “were responsible for the great majority of the killings, which is typically the case.”

As for how the perpetrators carried out their crimes, the ADL writes that “Firearms remain the weapon of choice for extremists who kill. Guns were responsible for 42 of the 50 deaths in 2018, followed by blades or edged weapons.”

While, as the SPLC points out, the number of black nationalist groups “[espousing] anti-white, anti-Semitic or anti-gay and anti-transgender views” also grew in 2018, from 233 to 264, their influence and actions paled in comparison to that of white supremacist, right-wing hate groups. As Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Project director at the SPLC writes of the white hate groups, “They, unlike black nationalist groups, have a firm foothold in the mainstream.”

That mainstream, Beirich asserts, includes the Trump administration and its supporters. “The president, aided and abetted by Fox News, continues to push his noxious anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim ideas into the public consciousness,” she says, “fueling fears of a forthcoming white-minority country.”

Before Trump was elected, the number of hate groups had actually fallen in the previous three years. Now, Beirich explained in an interview with the Times, “There are more hate groups, more hate crimes and more domestic terrorism in that same vein. It is a troubling set of circumstances.”

While saying that Trump’s ascendance is a key part of the rise in extremism, Beirich emphasizes that he’s part of a larger ecosystem of hate, telling the Times, “He is a critical aspect of this dynamic, but he is not the only reason why the ranks of hate groups are growing. The ability to propagate hate in the online space is key.”

Read the full SPLC report here, and the ADL report here.