Chris Hedges's Blog, page 335

Who’s Afraid of the Green New Deal

In recent weeks, a polar vortex blew across the U.S., killing at least 20 people. At the same time, U.S. government scientists reported that 2018 was the fourth-warmest year on record, with the five hottest years occurring in the past five years. A huge hole in one of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is causing accelerated melting there, while across that continent, large lakes of meltwater are bending, buckling and threatening to collapse these vast ice sheets — all leading to rapidly increasing global sea level rise. Glaciers melting in the Himalayas threaten tens of millions of people downstream with flooding and the disruption of water supplies. As evidence that the planet is experiencing what has been called “the sixth great extinction,” a recent review of scientific data concludes that 40 percent of the world’s insects are on the brink of extinction.

President Donald Trump’s response? During the polar vortex, he tweeted: “What the hell is going on with Global Waming? (sic) Please come back fast, we need you!” Yet there are signs of hope. Two Democrats, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, have submitted a resolution to Congress recognizing “the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” House Resolution 109 had a remarkable 67 co-sponsors in the House, all Democrats, and has been distributed to 11 different House committees for consideration.

“Today is the day that we truly embark on a comprehensive agenda of economic, social and racial justice in the United States of America,” Ocasio-Cortez said, announcing the effort. “Climate change and our environmental challenges are one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life, not just as a nation, but as a world.”

The Green New Deal is named after the original New Deal, the massive government program launched by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help the United States recover from the Great Depression. In addition to imposing a slew of regulations to constrain the big banks that were largely responsible for the financial collapse, FDR’s New Deal empowered the federal government to directly hire millions of workers to do everything from building roads and bridges to writing poetry. The Social Security system was created to protect the elderly from the ravages of poverty. In the decades since, the New Deal has become synonymous with successful government intervention on a grand scale to solve massive, seemingly intractable problems.

The parallel Senate and House resolutions put forth by Markey and Ocasio-Cortez — known as “AOC” to her supporters — are a call to action to Congress to craft laws that implement a true Green New Deal, rapidly shifting the U.S. economy to one that is powered by renewable energy, and to do so in a fair, equitable and just manner.

When asked on “60 Minutes” by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “Are you talking about everybody having to drive an electric car,” AOC replied: “It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now. What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?”

Cooper also challenged her on the cost of a Green New Deal, which, in part, AOC would pay for with an increased marginal tax on the super wealthy — a 70 percent tax rate on income earned in excess of $10 million, for example. Several national polls suggest strong support for such a tax.

While almost every Democratic presidential hopeful has embraced the Green New Deal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi casually derided the plan, saying, in response to a reporter’s question about its legislative chances: “It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

After Sen. Markey submitted his Green New Deal resolution, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “We’re going to be voting on that in the Senate to give everybody an opportunity to go on record.” He and the Republican Party are calculating that a vote in favor will politically damage incumbent Democrats come re-election time.

But McConnell is wrong. A majority of Americans believe that climate change is real, poses a threat to humankind, and that something must be done. It is time for the dinosaurs in Congress and the White House to wean themselves off fossil fuels and support the Green New Deal, or face extinction.

K-pop and Fancy Sneakers: Kim Jong Un’s Cultural Revolution

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Dancers in hot pants. Factories pumping out Air Jordan lookalikes. TV dramas that are actually fun to watch.

North Korean pop culture, long dismissed by critics as a kitschy throwback to the dark days of Stalinism, is getting a major upgrade under leader Kim Jong Un.

The changes are being seen in everything from television dramas and animation programs to the variety and packaging of consumer goods, which have improved significantly under Kim. Whether it’s a defensive attempt to keep up with South Korea or an indication that Kim is willing to embrace aspects of Western consumer culture that his predecessors might have viewed as suspiciously bourgeois isn’t clear.

“The most important thing for us is to produce a product that suits the people’s tastes,” Kim Kyong Hui of the Ryuwon Shoe Factory told The Associated Press recently in the facility’s showroom, which is filled with dozens of kinds of shoes for running, volleyball, soccer — even table tennis. “The respected leader Kim Jong Un has instructed us to closely study shoes from all over the world and learn from their example,” she added, pointing to a pair of flame-red high-top basketball shoes.

To be sure, North Korea remains one of the most insular countries in the world. Change comes cautiously and anyone who openly criticizes the government or leadership or is seen as a threat can expect severe repercussions. But there appears to be more of a willingness under Kim to experiment around some of the edges.

The most visible upgrades are on television and its normal menu of propaganda programs and documentaries in praise of the leaders.

Viewers of the main state-run TV network — the only channel that can be seen anywhere in the country — are now stopping their routines to watch the latest episodes of “The Wild Ginseng Gatherers of the Imjin War,” a historical drama set in the late 16th century, when Korea was struggling against a Japanese invasion.

The anti-Japan, nationalistic theme is nothing new. A similar theme was used for Kim Jong Un’s first big contribution to the television lineup, an animated series reviving a popular comic from his father’s era called “The Boy General” that made its debut in 2015. The animation, set in the Koguryo period when Korea was fighting off Chinese incursions, was such a hit that people would stop whatever they were doing to watch it. A Boy General game was created for mobile phones. New episodes are believed to be forthcoming.

What the TV drama, first aired last July, and the Boy General animation share that’s new is their high production values.

The acting in the movie is grittier and more compelling, the plots more engaging and the sets and costumes are decidedly more elaborate than previous projects. Even the dialogue spoken in Japanese by the villains, played of course by North Korean actors, is generally accurate, though delivered with a heavy North Korean accent. The Boy General, meanwhile, makes skillful use of computer effects and is visually on par with some of the best animation in the world.

The improvements reflect awareness within Kim’s regime that the North Korean public is increasingly familiar with foreign pop culture despite severe restrictions that make it impossible for most to travel abroad or freely experience foreign movies, music or books.

That familiarity is particularly true of the North Korean elite, who are accustomed to seeing brand name products from Dior to Sony on the shelves of upscale stores in Pyongyang, the capital. Cheap knockoffs from China are common in marketplaces around the country.

Watching South Korean movies or listening to South Korean music is illegal. But a lot makes its way over the border and, even for those who would never dream of taking that risk, the officially approved cultural fare isn’t entirely void of foreign treats.

Bollywood films are popular in state-run cinemas — 2009′s “Three Idiots” with Aamir Khan, for example, was recently shown in a cinema just across the street from Kim Il Sung Square. North Korea’s educational channel regularly features long clips from foreign documentaries, and dog-eared Harry Potter books are among the most popular items at the People’s Grand Study House, North Korea’s biggest library.

North Korea’s “approach to the influx of foreign media has been to ‘modernize’ media production to provide an attractive and competitive product that caters to younger generations for whom older productions are no longer attractive,” said Geoffrey See, the founder of the Choson Exchange, a Singapore-based non-profit that supports change in North Korea through exposure to knowledge and information in business, entrepreneurship and law.

“For consumer goods, it also ties into a state policy to encourage more domestic production and import substitution,” he said.

Kim’s first attempt to update the pop culture scene started almost as soon as he assumed power in late 2011 with the creation of the Moranbong Band, an ensemble of female vocalists and musicians who are the “soft face” of his regime.

Although the members all belong to the Korean People’s Army, they are known for performing in miniskirts and wearing their hair fashionably short. They have released dozens of songs, all of which get lots of exposure through concert tours, DVDs and airtime on television.

They are beginning to look a bit passe, however.

In February last year, North Korea sent some of its top musicians, including a female quintet that performed in black shorts and red tops, south of the Demilitarized Zone to perform during South Korea’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Two months later, Kim was in the audience as the South Korean girl group Red Velvet put on what is believed to be the first real K-pop show ever held in Pyongyang. The North Korean act that performed in South Korea was so well received that Kim sent them to Beijing last month for another goodwill tour.

Still, military orchestras and classically trained vocalists who perform in traditional “Choson-ot” gowns remain the mainstay of the Pyongyang musical scene. The girl band’s performance in Beijing was backed up by the state’s military chorus and orchestra, all in full uniform.

More importantly, there has been no effort to delink the arts from politics.

When the musical group returned to Pyongyang, Kim urged them to continue to “conduct original artistic activities pulsating with the party’s ideology” and act “courageously as mouthpieces of the party,” according to state media.

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Talmadge has been the AP’s Pyongyang bureau chief since 2013. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @EricTalmadge

California Governor Wants Users to Profit From Online Data

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has set off a flurry of speculation after he said the state’s consumers should get a piece of the billions of dollars that technology companies make by capitalizing on personal data they collect.

The new governor has asked aides to develop a proposal for a “data dividend” for California residents but provided no hints about whether he might be suggesting a tax on tech companies, an individual refund to their customers or something else.

“Companies that make billions of dollars collecting, curating and monetizing our personal data have a duty to protect it,” the Democrat said in his first State of the State speech Tuesday. “California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data.”

Tech companies, for example, sell the data to outside businesses that target ads to users. The European Union and Spain’s socialist government last year each proposed taxing big internet companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Common Sense Media, which helped pass California’s nation-leading digital privacy law last year, plans to propose legislation in coming weeks that would reflect Newsom’s proposal, founder and CEO James Steyer said, without providing details.

Starting next year, California’s European-style privacy law will require companies to tell customers upon request what personal data they have collected and why, which categories of third parties have received it, and allow consumers to delete their information and not sell it.

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, predicted in November that California would consider legislation that would “send a shiver down the spine” of tech companies.

He described the proposal as returning 25 percent of the value of an individual’s data. It wasn’t clear how the calculation would be made.

Warner’s office said Wednesday that he made the comment after speaking with Steyer. Warner is considering federal legislation requiring companies like California-based Facebook and Google to provide users with annual estimates of what their data is worth to the companies.

Steyer said in a statement that Newsom is “spot on” about consumers having the “right to share in the profits that companies are making off them.”

Axios calculated that the average Facebook user is worth $7.37 to the company, while a Twitter user is worth $2.83, and a Reddit user, about 30 cents. The calculation basically divided the companies’ annual revenue by their monthly active users.

California-based tech giants Facebook and Google did not immediately comment.

Newsom’s office would not say who is leading his review. Newsom “is open to constructive input” from national experts and lawmakers, spokesman Brian Ferguson said in a statement.

The governor’s office pointed to proposals elsewhere that would put a tax on data, including one that died in the Washington state Legislature in 2017. That measure would have taxed receipts from the sale of state residents’ personal data at a rate of 3.3 percent.

Mahsau Daee of the Internet Association said the industry will look forward to reviewing the governor’s eventual proposal but that “free and low-cost, data-driven online services offer Californians — and all Americans — enormous benefits.”

Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said Newsom “is off to the wrong start” on protecting consumer privacy.

“They shouldn’t be tricked into giving away their privacy for a small discount,” he said in an email. “Selling it for a few bucks isn’t the answer and will make the problem worse.”

Dan Goldstein, president the digital marketing agency Page 1 Solutions, said a tax might not benefit consumers, while some sort of profit-sharing plan would likely return a “pittance of a benefit” to individuals.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes last year suggested that users could band together to negotiate payments or a data tax could be administered, similar to a fund that annually shares oil profits with Alaska residents.

Consumer Federation of California executive director Richard Holober hailed the proposal while alluding to the vast financial divide between rich and poor, particularly in California, which is struggling to address homelessness and an affordable housing crisis.

The governor previously asked Silicon Valley companies to match $500 million in state funds with their own low-interest loans for developers to build homes for middle-income residents in some of the state’s costliest areas.

“We have such a disparity here with everyday Californians who are having trouble paying their rent or sending their kids to college,” Holober said. “California has created a very fertile land for these corporations to become fabulously wealthy, and they need to give back.”

Newsom’s announcement excited lawmakers who authored California’s privacy law, but they had no information about it.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg called the proposal “the next frontier of the online data and privacy conversation.”

Democratic Assemblyman Ed Chau, who is chairman of the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection, said the proposal “highlights the value of data, which has often been described as the new oil in this technological data-driven economy.”

In House’s Yemen Vote, Congress Reasserts War-Making Powers

WASHINGTON — Asserting congressional authority over war-making powers, the House passed a resolution Wednesday that would force the administration to withdraw U.S. troops from involvement in Yemen, in a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s alliance with the Saudi-led coalition behind the military intervention.

Lawmakers in both parties are increasingly uneasy over the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and skeptical of the U.S. partnership with that coalition, especially in light of Saudi Arabia’s role in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the royal family.

Passage would mark the first time Congress has relied on the decades-old War Powers Resolution to halt military intervention. It also would set up a potential confrontation with the White House, which has threatened a veto. The House voted 248-177 to approve the measure, sending it to the Senate, where a similar resolution passed last year.

“We have helped create, and worsen, the world’s largest humanitarian crisis,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., during the debate. “Our involvement in this war, quite frankly, is shameful.”

The chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said the vote represents “Congress reclaiming its role in foreign policy.”

Senate approval would set up a showdown with the administration — a veto would be Trump’s first — over the president’s shifting approach on foreign policy.

Lawmakers are quick to point out that Trump wants to withdraw troops from the wars in Syria and Afghanistan as part of his “America First” approach, but he has shown less interest in limiting the U.S. role in Yemen.

The White House says the House resolution is “flawed” because U.S. troops are not directly involved in military action in Yemen, where the coalition is fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in a conflict largely seen as a proxy war involving the Mideast’s dominant regional players.

Since 2015, the administration says, the U.S. has provided support to the coalition, including intelligence and, until recently, aerial refueling, but it has not had forces involved in “hostilities.”

Congress has not invoked the War Powers Resolution, which requires approval of military actions, since it was enacted in 1973. Lawmakers approved more sweeping authorizations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that some argue are being used too broadly for other military actions.

Newly emboldened Democrats in the House, eager to confront Trump on foreign policy, and Republicans in both chambers have shown a willingness to put a legislative check on the president’s agenda.

In the House, 18 Republicans, including members of the GOP’s libertarian-leaning wing and Trump allies in the conservative Freedom Caucus, joined Democrats in passing the Yemen measure.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who drafted the legislation, said there’s an emerging bipartisan alliance that’s skeptical of military intervention without congressional oversight.

“It’s not just about Yemen. It’s about the Congress taking a stand and every future president having to think twice about whether to authorize a military intervention without congressional approval,” Khanna said in an interview.

The Senate version is from independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and backed by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee.

Before Wednesday’s vote, the House overwhelmingly agreed to add an amendment offered by Republicans who are seeking to expose emerging Democratic divisions over support for Israel.

The amendment reaffirms the U.S. commitment “to combat anti-Semitism around the world” and says it’s in the national security interest to oppose boycotts of Israel. That’s a reference to the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement that has gained support of some lawmakers.

First-term Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of the Muslim-American women elected to Congress, came under criticism this week for her comments against the Israel lobbying organization AIPAC that raised anti-Semitic stereotypes. She later apologized.

Now the Yemen measure goes to the Senate, where a similar resolution on removing U.S. involvement in the war was approved with Republican support late last year.

At the time, Congress was eager to send a message to both the president and the Saudis after the October murder of the U.S.-based journalist Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The U.S. has sanctioned 17 Saudi individuals for their involvement in the killing, and U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, must have at least known of the plot. Trump so far has decided not to impose harsher penalties on the prince. The kingdom insists he did not order the killing.

The outcome of the legislation is uncertain. Republicans control the Senate, 53-47, and a simple majority is needed to pass.

Trump has yet to veto any measures from Congress. If he did veto the Yemen resolution, it’s unclear whether lawmakers would have enough support to override him.

Ilhan Omar Makes Convicted War Criminal Elliott Abrams Squirm

As forensic experts in El Salvador continue the 26-year effort to exhume the bodies of the victims of the December 1981 El Mozote massacre, Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar grilled the Trump administration’s Venezuela envoy, Elliott Abrams, on his role in human rights violations.

“I fail to understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful,” Omar said during a House foreign affairs hearing on Venezuela on Wednesday. She was referencing the Iran-Contra scandal, after which Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to two misdemeanor counts for lying to Congress about using cash from arms sales to Iran to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Abrams was later pardoned by George H.W. Bush. As Abrams began to speak, Omar cut him off.

“It wasn’t a question,” she said.

“It was an attack,” Abrams said, raising his voice.

Abrams's utterly indignant expression, enraged that anyone — ANYONE, let alone a Muslim woman of color — would dare ask him to his face about his record is priceless. https://t.co/hrC121KKRC

— Ali Gharib (@Ali_Gharib) February 13, 2019

“That was not a question. Thank you for your participation,” Omar replied, as she turned to one of the most brutal human rights violations on Abrams’ record:

”On February 8, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about U.S. policy in El Salvador. In that hearing, you dismissed as Communist propaganda [the] report about the massacre of El Mozote, in which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as 2 years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those troops bragged about raping 12-year-old girls before they killed them. You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a ‘fabulous achievement.’ Yes or no, do you still think so?”

“From the day that President [Jose] Duarte was elected in a free election, to this day,” Abrams said, slamming a pointer finger on the table, “El Salvador has been a democracy. That’s a fabulous achievement.”

Duarte was appointed president of the military junta and served from 1980 to 1982. He was then ousted. The election that Abrams referenced to was in 1984, three years after the El Mozote massacre.

“Even with Mr. Duarte’s election, the military was widely viewed as the country’s most powerful institution, through which wealthy Salvadoran families traditionally wielded oligarchic power,” The New York Times wrote in his obituary in 1990.

“Yes or no, do you think that massacre was a fabulous achievement that happened under our watch?” Omar asked.

“That is a ridiculous question—” Abrams began.

“Yes or no?” Omar asked.

“No. … I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack, which is not a question,” Abrams said.

Omar then turned to Venezuela, asking whether civilians would be protected there. “Does the interest of the United States include protecting human rights and include protecting people against genocide?” she asked.

“That is always the position of the United States,” Abrams said.

As Omar suggested when she began, it’s hard to take his words at face value. Jon Schwartz wrote at The Intercept:

The choice of Abrams sends a clear message to Venezuela and the world: The Trump administration intends to brutalize Venezuela, while producing a stream of unctuous rhetoric about America’s love for democracy and human rights. Combining these two factors — the brutality and the unctuousness — is Abrams’s core competency.

Watch Omar and Abrams’ exchange in the hearing:

Can California Revolutionize Rape-Kit Testing?

On a warm Friday night in May 2008, as a young woman and her friend got into a car in Berkeley, Calif., a stranger approached and held a gun to her head. He got into the back seat and ordered her to drive until she reached a dead-end street. There, he first raped the older teenager, and then the younger one.

After the assault, the teens went to a hospital, where the older one agreed to complete a rape kit so that DNA evidence from the attack could be collected from her body.

Had her rape kit been tested right away, it would immediately have revealed that her attacker was a California resident with a long criminal history, according to a 2016 report published by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Instead, her kit sat on a shelf in the Berkeley Police Department’s evidence room until 2014, when it was finally processed by a crime lab.

As a result of the long delay, the perpetrator remained free, and he raped another woman in 2015.

State Sen. Connie Leyva, who represents parts of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, wants to make sure that what happened to the young women in Berkeley never happens again. On the first day of California’s 2019-2020 legislative session, she introduced Senate Bill 22 (SB 22), which would require law enforcement agencies and forensic labs to test rape kits within a specific time frame. Twenty-three states have already passed similar legislation. If Leyva and sexual violence advocates across the state have their way, by the end of 2019, California will be the 24th.

“After having been raped and then undergoing an invasive rape kit exam, it is outrageous that a survivor would be led to believe that their rape kit would be tested promptly and then have it sit untested for months or years,” Levya said after introducing the bill. “Each untested rape kit represents a person, and I will not rest until we fully ensure justice for survivors.”

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The bill introduced by Levya—which would require law enforcement agencies to submit rape kits to crime labs within 20 days of collection and crime labs to test the kits within 120 days of receipt—is not new to California legislators. Last September, lawmakers in both chambers unanimously passed an identical piece of legislation—SB 1449. A few weeks later, it arrived on the desk of then-Gov. Jerry Brown. Instead of signing, he vetoed it.

In his veto message, Brown said he supported the goal of SB 1449 but believed the state should find out how many untested rape kits exist before it moves forward with mandatory testing. To that end, the same day he vetoed SB 1449, he signed AB 3118, which will require medical facilities, law enforcement agencies and crime labs to identify and count all untested rape kits in their possession. The law went into effect in January; the audit is expected to be completed by July.

The governor’s move rattled legislators and advocates. “I was absolutely shocked that he vetoed the bill, especially because the bill had gotten out of both houses without a single ‘no’ vote, so it was clearly a bipartisan issue,” Levya told Truthdig. She added that she feels the message he posted when he vetoed the bill was insincere. “It’s really an apples and oranges situation,” she said. The aim of the audit is to establish how many previously collected rape kits have sat on shelves, untested. The bill Levya has pushed for, the one vetoed by Brown and recently reintroduced as SB 22, would ensure that all kits collected in the future are tested within a few months. “My bill would make sure [a backlog] never happens again.”

For advocates like Ilse Knecht, the rape kit backlog reflects a decades-long unwillingness by police and the criminal justice system to prioritize sexual violence and the well-being of survivors. Knecht is director of policy and advocacy at the Joyful Heart Foundation, which works to support survivors of sexual and domestic violence, in part through an initiative called End the Backlog.

The reasons for the backlog are manifold and complex, Knecht told Truthdig. Nationally, many jurisdictions do not have comprehensive, written policies for processing and testing rape kits, which means that decisions are made on an ad hoc or case-by-case basis. Law enforcement officials often lack training in how sexual assault trauma manifests, which means they may make assumptions about whether survivors are telling the truth, which can bias their decisions about which kits are worth testing. Moreover, crime labs and police may lack funds to test and track kits effectively. “It all really does come down to where a department puts sexual assault in their priority list,” Knecht said.

Before the advent of rape kits, there was no standard process for collecting the forensic evidence often left on people’s bodies after an assault. That changed in the 1970s. Emboldened by the women’s rights movement, survivors became more willing to report sexual violence and to challenge the stereotypes and assumptions about the circumstances of assault and how trauma manifests. It was an assault survivor named Martha Goddard, according to CNN, who spearheaded the effort to determine the best uniform way to collect evidence. She also successfully pushed for cops, prosecutors and hospitals to adopt the use of rape kits and recognize their significance.

The first kit was utilized in September 1978, according the Chicago Tribune, and although training for nurses and doctors has improved since then, the evidence collection process remains incredibly invasive. Although kits vary by state, a nurse or doctor often begins by scraping under the survivor’s fingernails. Later, survivors have to undress above an evidence collection sheet and their clothes are bagged and sealed. A black light is used to scan their bodies for sperm and other genetic material. In the last steps, swabs are taken from the person’s mouth, vagina or anus. Because rape kits must generally be collected within 48 hours of an assault, survivors tend to be in the first throes of the trauma they’ve experienced, making the process of evidence collection especially harrowing.

Most assault survivors are willing to undergo this procedure for one reason: They hope evidence will be collected to hold their perpetrator responsible. Patti Giggans is the executive director of the Los Angeles organization Peace over Violence, which supports survivors of sexual and domestic violence and engages in prevention work. “Once you go through this arduous, very intimate, invasive exam, it’s important that you know that you’re doing it for a reason,” she told Truthdig.

In addition to the backlog bill, Sen. Levya has successfully pressed for the passage of a host of other legislation to address sexual violence in California, including SB 820, which was signed by Brown last September. The bill prohibits public and private employers in the state from requiring workers to sign nondisclosure agreements when they settle sexual harassment claims.

Not all of Levya’s initiatives have garnered unanimous support from progressives. In 2016, the Justice for Victims Act was signed into law, eliminating the statute of limitations for rape and felony sex crimes in California. Although the legislation won unanimous approval by both the California Senate and Assembly, it was opposed by some civil society groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

When the law was being debated, Natasha Minsker, director of the ACLU’s California Center for Advocacy and Policy, told the Los Angeles Times that the statute of limitations was created for a reason. “When a case is prosecuted literally decades after the event, it becomes much more … difficult to prove that you are wrongfully accused,” she said. For some progressives, eliminating the statute of limitations threatens to undermine the rights of criminal defendants in an already broken and unequal system.

California has been the site of several debates about how to balance criminal justice reform with the rights of survivors, but almost everyone agrees—at least in principle—that rape kit testing should happen quickly, and with as much transparency as possible. In 2017, the state passed legislation requiring law enforcement agencies and forensic labs to use the state’s online evidence collection system, so that the location and testing status of all newly collected kits could be easily tracked. The same year, another bill passed that gave survivors the right to know the status and location of their kits. AB 3118 went into effect this month, and all untested rape kits in the state should be identified and counted by the summer.

With new leadership in Sacramento, Giggans, Levya, Knecht and other lawmakers and advocates are hopeful that SB 22 will not only be passed by both chambers, but signed into law. But even if it is, there is more work to be done. Knecht told Truthdig that once the backlog is tallied, legislators will have to make sure that there’s a plan and enough funds in place to make sure all rape kits are tested. She is also pushing for California to make other changes to its existing tracking system, so that survivors can track where their rape kit with the same ease as people in law enforcement.

But for now, Knecht and other advocates and legislators are focused on securing the next key win. “Getting SB 22 passed is our top priority this year,” she said.

Track the progress of SB 22 on the California State Legislature’s website here.

Danny Glover: The U.S. Redefines the Term ‘Dictator’ as It Sees Fit

What follows is a conversation between actor Danny Glover 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.

In the State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Trump reiterated his recognition of the opposition leader Juan Guaido in Venezuela, who is a self-declared president, he claims, of Venezuela. He also deemed that Venezuela–now, this is President Trump–he also deemed that Venezuela is a socialist country saying, that its economic crisis proves that socialism does not work. Meanwhile, more countries recognize self-proclaimed Juan Guiado as the president of Venezuela and have pledged humanitarian aid to him for assisting Venezuelans. The U.S. has promised 20 million dollars, Colombia 40 million dollars, and Canada 53 million dollars. Venezuela’s President Maduro is rejecting the aid, saying “We do not need charity, we want everyone to release Venezuelan governments’ billions of dollars that are held in assets all over the world released.” And these funds have been used as sanctions against Venezuela so it cannot assist its own people.

Joining me now here in the studio to discuss the latest developments is the renowned actor and activist, Danny Glover.

DANNY GLOVER: Thank you very much, Sharmini. Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES: Danny, you have a very special history with Venezuela, and with the Chavez government previously. You were invited–you were a regular visitor with Chavez. You were a friend of Chavez. Since Chavez has died, you have also, on the invitation of the Venezuelan government, have visited Venezuela many times. And I say all of this, A, for transparency, and B, for over a decade and a half, you have built up your expertise, your knowledge, your insight, understanding of the crises that Venezuela has been experiencing during this long period of Chavismo. And I think it’s important for us, and for people on the left, to have an honest conversation about the way in which we defend Venezuela. And I say we because I myself, in the interest of transparency, worked with President Chavez for four and a half years at Miraflores, and am someone who very much believed in the revolution and what was possible in terms of another world that Venezuela was trying to forge at the time.

And so, with that in mind, and this history and the knowledge and the advice you yourself has given to the Venezuelan government, particularly in light of Afro-Venezuelans holding up their human rights and how to advance the rightful situation, rightful interests of citizens of Afro descendants in Venezuela. You have worked on all of these issues. Now, I want to ask you–and to that history I want to add that you’re also a human rights advocate for not only people here in the United States but all over the world. You’ve traveled throughout Latin America, you have defended people. So with that history and being an American, how do you feel and how do you actually respond to your government and many European countries, and now many Latin American countries, recognizing self-proclaimed Juan Guiado as the president of Venezuela?

DANNY GLOVER: Well, with all due respect to any analysis of Venezuela, we have to go back a little ways. The planning for the Conference on Racism and Xenophobia took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001. It had been years of planning, it had been movements relative to Afro-Descendants, changes that have occurred after the end of the military dictatorships in the respective countries in Latin America. So we go back. This renewed, this explosion of energy and democracy, democratic principles and all those things, adjusting to the past wrongs that have been done through the military dictatorships and historically throughout Latin America.

I mean, when we look at that, then on top of that we have the World Social Forum, The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 2003, my first time to go to Brazil and one of the first times in the beginning of a long term relationship with Latin America, where we saw so many things happening. We saw things were happening in Bolivia, Evo Morales came out of the struggle against privatizing the water in Bolivia, and you can go on and on and on. You had Lula da Silva, who had run many times for president and won. And all these new changes that were happening, it seemed to be a new nexus around real transformative changes, relationships, nation to nation relationships. CARICOM, Petro Caribe, all these different, new, the idea of the bank of the South.

All these ideas were set in motion at this particular time. It’s an explosion of people’s energy, a repudiation of the neoliberal paradigm that they had suffered through, and the exploitation of the natural resources, the exploitation of indigenous people, et cetera. All of it was slave-owned here. And at that particular point in time–and I’m trying to assess all of this, because we talk about Venezuela, but we see what’s happening in Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, which had one coup in 1973, now it’s moved further to the right, et cetera.

SHARMINI PERIES: Brazil…

DANNY GLOVER: Brazil, which has moved further to the right. And the most dangerous, the elements who are most endangered are the most progressive, most enlightened parts of the Brazilian transformation, of the landless movement, MST. And that movement has placed more than 400,000 families on vacant lands and has transformed the relationship that not only citizens have with the nation-state, but citizens have with themselves as well. So this whole thing, this whole thing that we’re watching, we watched and we saw this, we witnessed, we were drawn to it. The left may have criticized parts of it, it didn’t go far enough. What was explained as socialism may have been considered to be social-democratic, et cetera. But this movement was in process and everything else.

At the same time, all these conspiratorial forces were there to try to undermine it, to limit its effectiveness and subvert it. And those things were happening. We see this in Venezuela especially, because the ideas came out of Venezuela because Venezuela is not a country of 200 million people, so it’s difficult to get a consensus among 200 million people. It’s a small country. So the sample size of building two million homes, of training doctors, of having doctors service communities, the barrios and other communities that had been disenfranchised, all was doable on the way. To eradicate literacy, all this was doable in a sense. So all these things which we would think of in the world were necessary demands for the human existence and their progression in their lives and everything, those things were happening right here.

So what we see now, in a brutal attempt, whether it finds itself in the illegal imprisonment of Lula da Silva or the illegal coup that occurred, the legislative coup that happened with Dilma Rousseff, all these things are happening right now. And as we get more and more information about what’s just happened, as you share the information about the “humanitarian aid” that’s provided. Now what you’ve done is you’ve taken the billions of dollars that rightfully belong to the Venezuelan people, and what you’ve done is you’ve taken those millions of dollars, you’re putting sanctions on it, they can’t use their own money, their own resources. And then you come as this knight in shining armor to save them and everything with a few million dollars of “humanitarian aid.” We don’t know where that money goes to you. All these.

But this is a very, very concise plan, a plan that was laid out with certain contingencies and certain possibilities and always adjusting to the dynamics that were happening internally in the country here. And I think that’s the point. We could argue about Maduro, what he did, what he didn’t do, we can go onto that. But for one thing, we have to take into the fact the sanctions, the initial sanctions placed by the Obama administration, which interestingly enough, in a sense, included simply just those people who were in governance and everything, those people who were part of the governmental apparatus. But at the same time, now he’s moved to attack the people in direct, specific ways. The hyperinflation, we could make and arguments about what the Venezuelans could have done in terms of dealing with inflation, and essentially what has turned to hyperinflation, which in some sense is the death nail of any country with hyperinflation.

You can’t get anything done. The black market, which dictates a great deal of how currency flow is and everything else. So whatever we talk about, this becomes disproportionate. The danger that we have now and the danger that we see is a full-scale conflict which will decimate not simply the gains that were made by this action called the Bolivarian Revolution over the last over the last 20 years. This is the attempt to kill that, is what is on the table and had always been on the table. Power always, in this sense, this corruptive, dangerous power that this country has always attempted to diminish people’s expectations. I don’t care if it’s the Mayan Indians Guatemala, I don’t care if it’s those who fought for independence, the Sandinistas forming independence and won their war. Whatever it is, it’s to diminish their expectations.

So how do we talk about it? Yes, it’s disappointing. We’ve been on this, the Center for Economic Policy and Research, other organizations have been on this 24/7 for some time, trying to find a way in which we can push congressional leaders, push certain people to the point of first of all questioning the historic relationship that the U.S. has had with Latin America, and trying to find a new relationship with Latin America. And as I listen to this–and we talk about conspiracies and everything else, but there is a conspiracy. Whatever the conspiracy is, there’s a conspiracy undermine the will of the people, and that has happened, the will of the majority of the people. They delegitimized the elections when the Carter Institute said that “these are the best elections in the world.” I mean, we’ve studied these elections. There’s been, books, reports, they’ve reported before Congress or whatever that “this the best election of all.” So any way to undermine this, because there’s a deeper pathology here. And it may be all we do might not be enough.

SHARMINI PERIES: Let’s talk about that pathology, the deeper pathology you’re talking about. It is absolutely clear that countries that have supported and recognized Juan Guiado as the president of Venezuela has a certain interest in Venezuela. Now, I can say to you myself that Canada has a particular interest in Venezuela, and that’s a financial one, that’s a trade one. They actually own a number of the leases to the gold mines. It’s not only oil. Canada has a lot of oil, Canada is not interested in the oil, but they have interests and leases in gold mines at nickel mines, Bauxite, there are diamond-rich mines. And all of this is what’s driving say Canadian policy and interests of the Lima group and why now Canada is doing the bidding for Donald Trump and for John Bolton and others. But talk a little bit about the interests, the capital interests driving foreign policy here.

DANNY GLOVER: Well, for a long time, we think about the nation-state and everything, but the nation-state in so many in so many ways has dissolved into relationships that purely depend upon multinational corporations. Corporations, in some sense– David Korten wrote a book, Corporations Rule the World. They dictate policy, they can create a currency crisis that destabilizes the economy anywhere they want to do this. That’s the issue. So the nation-state, now, in some sense is represented by these corporate interests which have the interests in raw materials. And certainly, we can look at the world. Of the main issues is that perhaps Africa has never had the kind of clear because of the role colonialism played. And because there was no major figure like Simon Bolivar, who came in and expressed a certain identity in terms of Latin America and peoples in South America as well, because it wasn’t there that it has the same problem.

Look at the Congo. We sit around and it’s as if the Congo doesn’t exist, as if the Congo doesn’t have three billion people who have been killed in the Congo. And it’s been kind of acceptable or acknowledgment that has occurred in the Congo, but it’s Africa, and Africa, with all of its so-called disfunctionalism and everything else. So the same thing is happening. But there’s a strong currency within the way that Latin Americans see themselves. You find it in every aspect of the cultural life, the poetry, the great writers who talked about this certain kind of identity and sense of their own entitlement and self. And basically, the Bolivarian Revolution centered on Simon Bolivar, who was in some sense, in some ways, the godfather of this sense of determination and independence that it resonates in.

So the question is, what happens in these internal wars? What will happen if there’s a civil war in Venezuela and what impact would that civil war have on the rest of the region, particularly fragile countries who are struggling with themselves? Small Uruguay, three million people trying to find their answers with answers within their own new identity and relationship with Bolivia. What impact does that have on Bolivia now and Evo Morales? And we see all this. And what impact does that have on Caribbean countries as well?

SHARMINI PERIES: Speaking of Caribbean countries, CARICOM came out in a very strong statement denouncing the self proclamation of Juan Guiado as president and they recognize Maduro as the president of Venezuela, and denounced, at the UN Security Council meeting, anything but the recognition of Maduro. Now, except Haiti, Haiti recognized Juan Guiado, and this was very interesting to me particularly given the history that you’re talking about, which is Simon Bolivar, Haiti, and the alliance with Venezuela. And you are a scholar, you have followed what’s going on in Haiti for a very long time. Why this departure now?

DANNY GLOVER: Well, I mean, Haiti had–as short-lived as it was–1990, 1989 they elected a priest, a charismatic priest who talked about Haiti and his own responsibility to the Haitians, who revitalized the idea of the Artibonite River and Valley should be a rice-growing, should provide, and had been for most of its existence as a nation, self-sufficiently provided rice for the Haitian people, they were able to grow there, they became self-sufficient in rice. Now that we’re importing rice from Iowa and other places because of the new arrangements, the new structural adjustments, or the new arrangements that the neoliberal paradigm, they find themselves depending upon imported rice and everything. We see all these countries. We see Mexico and what has happened in terms of just corn itself. The corn comes from other places in the world, and poor farmers cannot feed themselves, cannot produce corn at a price that is profitable, where they can maintain their life and everything else and keep from starving. So all those things.

One picture of this is the picture of Venezuela with I think the most egalitarian usage of national resources that we’ve seen in a long while. I mean, in that period of time of taking those resources and turning the resources into places where they benefit as people and everything else is a dangerous precedent. What do we draw from this? We can talk about all the liberal ideas that we want and all the ideas of independence and self-sufficiency and everything else. But when a country attempts to become self-sufficient in its own way, and thereby its self-sufficiency allows them to place demands on themselves and place demands on those who attempt to alter and change that, that’s another reality. The game is inconclusive. There are many things that can happen in this whole process. You know. And maybe there could be some sort of arrangement in which we don’t have the eradicating of all the things that have been so dear and have been so accomplished, so many things have been accomplished in this moment. It’s 20 years. It’s a short period of time, 20 years. It’s very discouraging.

SHARMINI PERIES: One last question to you, Danny. Much of the international media, much of the international community, tries to portray Nicolas Maduro as a dictator. If you were to do a search on the Internet in coverage of Venezuela, you will often find the word President Maduro followed by “dictator” or “Dictator Maduro.” Is there any evidence to such a claim as President Nicolas Maduro is a dictator?

DANNY GLOVER: No more than it was President Chavez as a dictator. People elected him, he was elected. We seem to redefine or define dictator in ways that are useful. So you drive it into people’s consciousness. This pathology, if you drive that into people’s consciousness, that a person is a dictator, then in some sense, they accept that in ways, subconsciously, unconsciously, because it’s been drummed into their memory. No matter all the information that refutes that, whether there was free elections, whether there was transparent elections, whatever. The question is that, the question is always going to be what they hear, what they perceive. And I find that people that I respect on the Hill have used that platform in their culture. And like I said, I can only-yeah. But he’s not, no more than Hugo Chavez was aa dictator.

And same thing, they say maybe the fact that they are entitled to certain services, that they as citizens–and active citizens. These were active citizens. These weren’t citizens–they were active citizens in the course of building something, building something they believed in. And like I said, because of the vast amount of resources, because it’s only 25, 26 million people, the stakes were higher in some sense. The possibilities were higher in some sense. And for us who were able to watch that and to watch them redefine nation to nation relationships, whether it was in Argentina, a larger population, whether it was small Caribbean islands, whether it’s the ideas that spun out of it as a possibility where there’s a relationship.

But like I said, there’s something else deeper here too. And that is the other place that is on the hit list is a country that had the sixtieth anniversary of their own revolution. And it’s got embargoes, sanctions and everything else for all this time and perhaps have found new partners in China, despite the fact that there is now, because there were doctors in Venezuela, doctors in Brazil, doctors in other places in Latin America, doctors around the world in which they play this marvelous role of trying not only training, but supporting doctors. This is Cuba. Training and supporting doctors. Now they’re pushed and put in a crunch as well. And there’s large migrations of Cubans because of the lockdown on Venezuela, the lockdown on the Brazil, the lockdown on all those previous partners that they had in the hemisphere. Now it will have an impact on Cuba. And certainly, who knows what’s going to happen at this particular point in time?

SHARMINI PERIES: I’ve been speaking with Danny Glover. He’s an activist and actor. I thank you so much for joining us today.

This May Be the Only Viable Alternative to ‘Medicare for All’

Affordable health care providing universal access has long been a holy grail of the Democratic Party. Like the grail itself, however, many have tried to obtain it, and all have failed in the efforts.

Even after the implementation of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, American health care is still neither particularly affordable (especially after repeated Republican efforts under the Trump administration to gut its main elements), nor is the access universal. Unlike in most other countries, U.S. health care is still largely predicated on employment, despite the insistence of many that it is a “universal right.”

On the other hand, a wholesale restructuring of the existing employee-based patchwork system with a single-payer Medicare for All system seems to be equally challenging without a huge Democratic majority in Congress and a sane operator in the White House. Despite growing political support (helped by an apparent endorsement by former President Obama), it is still not a goal universally shared by Democrats in the present congressional term, if recent statements by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are anything to go by. A tough row to hoe.

While we wait and perhaps agitate for a better health care system, it’s worth examining other potential remedies that can improve what we currently have coming from a different political logic that the current political alignment may find even slightly palatable. Consider, for example, that the Trump administration has some kinds of price regulations in mind with regard to pharmaceutical prices, regulating them against what they cost on average in other countries. “Lower costs” and “administrative simplicity” have currency in this political climate. If Medicare for All remains a bridge too far, what about the concept of the “all-payer system”?

In general terms, as Sarah Kliff, a leading health care journalist, has highlighted, an all-payer system means that all payers pay the same price for the same procedure or drug everywhere, so issues such as the asymmetry of bargaining power (which exists in the current system, say, between a consumer and a health insurance conglomerate or HMO) cease to matter.

Of course, $1 means different things to people of different economic levels. But the variance in price for the same medical services is gigantic, and the power of fixed prices would steamroll many of the worst elements of the system we currently have in place. Consider that the taxi businesses in many cities profitably operate on fixed rates, as do health care systems in other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

How would it work? As the economist Uwe Reinhardt puts it: “All private and public insurance programs in a region would pay all physicians, hospitals, and other providers of health care on the basis of a uniform fee schedule common to all payers, and the cost of uncompensated care rendered to uninsured patients would be covered by a separate fund.” In essence, the goal is to ensure that everybody pays the exact same price and the same rate for any procedure or medicine, regardless of where you live or work. And everybody is covered.

Decades of “reform” in this country have demonstrated conclusively that simply tinkering with the existing system won’t work. America’s health care provision delivers inferior outcomes relative to those in other countries, which do provide universal health care coverage. And for a country that supposedly has the most market-savvy consumers in the world, U.S. health care furnishes remarkably lousy value for money for them, as the OECD’s “Health Care at a Glance 2011” highlighted:

“The same set of hospital interventions (including the normal delivery of a baby, a Caesarean section, a hip or knee replacement, etc.) cost 60 percent more in the United States than in a selection of other countries. Similarly, 50 high-selling pharmaceuticals cost 60 percent more in the United States than in Europe. …Overall, therefore, high prices are the main reason for high health care spending in the United States.”

Prices remain so high because the overall system (outside of Medicare) remains largely administered via a for-profit private health insurance oligopoly, and pharmaceutical companies, which preserve margins via predatory price gouging, and literally kill people in the process because of lack of affordability.

As a result of these longstanding failures, “single-payer” proposals such as Medicare for All have finally started to gain serious policy traction, especially within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Single-payer can take many forms, but in essence, it is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency provides health care financing (via taxation or social insurance charges). But even though publicly funded, the delivery of that care remains in private hands. This is fundamentally what Medicare is, and the goal of politicians such as Senator Bernie Sanders is to expand Medicare provision to all Americans—Medicare for All.

In health care, the right is ideologically fixated on the idea that the answer to predatory pricing is more competition (which can’t work in imperfect medical markets, for reasons highlighted by economist Paul Krugman). By contrast, a large number of elected Democrats, both at the federal and state levels, want to do it through single payer, which has worked in other countries where the insurance and pharmaceutical industries don’t represent 15 percent of GDP.

Unfortunately, the fact that Big Pharma and a large private health insurance oligopoly exist in the United States is precisely what makes Medicare for All tricky to enact. With each reform threat, the two groups—Big Pharma and the health insurance industry—quickly mobilize opposition in Congress (to whom they have generously donated precisely for this purpose), much as Wall Street banks thwarted wholesale financial reform in the wake of the 2008 crisis, even when those banks were at death’s door.

All-payer systems have many of the same virtues of Medicare for All, particularly the reduction of costs and minimal overhead and complexity. The key feature with all-payer systems is that everybody pays the same government-set price for the same drug or procedure, which keeps costs low (as do single-payer systems). But as Kliff notes, the key distinction from the Medicare for All proposal (or other forms of single-payer) is that “Single payer does this by eliminating private plans for one government plan. All-payer rate setting gets there by setting one price that every health insurer pays for any given medical procedure.” But in banding together, a country’s insurers can achieve cost savings comparable to nations where single-payer is operative, argues Kliff, who cites the international pricing data to illustrate the magnitude of the price differentials currently existing between the United States and these other countries.

The virtue of the all-payer system in contrast to single-payer is that the former allows for the existence of multiple insurers—government, private commercial, nonprofit—thereby avoiding the politically toxic threat (largely exploited by the right) of a big socialistic government, via rationing and “death panels,” taking full control of your existing health care, and destroying it in the process.

States such as Maryland already use this kind of system when they negotiate with hospitals, and several European health systems, such as Germany and Switzerland, have, as Kliff illustrates, “long used an all-payer approach on a regional basis for physicians, hospitals, pharmaceutical products, and various other providers of health care.” So has Japan, an aging society that arguably has an even more acute demographic problem than the United States. Kliff cites a study of that country’s all-payer rate setting program, published in Health Affairs in 2011, which found that “the share of the country’s economy devoted to health care grew 0.8 percentage points between 2000 and 2008. During the same time period, American health care grew 2.7 percentage points.”

The “all-payer” system, then, cuts less against the grain of the existing American health care architecture. The government does not eliminate the private health insurers but merely sets the standard prices that providers can charge. In countries where it currently exists, negotiated rates are established over a medium-term time frame, usually two to three years, by an independent rate commission with representatives of providers and payers. And because of the existence of a uniformly imposed fee schedule, the cost of, say, an appendectomy, or a cancer treatment, remains the same, regardless of one’s insurer, the hospital, or the state in which one lives, so administrative burdens are significantly reduced, as is the cumbersome complexity of our current health care system.

Of course, the stringent cost controls built into all-payer are exactly why the for-profit insurers and pharmaceutical companies will still vigorously oppose its introduction. Both industries thrive on complexity and minimal efforts to contain spiraling costs, which fatten their considerable margins. Their usual justification for these exorbitant profit margins, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry, is that intense price controls stifle innovation. But some of the most innovative developments in health care treatments have arisen in countries that tightly constrain costs, such as France or Switzerland (which also have thriving pharmaceutical sectors). And as the Commonwealth Fund has illustrated, the lack of price controls hasn’t exactly given the United States a massive qualitative edge in health care provision:

“1. The U.S. ranked last place among the 11 countries for health outcomes, equity and quality, despite having the highest per capita health earnings.


The U.S. also had the highest rate of mortality amenable to healthcare, meaning more Americans die from poor care quality than any other country involved in the study.
Poor access to primary care in the U.S. has contributed to inadequate chronic disease prevention and management, delayed diagnoses and safety concerns, among other issues.”

It is also worth noting that like many of their counterparts in other industries, U.S. pharmaceutical companies in particular are increasingly deploying their substantial profits not toward R&D, but share buybacks, which also undermines the justification for the exorbitant prices of their products. Big Pharma’s other rationale for high prices—namely, to recoup the amount of time and cost deployed toward the research undertaken—also conveniently ignores the fact that many of their “pioneer” drugs were originally devised in academic laboratories with considerable federal government support, only then to be patented and licensed to private companies, as former Congressman Henry Waxman notes in a 2017 report, “Getting to the Root of High Prescription Drug Prices: Drivers and Potential Solutions.”

To get around the likely opposition to all-payer in the United States, Uwe Reinhardt has suggested taxing prices that vary too much from the Medicare or Medicaid reference prices, as opposed to banning private health insurance altogether, as California Senator (and presidential candidate) Kamala Harris recently suggested (and subsequently walked back). Regulators can just extend the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services fee schedules to the private sector. After a few rich specialists retire, and the hollowness of the claims of Big Pharma are exposed, we can settle down to a new normal of non-predatory pricing as occurs in the rest of the OECD. Only if for political reasons we discover we can’t have direct all-payer regulation of medical prices (which most advanced countries no matter their insurance systems have) might there be a need to resort to Plan B, namely, a single-payer system in which government or large organizations use their monopsony power to set prices.

To the complaint that even all-payer introduces a huge new level of “statist” government control antithetical to the “values” of America’s market economy, it is worth noting that it is only “statist” in the sense that electric utility rate commissions are statist. But it doesn’t require “socializing” anything, any more than utility regulations do.

The optics of health care are changing. Given the hard political realities of the United States, what is most likely to happen in the next 10 years?

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Israeli Leader Hopes Summit Brings Arab Ties Out in the Open

WARSAW, Poland — The Mideast conference in Poland that started Wednesday offers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an opportunity to flaunt in public what he has long boasted about happening behind the scenes — his country’s improved relations with some Gulf Arab nations.

Several Gulf dignitaries are expected to attend in a potential show of force against uninvited Iran. But the Palestinians are urging a boycott of the conference, and it remains to be seen whether Arab officials will make any public overtures to Netanyahu without a major concession to the Palestinian cause, which still animates the Arab public.

The United States and Poland are sponsoring the conference in Warsaw, which they say is aimed at promoting peace and security in Mideast but appears to be mainly focused on isolating Iran.

Iran has denounced the gathering as an American anti-Iran “circus.” Russia has said it will not attend, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, is also skipping the event.

For the Trump administration, it is a high-profile occasion to gather all its Middle East allies. For Poland, it offers a chance to strengthen ties with Washington as it seeks greater protection from Russia.

But the real winner could be Netanyahu, who has repeatedly stated that Israel has clandestinely developed good relations with several Arab states, despite a lack of official ties. Bringing such contacts out into the open would mark a major diplomatic coup, put a seal of approval on his goal of improving Israel’s standing in the world and provide a powerful photo-op for his re-election campaign ahead of the April vote in Israel.

Netanyahu’s office released a video Wednesday showing him meeting Oman’s foreign minister, Yusuf bin Alawi. Netanyahu, who visited Oman last October, called the invitation to the Gulf state “courageous” and said “many” countries are following Oman’s lead, hinting that additional meetings would take place during the conference.

Bin Alawi said people in the Middle East have “suffered a lot” because they stick to the past and said Wednesday’s meeting reflected a “new era.”

Before departing for Poland, Netanyahu told reporters on Tuesday the focus of the conference will be Iran, an issue he said “unites Israel, the United States, many countries in the world.”

Danny Danon, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, said his private contacts with Arab officials are far warmer than what is said in public.

“As of now, they are already cooperating with us,” he told reporters in Jerusalem recently. “We ask them to recognize us and not to be ashamed for using our technology or our defense systems.”

Israel has signed peace accords with Egypt and Jordan, but other Arab nations have refused to publicly improve relations without significant progress being made toward ending Israel’s half-century occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state.

But as shared concerns about Iran have overshadowed the Palestinian issue in recent years, ties that have long lingered in the shadows have begun to emerge.

Days after Netanyahu’s visit to Oman, two of his Cabinet ministers headed to the United Arab Emirates last fall for a security conference and to cheer on an Israeli delegation at a judo tournament — where the Israeli anthem was played after an Israeli competitor won gold.

Saudi Arabia, long rumored to have backdoor ties to Israel, lifted a decades-long ban on the use of its airspace for flights to Israel last spring. The leaders of the small Gulf nation of Bahrain have also expressed willingness to normalize relations.

Gulf Arab states have given less voice to their traditional antipathy toward Israel as they have grown increasingly fearful of Iran over its involvement in various regional conflicts and its support for various armed groups. Getting closer to Israel also helps them to curry favor in Washington.

But with Arab public opinion still strongly against normalization with Israel, this week’s conference is unlikely to produce warm engagement right away, said Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.

“Covert meetings already exist, and the ‘under-the-table’ relations are the world’s worst kept secret, so I don’t see what the Arabs would gain from shaking hands,” he said. “The point is to see everyone in the same room as a united front against Iran. But the Arab street is still nowhere near where the elites are regarding Israel, and too strong an embrace could draw fire.”

The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are scheduled to attend and meet with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It is unclear what their level of engagement will be with the Israeli delegation.

Netanyahu recently visited the Muslim-majority African nation of Chad to officially restore relations after 50 years and promised there would be more such visits and announcements soon.

President Donald Trump’s senior Mideast adviser, son-in-law Jared Kushner, has been working on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan for close to two years, but has not yet released details. U.S. officials say Kushner is expected to make some comments in Warsaw about the conflict, but Netanyahu said he doesn’t expect any discussion of the peace plan.

The Palestinians have pre-emptively rejected the plan, accusing the Trump White House of being unfairly biased toward Israel. They’ve also asked Arab countries to boycott or downgrade their representation at the conference in Poland.

“We view the Warsaw conference as a plot against the Palestinian cause,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said this week.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Saudi King Salman on Tuesday, who expressed his “permanent stand” in favor of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, according to the official Saudi news agency.

Further tempering expectations, an Israeli TV channel obtained what it said was a secret Foreign Ministry report concluding it was very unlikely Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel without a major concession to the Palestinians. The report, aired on Israel’s Channel 13 news, quotes a senior official as saying the narrow window for a breakthrough with the Saudis had closed.

Robert Reich: Trump’s Attacks on Warren Can’t Be Tolerated

Elizabeth Warren is one of the most talented politicians and policy leaders in America. We must not allow Trump or anyone else to “swift-boat” her because she identified herself as an American Indian three decades ago.

At worst, Warren may have stretched the bounds of the definition of whiteness. That’s understandable. She grew up in Oklahoma, a state created from Indian Territory. She probably witnessed the disrespect and occasional brutality that Native Americans were, and still are, subject to. Her own genetic test showed at least one Native American ancestor. She has stressed that she is not a member of a tribal nation.

Warren didn’t call Mexicans rapists. She didn’t call nations populated primarily by black or brown people “shitholes.” She didn’t assume all Muslims are terrorists. She didn’t characterize black neighborhoods as war zones. She didn’t assert that an American president was born in Africa. She has not sexually assaulted anyone. She has not paid hush money to prostitutes. She hasn’t insulted Native Americans by calling a leading politician “Pocahontas” and joking about the Trail of Tears in the 1830s.

Warren got no career benefit from her self-designation. At every step of her exceptional rise in the legal profession, those responsible for hiring her saw her as a white woman. The fact that she claimed Indian descent on a Texas bar form that was meant to be confidential is further evidence that her identification arose from sincere belief.

In a larger sense, our Native American heritage should be a point of national pride. Bill Clinton proudly claimed in 1998 that his grandmother was “one-quarter Cherokee.” I remember former Republican Senator Alan Simpson beaming proudly as he showed me an old family reunion photo in which several of the eldest attendees were Native Americans.

It’s far better for a presidential candidate to err on the side of racial or ethnic inclusiveness than for a president to whip the nation into a dangerous and delusional frenzy of racial or ethnic divisiveness.