Chris Hedges's Blog, page 389

This Radical Plan to Fund the ‘Green New Deal’ Just Might Work

With what author and activist Naomi Klein calls “galloping momentum,” the “Green New Deal” promoted by Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., appears to be forging a political pathway for solving all of the ills of society and the planet in one fell swoop. Her plan would give a House select committee “a mandate that connects the dots” between energy, transportation, housing, health care, living wages, a jobs guarantee and more. But even to critics on the left, it is merely political theater, because “everyone knows” a program of that scope cannot be funded without a massive redistribution of wealth and slashing of other programs (notably the military), which is not politically feasible.

That may be the case, but Ocasio-Cortez and the 22 representatives joining her in calling for a select committee also are proposing a novel way to fund the program, one that could actually work. The resolution says funding will come primarily from the federal government, “using a combination of the Federal Reserve, a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks, public venture funds and such other vehicles or structures that the select committee deems appropriate, in order to ensure that interest and other investment returns generated from public investments made in connection with the Plan will be returned to the treasury, reduce taxpayer burden and allow for more investment.”

A network of public banks could fund the Green New Deal in the same way President Franklin Roosevelt funded the original New Deal. At a time when the banks were bankrupt, he used the publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation as a public infrastructure bank. The Federal Reserve could also fund any program Congress wanted, if mandated to do so. Congress wrote the Federal Reserve Act and can amend it. Or the Treasury itself could do it, without the need to even change any laws. The Constitution authorizes Congress to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and that power has been delegated to the Treasury. It could mint a few trillion-dollar platinum coins, put them in its bank account and start writing checks against them. What stops legislators from exercising those constitutional powers is simply that “everyone knows” Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation will result. But will it? Compelling historical precedent shows that this need not be the case.

Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, has studied the hyperinflation question extensively. He writes that disasters such as Zimbabwe’s fiscal troubles were not due to the government printing money to stimulate the economy. Rather, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”

As long as workers and materials are available and the money is added in a way that reaches consumers, adding money will create the demand necessary to prompt producers to create more supply. Supply and demand will rise together and prices will remain stable. The reverse is also true. If demand (money) is not increased, supply and gross domestic product (GDP) will not go up. New demand needs to precede new supply.

The Public Bank Option: The Precedent of Roosevelt’s New Deal

Infrastructure projects of the sort proposed in the Green New Deal are “self-funding,” generating resources and fees that can repay the loans. For these loans, advancing funds through a network of publicly owned banks would not require taxpayer money and could actually generate a profit for the government. That was how the original New Deal rebuilt the country in the 1930s at a time when the economy was desperately short of money.

The publicly owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was a remarkable publicly owned credit machine that allowed the government to finance the New Deal and World War II without turning to Congress or the taxpayers for appropriations. First instituted in 1932 by President Herbert Hoover, the RFC was not called an infrastructure bank and was not even a bank, but it served the same basic functions. It was continually enlarged and modified by Roosevelt to meet the crisis of the times, until it became America’s largest corporation and the world’s largest financial organization. Its semi-independent status let it work quickly, allowing New Deal agencies to be financed as the need arose.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act of 1932 provided the financial organization with capital stock of $500 million and the authority to extend credit up to $1.5 billion (subsequently increased several times). The initial capital came from a stock sale to the U.S. Treasury. With those resources, from 1932 to 1957 the RFC loaned or invested more than $40 billion. A small part of this came from its initial capitalization. The rest was borrowed, chiefly from the government itself. Bonds were sold to the Treasury, some of which were then sold to the public, although most were held by the Treasury. All in all, the RFC ended up borrowing a total of $51.3 billion from the Treasury and $3.1 billion from the public.

In this arrangement, the Treasury was therefore the lender, not the borrower. As the self-funding loans were repaid, so were the bonds that were sold to the Treasury, leaving the RFC with a net profit. The financial organization was the lender for thousands of infrastructure and small-business projects that revitalized the economy, and these loans produced a total net income of $690,017,232 on the RFC’s “normal” lending functions (omitting such things as extraordinary grants for wartime). The RFC financed roads, bridges, dams, post offices, universities, electrical power, mortgages, farms and much more, and it funded all this while generating income for the government.

The Central Bank Option: How Japan Is Funding Abenomics with Quantitative Easing

The Federal Reserve is another Green New Deal funding option. The Fed showed what it can do with “quantitative easing” when it created the funds to buy $2.46 trillion in federal debt and $1.77 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, all without inflating consumer prices. The Fed could use the same tool to buy bonds earmarked for a Green New Deal, and because it returns its profits to the Treasury after deducting its costs, the bonds would be nearly interest-free. If they were rolled over from year to year, the government, in effect, would be issuing new money.

This is not just theory. Japan is actually doing it, without creating even the modest 2 percent inflation the government is aiming for. “Abenomics,” the economic agenda of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, combines central bank quantitative easing with fiscal stimulus (large-scale increases in government spending). Since Abe came into power in 2012, Japan has seen steady economic growth, and its unemployment rate has fallen by nearly half, yet inflation remains very low, at 0.7 percent. Social Security-related expenses accounted for 55 percent of general expenditure in Japan’s 2018 federal budget, and a universal health care insurance system is maintained for all citizens. Nominal GDP is up 11 percent since the end of the first quarter of 2013, a much better record than during the prior two decades of Japanese stagnation, and the Nikkei stock market is at levels not seen since the early 1990s, driven by improved company earnings. Growth remains below targeted levels, but according to Financial Times, this is because fiscal stimulus has actually been too small. While spending with the left hand, the government has been taking the money back with the right, increasing the sales tax from 5 percent to 8 percent.

Abenomics has been declared a success even by the once-critical International Monetary Fund. After Abe crushed his opponents in 2017, Noah Smith wrote in Bloomberg, “Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party has figured out a novel and interesting way to stay in power—govern pragmatically, focus on the economy and give people what they want.” Smith said everyone who wanted a job had one, small and midsize businesses were doing well; and the Bank of Japan’s unprecedented program of monetary easing had provided easy credit for corporate restructuring without generating inflation. Abe had also vowed to make both preschool and college free.

Not that all is idyllic in Japan. Forty percent of Japanese workers lack secure full-time employment and adequate pensions. But the point underscored here is that large-scale digital money-printing by the central bank to buy back the government’s debt, combined with fiscal stimulus by the government (spending on “what the people want”), has not inflated Japanese prices, the alleged concern preventing other countries from doing the same.

Abe’s novel economic program has done more than just stimulate growth. By selling its debt to its own central bank, which returns the interest to the government, the Japanese government has, in effect, been canceling its debt. Until recently, it was doing this at the rate of a whopping $720 billion per year. According to fund manager Eric Lonergan in a February 2017 article:

The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%). BOJ holdings are part of the consolidated government balance sheet. So its holdings are in fact the accounting equivalent of a debt cancellation. If I buy back my own mortgage, I don’t have a mortgage.

If the Federal Reserve followed suit and bought 40 percent of the U.S. national debt, it would be holding $8 trillion in federal securities, three times its current holdings from its quantitative easing programs. Yet liquidating a full 40 percent of Japan’s government debt has not triggered price inflation.

Filling the Gap Between Wages, Debt and GDP

Rather than stepping up its bond-buying, the Federal Reserve is now bent on “quantitative tightening,” raising interest rates and reducing the money supply by selling its bonds into the market in anticipation of “full employment” driving up prices. “Full employment” is considered to be 4.7 percent unemployment, taking into account the “natural rate of unemployment” of people between jobs or voluntarily out of work. But the economy has now hit that level and prices are not in the danger zone, despite nearly 10 years of “accommodative” monetary policy. In fact, the economy is not near true full employment nor full productive capacity, with GDP remaining well below both the long-run trend and the level predicted by forecasters a decade ago. In 2016, real per capita GDP was 10 percent below the 2006 forecast of the Congressional Budget Office, and it shows no signs of returning to the predicted level.

In 2017, U.S. GDP was $19.4 trillion. Assuming that sum is 10 percent below full productive capacity, the money circulating in the economy needs to be increased by another $2 trillion to create the demand to bring it up to full capacity. That means $2 trillion could be injected into the economy every year without creating price inflation. New supply would just be generated to meet the new demand, bringing GDP to full capacity while keeping prices stable.

This annual injection of new money can not only be done without creating price inflation, it actually needs to be done to reverse the massive debt bubble now threatening to propel the economy into another Great Recession. Moreover, the money can be added in such a way that the net effect will not be to increase the money supply. Virtually our entire money supply is created by banks as loans, and any money used to pay down those loans will be extinguished along with the debt. Other money will be extinguished when it returns to the government in the form of taxes. The mechanics of that process, and what could be done with another $2 trillion injected directly into the economy yearly, will be explored in Part 2 of this article.

Putin Calls on Cultural Leaders to Restrain Rap Music in Russia

MOSCOW — Alarmed by the growing popularity of rap among Russian youth, President Vladimir Putin wants cultural leaders to devise a means of controlling, rather than banning, the popular music.

Putin says “if it is impossible to stop, then we must lead it and direct it.”

But Putin said at a St. Petersburg meeting with cultural advisers Saturday that attempts to ban artists from performing will have an adverse effect and bolster their popularity.

Putin noted that “rap is based on three pillars: sex, drugs and protest.” But he is particularly concerned with drug themes prevalent in rap, saying “this is a path to the degradation of the nation.”

He said “drug propaganda” is worse than cursing.

Putin’s comments come amid a crackdown on contemporary music that evoked Soviet-era censorship of the arts.

Last month, a rapper known as Husky, whose videos have garnered more than 6 million views on YouTube, was arrested after he staged an impromptu performance when his show was shut down in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.

The 25-year-old rapper, known for his lyrics about poverty, corruption and police brutality, was preparing to take to the stage on Nov. 21 when local prosecutors warned the venue that his act had elements of what they termed “extremism.”

Husky climbed onto a car, surrounded by hundreds of fans, and chanted “I will sing my music, the most honest music!” before he was taken away by police.

On Nov. 30, rapper Gone.Fludd announced two concert cancellations, citing pressure from “every police agency you can imagine,” while the popular hip hop artist Allj cancelled his show in the Arctic city of Yakutsk after receiving threats of violence.

Other artists have been affected as well — pop sensation Monetochka and punk band Friendzona were among those who had their concerts shut down by the authorities last month.

___

Francesca Ebel in Moscow contributed.

Nations at Climate Talks Back Universal Emissions Rules

KATOWICE, Poland — After two weeks of bruising negotiations, officials from almost 200 countries agreed Saturday on universal, transparent rules that will govern efforts to cut emissions and curb global warming.

The deal agreed upon at U.N. climate talks in Poland enables countries to put into action the principles in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

But to the frustration of environmental activists and some countries who were urging more ambitious climate goals, negotiators delayed decisions on two key issues until next year in an effort to get a deal on them.

“Through this package, you have made a thousand little steps forward together,” said Michal Kurtyka, a senior Polish official chairing the talks.

He said while each individual country would likely find some parts of the agreement it didn’t like, efforts had been made to balance the interests of all parties.

“We will all have to give in order to gain,” he said. “We will all have to be courageous to look into the future and make yet another step for the sake of humanity.”

The talks in Poland took place against a backdrop of growing concern among scientists that global warming on Earth is proceeding faster than governments are responding to it. Last month, a study found that global warming will worsen disasters such as the deadly California wildfires and the powerful hurricanes that have hit the United States this year.

And a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, concluded that while it’s possible to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times, this would require a dramatic overhaul of the global economy, including a shift away from fossil fuels.

Alarmed by efforts to include this in the final text of the meeting, the oil-exporting nations of the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait blocked an endorsement of the IPCC report mid-way through this month’s talks in the Polish city of Katowice. That prompted uproar from vulnerable countries like small island nations and environmental groups.

The final text at the U.N. talks omits a previous reference to specific reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and merely welcomes the “timely completion” of the IPCC report, not its conclusions.

Last-minute snags forced negotiators in Katowice to go into extra time, after Friday’s scheduled end of the conference had passed without a deal.

One major sticking point was how to create a functioning market in carbon credits. Economists believe that an international trading system could be an effective way to drive down greenhouse gas emissions and raise large amounts of money for measures to curb global warming.

But Brazil wanted to keep the piles of carbon credits it had amassed under an old system that developed countries say wasn’t credible or transparent.

Among those that pushed back hardest was the United States, despite President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord and his promotion of coal as a source of energy.

“Overall, the U.S. role here has been somewhat schizophrenic — pushing coal and dissing science on the one hand, but also working hard in the room for strong transparency rules,” said Elliot Diringer of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a Washington think tank.

When it came to closing potential loopholes that could allow countries to dodge their commitments to cut emissions, “the U.S. pushed harder than nearly anyone else for transparency rules that put all countries under the same system, and it’s largely succeeded.”

“Transparency is vital to U.S. interests,” added Nathaniel Keohane, a climate policy expert at the Environmental Defense Fund. He noted that breakthrough in the 2015 Paris talks happened only after the U.S. and China agreed on a common framework for transparency.

“In Katowice, the U.S. negotiators have played a central role in the talks, helping to broker an outcome that is true to the Paris vision of a common transparency framework for all countries that also provides flexibility for those that need it,” said Keohane, calling the agreement “a vital step forward in realizing the promise of the Paris accord.”

Among the key achievements in Katowice was an agreement on how countries should report their greenhouses gas emissions and the efforts they’re taking to reduce them. Poor countries also secured assurances on getting greater predictability about financial support to help them cut emissions, adapt to inevitable changes such as sea level rises and pay for damages that have already happened.

“The majority of the rulebook for the Paris Agreement has been created, which is something to be thankful for,” said Mohamed Adow, a climate policy expert at Christian Aid. “But the fact countries had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the finish line shows that some nations have not woken up to the urgent call of the IPCC report” on the dire consequences of global warming.

A central feature of the Paris Agreement — the idea that countries will ratchet up their efforts to fight global warming over time — still needs to be proved effective, he said.

“To bend the emissions curve, we now need all countries to deliver these revised plans at the special U.N. Secretary General summit in 2019. It’s vital that they do so,” Adow said.

In the end, a decision on the mechanics of an emissions trading system was postponed to next year’s meeting. Countries also agreed to consider the issue of raising ambitions at a U.N. summit in New York next September.

Speaking hours before the final gavel, Canada’s Environment Minister Catherine McKenna suggested there was no alternative to such meetings if countries want to tackle global problems, especially at a time when multilateral diplomacy is under pressure from nationalism.

“The world has changed, the political landscape has changed,” she told The Associated Press. “Still you’re seeing here that we’re able to make progress, we’re able to discuss the issues, we’re able to come to solutions.”

___

Read more stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://www.apnews.com/Climate

‘Medicare for All’ Activists Condemn Affordable Care Act Decision

A federal judge’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) violates the U.S. Constitution alarmed healthcare advocates Friday, but left most unconcerned that the judge would succeed in taking away health coverage from 20 million Americans—and only served to bolster the argument for a Medicare for All system that would provide every American with the kind of free healthcare that’s available in other developed countries.

Handing down his ruling in a lawsuit filed this year by Republican governors and attorneys general, Federal District Court Judge Reed O’Connor said Friday night in Ft. Worth, Texas that the ACA’s individual mandate requiring all Americans to buy insurance is unconstitutional and cannot be considered a tax, invalidating the rest of the law.

Healthcare advocates quickly addressed the concern that the attack on the ACA could harm 133 million Americans who rely on the law’s rule banning insurance companies from refusing coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and the 20 million Americans who gained insurance because of the law. The ruling will likely be repealed, many wrote on social media, and Americans who need coverage through their states can still sign up through Saturday.

A Texas court just ruled that the #ACA is unconstitutional. But there are other cases pending and this ruling will be appealed. This battle is NOT over.

6-Year-Old in Immigration Court Tells Judge He Wants to Go Home

Nearly an hour into Judge Anibal Martinez’s afternoon immigration docket, the bailiff called out Wilder Maldonado’s name. The 6-year-old hadn’t made a fuss about the wait, quietly coloring pictures of animals. Now, he set aside his blue crayon, tiptoed up to the defendant’s table and took a long, deep breath.

Wilder Hilario Maldonado Cabrera, chubby-cheeked with a toothless grin, has done a lot of waiting. He and his father left grinding poverty El Salvador for the United States in June, but they were caught by Border Patrol agents after they illegally entered the country. The agents then separated the pair — along with nearly 3,000 others — as part of the administration’s zero-tolerance policy. Faced with sweeping condemnations, the administration retreated from the policy and, led by immigrant advocates and lawyers, began putting the families back together. Wilder’s case is one of the last that remains unresolved.

Since their separation, Wilder has been living in a temporary foster home in San Antonio while his father is held in an immigration detention facility less than an hour’s drive away. Wilder has spent the last six months — one-twelfth of his life — in limbo, waiting for his father’s plea for asylum to work its way through the system and determine whether the two of them could start a new life in the United States, or be sent back to the one they left.

Part of Wilder’s waiting involved coming to Martinez’s court. Wilder was last here a few weeks ago, right before Thanksgiving. That day, he was striking, wearing a hat stitched with two googly eyes and a red yarn mohawk. This time, he dressed without flourish, in a dark denim jacket with gray sleeves. Last time, he appeared alone, without a lawyer. This time, his father’s lawyer, Thelma O. Garcia, appeared on both the father and son’s behalf.

Garcia said that Wilder’s father had been denied asylum and had decided not to appeal any further. He’d grown desperate sitting in detention, while his wife and three other children remained back in El Salvador struggling to cobble together enough money to eat. He was his family’s sole breadwinner, Garcia said, and if he wasn’t going to be able to stay here, he needed urgently to go home. And he wanted take Wilder with him.

But one of the quirks of the zero-tolerance reunification system required Wilder to affirmatively tell a judge that he wanted to go. That’s why Garcia had joined him in court.

“We are requesting a voluntary departure for this young man,” Garcia said.

“He wishes to return to El Salvador?” the judge asked.

“Yes,” Garcia said.

“Would his return place him in any danger or harm?” the judge asked.

“The parents are there for him, and he should not be in any danger,” she said.

Then the judge peered down from the bench at Wilder. “You want to go home to your mother?”

Wilder nodded eagerly, smiling at the judge, who he referred to as “El Señor.”

Then the judge ordered it so, and he set a six-week deadline for Wilder to leave the country, as if his departure was up to him.

At that moment, the only departure that really seemed to matter to Wilder was getting out of the courtroom. He yawned and looked around for his caseworker. He asked Garcia, whose hands he’d adorned with stickers, whether she’d call him to play again sometime. Then, as he got up to leave, he was asked how he felt. His answer suggested that the moment was bittersweet. He wants to go home to his mother and sisters, but he’s also become attached to his foster parent, a woman he calls “tía,” or aunt.

“I’m tired,” he said. “And I’m sad because I have to leave my tía.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to Step Down

After racking up 17 federal investigations into suspected ethics violations and facing likely questioning by a House panel over his conduct in office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is set to resign from the Trump administration at the end of the year.

President Donald Trump announced Zinke’s impending departure in a tweet Saturday morning, saying that a replacement would be announced next week.

Ethics watchdogs and climate action groups alike applauded the announcement, as Zinke’s close ties to the fossil fuel industry were cause for great concern about his lack of interest in fulfilling the stated mission of the Interior Department, instead giving favorable treatment to oil and gas companies.

It's because of all those federal investigations into him, right? https://t.co/iwMeteE93V https://t.co/FHyeTZQs3l

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) December 15, 2018

Zinke sent packing on the horse he rode in on https://t.co/FZciDWS0y4

— Sierra Club (@SierraClub) December 15, 2018

“Zinke’s days of plundering our lands and enriching himself and his friends are over,” said Nicole Ghio, a program manager at Friends of the Earth (FOE). “With an average of nearly one federal investigation opened into his conduct in office per month, Zinke’s highly questionable ethics have finally caught up with him. Now, he is just another name on Trump’s list of disgraced cabinet officials, which the Republican-led Congress has failed to hold accountable.”

“Ryan Zinke’s tenure at the Department of Interior was a disaster for public lands of historic proportions,” said Chris Saeger, executive director of the Western Values Project. “The public and Congress should continue their commitment to vigilant oversight over the ongoing ethical abuses at Interior in order to repair its reputation.”

Zinke’s departure may help him avoid the questioning that Rep. Raul Griljalva (D-Ariz.) planned to subject him to in January when he takes the helm of the House Natural Resources Committee, over a land deal that was backed by a Halliburton executive in Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana.

A retail development was planned close to properties owned by Zinke, benefiting both the secretary and the Halliburton official, David Lesar. Since Halliburton also stood to benefit from Zinke’s lax attitude regarding the use of public land by fossil fuel companies, the deal was investigated as a conflict of interest by Interior’s inspector general, Mary Kendall.

Kendall referred the case to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in October, suggesting that a criminal investigation into Zinke’s conduct may be underway.

“This is no kind of victory, but I’m hopeful that it is a genuine turning of the page,” wrote Griljalva on Twitter. “It’s time for the Interior Dept to put the public good ahead of the fossil fuel industry, and House Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee will do just that come January.”

FOE has repeatedly called for Zinke’s dismissal, and on Saturday the group recognized the 145,000 Americans who signed petitions condemning Zinke’s conduct in office.

Thank you to the 145K+ Friends of the Earth members who spoke out against Ryan Zinke handing our public lands to Big Oil & using his public office for personal gain. Your voices helped kick him out of office. #FireZinkehttps://t.co/UFDK3J29zX pic.twitter.com/nnoZBqvf6d

— Friends of the Earth (@foe_us) December 15, 2018

David Bernhardt, Zinke’s deputy and a former oil lobbyist whose clients included Halliburton and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, is widely expected to step in as acting secretary—an appointment that green groups say should cause as much alarm as Zinke’s leadership of the Interior Department.

“With Zinke gone, his likely successor David Bernhardt must now be stopped. Bernhardt’s history of lobbying for special interests, and his deep ties to fossil fuel companies, make him a walking conflict of interest,” said Ghio. “As the new Congress comes into session, Democrats must dig into the corruption at Trump’s Interior Department that exploits our lands and waters for the benefit of corporate profits instead of the American people.”

Federal Judge Rules Obamacare Invalid

WASHINGTON — A conservative federal judge in Texas has ruled the Affordable Care Act “invalid” on the eve of the sign-up deadline for next year. But with appeals certain, even the Trump White House said the law will remain in place for now.

In a 55-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Friday that last year’s tax cut bill knocked the constitutional foundation from under “Obamacare” by eliminating a penalty for not having coverage. The rest of the law cannot be separated from that provision and is therefore invalid, he wrote.

Supporters of the law immediately said they would appeal. “Today’s misguided ruling will not deter us: our coalition will continue to fight in court for the health and wellbeing of all Americans,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is leading a coalition of states defending the ACA.

The White House applauded O’Connor’s ruling, but said the law remains in place while appeals proceed. President Donald Trump tweeted that Congress should pass a new law.

“As I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an UNCONSTITUTIONAL disaster!” Trump tweeted. “Now Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions.”

However, Congress is unlikely to act while the case remains in the courts. Numerous high-ranking Republican lawmakers have said they did not intend to also strike down popular provisions such as protection for people with pre-existing medical conditions when they repealed the ACA’s fines for people who can afford coverage but remain uninsured.

Still, Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to become House speaker in January, vowed to fight what she called an “absurd ruling.” She said the House “will move swiftly to formally intervene in the appeals process to uphold the life-saving protections for people with pre-existing conditions and reject Republicans’ effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “We expect this ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court. Pending the appeal process, the law remains in place.”

Legal expert Timothy Jost, a supporter of the health law, said O’Connor’s ruling would have repercussions for nearly all Americans if it stands. If the entire health law is invalidated, popular provisions that benefit Medicare beneficiaries and people with employer coverage would also be scrapped. That could include the section that allows parents to keep young adult children on their coverage until age 26.

About 20 million people have gained health insurance coverage since the ACA passed in 2010 without a single Republican vote. Currently, about 10 million have subsidized private insurance through the health law’s insurance markets, while an estimated 12 million low-income people are covered through its Medicaid expansion.

Saturday is the sign-up deadline for 2019 private plans through HealthCare.gov. Meanwhile, a number of states are expected to move forward with Medicaid expansion after Democratic victories in the midterm elections.

If the case were to reach the Supreme Court it would mark the third time the justices consider a challenge to fundamental provisions of the law. “Obamacare” opponents lost both the first two cases.

The five justices who upheld the health law in 2012 in the first major case — Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberals — are all still serving.

Since then public opinion on the ACA has shifted from mostly negative to generally favorable.

Preserving the law’s protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions proved to be a strong argument for Democrats in the midterm elections. Republicans who tried to undermine those safeguards during their failed effort to repeal the health law last year were forced on the defensive and went on record saying they, too, want to make sure people with health problems can get coverage.

Democrats set to take control of the House in January are talking about passing legislation that enshrines protections for pre-existing conditions. It’s unclear what form that would take, or if the Republican-majority Senate would go along and Trump would sign it.

The GOP-led states who brought the lawsuit asked O’Connor to toss out the entire law after Congress repealed the “individual mandate” penalty for going without coverage. The conservative judge had previously ruled against other Obama-era policies.

The Trump administration weighed in, saying the government would no longer defend some core components of the ACA, but that others could remain, including Medicaid expansion, subsidies for private insurance and health insurance markets.

Along with the requirement to have health insurance, the administration said the parts of the law that should go included:

— The requirement that insurers must take all applicants for comprehensive coverage regardless of prior health history, including pre-existing conditions. That includes a prohibition on insurers writing policies that exclude a particular condition — for example, a recurrence of breast cancer.

— The prohibition on insurers charging higher premiums to people with health problems.

The health insurance industry says doing away with consumer protections will destabilize a market that seems to be finding its footing, with modest premium increases and more plan choices next year.

The American Medical Association called O’Connor’s ruling an “unfortunate step backward for our health system that is contrary to overwhelming public sentiment to preserve pre-existing condition protections.”

Scandal-Hit CBS to Give $20M to 18 Women’s Rights Groups

NEW YORK — CBS on Friday pledged to give $20 million to 18 organizations dedicated to eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace as the network tries to recover from a scandal that led to the ouster of its top executive, Les Moonves.

The announcement comes as the network’s crisis deepens, with details emerging from an ongoing investigation into Moonves’ conduct and news surfacing of other instances of sexual misconduct at CBS.

In the latest revelation, CBS acknowledged that it reached a $9.5 million confidential settlement last year with actress Eliza Dushku, who said she was written off the show “Bull” in March 2017 after complaining about on-set sexual comments from its star, Michael Weatherly. Some women’s rights activists called on CBS to fire Weatherly.

The funds for the grants to the 18 organizations are being deducted from severance owed to Moonves under his contract, and the company had previously said the former CEO would have a say in which groups would receive the money.

But whether Moonves, who was one of the television industry’s most powerful executives, receives the remaining $120 million of his severance hinges on the investigation, which is being conducted by two outside law firms. The company has said Moonves would not be entitled to the severance if its board of directors determines he was fired for cause.

CBS said its donation to the 18 groups will go toward helping expand their work and “ties into the company’s ongoing commitment to strengthening its own workplace culture.”

Among the recipients are Catalyst, a 56-year-old organization dedicated to empowering women in the workplace, and several groups that have emerged as prominent voices since the downfall last year of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, which triggered an avalanche of sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men across several industries.

The 18 organizations issued a joint statement praising the donations as a first step while calling on CBS to disclose the results of the Moonves investigation and the company’s efforts to rectify practices that may have enabled misconduct.

“We thank CBS for these donations. We also recognize these funds are not a panacea, nor do they erase or absolve decades of bad behavior,” the groups said.

Moonves was ousted in September after the New Yorker published allegations from 12 women who said he subjected them to mistreatment that included forced oral sex, groping and retaliation if they resisted. Moonves has denied having any non-consensual sexual relationships.

Two other major figures at CBS have lost their jobs in the past year over misconduct allegations: “60 Minutes” top executive Jeff Fager, and news anchor Charlie Rose.

The New York Women’s Foundation said it is receiving $2.25 million from CBS to support its “Fund for the Me Too Movement and Allies,” which is co-led by #MeToo founder Tarana Burke. The fund invests in community organizations nationwide dedicated to fighting sexual violence and harassment.

Ana Oliveira, the foundation’s president and CEO, said the donation will help give survivors of sexual misconduct a voice in developing solutions. But she urged CBS to do the same within its own organization.

“Those who have lived through the issues have some of the best solutions. This is not a conversation about the perpetrators. CBS needs to do its own work there,” Oliveira said.

Other grant recipients include Time’s Up, a Hollywood-based group promoting gender equity in the workplace, and Press Forward, an organization of women dedicated to fighting sexual harassment in the news industry.

Time’s Up Entertainment said it will use its $500,000 from CBS to launch an initiative to increase the presence of people of color and of different social backgrounds in the entertainment industry’s producing and executive ranks.

Carolyn McGourty Supple, co-founder of Press Forward, said the new funding would accelerate her group’s programs, which include a partnership with the Poynter Institute to develop innovative sexual-harassment training and a study on the state of women in America’s newsrooms.

She said Press Forward has been “very encouraged” by the willingness of CBS News’ leadership “to engage with us.”

“We have faith that we will work side by side to make sure our newsrooms are places where journalists do their best work,” McGourty Supple said.

The entertainment business of CBS, however, is facing new outcry over the revelations about “Bull” star Weatherly, which were first reported by The New York Times.

Shaunna Thomas, executive director of the women’s rights organization UltraViolet, said CBS tried to sweep “his abuse under the rug” and “must immediately move to fire Michael Weatherly.”

Melissa Silverstein, founder of the “Women and Hollywood” initiative, tweeted that she was “still wondering why” Weatherly has a job.

Neither UltraViolet nor Silverstein’s group received funds from CBS.

Weatherly, who appeared on the CBS series “NCIS” for 13 years before “Bull” began in 2016, said in an email to the Times that he had apologized to Dushku after she confronted him. Weatherly’s manager, Doug Wald, has not responded to Associated Press requests for additional comment.

In a September interview with the AP, Weatherly said his long history with CBS made it difficult to comment on the Moonves scandal.

“Not to get into any of the ifs, ands or buts about what is right or wrong and where it comes from,” Weatherly said then. “Professionally I owe a great part of my career to the decision-making of the higher-ups at the company. It’s a complicated place to be.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Signs Sweeping Lame-Duck GOP Bills

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a sweeping package of Republican legislation Friday that restricts early voting and weakens the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general, brushing aside complaints that he is enabling a brazen power grab and ignoring the will of voters.

Signing the bills just 24 days before he leaves office, the Republican governor and one-time presidential candidate downplayed bipartisan criticism that they amount to a power grab that will stain his legacy.

Just two hours later, a group run by former Democratic U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced it planned legal action to block the limitation on early voting.

Walker’s action Friday came as Michigan’s Rick Snyder, another Midwestern GOP governor soon to be replaced by a Democrat, signed legislation in a lame-duck session that significantly scales back minimum wage and paid sick leave laws that began as citizen initiatives. Michigan’s Republican legislators also are weighing legislation resembling Wisconsin’s that would strip or dilute the authority of incoming elected Democrats.

The push in both states mirrors tactics employed by North Carolina Republicans in 2016.

Speaking for 20 minutes and using charts to make his points, Walker detailed all of the governor’s powers, including a strong veto authority, that will not change while defending the measures he signed as improving transparency, stability and accountability.

“There’s a lot of hype and hysteria, particularly in the national media, implying this is a power shift. It’s not,” Walker said before signing the measures during an event at a state office building in Green Bay, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) from his Capitol office that has frequently been a target for protesters.

Walker was urged by Democrats and Republicans, including Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and former Republican Gov. Scott McCallum, to reject the legislation. Walker, who was defeated by Evers for a third term, had earlier said he was considering partial vetoes, but he ultimately did not strike anything.

Evers accused Walker of ignoring and overriding the will of the people by signing the bills into law. He held a five-minute news conference in Madison shortly after the signing to accuse Walker of ignoring the will of the voters.

“People will remember he took a stand that was not reflective of this last election,” Evers said. “I will be reviewing our options and do everything we can to make sure the people of this state are not ignored or overlooked.”

Evers didn’t elaborate and left without taking questions.

Walker, speaking after he signed the bills, brushed aside what he called “high-pitched hysteria” from critics of the legislation. He said his legacy will be the record he left behind that includes all-but eliminating collective bargaining for public workers, not the lame-duck measures.

“We’ve put in deep roots that have helped the state grow,” Walker said. “You want to talk about legacy, to me, that’s the legacy.”

Holder’s group, the National Redistricting Foundation, along with the liberal One Wisconsin Now, promised a swift legal challenge to one provision Walker signed limiting early voting.

Holder, in a statement, called it a “shameful attack on our democracy.”

One Wisconsin Now successfully sued in federal court in 2016 to overturn similar early voting and other restrictions enacted by Walker.

The Wisconsin bills focus on numerous Republican priorities, including restricting early in-person voting to two weeks before an election, down from as much as nearly seven weeks in the overwhelmingly Democratic cities of Milwaukee and Madison.

The legislation also shields the state’s job-creation agency from Evers’ control until September and limits his ability to enact administrative rules. The measures also would block Evers from withdrawing Wisconsin from a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, one of his central campaign promises.

The legislation imposes a work requirement for BadgerCare health insurance recipients, which Walker won federal approval to do earlier this year, and prevents Evers from seeking to undo it.

It eliminates the state Department of Justice’s solicitor general’s office, which outgoing Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel used to launch contentious partisan litigation. Doing away with it ensures Democratic-Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul can’t use the office to challenge Republican-authored laws.

The bills also allow lawmakers to intervene in lawsuits, ensuring Republicans will be able to defend their policies and laws in court if Kaul refuses to do it. Kaul also would need approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing committee before he can reach any settlements, further increasing the power of that GOP-controlled panel.

The Republican-controlled Legislature introduced and passed the bills less than five days after unveiling them late on a Friday afternoon two weeks ago. Outraged Democrats accused the GOP of a power grab that undermined the results of the November election. Evers and others have argued Walker will tarnish his legacy by signing the bills, and Kaul has predicted multiple lawsuits challenging the legislation.

Republican legislative leaders countered that they were merely trying to balance the power of the executive and legislative branches. They said they wanted to ensure Evers must negotiate with them rather than issue executive orders to undo their policy achievements.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said by signing the bills, Walker was “acknowledging the importance of the Legislature as a co-equal branch of government.”

Walker’s signing of the bills comes a day after he announced a $28 million incentive package to keep open a Kimberly-Clark Corp. plant in northeast Wisconsin. One of the lame-duck bills would prevent Evers from making such a deal, instead requiring the Legislature’s budget committee to sign off.

___

Associated Press writer David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.

How the Heart Can Heal the Brain

“The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing”
Purchase in the Truthdig Bazaar

Reviewed by Alexis Camins

“The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing”

A book by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., and Maia Szalavitz

“Mom is lying. Mom is hurting me. Please call the police.”

Few things are more heartbreaking than when the trust of a child has been broken. It’s a betrayal of the unspoken compact between a defenseless creature and its caretaker: I’m trusting you with my life. As someone with two small young ones of my own, reading through the truly horrific stories of neglect, abuse and violence inflicted on children and infants in “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing,” by Dr. Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz, was an absolutely brutal endeavor. Passages sickened me enough that at times, I had to put the book down. The vivid depictions of trauma and their damaging effects made this a truly difficult read. The scenarios that Perry and Szalavitz impart are filled not just with parental mistakes made out of ignorance or circumstances beyond control, but deliberate acts against the helpless committed by the very people who should be protecting them.

Perry and Szalavitz’s book, first released in 2006 and since revised and updated, has become a textbook for therapists and psychologists, but also for anyone who works with or comes in contact with populations who may have suffered trauma. (I also highly recommend it for parents and caregivers who can make it through the tougher parts, because it informs one’s understanding of children beyond the usual how-to-parent fare.) Trauma-aware or trauma-informed care is a now part of the common vernacular across education, mental health, juvenile justice and child welfare, thanks in large part to Perry’s work.

“The Boy” reads less like a textbook and more like an extended detective story, with a curious, empathic therapist in the place of a hard-nosed private eye. “The Boy” retells some harrowing stories in great detail, but what saves the book from being one grim account after another is the science and the heart it is infused with. Perry and Svalavitz lay a solid foundation for the reader, grounded in the science of brain development, and layer on heart-rending anecdotes that together shed light into why and how trauma affects the very biology of the brain. Using stories from his own hands-on clinical therapy and research, Perry peels away at the mystery, and the result is a powerful, moving testament, graced with sensitivity, compassion and above all, hope.

Click here to read long excerpts from “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog” at Google Books.

As a child psychiatry fellow starting out at the University of Chicago in 1987, Perry did not purposely seek to uncover the effects of trauma on the human brain. During his early years as a therapist, knee-jerk diagnoses for attention deficit disorder (ADD) and oppositional defiant disorder were already very much in vogue, along with their accompanying pharmaceutical prescriptions. Neuroscience was not embraced by child psychiatry.

But when Perry meets his first patient, a young girl named Tina, he realizes that simply looking at the patient’s symptoms revealed only a part of her story. Tina suffered repeated sexual abuse by the son of her babysitter for two years, between the ages of 4 and 6. She was bound, raped, sodomized and threatened to be killed if she uttered a word. The boy was later caught and the abuse stopped, but a year later, Tina’s school reported that she had exposed herself to older children, used sexual language and tried to engage them in sex play. She refused to follow directions and didn’t pay attention in class. An adviser of Perry’s put Tina in the ADD bucket and suggested treating her with drugs.

Perry’s empathy led him down a different path. One bitter Chicago evening, against his better clinical judgment, Perry offers Tina and her mother a ride home, after they had been waiting in vain for a bus in the cold winter night. Along the way, Perry gets a glimpse of his patient and her family’s life:

How difficult this mother’s life was . . . all alone caring for three children, no money, only episodic and often tedious work, no extended family nearby. . . . The drive home took me through some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago. . . . I felt I knew much more about Tina. She had grown up in a world so very different from mine. And somehow that had to be related to the problems that brought her to see me.

This humble curiosity would be the foundation of Perry’s research; he began to understand that genetics and bad luck may not be the only reasons for a child’s abnormal behavior. With encouragement from a different adviser, Perry began to consider environmental and social factors when assessing patients, and he started to look for ways that developmental delays may be linked to past events in a child’s life.

The brain is organized from the inside out, adding increasingly complex layers in a sequential order: “The lower and most central regions of the brainstem and diencephalon are the simplest. They evolved first and they develop first as a child grows. As you move upward and outward, things get increasingly more complex with the limbic system. The cortex is more intricate still, the crowning achievement of brain architecture.” Repeated trauma when the brain is still developing its most basic parts and functions can affect everything from impulse control to stress regulation to speech and language development. Therefore, the earlier the trauma is experienced, the more severe and widespread the damage. Perry theorized that in Tina’s case:

The repeated activation of her stress response systems from a trauma endured at a young age, when her brain was still developing, had probably caused a cascade of altered receptors, sensitivity, and dysfunction throughout her brain. . . . Her attention and impulse problems might be due to a change in the organization of her stress response neural networks, a change that might have once helped her cope with her abuse, but was now causing her aggressive behavior and inattention to class work in school.

Perry began to see these kinds of correlations in his subsequent cases. One young girl who was referred to him had an incomprehensibly horrific story. Three-year-old Sandy “witnesses her mother being raped and murdered. She has her own throat cut, twice and is left for dead.” A year later, Sandy had aggressive outbursts and on other occasions would jump at the sound of a doorbell. She also refused to drink milk, much less look at a milk bottle.

Clearly, Sandy had suffered immense trauma, and exhibited signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, then a relatively new psychiatric diagnosis introduced in 1980. Since Sandy was being asked to testify in an upcoming trial for her mother’s murder, Perry was tasked to prepare her to revisit that horrific day. Perry patiently worked to earn Sandy’s trust over the course of numerous sessions, in which Sandy was given full control. Eventually, she was ready to recount what happened that night. Her mother’s boyfriend had rung the doorbell and came into the house yelling. When Sandy came out of her room, “the assailant cut her throat—twice. Sandy immediately collapsed. Later, she regained consciousness and attempted to ‘wake up’ her mother.” It turns out that during the 11 hours she wandered the apartment alone, attempting to wake her mother once in a while, Sandy took milk from the refrigerator and gagged when she tried to drink some. It oozed through the slit in her throat. She tried to give her mother some, but she “was not thirsty.”

The behaviors Sandy displayed were directly linked to her horrific experiences. In fact, because the events had so scarred Sandy, her body continued to react with the same fight-or-flight responses that it had used to protect her on that fateful day. Perry explains that “many post-traumatic psychiatric symptoms, in fact, are related to either dissociative or hyperarousal responses to memories of the trauma.” Sandy’s outbursts seemed to come from nowhere, because her foster parents did not know the details of the crime, but Perry made the connection, and the link between trauma and behavior seemed to grow stronger.

Like a patient detective, Perry follows the breadcrumbs and his trauma-informed theory evolves. The years of research and trial chronicled in “The Boy” leads Perry and his colleagues to develop what is now known as the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics: a multifaceted therapeutic approach encompassing everything from cognitive therapy, medicine, massage and art and music therapy. Essentially, a thorough medical and psychological assessment pinpoints the timeline of the abuse or neglect, and specific types of therapy are provided in a developmentally appropriate sequence, allowing brain development to resume where it was halted or derailed. Perry and his team then tested their new therapeutic model on some of the toughest cases Perry came across, including the titular boy who was raised in a cage for the first five years of his life. Through a series of events, Justin wound up under the care of his grandmother’s live-in boyfriend, Arthur, a dog breeder in his late 60s who never had children and had been a loner for most of his life, and most likely suffered from mild mental retardation himself:

He raised Justin as he raised his other animals: giving him food, shelter, discipline and episodic direct compassion. Arthur wasn’t intentionally cruel: he’d take both Justin and the dogs out of their cages daily for regular play and affection. But he didn’t understand that Justin acted like an animal because he’d been treated as one, and so when the boy ‘didn’t obey,’ back into the cage he went. Most of the time, Justin was simply neglected.

The result: Justin was a nonverbal 6-year-old, prone to throwing food and feces; “a bony child in a loose diaper soaked in urine . . . [he] rocked back and forth, whimpering a primitive self-soothing lullaby.” Perry approached him more cautiously than any patient before him and over a course of dramatic initial meetings, he slowly and patiently earned Justin’s trust. The psychiatric, occupational and speech therapy Perry and his team began to provide met Justin at his developmental level, rather than where he was supposed to be, and allowed him to make astonishingly quick progress. But equally as vital were the daily visits from a dedicated psychiatric staffer and Perry himself. Justin began to smile and even make jokes. Justin’s “once dormant, underdeveloped neural networks began to respond to these new repetitive patterns of stimulation. His brain seemed to be like a sponge, thirsty for the experiences it required, and eagerly soaking them up.”

Within six months, Justin was able to be transferred to a foster family and was ready for kindergarten by age 8. Perry received a letter from his foster parents and enclosed “was a picture of Justin all dressed up, holding a lunch box, wearing a backpack, and standing next to a school bus. On the back of the note, in crayon, Justin himself had written, ‘Thank You, Dr. Perry. Justin.’ I cried.”

Through his work with the children who suffered in the Branch Davidian compound, Perry witnesses how compassionate therapy can undo even the most willful of damage. Through his work with a teenager who experiences a catatonic state, he understands that abuse can directly alter the brain chemistry of an individual even years later, and how with proper medical and therapeutic intervention, this impact can be lessened and even reversed. Through his work with an adopted boy from Russia, who suffered severe neglect in an orphanage at the most critical early stages of his development, Perry discovers how providing the kind of guidance and attention that a child never received during the trauma he experienced, the brain finds ways to “catch up” and resume the path of proper development.

When the theory finally comes together, the moment is revealed as Perry sits with a group of first-graders. He has come into the class of the Russian boy, Ted, who has been struggling both socially and academically. With the boy present, Perry explains to his classmates what he had gone through early in his life, how it had affected the growth of his brain, and how this was causing some of his behavior. With the patience he’d acquired through years of experience, Perry goes on to invite the class to support their new classmate, with their patience, understanding and, when needed, guidance.

It is a quiet but powerful scene, in which Perry simplifies decades of research down to its core humanistic essence so elegantly that 7-year-olds understand, empathize and rise to help one of their own in need. With the support of his peers, Ted improves almost immediately and “What had been a downward spiral of rejection, confusion and frustration became instead a cascade of positive reinforcement, which fed on itself. The huge gaps in developmental age across emotional, social, motor and cognitive domains slowly filled in.”

Humans are social animals and “could never have survived without deeply interconnected and interdependent human contact. The truth is you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation.” When neglect or trauma deprives a young child of that connectedness, it makes sense that only a return to connection can heal him or her. In “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog,” Perry’s compassion is that first hand that reconnects those who have been isolated, and he makes clear that despite what young children may have experienced, in the end, loving relationships can heal them. Perry may be a scientist, but in “The Boy,” he insists that the brain can heal from even the most extreme cases of trauma and neglect and the primary engine of that healing is, in fact, the heart.

“Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.”