Chris Hedges's Blog, page 428

Police Investigate Possible Lynching of Ferguson Activist’s Son

Danye Jones was found dead on Oct. 17 in the backyard of his mother’s home in St. Louis County, Mo. Police are investigating the death as a suicide, but his mother, Melissa McKinnies, an activist involved in the Ferguson, Mo., protests over the 2014 shooting death of Mike Brown by police, insists it was a lynching. She also believes her son was targeted because of her activism, The Washington Post reports, and perhaps is part of a larger wave of killings of people active in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Jones’ death garnered attention when McKinnies shared on social media photos that appeared to be him hanging from a bedsheet. In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, McKinnies said that her son had been upbeat in the days leading up to his death, and that the bedsheet in question didn’t match any she owned. She also said he was not familiar with any of the knots used to tie the sheet.

Jones had also packed an overnight bag, which, McKinnies told the Post-Dispatch, indicated that he trusted his killer and had planned to go somewhere with him or her.

“They lynched my baby,” McKinnies wrote in a since-removed Facebook post.

St. Louis County police told the Post-Dispatch that Jones’ death is being handled as a suicide:

Spokesman Shawn McGuire said the body was on the ground when police arrived. There were no signs of struggle or trauma to the body. And, he said, the family reported a suicide when they called 911. A determination of the cause of death had not yet been made, pending results from toxicology tests.

But Jones’ death is raising suspicions that someone, or even a group, is targeting activists. As The Washington Post observes, “Three untimely deaths in St. Louis County over the past four years have inspired speculation that Ferguson protesters are being systematically murdered, although so far there is no evidence to suggest that the parallels are anything more than coincidental.”

Brittany Packnett, a Ferguson activist, creator of Campaign Zero and vice president of national community alliances for Teach for America, doesn’t believe Jones’ death is coincidental. “#DanyeJones is at least the 4th person related to the #Ferguson uprising to die in more than suspicious circumstances,” she wrote on Twitter. “This is a pattern.”

The St. Louis County medical examiner’s office would not comment on its ongoing investigation into the cause of Jones’ death. It could take weeks before a final ruling is issued.

‘My Baby Was Lynched’: Police Investigate the Death of a Ferguson Activist’s Son

Danye Jones was found dead on Oct. 17 in the backyard of his mother’s home in St. Louis County, Mo. Police are investigating the death as a suicide, but his mother, Melissa McKinnies, an activist involved in the Ferguson, Mo., protests over the 2014 shooting death of Mike Brown by police, insists it was a lynching. She also believes her son was targeted because of her activism, The Washington Post reports, and perhaps is part of a larger wave of killings of people active in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Jones’ death garnered attention when McKinnies shared on social media photos that appeared to be him hanging from a bedsheet. In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, McKinnies said that her son had been upbeat in the days leading up to his death, and that the bedsheet in question didn’t match any she owned. She also said he was not familiar with any of the knots used to tie the sheet.

Jones had also packed an overnight bag, which, McKinnies told the Post-Dispatch, indicated that he trusted his killer and had planned to go somewhere with him or her.

“They lynched my baby,” McKinnies wrote in a since-removed Facebook post.

St. Louis County police told the Post-Dispatch that Jones’ death is being handled as a suicide:

Spokesman Shawn McGuire said the body was on the ground when police arrived. There were no signs of struggle or trauma to the body. And, he said, the family reported a suicide when they called 911. A determination of the cause of death had not yet been made, pending results from toxicology tests.

But Jones’ death is raising suspicions that someone, or even a group, is targeting activists. As The Washington Post observes, “Three untimely deaths in St. Louis County over the past four years have inspired speculation that Ferguson protesters are being systematically murdered, although so far there is no evidence to suggest that the parallels are anything more than coincidental.”

Brittany Packnett, a Ferguson activist, creator of Campaign Zero and vice president of national community alliances for Teach for America, doesn’t believe Jones’ death is coincidental. “#DanyeJones is at least the 4th person related to the #Ferguson uprising to die in more than suspicious circumstances,” she wrote on Twitter. “This is a pattern.”

The St. Louis County medical examiner’s office would not comment on its ongoing investigation into the cause of Jones’ death. It could take weeks before a final ruling is issued.

Google Employees Stage Worldwide Walkout

At 11:10 a.m. Thursday, in every time zone with participating offices, Google employees began walking off the job. They did so, walkout organizers write in New York Magazine’s The Cut, to protest “Google’s history of harassment, discrimination, [and] support for abusers” and to show solidarity with “the people whose lives and careers become collateral damage in the process.”

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported on how Google protected an employee, Andy Rubin, dubbed “the father of the Android,” from accusations of sexual misconduct. Rubin had been having an extramarital affair with another employee, but had also coerced her into unwanted sex. Google, the Times reports, “investigated and concluded her claim was credible.” Rubin was asked to resign, but he did so with a lucrative exit package and celebration, complete with a statement from Google co-founder Larry Page.

In their article for The Cut, the organizers of Thursday’s protest explain that Rubin is not the only employee who has never faced consequences for his actions: “These stories are our stories. We share them in hushed tones to trusted peers, friends, and partners. There are thousands of us, at every level of the company. And we’ve had enough.”

They explain that the walkout, in which two-thirds of Google’s worldwide offices are participating, is a last resort. “We’ve waited for leadership to fix these problems, but have come to this conclusion: no one is going to do it for us. So we are here, standing together, protecting and supporting each other.”

Among their demands are an end to forced arbitration for sexual harassment cases, and the right of all Google employees to bring a companion of their choosing to meetings with human resources officials when filing any kind of claim, especially one involving harassment. They want equal pay for equal work and demand “[a] commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity, for example making sure there are women of color at all levels of the organization, and accountability for not meeting this commitment,” including transparent data on the company’s progress on meeting these goals.

Google employees also seek a public sexual harassment report, with complete data on how many claims are made and “how many victims and accused have left Google; any exit packages and their worth.”

Employees also are demanding a global process for reporting sexual harassment claims and new reporting structures that require the chief diversity officer to answer directly to the chief executive officer, as well as the appointment of an employee representative to Google’s board of directors.

Walkouts started in Asia on Thursday before spreading to other continents. As of 1 p.m. EDT, it was still unclear how many employees had walked away from their work in the United States, because many stayed inside their office buildings. But, the Times reported, protests had already taken place in “Singapore; Hyderabad, India; Berlin; Zurich; Dublin; London; and New York,” with more to come.

Strikers and organizers are adamant that temporary and contract workers be covered by their demands. Organizers emphasize that “the power structure that inherently diminishes” temps, vendors and contractors is “rooted in the same foundation of inequality.” As one employee told the Times, “That doesn’t get talked about enough in tech.”

At least one Google executive appeared supportive of the walkouts. “Employees have raised constructive ideas for how we can improve our policies and our processes,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, told the Times on Wednesday. “We are taking in all their feedback so we can turn these ideas into action.”

Read the organizers’ full demands here.

The Pentagon’s Cunning Plot to Militarize the Economy

Given his erratic behavior, from daily Twitter eruptions to upping his tally of lies by the hour, it’s hard to think of Donald Trump as a man with a plan. But in at least one area — reshaping the economy to serve the needs of the military-industrial complex — he’s (gasp!) a socialist in the making.

His plan is now visibly taking shape — one we can see and assess thanks to a Pentagon-led study with a distinctly tongue-twisting title: “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States.” The analysis is the brainchild of Trump’s adviser for trade and manufacturing policy, Peter Navarro, who happens to also be the key architect of the president’s trade wars.

Navarro, however, can hardly take sole credit for the administration’s latest economic plan, since the lead agency for developing it was also the most interested of all in the project, the Pentagon itself, in particular its Office of Defense Industrial Policy.  In addition, those producing the report did so in coordination with an alphabet soup of other agencies from the Department of Commerce to the Director of National Intelligence.  And even that’s not all.  It’s also the product of an “interagency task force” made up of 16 working groups and 300 “subject matter” experts, supplemented by over a dozen industry “listening sessions” with outfits like the National Defense Industrial Association, an advocacy organization that represents 1,600 companies in the defense sector.

Before jumping into its substance and implications for the American economy and national defense, let me pause a moment to mention two other small matters.

First, were you aware that the Pentagon even had an Office of Defense Industrial Policy? It sounds suspiciously like the kind of government organization that engages in economic planning, a practice anathema not just to Republicans but to many Democrats as well.  The only reason it’s not a national scandal — complete with Fox News banner headlines about the end of the American way of life as we know it and the coming of creeping socialism — is because it’s part of the one institution that has always been exempt from the dictates of the “free market”: the Department of Defense.

Second, how about those 300 subject matter experts? Since when does Donald Trump consult subject matter experts?  Certainly not on climate change, the most urgent issue facing humanity and one where expert opinion is remarkably unified. The Pentagon and its contractors should, however, be thought of as the ultimate special interest group and with that status comes special treatment. And if that means consulting 300 such experts to make sure their “needs” are met, so be it.

A Slogan for the Ages?

Now for the big stuff.

According to Peter Navarro’s summary of the new industrial base report, which appeared as an op-ed in the New York Times, the key to the Trump plan is the president’s belief that “economic security equals national security.” When it comes to weapons manufacturing, the administration’s approach involves building a Fortress America economy that will depend as little as possible on foreign suppliers. Consider it just the latest variation on Trump’s “America First” economic strategy, grounded in its unapologetic embrace of nationalism. As a slogan, “economic security equals national security” doesn’t have quite the populist ring of “Make America Great Again,” but it’s part of the same worldview.

In a flight of grandiosity (and flattery) that must have made his boss swell with pride, Navarro suggested in his op-ed that the slogan might go down in the annals of history alongside other famed pearls of presidential wisdom.  As he put it:

“McKinley’s… ‘Patriotism, protection and prosperity’… catalyzed strong economic growth. Roosevelt’s ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’ helped transform the Navy into a military force capable of projecting power around the world. And Reagan’s ‘Peace through strength’ inspired an unprecedented rebuilding of the military that brought the Soviet Union to its knees… History will judge whether Donald Trump’s ‘economic security is national security’ joins the ranks of great presidential maxims.”

The essence of the Pentagon’s scheme for making America safe for a never-ending policy of war preparations (and war) is to organize as much of the economy as possible around the needs of military production. This would involve eliminating what Navarro describes as the “300 vulnerabilities” of the defense economy — from reliance on single suppliers for key components in weapons systems and the like, to dependence on foreign inputs like rare earth minerals from China, to a shortage of younger workers with the skills and motivation needed to keep America’s massive weapons manufacturing machine up and running. China figures prominently in the report’s narrative, with its trade and investment policies repeatedly described as “economic aggression.”

And needless to say, this being the Pentagon, one of the biggest desires expressed in the report is a need for — yes, you guessed it! — more money. Never mind that the United States already spends more on its military than the next seven nations in the world combined (five of whom are U.S. allies).  Never mind that the increasein Pentagon spending over the past two years is larger than the entire military budget of Russia.  Never mind that, despite pulling tens of thousands of troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, this country’s spending on the Pentagon and related programs (like nuclear warhead work at the Department of Energy) will hit $716 billion in fiscal year 2019, one of the highest levels ever. Face it, say the Pentagon and its allies on Capitol Hill, the U.S. won’t be able to build a reliable, all-weapons-all-the-time economic-industrial base without spending yet more taxpayer dollars.  Think of this as a “Pentagon First” strategy.

As it happens, the Pentagon chose the wrong 300 experts.  The new plan, reflecting their collective wisdom, is an economic and security disaster in the making.

Consider it beyond ironic that some of the same experts and organizations now suggesting that we bet America’s future on pumping up the most inefficient sector of our economy — no, no, I didn’t mean the coal industry, I meant the military-industrial complex — are conservative experts who criticized the Soviet Union for the very same thing.  They still claim that it imploded largely because Washington cleverly lured its leaders into devoting ever more of their resources to the military sector.  That, they insist, reinforced a rigidity in the Soviet system which made it virtually impossible for them to adapt to a rapidly changing global economic landscape.

Our military buildup, they still fervently believe, bankrupted the Soviet Union. Other analysts, like the historian Lawrence Wittner, have questioned such a view. But for the sake of consistency, shouldn’t conservatives who claimed that excessive military spending did in the Soviets be worried that President Trump’s policy of massive tax cuts for the rich, increased Pentagon spending, and trade wars with adversaries and allies alike might do something similar to the United States?

What Would a Real Industrial Policy Look Like?

Industrial policy should not be a dirty word.  The problem is: the Pentagon shouldn’t be in charge of it.  The goal of an effective industrial policy should be to create well-paying jobs, especially in sectors that meet pressing national needs like rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure and developing alternative energy technologies that can help address the urgent dangers posed by climate change.

The biggest economic challenge facing the United States today is how to organize an economic transition that would replace jobs and income generated by dysfunctional activities like overspending on the Pentagon and subsidizing polluting industries.  The argument that the Pentagon is crucial to jobs production in America has been instrumental in blocking constructive changes that would benefit both the environment and true American security.  Members of Congress are, for example, afraid to jettison questionable weapons programs like the F-35 combat aircraft — an immensely costly, underperforming fighter plane that may never be ready for combat — for fear of reducing jobs in their states or districts.  (The same is true of the coal and petroleum industries, which endlessly play up the supposed job-creating benefits of their activities.)

Where could alternatives to Pentagon job-creation programs come from?  The short answer is: invest in virtually anything but buying more weapons and waging more wars and Americans will be better off.  For instance, Pentagon spending creates startlingly fewer jobs per dollar than putting the same taxpayer dollars into infrastructure repair and rebuilding, alternative energy creation, education, or health care.  A study conducted by University of Massachusetts economist Heidi Garrett-Peltier for the Costs of War Project at Brown University found that, had the government invested in civilian activities the $230 billion per year wasted on America’s post-9/11 wars, that sum would have created 1.3 million additional jobs.  A more equitable tax policy that required wealthy individuals and corporations to pay their fair share could similarly fund a $2 trillion infrastructure program that would support 2.5 million new jobs in its first year, according to a proposal put forward by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

As for the president’s much touted, dramatically overblown claims about the jobs to be had from arms exports, the global arms market represents only a tiny fraction of the growing market for renewable energy technologies. If the goal is to produce jobs via exports, developing technologies to tap the huge future market in renewables, which one study suggests could hit $2.1 trillionby 2025, would leave weapons systems in the dust. After all, that’s about 20 times the current size of the total global arms trade, which clocks in at about $100 billion annually. But an analysis by Miriam Pemberton and her colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies indicates that the United States spends 28 times as much on its military as it does on genuinely job-creating programs designed to address the threat of climate change.

Such actions would be a good start — but just a start — when it comes to reducing the dependency of the United States economy on guns and pollution.  Of course, the Trump administration doesn’t have the faintest interest in any of this.  (It would apparently rather cede the lucrative future market in renewable energy to China, with barely a fight.)

Still, the question remains: What would such a shift in priorities mean for the defense industrial base?  If you accept the premise that the U.S. government needs to run a permanent war economy (and also fight never-ending wars across a significant swath of the planet), some of the Pentagon’s recommendations might almost make sense.  But a foreign policy that put more emphasis on diplomacy — one that also thought it important to address non-military dangers like climate change — wouldn’t require such a large military production network in the first place. Under this scenario, the alarmist argument that the U.S. won’t be able to defend itself without stepping up the militarization of our already exceedingly militarized economy suddenly becomes unpersuasive.

But let’s give the weapons sector some credit.  Its CEOs are working assiduously to build up local economies — overseas.  Saudi Arabia’s long-term economic plan, for instance, calls for 50% of the value of its weapons purchases to be spent building up its own military industry.  U.S. weapons giants like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have been quick to pledge allegiance to that plan, setting up subsidiaries there and agreeing to have systems like helicopters assembled in Saudi Arabia, not the United States. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin is helping the United Arab Emirates develop the capability to produce robot-controlled machine tools that are in great demand in the defense and aerospace industries.  And the F-35 program is creating production jobs in more than a dozen countries, including assembly plants in Italy and Japan.

Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy summed up this approach when he discussed his company’s growing partnership with Saudi Arabia: “By working together, we can help build world-class defense and cyber capabilities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” And keep in mind that these are the jobs from so many of those Saudi weapons sales that President Trump keeps bragging about.  Of course, while this may be bad news for American jobs, it works just fine as a strategy for keeping the profits of U.S. arms makers stratospheric.

Making the transition from Peter Navarro’s “economic security equals national security” to an economy far less dependent on over-the-top military spending would mean a major shift in budget priorities in Washington, a prospect that is, at the moment, hard to imagine.  But if the Pentagon can plan ahead, why shouldn’t the rest of us?

Robert Reich: The Trump Economy Is Not What It Appears

I keep hearing that although Trump may be a scoundrel or worse, he’s done a great job for the economy.

Baloney. Yes, the stock market is great, but 84 percent of it is owned by the richest 10 percent of Americans.

The economy is growing, but very little of that growth is trickling down to average Americans. Jobs may be back but they pay squat, especially compared to the rising costs of housing, healthcare, and education.

Trump slashed taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and he promised everyone else a wage boost of $4,000 but it never happened.

Meanwhile, employers continue to cut pension and healthcare benefits. Jobs are less secure than ever. One in 5 jobs is now held by a worker under contract, without any unemployment insurance, sick leave, or retirement savings.

Housing costs are skyrocketing, with a large portion of Americans now paying a third of their paychecks in rent or mortgages.

Trump’s budget proposes drastic cuts in low-income housing. Trump’s undermining of the Affordable Care Act is also making life harder. Over the past two years, some 4 million people have lost healthcare coverage, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

The costs of college education continue to soar. All Trump has done is make it easier for for-profit colleges to defraud students.

And as the climate changes, more Americans are being hit with floods, mudslides, droughts, and wildfires.

And what’s Trump’s response? Allow more carbon pollution into the atmosphere and make climate change even worse.

So don’t be fooled. Don’t judge this economy by the stock market or economic growth, or even the level of unemployment.

Look at actual living standards of average working Americans, and you see an economy that’s getting worse, not better.

The Financial Press Can’t Hide Its Glee Over a Fascist Brazil

Brazil’s controversial elections pitted far-right Jair Bolsonaro against the center-left Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad. But it was clear which candidate international markets—and therefore the financial press—wanted.

Bolsonaro was elected with 55.5 percent of the vote in an election that saw former leftist President Lula da Silva, by far the most popular candidate, jailed and barred from running on highly questionable charges. Bolsonaro was an army officer during Brazil’s fascist military dictatorship (1964–85), which he defends, maintaining that its only error was not killing enough people.

An incendiary character with a long history of racist and sexist outbursts, he told a female federal deputy that she was not worthy of being raped by him, said that he would be unable to love a gay son and that his children would never have a black partner, as they had been very well-educated. During the 2016 impeachment of Workers’ Party President Dilma Rouseff, who was tortured by the dictatorship, he dedicated his impeachment vote to the colonel who tortured her.

The new president-elect has promised to unleash a wave of violence on the working class, minorities and the left. He told his supporters to shoot every Workers’ Party supporter in Acre state in September. At a presidential rally, he proclaimed (Guardian, 10/22/18):

These red outlaws will be banished from our homeland. It will be a cleanup the likes of which has never been seen in Brazilian history…. Either they go overseas, or they go to jail.

Watching Brazil—the world’s ninth largest economy—carefully, the financial press has expressed its delight over Bolsonaro’s rise and victory. Forbes (10/3/18) happily reported on a rising “Bolsonaro fever,” noting the Brazilian currency, the real, was strengthening on news of his increasing support and dwindling Workers’ Party enthusiasm. The Financial Times (10/8/18) and CNBC (10/2/18) both reported that the markets were “cheering” his lead in the presidential race, with a follow-up Financial Times piece (10/18/18) noting weapons companies’ surging stocks upon Bolsonaro’s emergence as the frontrunner, a trend mirrored by stocks more generally as his performance “heartened investors.”Economically, he proposes a course of shock therapy, appointing a University of Chicago-trained economist, Paulo Guedes, to oversee a fire sale of state assets and an opening up of the country’s vast natural resources for foreign exploitation.

The New York Times (10/26/18) reported markets were surging on “hope of a Bolsonaro victory,” claiming his appeal lies in his willingness to enact unpopular privatizations and gut Brazilian pensions. Bloomberg (10/30/18) breathlessly reported that he would be “extraordinarily pro-business.” The CBC (10/26/18) explored the new world of possibilities for profits for Canadian corporations in agriculture, extractive sectors and finance, as Bolsonaro promises to slash environmental regulations and virtually all market restrictions. “It could be a good time to be a mining investor in Brazil,” it reported. It did note in an offhand manner that, as an externality, critics say it could lead to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Studying the financial press’ coverage of Brazil reveals a great deal about its priorities and ideology. Faced with the choice of center-left reformers who may tax business slightly more, and outright fascist candidates, the financial press once again made its decision clear, proving that democracy and the health of the stock market often do not mix.But the Wall Street Journal (10/29/18) went the furthest in its praise for the new president. Its editorial board came out to endorse him as a “credible” “reformer,” describing him as an “antidote” to the greed of the Workers’ Party. It also made the claim that the election was “transparent, competitive and fair,” a remarkable claim, considering Bolsonaro is widely accused of illegally employing foreign companies to create a massive fake news industry via WhatsApp (Guardian, 10/18/18), and that the real frontrunner for the election, Lula da Silva, is in jail on spurious grounds and barred from running, even from his cell.

The media appear uninterested in the human cost of Bolsonaro’s near-genocidal statements, nor the cost to the population if pensions are gutted and state assets are sold off, nor the cost to the Amazon, a crucial carbon reserve that must be maintained and strengthened if humanity has any chance of mitigating the catastrophe of climate change. These are mere externalities. When it comes to opportunities for profits, all else is forgotten. After all, fascism is big business.

Facebook’s New Transparency Rules Are Being Dodged With Ease

A Facebook ad in October urged political conservatives to support the Trump administration’s rollback of fuel emission standards, which it hailed as “our president’s car freedom agenda” and “plan for safer, cheaper cars that WE get to choose.” The ad came from a Facebook page called Energy4US, and it included a disclaimer, required by Facebook, saying it was “paid for by Energy4US.”

Yet there is no such company or organization as Energy4US, nor is it any entity’s registered trade name, according to a search of LexisNexis and other databases. Instead, Energy4US — which Facebook says spent nearly $20,000 on the ads — appears to be a front for American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade association whose members include ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Shell. In 2015, when the Energy4US website was launched, it was registered to AFPM, which is also first on a list of “coalition members” on the site. AFPM, which did not respond to calls and emails for this article, has spent more than $2.5 million this year lobbying the federal government, including advocating for less stringent emission standards.

Although Facebook now requires every political ad to “accurately represent the name of the entity or person responsible,” the social media giant acknowledges that it didn’t check whether Energy4US is actually responsible for the ad. Nor did it question 11 other ad campaigns identified by ProPublica in which U.S. businesses or individuals masked their sponsorship through faux groups with public-spirited names. Some of these campaigns resembled a digital form of what is known as “astroturfing,” or hiding behind the mirage of a spontaneous grassroots movement. In most cases, Facebook users would have to click on the ad and scrutinize the affiliated website to find any reference to the actual sponsor.

The 12 ad campaigns, for which Facebook received a total of more than $800,000, expose a significant gap in enforcement of its new disclosure policy, and they cast doubt on Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg’s assurance to the U.S. Senate in September that “you can see who paid for” ads. Adopted this past May in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, Facebook’s rules are designed to hinder foreign meddling in elections by verifying that individuals who run ads on its platform have a U.S. mailing address, governmental ID and a Social Security number. But, once this requirement has been met, Facebook doesn’t check whether the advertiser identified in the “paid for by” disclosure has any legal status, enabling U.S. businesses to promote their political agendas secretly.

“Facebook and other social media platforms that allow political advertising must do more to provide transparency to Americans on the source of the content on their platforms,” U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, told ProPublica.

Cortez Masto warned of this loophole before Facebook introduced its disclosure rules. In written questions to the company, she asked: “Would you let a mysterious group … run an ad on Facebook without any further information about who they are?” and “Will these transparency measures you are discussing tell you who paid the Facebook page to run the ad?”

Facebook told her that when users click on the disclosure, they would be able to see details about the advertiser. However, Facebook leaves it to the advertiser to decide whether to supply these details, and clicking on those disclosures for the 12 campaigns offers no new information. (Most of these ads were contributed by readers participating in ProPublica’s Political Ad Collector project.)

Like Cortez Masto, Richard Hasen wasn’t surprised. “It struck me when Facebook announced its rules that it was about to encounter a hornet’s nest,” said Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California’s Irvine campus and an expert on election law. “Right now, it does not seem like it’s a regime that’s set up to create effective disclosure.”

Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, said Facebook doesn’t try to verify the provenance of every political ad. The lack of a “reliable source to look and see every possible entity name that would be valid, including ‘doing business as’ names,” would make it a herculean task, he said. “We have to rely on the things that we can scalably look at.” Facebook primarily monitors disclaimers for profanity, names of hate groups and “vague or inaccurate” descriptions, as well as URLs (banned because they’re not official names), he said.

“It’s pretty hard to prove a negative that something does not exist,” Leathern said. Facebook reviewed the ads identified by ProPublica, and they comply with the disclosure policy, he said.

Leathern said that the new policy has improved advertiser transparency overall, and ProPublica did find some examples of enhanced disclosure. For example, a “Hoosier Country” campaign supporting U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, an Indiana Democrat, and criticizing his Republican opponent, has added a disclaimer that it’s paid for by Priorities USA Action — a liberal superPAC — and SMP, the “Senate Majority Project,” which is associated with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Leathern also noted that Facebook’s disclosure policy applies to ads about political issues as well as candidates. By contrast, Google’s disclosure requirements only apply to ads about federal candidates or officeholders, according to its website. Issue-oriented ads on television also don’t require a disclaimer.

“We’re looking to do more than has been done in other media, we’re looking to take a leadership position here,” Leathern said. “This is not only an on-Facebook problem.”

Like Facebook, Twitter requires ads about political issues to carry a “paid for by” disclaimer. But unlike Facebook, under a policy that it began enforcing on Sept. 30, Twitter verifies advertisers’ names via their Employer Identification Numbers, making it harder for the actual sponsors to hide. For instance, ads from Energy In Depth carried a disclaimer on Twitter — but not on Facebook — that they were paid for by Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Energy in Depth’s ads on Facebook criticized lawsuits against oil and natural gas companies over climate change. Seth Whitehead, a team lead with Energy in Depth, said that it complies fully with Facebook’s rules and that the group’s website discloses its role as an IPAA program.

Including the Energy4US and Energy in Depth campaigns, seven of the 12 ads identified by ProPublica were linked to the energy industry. The American Petroleum Institute, a trade association that has spent more than $5 million this year on federal lobbying, accounted for three of them. Under Energy Citizens, a name that API began using in 2009 to organize an ostensible grassroots movement against limits on emissions linked to climate change, the institute spent $260,000 since this May on Facebook ads aimed at people interested in Donald Trump or Sean Hannity. The ads praised oil and gas production for protecting the environment and addressing climate change, supported the controversial Keystone XLpipeline and opposed a nuclear power plant “bailout” in Ohio. Under Energy Nation, API urged Facebook users to “Vote for energy. Vote for jobs.” Under Explore Offshore Coalition, it courted people interested in Trump with ads contending that offshore drilling benefits veterans and doesn’t affect tourism.

Facebook users would have to click through the links on these ads and scroll to the bottom of the websites of Energy Citizens and Explore Offshore Coalition to learn that they are actually linked to the petroleum group; the Energy Nation website’s header image includes a reference to API. “We are in compliance with Facebook’s advertising rules,” API spokeswoman Natalia Sharova said. (API has also run political ads under its own name since Facebook’s policy took effect.)

Of the five ad campaigns unrelated to energy, three trace back to insurance, real estate and technology companies. For instance, Trenton Don’t Touch My Insurance ran ads against a New Jersey bill that would have made it easier for individuals to sue insurance companies. The logo of the Insurance Council of New Jersey appears at the bottom of Don’t Touch My Insurance’s website.

“The insurance industry is behind the campaign,” Christine O’Brien, president of the Insurance Council of New Jersey, said. “We’re not hiding that the industry is educating the public through this campaign. I don’t know why there wouldn’t be a disclaimer on it.”

She said the failure to include “Paid for by Insurance Council of New Jersey” on the Facebook ads was unintentional, adding, “We stand behind it.” Other ads related to the campaign that ran on platforms besides Facebook did say they were paid for by the Insurance Council of New Jersey.

The businesses or individuals behind the other two campaigns — one by the Long Island Coalition for Healthy Lawn and Water opposing a proposed New York state ban on certain fertilizers, and one by Americans for Fair Courtrooms against bail reform in California — could not be traced. The groups didn’t respond to requests for comment via Facebook Messenger, and Facebook declined to say who was behind these ads.

“We have no reason to believe that these disclaimers are violating our policies,” Facebook spokeswoman Devon Kearns said. “There is no way to be absolutely sure.”

Other media outlets have also identified Facebook political ads that were less than transparent. The New York Times reported in October on ads in a Virginia congressional race that identified the funder only as “A freedom loving American Citizen exercising my natural law right, protected by the 1st Amendment and protected by the 2nd Amendment.” CNN found ads on Facebook from “Memes that are right” and “Crush Cruz” groups, without further identifying the sponsors.

Kearns told ProPublica that these disclaimers violated Facebook’s rules.

Facebook users can’t judge the validity of a political message without knowing who’s behind it, said Ann Ravel, a former Democratic member of the Federal Election Commission. “Often groups with neutral-sounding names will send advertisements … to try to influence people and you don’t know that they’re self-interested in that a particular policy,” she said. “Those people have a self-interest” in the policies their ads are pushing, referring to the trade groups. Or, as Facebook put it in a training manual for advertisers, “Knowing who paid for an ad with political content is crucial to properly understand and evaluate it.”

In response to ProPublica’s questions, two advertisers promised more disclosure. Connect Americans Now, which pushes for improved access to high-speed internet in rural areas, is a “Microsoft-supported community,” Zachary Cikanek, a Connect Americans Now spokesman, said. “In future ads we are going to go beyond what is required” and identify Microsoft’s role.

We Stand For Energy ran ads seeking to limit refunds that South Carolinians with solar panels receive on electric bills for excess power that they generate, and supporting wind energy in South Dakota and electric vehicle charging stations in Washington, D.C. It’s actually a campaign of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group of electrical utilities. “We have always been transparent that EEI sponsors We Stand for Energy, and we are currently in the process of updating all the Facebook ads,” said EEI spokesman Jeff Ostermayer. As of Oct. 25, its new ads said “Paid for by Edison Electric Institute.” He described “We Stand For Energy” as a “grassroots platform that unites and educates customers and key community stakeholders.”

Energy interests, including EEI, have a decades-long history of cloaking sponsorship to promote their interests, environmental researchers and activists say. Energy companies “were raising their offshore drilling platforms to account for larger storms and higher seas due to climate change while funding front groups to undermine climate science,” said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity. “And those groups were just very similar to these Facebook operations, designed to look credible, designed to look independent. They’re after any additional bit of credibility that they can conjure up. You’re trying to get every little psychological edge in this game.”

Wiles cited leaked documents from a proposed 1991 ad campaign sponsored in part by EEI. To avoid “lower overall credibility ratings” garnered by industry sources, the campaign would have created a group called “Information Council on the Environment” or “Informed Citizens for the Environment” to express skepticism about global warming. The messaging was tested in a few media markets and received critical press coverage, according to the documents. EEI did not respond to questions about this campaign.

Similarly, when the American Petroleum Institute sought in 1998 to cast doubt on climate change and stop the U.S. Senate from ratifying an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one tactic it considered in a “roadmap” memo was to establish a nonprofit organization called the “Global Climate Science Data Center.” The nonprofit’s goal would be “raising questions about and undercutting the ‘prevailing scientific wisdom,’” according to the memo. At the time, an API spokesman told The New York Times that the plan was “very, very tentative.”

In response to questions about this history, API said it is “often joined by individuals and organizations who share our vision of American energy leadership.”

Several years ago, the “California Drivers Alliance” and “Fed Up at the Pump” —stand-ins for, respectively, the Western States Petroleum Association and the California Independent Oil Marketers Association, now rebranded the California Fuels & Convenience Alliance — ran ads on Facebook and elsewhere in an attempt to stop the scheduled implementation of climate regulations in California.

Kara Siepmann, a WSPA spokeswoman, confirmed that it was behind the California Drivers Alliance campaign. WSPA is now running ads on Facebook under the name “Californians for Cost Containment,” warning that climate change restrictions could lead to higher fuel prices.

“We agree that there needs to be transparency,” Siepmann said. WSPA is “examining the updates the social platforms are making and ensuring that WSPA is remaining transparent around the communications campaigns that it’s running.” CFCA did not return requests for comment.

Kathy Mulvey, who directs the Climate Accountability Campaign of the Union of Concerned Scientists and reviewed several of the energy industry ads identified by ProPublica, said that the masking of sponsorship on Facebook is “eerily similar” to earlier tactics. “The new Facebook transparency measures clearly don’t cut it for anyone who wants to know the real interests behind an ad,” she said. “There are loopholes big enough for front groups … to drive a truck through.”

Here are the examples found by ProPublica where Facebook has allowed advertisers to say their ads are “paid for by” a legally nonexistent group.

Energy Citizens, Energy Nation and Explore Offshore Coalition, actually programs of the American Petroleum Institute. “We are in compliance with Facebook’s advertising rules,” API spokeswoman Natalia Sharova said.
We Stand For Energy, actually a program of the Edison Electric Institute. EEI spokesman Jeff Ostermayer said, “We have always been transparent that EEI sponsors We Stand For Energy, and we are currently in the process of updating all the Facebook ads to reflect that EEI is sponsoring the ads.”
Energy In Depth, actually a program of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. Seth Whitehead, a team lead with Energy in Depth, said, “Our role as an IPAA program is disclosed on every page of our website and in all our interactions with the media and other third parties. EID’s Facebook profile also clearly notes the program’s affiliation with IPAA. Occasionally, EID will run ads on Facebook, which is done in full compliance with Facebook’s advertising requirements.”
Energy4US, linked to American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers. AFPM did not return requests for comment.
Long Island Coalition for Healthy Lawn and Water, actual advertiser unknown. Did not respond to a request for comment via Facebook Messenger.
Don’t Touch My Insurance is “just a name of a campaign” managed by the Insurance Council of New Jersey, said ICNJ president Christine O’Brien.
Americans for Fair Courtrooms, actual advertiser unknown. Did not respond to a request for comment via Facebook messenger.
Texans for Natural Gas is a “is a digital advocacy campaign,” said a spokesman, Steve Everley, “As clearly disclosed on our home page, Texans for Natural Gas receives support from three natural gas producers,” EnerVest, EOG Resources and XTO Energy. XTO Energy is a subsidiary of ExxonMobil.
Connect Americans Now is a “Microsoft-supported community.” Connect Americans Now spokesman Zachary Cikanek said.
Greenlight the Gulch, an ad campaign promoting tax benefits for a proposed real estate development in downtown Atlanta, is linked to CIM Group, the project’s developer. Spokesman Bill Mendel said that “all advertising for Greenlight the Gulch — including on social media and in print — directs people to the campaign’s website, which clearly states CIM’s developer role.”

American Billionaires Are Overwhelmingly Conservative, New Study Finds

While some of the most famous ultra-rich Americans—such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and the Koch Brothers—have very public profiles and readily disclose where they stand ideologically or on key issues, new research reveals that a cabal of the U.S. billionaires largely operates in the shadows as they use their vast wealth and influence to maintain their status and undermine democracy.

In a piece published by the Guardian on Wednesday, Northwestern University professors Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe lay out the findings of their “exhaustive, web-based study of everything that the 100 wealthiest U.S. billionaires have said or done, over a 10-year period, concerning several major issues of public policy.”

The trio of researchers found that “both as individuals and as contributors to Koch-type consortia, most U.S. billionaires have given large amounts money—and many have engaged in intense activity—to advance unpopular, inequality-exacerbating, highly conservative economic policies.”

Their research, also detailed in their forthcoming book Billionaires and Stealth Politics, shows that despite spending tons of money over the past decade to advance policies that safeguard and even expand their wealth, “billionaires who favor unpopular, ultraconservative economic policies, and work actively to advance them (that is, most politically active billionaires) stay almost entirely silent about those issues in public.”

“Billionaires have plenty of media access, but most of them choose not to say anything at all about the policy issues of the day. They deliberately pursue a strategy of what we call ‘stealth politics,'” the researchers explain. “This sort of stealth politics,” which enables wealthy individuals to stay off the radar of the general public and avoid political accountability while wielding significant influence over politicians and government institutions, “is harmful to democracy.”

We know billionaires exert a lot of influence on American politics. But what do they want?

Benjamin Page, Jason Seawright, and @M_J_Lacombe know—and in this @guardian piece from their book Billionaires and Stealth Politics, they share the secret details:https://t.co/AS0Ipwaucr

— UChicagoPress (@UChicagoPress) October 31, 2018

While the researchers examined American billionaires’ stances on everything from same-sex marriage and abortion to immigration and taxation, as a clear example of such stealth politics in action, they point to Social Security. Among the American public, Social Security—which provides retirement, disability, and survivors’ benefits—is immensely popular, perhaps more so than any other safety net program.

However, as the researchers report, “Most of the wealthiest U.S. billionaires have made substantial financial contributions—amounting to hundreds of thousands of reported dollars annually, in addition to any undisclosed ‘dark money’ contributions—to conservative Republican candidates and officials who favor the very unpopular step of cutting rather than expanding social security benefits. Yet, over the 10-year period we have studied, 97 percent of the wealthiest billionaires have said nothing at all about Social Security policy.”

Covert efforts by the American billionaire class to dismantle safety net programs come amid rising wealth inequality that “is largely the result of rapidly growing wealth dynasties and a rigged economy that enables the ultra-wealthy to grow their wealth to never-before-seen highs,” noted Josh Hoxie of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), who co-authored a new report detailing how U.S. billionaires have have been able to hoard their money and pass it on to heirs.

To combat the issue of American billionaires using their outsize wealth and power “to rig the political rules and preserve and expand their private wealth dynasties,” the IPS report argues that imposing “a direct tax on wealth paid by the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent could generate significant revenue to be reinvested in creating and restoring opportunities for low wealth households to prosper,” and that “taxing inherited wealth as income would help break up current and future wealth dynasties.”

“Today’s extreme wealth inequality is perhaps greater than any time in American history. This is largely the result of rapidly growing wealth dynasties and a rigged economy.” #BillionaireBonanza2018 @JoshHoxie @johnsonjakep https://t.co/FBSs9XjYQg

— Inequality.org (@inequalityorg) October 31, 2018

Trump Administration Abruptly Calls for End to War in Yemen

Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have abruptly called for an end to the Saudi-backed quagmire in Yemen, after years of backing the war over alleged Iranian involvement.

Speaking at the congressionally mandated U.S. Institute for Peace on Tuesday, Mattis said, according to the BBC, that Washington had been watching the Yemen war “for long enough.” He added, “We have got to move towards a peace effort here, and we can’t say we are going to do it sometime in the future. We need to be doing this in the next 30 days.”

Mattis added that all sides should meet UN special envoy Martin Griffiths in Sweden in November and “come to a solution.”

Pompeo asked the Houthi government of north Yemen to cease its rocket attacks on Saudi Arabia and urged the Saudis to stop bombing populated areas from the air.

Pompeo said, “It is time to end this conflict, replace conflict with compromise, and allow the Yemeni people to heal through peace and reconstruction.”

How to explain this American initiative on Yemen? Well, it is very murky and unexpected, but here are some considerations that may have led to this Trump administration about-face:

1. The murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Istanbul Saudi consulate on Oct. 2 has much weakened the Saudi government, so that the U.S. and France and others may now see this moment as a prime one for pressuring Riyadh.

2. The UN is now warning of an enormous die-off in Yemen of millions of people if the war continues at its present pace. No administration wants that sort of catastrophe to come about on its watch, more especially if it is itself partially responsible for the starvation.

3. There could be a massive refugee exodus across the Red Sea and up to Europe. France is also pressuring Riyadh to end the war.

4. The administration may anticipate losing the House of Representatives to the Democrats next Tuesday. Prominent Dems have already introduced resolutions for the U.S. to get out of Yemen. This congressional pressure is likely to be much strengthened if the Dems are in a position to launch investigations and subpoena officials.

5. The Khashoggi murder made the Saudis abruptly disliked by even the Republican rank and file, and the administration may fear that their being joined at the hip with Riyadh may play poorly in the upcoming midterms.

6. U.S. intelligence may have finally gotten through to Mattis and Pompeo that the Houthis are an indigenous protest movement and not actually very tied to Iran, which practices a different form of Shiism and has other regional priorities.

But to tell you the truth, I find this sudden coordinated maneuver on Yemen among the Trump high officials to be a little baffling, and there may be more factors driving it than are apparent on the surface. One thing is certain: They aren’t doing it for their health.

A Change of Diet Can Help Save the Planet

A change of diet can work wonders. European scientists have established one priority for the shopper concerned about climate change: don’t worry about shopping for local produce, worry about the meat and dairy products in the shopping basket instead.

Agricultural emissions are a huge factor in the global greenhouse gas budget. But when scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria sat down to calculate the carbon cost in terms of land use change, transportation and dietary choices, they found one overwhelming component.

Bacon, beef, butter, chicken, cheese and milk do more to step up global warming than any conversion of forest to farmland, the canning of beans, or the transport of tea from China, coffee from Brazil or wheat from Canada.

The researchers report in the journal Global Food Security that they calculated the contribution of an average European Union citizen’s food purchases in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent: each person in what will soon be 27 member states notches up 1,070 kilograms in gas emissions each year.

This is about what he or she would produce by driving a passenger vehicle for 6,000 kms. It is also about one-third more than previous production-based emission estimates.

Some European states, among them Malta and Luxembourg, import up to 70% of their food. Others, like Romania and Poland, import less than 20%. But even after the scientists factored in the carbon costs of land use change, processing and packaging and transport from another country, they found one clear result.

Meat and dairy production account for more than 75% of the climate impact from EU diets. Grazing animals consume crops grown as animal feed; they occupy more of the farmland converted from forest, and they discharge greater quantities of that potent greenhouse gas methane, along with carbon dioxide.

“People tend to think that consuming locally will be the solution to climate change, but it turns out that the type of product we eat is much more important for overall impact,” says one of the report authors, Hugo Valin, a research scholar in ecosystems services and management at IIASA.

Diversifying Diet

“Europeans are culturally attached to meat and dairy product consumption. Reducing our climate footprint does not necessarily require stopping eating these food products, but rather diversifying our diets to reduce the share of these.”

The research applies only to the European Union, and because so much of the European diet is imported, direct food production in the EU amounts to less than 5% of global emissions. A new study published in Nature journal delivers a wider picture of the problem facing the whole planet by 2050, when farmers may have to feed as many as 10 billion people.

In one sample year, 2010, the food production system worldwide put more than 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere, from 12.6 square kilometres of cropland, and consumed 1,810 cubic kilometres of water. This food system also devoured 104 million tonnes of nitrogen and 18 million tonnes of phosphorus as fertilisers.

Cutting Waste

By 2050, global income could have tripled, and demand will have increased dramatically. What the scientists politely call the “environmental pressures” of food could increase by from 50% to more than 90%.

But since a third of all food is wasted or lost before it gets to market, there are things societies could do to help. Just halving this waste would reduce pressure on the environment by between 6% and 16%.

And a shift from meat and dairy to fruit and vegetable products – a shift to much healthier eating – could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 56% and other environmental pressures by up to 22%.

But the IAAS researchers warn that there is no single solution. To seriously reduce carbon emissions from the world food system, nations will have to address the problem of waste, the shift to vegetarian or vegan diets, and the need for better farmland management and more efficient technologies, all at the same time.