Lily Salter's Blog, page 117

Trump’s recycling program: War crimes and war criminals, old and (potentially) new

(Credit: AP)

A barely noticed anniversary slid by on March 20th. It’s been 15 years since the United States committed the greatest war crime of the twenty-first century: the unprovoked, aggressive invasion of Iraq. The New York Times, which didn’t exactly cover itself in glory in the run-up to that invasion, recently ran an op-ed by an Iraqi novelist living in the United States entitled “Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country,” but that was about it. The Washington Post, another publication that (despite the recent portrayal of its Vietnam-era heroism in the movie “The Post”) repeatedly editorialized in favor of the invasion, marked the anniversary with a story about the war’s “murky” body count. Its piece concluded that at least 600,000 people died in the decade and a half of war, civil war, and chaos that followed — roughly the population of Washington, D.C.

These days, there’s a significant consensus here that the Iraq invasion was a “terrible mistake,” a “tragic error,” or even the “single worst foreign policy decision in American history.” Fewer voices are saying what it really was: a war crime. In fact, that invasion fell into the very category that led the list of crimes at the Nuremberg tribunal, where Nazi high officials were tried for their actions during World War II. During the negotiations establishing that tribunal and its rules, it was (ironically, in view of later events) the United States that insisted on including the crime of “waging a war of aggression” and on placing it at the head of the list. The U.S. position was that all the rest of Germany’s war crimes sprang from this first “crime against peace.”

Similarly, the many war crimes of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush — the extraordinary renditions; the acts of torture at Guantánamo, Bagram Air Basein Afghanistan, and CIA black sites all over the world; the nightmare of abuse at Abu Ghraib, a U.S. military prison in Iraq; the siege and firebombing (with white phosphorus) of the Iraqi city of Fallujah; the massacre of civilians in Haditha, another Iraqi city — all of these arose from the Bush administration’s determination to invade Iraq.

It was to secure “evidence” of a (nonexistent) connection between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda attackers of 9/11 that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld upped the ante at Guantánamo in his infamous memo approving torture there. The search for proof of the same connection motivated the torture of Abu Zubaydah at a CIA black site in Thailand. If not for that long-planned invasion of Iraq, the “war on terror” might have ended years ago.

But wasn’t that then?

Fifteen years is an eternity in what Gore Vidal once called “the United States of Amnesia.” So why resurrect the ancient history of George W. Bush in the brave new age of Donald Trump? The answer is simple enough: because the Trump administration is already happily recycling some of those Bush-era war crimes along with some of the criminals who committed them. And its top officials, military and civilian, are already threatening to generate newones of their own.

Last July, the State Department closed the office that, since the Clinton administration, has assisted war crimes victims seeking justice in other countries. Apparently, the Trump administration sees no reason to do anything to limit the impunity of war criminals, whoever they might be. Reporting on the closure, Newsweek quoted Major Todd Pierce, who worked at Guantánamo as a judge advocate general (JAG) defense attorney, this way:

“It just makes official what has been U.S. policy since 9/11, which is that there will be no notice taken of war crimes because so many of them were being committed by our own allies, our military and intelligence officers, and our elected officials. The war crime of conspiring and waging aggressive war still exists, as torture, denial of fair trial rights, and indefinite detention are war crimes. But how embarrassing and revealing of hypocrisy would it be to charge a foreign official with war crimes such as these?”

Guantánamo JAG attorneys like Pierce are among the real, if unsung, heroes of this sorry period. They continue to advocate for their indefinitely detained, still untried clients, most of whom will probably never leave that prison. Despite the executive order President Obama signed on his first day in office to close GITMO, it remains open to this day and Donald Trump has promisedto “load it up with some bad dudes,” Geneva Conventions be damned.

Indeed, Secretary of Defense James (“Mad Dog”) Mattis has said that the president has the right to lock up anyone identified as a “combatant” in our forever wars, well, forever. In 2016, he assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that any detainee who “has signed up with this enemy” — no matter where “the president, the commander-in-chief, sends us” to fight — should know that he will be a “prisoner until the war is over.” In other words, since the war on terror will never end, anyone the U.S. captures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Niger, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, or elsewhere will face the possibility of spending the rest of his life in Guantánamo.

Recycling war criminals

Speaking of Mattis and war crimes, there’s already plenty of blood on his hands. He earned that “Mad Dog” sobriquet while commanding the U.S. Marines who twice in 2004 laid siege to Fallujah. During those sieges, American forces sealed that Iraqi city off so no one could leave, attacked marked ambulances and aid workers, shot women, children, and an ambulance driver, killed almost 6,000 civilians outright, displaced 200,000 more, and destroyed 75% of the city with bombs and other munitions. The civilian toll was vastly disproportionate to any possible military objective — itself the definition of a war crime.

One of the uglier aspects of that battle was the use of white phosphorus, an incendiary munition. Phosphorus ignites spontaneously when exposed to air. If bits of that substance attach to human beings, as long as there’s oxygen to combine with the phosphorus, skin and flesh burn away, sometimes right into the bone. Use of white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon is forbidden under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which the U.S. has signed.

In Iraq, Mattis also saw to it that charges would be dropped against soldiers responsible for murdering civilians in the city of Haditha. In a well-documented 2005 massacre — a reprisal for a roadside bomb — American soldiers shot 24 unarmed men, women, and children at close range. As the convening authority for the subsequent judicial hearing, Mattis dismissed the murder charges against all the soldiers accused of that atrocity.

Mattis is hardly the only slightly used war criminal in the Trump administration. As most people know, the president has just nominated Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel to head the Agency. There are times when women might want to celebrate the shattering of a glass ceiling, but this shouldn’t be one of them. Haspel was responsible for running a CIA black site in Thailand, during a period in the Bush years when the Agency’s torture program was operating at full throttle. She was in charge, for instance, when the CIA tortured Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was waterboarded at least three times and, according to the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Torture report, “interrogated using the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.” (The report provided no further details.)

Haspel was also part of the chain of command that ordered the destruction of videotapes of the torture of Abu Zubaydah (waterboarded a staggering 83 times). According to the PBS show Frontline, she drafted the cable that CIA counterterrorism chief José Rodríguez sent out to make sure those tapes disappeared. In many countries, covering up war crimes would itself merit prosecution; in Washington, it earns a promotion.

More on Trump and torture

Many people remember that Trump campaigned on a promise to bring back waterboarding “and a whole lot worse.” On the campaign trail, he repeatedly insisted that torture “works” and that even “if it doesn’t work, they [whoever “they” may be] deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing.” Trump repeatedhis confidence in the efficacy of torture a few days after his inauguration, saying that “people at the highest level of intelligence” had assured him it worked.

Trump’s nominee to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state is former Tea Party congressman and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Known for his antipathy to Muslims (and to Iran), he once endorsed calling his Indian-American electoral opponent a “turban topper.”

Pompeo is as eager as Trump to restore torture’s good name and legality, although his public pronouncements have sometimes been more circumspect than the president’s. During his CIA confirmation hearings he assured the Senate Intelligence Committee of what most of its members wanted to hear: that he would “absolutely not” reinstitute waterboarding and other forms of torture, even if ordered to do so by the president. However, his written testimony was significantly more equivocal. As the British Independent reported, Pompeo wrote that he would back reviewing the ban on waterboarding if prohibiting the technique was shown to impede the “gathering of vital intelligence.”

Pompeo added that he planned to reopen the question of whether interrogation techniques should be limited to those — none of them considered torture techniques — found in the Army Field Manual, something legally required ever since, in 2009, President Obama issued an executive order to that effect. (“If confirmed,” wrote Pompeo, “I will consult with experts at the [Central Intelligence] Agency and at other organizations in the U.S. government on whether the Army Field Manual uniform application is an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country.”) Unlike many of Trump’s appointees, Pompeo is a smart guy, which makes him all the more dangerous.

When President Trump lists his triumphs, often the first one he mentions is the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court justice. Gorsuch, too, played a small but juicy role in the Bush torture drama, drafting the president’s signing statement for the Detainee Treatment Act when he worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel back in 2005. That statement officially outlawed any torture of “war on terror” detainees, and yet left open the actual practice of torture because, as Gorsuch assured President Bush, none of the administration’s self-proclaimed “enhanced interrogation techniques” (including waterboarding) amounted to torture in the first place.

Still, of all Trump’s recycled appointments, the most dangerous of all took place only recently. The president fired his national security advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, and replaced him with John Bolton of Iran-Contra and Iraq invasion fame.

Under George W. Bush, Bolton was a key proponent of that invasion, which he’d been advocating since at least 1998 when he signed an infamous letter to Bill Clinton from the Project for a New American Century recommending just such a course of action. In 2002, Bolton, while undersecretary of state for arms control, engineered the dismissal of José Bustani, the head of the U.N.’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which was involved in overseeing Iraq’s disarmament process. A former Bolton deputy told the New York Times that Bolton was dismayed because Bustani “was trying to send chemical-weapons inspectors to Baghdad in advance of the U.S.-led invasion.” Presumably Bolton didn’t want the U.N. trumpeting the bad news that Iraq had no active chemical weapons program at that moment.

Nor has Bolton ever forgotten his first Middle Eastern fascination, Iran, although nowadays he wants to attack it (along with North Korea) rather than conspire with it, as President Reagan and he did in the 1980s. He’s argued in several editorials and as a Fox News commentator — wrongly as it happens — that it would be completely legal for the United States to launch first strikes against both countries. Naturally, he opposes the six-nation pact with Iran to end its nuclear weapons program. When that agreement was signed, the New York Times ran an op-ed by Bolton entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” It should (but doesn’t) go without saying that any first strike against another country is again the very definition of the initial crime on that Nuremberg list.

Recycling war crimes

We can’t blame the Trump administration for the decision to support Saudi Arabia’s grim war in Yemen, a catastrophe for the civilians of that poverty-stricken, now famine-plagued country. That choice was made under Barack Obama. But President Trump hasn’t shown the slightest urge to end the American role in it either. Not after the Saudis threw him that fabulous party in Riyadh, projecting a five-story-high portrait of him on the exterior of the Ritz Carlton there. Not after his warm embrace of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman during his recent visit to the United States. In fact, at their joint press conference, Trump actually criticized former president Obama for bothering the Saudis with complaints about human rights violations in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia itself.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to fund and support the Saudi military’s three-year-old war crime in that country, providing weaponry (including cluster bombs), targeting intelligence, and mid-air refueling for Saudi aircraft conducting missions there. The conflict, which the New York Times has called “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” has killed at least ten thousand people, although accurate numbers are almost impossible to come by. As of December 2017, the Yemen Data Project had catalogued 15,489 separate air attacks, of which almost a third involved no known military targets and another 4,800 hit targets that have yet to be identified. Hospitals and other health facilities have been targeted along with crowded markets. Government funding for public health and sanitation ended in 2016, leading to a cholera epidemic that the Guardian calls “the largest and fastest-spreading outbreak of the disease in modern history.”

Through the illegal blockading of Yemen’s ports, Saudi Arabia and its allies have exposed vast numbers of Yemenis to the risk of famine as well. Even before the latest blockade began in November 2017, that country faced the largest food emergency in the world. Now, it is in the early stages of a potentially devastating famine caused entirely by Saudi Arabia’s illegal war, aided and abetted by the United States. In addition, Trump has increased the number of drone assassinations in Yemen, with their ever-present risk of civilian deaths.

Yemen is hardly the only site for actual and potential Trump administration war crimes. In response to requests from his military commanders, the president has, for instance, eased the targeting restrictions that had previously been in place for drone strikes, a decision he’s also failed to report to Congress, as required by law. According to Al-Jazeera, such drone strikes in countries ranging from Libya to Afghanistan will no longer require the presence of an “imminent threat,” which means “the U.S. may now select targets outside of armed conflict,” with increased risk of hitting noncombatants. Also relaxed has been the standard previously in place “of requiring ‘near certainty’ that the target is present” before ordering a strike. Drone operators will now be permitted to attack civilian homes and vehicles, even if they can’t confirm that the human being they are searching for is there. Under Trump, the CIA, which President Obama had largely removed from the drone wars, is once again ordering such attacks along with the military. All of these changes make it more likely that Washington’s serial aerial assassinations will kill significant numbers of civilians in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other target countries.

Defense Secretary Mattis has also loosened the rules of engagement in Afghanistan by, for example, removing the “proximity requirement” for bombing raids. In other words, U.S. forces are now free to drop bombs even when the target is nowhere near U.S. or Afghan military forces. As Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee last October,

“If they are in an assembly area, a training camp, we know they are an enemy and they are going to threaten the Afghan government or our people, [Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan,] has the wherewithal to make that decision. Wherever we find them, anyone who is trying to throw the NATO plan off, trying to attack the Afghan government, then we can go after them.”

Under such widened rules for air strikes — permitting them anytime our forces notice a group of people “assembling” in an area — the chances of killing civilians go way up. And indeed, civilian casualties rose precipitouslyin Afghanistan last year.

And then there’s always the chance — the odds have distinctly risen since the appointments of two raging Iranophobes, Pompeo and Bolton, to key national security positions — that Trump will start his very own unprovoked war of aggression. “I’m good at war,” Trump told an Iowa rally in 2015. “I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war. I love war in a certain way, but only when we win.” With Mike Pompeo whispering in one ear and John Bolton in the other, it’s frighteningly likely Trump will soon commit his very own war crime by starting an aggressive war against Iran.

It’s official: Laura Ingraham will return to Fox News

Laura Ingraham (Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

In a case of what can only be thought of as interesting timing, right-wing news personality Laura Ingraham is taking a week off to spend time with her family. The host of Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” cheerfully announced her spring break on Friday, two days into the fallout resulting from her March 28 tweet ridiculing 17-year-old Parkland mass shooting survivor and activist David Hogg.

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018

Ingraham built her stardom on a foundation of hyper-conservative snarking, and she’s rarely seen quarry sacred enough in her eyes to be deemed untouchable. This time, a share of thinking went, might be different. This time she took aim at a kid who, regardless of how quickly his star has risen, is still raw and in the early stages of dealing with a level of trauma of which Ingraham, a best-selling author, popular talk radio personality  and fully-grown adult, has no first-hand knowledge. The 54-year-old slung dirt at a teenage target who happens to be media-savvy and unrelenting in his opposition to anyone standing against his cause. And Hogg knew how to hit Fox and Ingraham back where it hurts: their advertising revenues.

More than a dozen companies have pulled their advertising from “The Ingraham Angle” — large corporations with deep pockets, including Johnson & Johnson, Jenny Craig, Nestlé, Hulu, Liberty Mutual and Ruby Tuesday. Ingraham issued a weak apology afterward, one that Hogg did not accept.

“Unfortunately Ms. Ingraham has discovered that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences,” former CNN journalist Soledad O’Brien tweeted in response to an assertion Brian Stelter made — that such boycotts can be dangerous — on his CNN series “Reliable Sources” over the weekend.

On that same episode of “Reliable Sources” Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik responded to Stelter by pointing out that the Parkland students “have a great moral authority that most people in the media don’t have. And they have it because of what they went through, seeing classmates killed and then having to mourn and bury their classmates and go on with their life.”

Zurawik continued, “So, why you would go after someone like that and not expect the fiercest kind of push back that he or she can generate? It doesn’t make sense.”

Ingraham’s vacation, according to Fox representatives, was a pre-planned affair that was on the books for some time. Her week away from “The Ingraham Angle” will grant soft auditions to guest hosts such as Jason Chaffetz and Pete Hegseth while giving Ingraham’s bosses time to assess the lasting damage of the current advertiser exodus.

But Ingraham taking “me time” in the midst of a major public relations gaffe isn’t the interesting part — the fact that it coincides with the anniversary of Bill O’Reilly’s famous vacation in April 2017 is raising a few eyebrows.  O’Reilly’s sudden flight to the beach followed breaking news about the price tag for Fox News to keep his various sexual harassment accusations quiet — more than $13 million. O’Reilly was the face of the channel a year ago, and Fox News’ top ratings earner for most of its existence. He had fended off publicized sexual harassment claims before. This time, though, Fox News made his vacation permanent.

This recent history gave some people the impression that Ingraham, too, would be invited to remain at whatever resort where she and her family have ensconced themselves. UPDATE: Not so fast: Monday afternoon Fox News officially announced that Ingraham will indeed be returning to host “The Ingraham Angle.”

“We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts,” said Fox News Channel co-president Jack Abernethy in a statement reported in Variety. “We look forward to having Laura Ingraham back hosting her program next Monday when she returns from spring vacation with her children.”

One truth that the Parkland survivors have spotlighted is that the hypocritical “hopes and prayers” and excuse-making that politicians use to mask their fealty to corporate interests do nothing to protect the lives of children. Hogg and his fellow student survivors of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have used that simple fact to demonstrably amplify their message. They’ve also been quick to slap down conservative detractors by calmly shaming them for behaving more childishly than they do. Over the weekend Hogg very strategically used the term “bully” to describe Ingraham. He also pointed out that Ingraham was very quick to apologize to him but has made no such offer to NBA stars Kevin Durant or LeBron James who, last month, she famously told to “shut up and dribble.”

Durant and James are wealthy celebrities and easy marks for Ingraham. In taking a swipe at Hogg, however, she forgets that he’s still a kid who didn’t ask for a horrific tragedy to thrust him upon the national stage. The world is watching how American adults are treating their kids right now, in a time when the nation’s reputation globally has been diminished.

A closer-to-home issue for Fox, however, is that the median age of its primetime viewership in 2017 was 66, according to Nielsen data, remaining unchanged from its 2016 number. If they want to replenish the ranks of an audience that is literally dying off, it may not be a wise strategy to tick off potential future viewers.

That might matter even more to advertisers who want to secure the loyalty of a generation that will soon come into its own buying power. Americans tend to forget the various wrongs companies commit as soon as said companies dream up new products we want want, but surely the likes of Johnson & Johnson see the unflattering meme-making possibilities here. A company that makes baby powder probably shouldn’t financially support a person who ridicules a child survivor of a massacre. From a corporate image perspective, better to step clear of possibly being on the wrong side of history than to let those ads ride.

Though an #IStandWithLaura counter-movement is rising on social media (of course) it is being amplified by Russian bots (also of course).

Even so, Fox continues to do just fine in the ratings, regularly topping CNN and MSNBC in primetime. What’s more, Ingraham helms a program that often ranks as the fourth most-watched program in all of cable news, attracting a nightly average of 2.6 million viewers. On the network, her program ranks third in primetime behind “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

While popularity didn’t save O’Reilly from a one-way trip to the shed — again, owing to those millions of dollars of hush-money settlements, as well as house-cleaning that bumped off Fox News boss Roger Ailes in the bargain — Ingraham’s obviously saved her. And somewhat ironically, she may want to quietly thank the Ailes and O’Reilly oustings for her reprieve.

Why? As you may have noticed, Fox’s current on-camera bench otherwise lacks a female host as strong as Megyn Kelly, who departed for NBC, or Gretchen Carlson, whose sexual harassment case spelled the beginning of the end for Ailes and others within the company. Nobody’s looking at “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt to leave that morning couch any time soon. And Jeanine Pirro doesn’t fit the network’s — shall we say — aesthetic standards (read: blonde) for its female prime time personalities. Getting rid of Ingraham without an equally popular female host ready to take her slot does not fit Fox News’ primetime strategy.

Besides, Fox News personalities have been taunting children for years without suffering any consequences. Contributors have gone after student protesters at colleges, those bastions of liberalism, with vigor and no one bats an eye. In 2015, the 14-year-old who brought a clock he constructed to school and was arrested for it when administrators mistook it for a bomb gave pundits fodder for days. (Surely it had nothing to do with the fact that the kid’s name is Ahmed Mohamed.)

Even recently Hannity viewers continued to support him after he threw his weight behind Roy Moore, a toxic political candidate and accused child molester. Viewers famously shamed an advertiser, Keurig, when it tweeted its intent to boycott by smashing their own coffeemakers.

Fox News management apparently had no problem with any of that, nor with Tucker Carlson’s recent comparison of the Parkland students to “Mao’s Red Guards,” nor even with Ingraham herself writing off their movement as “nothing but a left-wing, anti-Trump diatribe” two weeks before her snarky college acceptance tweet. This is a network that thinks of the children only when it aligns with their audience’s viewpoint.

It may be more reasonable to expect that Ingraham’s advertiser desertion could change the network’s overall tolerance for its hosts punching down at children. But this controversy could also test the limits of the movement’s power and influence over corporate media’s will. Companies may abandon “The Ingraham Angle” now, but in the short-term it could simply mean additional buys on other programs throughout the network’s schedule.

Though it pains me to say it, this boycott appears to be a temporary problem for Ingraham and Fox News. Advertisers still want to be where the eyeballs are, regardless of the political content of the programming they’re sponsoring. Those abandoned ad slots will be filled with other buyers who might take advantage of the situation to get primetime placement at discounted rates.

Our outrages burn bright and quickly these days, and they tend to subside sharply after initial victories in wars that require sustained attention and effort to truly win. Fox News must be counting on emotions to cool in Ingraham’s absence, just as it may be counting on a spike in her ratings upon her return.

The larger question is whether Hogg and his youthful cohort’s moral authority will mean anything in the long run to a news channel that caters to the far-right fringes of the self-styled moral majority.

Note: This story has been updated to reflect a late-breaking development.

Democratic congresswoman won’t seek re-election after shielding abusive staffer

Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 4, 2015, about bipartisan legislation on gun safety. Esty was joined by others at the news conference including former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who returned to Capitol Hill to join forces with advocates of expanded criminal background checks on all commercial firearms sales. The measure is considered a longshot because of opposition by the National Rifle Association. Giffords was shot in the head during a 2011 rampage in Arizona that left six people dead and a dozen others wounded. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (Credit: AP)

Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty, a Connecticut Democrat, announced on Monday that she would resign from her post and would not be seeking re-election amid scrutiny for how she handled the departure of her former chief of staff, Tony Baker, who has been accused of violence, death threats and harassment by female staffers in her congressional office.

“It is one of the greatest honors of my life that the people of Connecticut’s Fifth District elected me to represent them in Congress,” Esty wrote in a Facebook post published Monday evening. “However, I have determined that it is in the best interest of my constituents and my family to end my time in Congress at the end of this year and not seek re-election.”

Earlier Monday, Esty asked the House Ethics Committee to conduct an expedited review of her handling of the staffer’s departure.

“Although we worked with the House Employment Counsel to investigate and ultimately dismiss this employee for his outrageous behavior with a former staffer, I believe it is important for the House Ethics Committee to conduct its own inquiry into this matter,” Esty said in a letter Monday morning. “In seeking this inquiry, I want to clarify whether there was any wrongdoing on my part,” the statement concluded.

Esty’s previous public statements Monday came after The Washington Post revealed last week that her then-chief of staff kept his job for three months in 2016 after he threatened to kill a former colleague, despite the abuse allegations against him being brought to Esty’s attention.

She had been considered a champion of the #MeToo movement on Capitol Hill. Before news of her own controversy broke, Esty had issued a press release calling for tougher harassment protections for congressional staffers and was among those calling for Rep. John Conyers of Michigan to step down over allegations of sexual misconduct.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., endorsed Esty’s call for an ethics review and said that the congresswoman’s actions had not protected a former staffer in her office. Pelosi did not call on Etsy to resign, however.

In a statement, Pelosi praised Esty’s former staffer Anna Kain, who came forward and told her story involving alleged abusive behavior Esty’s former chief of staff.

“As Congresswoman, Esty has acknowledged, her actions did not protect Ms. Kain and should have. Congresswoman Esty has now appropriately requested an expedited review by the Ethics Committee,” Pelosi said in her statement.

Pelosi used the incident to highlight relevant legislation, the Congressional Accountability Act, which would reform Congress’s sexual harassment policies but has stalled in the Senate. “Nearly 8 weeks ago, the House passed the bipartisan #MeToo Congress legislation to address the broken Congressional process,” Pelosi said. “The Senate is overdue in passing that legislation.”

Earlier this week, Esty apologized for how she handled harassment allegations against her former chief of staff, and said she was “inspired by the courage this young woman is demonstrating by speaking up — in the one company town of DC — to say MeToo.”

“Too many women have been harmed by harassment in the workplace. In the terrible situation in my office, I could have and should have done better,” Esty wrote. “To the survivor, I want to express my strongest apology for letting you down.”

In the statement, the congresswoman also called for “stronger workplace protections and to provide employees with a platform to raise concerns, address problems, and work to reduce and eliminate such occurrences.”

“In my final months in Congress, I will use my power to fight for action and meaningful change,” Etsy said.

What could have saved the Hart children?

The pullout where the SUV of Jennifer and Sarah Hart was recovered off the off Pacific Coast Highway 1, near Westport, Calif. (Credit: AP/Alameda County Sheriff's Office)

The tragedy seemed to unfold in slow motion. First there was the news that an entire family had been involved in a mysterious crash on March 26 that had left five people confirmed dead and three presumed so. Then the stories of abuse began to emerge. Then on Sunday came reports that the plunge off a California cliff may have been deliberate. How did this happen to the Hart family children? And who, if anyone, could have saved them from their own mothers?

Until the March crash in Mendocino County, the Hart family was best known for a viral photograph of one of its members. In 2014, a then 12 year-old Devonte Hart appeared at a Portland protest over the Ferguson verdict. He was weeping and carrying a sign offering free hugs. Portland Police Sergeant Bret Barnum stepped forward to take him up on the offer, and the image — of a white cop and an African American kid locked in a tearful embrace — went viral. As another photographer there at the event said at the time, “Devonte is doing the healing while the rest of us still need to do the work.”

But the media frenzy had an impact on the Harts, who reportedly “stayed locked in their house until slowly the reporters and photographers subsided.” Now, however, there are questions about whether that desire for privacy had a more sinister element. And Devonte is presumed dead, along with the rest of his family, including his siblings Hannah and Sierra.

Jennifer and Sarah Hart had been on Child Protective Services’ radar for years before the crash — long before the famous photograph. In the days following the wreck, KATU reported that Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to a domestic assault charge in Minnesota in 2011 after her daughter revealed several bruises all over her body to a teacher. Sarah explained at the time that she had “resorted to spanking” over the child’s misbehavior.

Neighbors Bruce and Dana Dekalb told KATU News they’d called CPS as recently as days before the crash, claiming that the children “came over to their house, asking for food, eventually several times a day.” They also said one of the children tried to run away last fall. CPS had reportedly identified the children as “potential victims of alleged abuse or neglect.” After a case worker knocked and received no response on March 23, witnesses say they saw the family pack their SUV and take off.  Yet other neighbors thought the family seemed happy. “Jen and Sarah really were the kind of parents that I think the world desperately needs,” a longtime friend told Portland’s KOIN last week.

On Sunday, a California Highway Patrol representative told KOIN that the crash appears to have been an “intentional act,” saying that based on their investigation, “It was pure acceleration from last break application until it hit the bottom of the ocean — the edge of the ocean.” The SUV’s speedometer was stopped at 90 mph. Mendocino County Sheriff’s Lt. Shannon Barney cautioned, however, that’s it’s still “too early” to say for certain what happened.

It’s notable that at some point between the assault charge and the March car crash, the Harts reportedly began home schooling their six adopted children, whose ages ranged from 12 to 19. Yet the Oregonian reports that the mothers “never filed the proper notices [to home school] in Oregon and Washington, according to agencies in both states.” The local school districts likewise have no record of the children. David Holmes, superintendent of schools in La Center, Washington, told the paper that it is ” totally up to the family to notify.”

As unusual as the Hart’s horrific fate is, their story bears echoes of another shocking family case from early this year — that of the Turpins. In January, California couple David and Louise Turpin made headlines for allegedly abusing and keeping their thirteen children — ages 2 to 29 — in captivity. Their alleged crimes came to light when their 17-year-old daughter escaped through a window and managed to call 911. Like most of her siblings, the girl was so malnourished that she appeared several years younger than her true age. When police arrived at the home, three of the children were chained up. Authorities described the entire home, riddled in filth, as “a crime scene.” And Reuters reported in January that “It may have been easier for the parents to shield their children from scrutiny because they were home-schooled.” That pathologically controlling behavior was also on display in the case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, whose abusive mother Dee Dee convinced the home-schooled girl she had an array of debilitating illnesses, until Gypsy and her boyfriend killed her. 

It’s not that home schoolers are prone to abusing their children — the vast majority of the community is made up of loving, involved families. But as a recent LA Times op-ed argued with some staggering statistics, the concern is that abusers can exploit the home schooling system. A 2014 study of child torture reported that “47% of school-age victims had been withdrawn from school for homeschooling and an additional 29% had never been enrolled.” Other sources dispute the figure, however, and assert that home schoolers suffer no more neglect and abuse than traditionally schooled children. 

Yet our erratically regulated American home schooling system and the way abusers operate can make a devastating combination. Nearly 60 percent of child abuse reports come from professionals who have regular contact with children, and have a system of reporting requirements. Take that safety net away, and a child becomes more vulnerable. Presciently, five years ago, the Coalition for Responsible Home Education explored the potential for abuse in the community, noting red flags that now seem like hallmarks of the Turpin and the Hart cases, including “confinement and food deprivation,” “isolation and totalistic” behavior that verges on “cult-like” and targeting “adoption and special needs” children, with particular regard to families with “large numbers” of children. “In some cases,” the organization observed, “parents may start out honestly wanting to do their best, but end up becoming abusive. Ignorance can be as damaging as malice.”

In the cases of the Harts and the Turpins, there are still so many lingering questions regarding what precisely happened to their children. Yet the picture that emerges of both families so far involves extreme isolation and deprivation. These cases involve 19 children, many of them teenagers, but you’d be hard pressed to find any accounts yet from their own peers. The Turpin children appear to have been cut off from outside community for years, emerging only for tightly regimented, photo-op family trips. A former classmate recently recalled the bullying one of the older Turpin girls received when she was still in a traditional school, but that would have been 20 years ago. And while the “family friends” of Jennifer and Sarah Hart have described the women as “loving, inspiring parents,” where were Devonte’s friends? Where were Markis and Jeremiah and Abigail and Hannah and Sierra’s? Where were the peers to advocate for them?

Over the past several weeks, parents and their kids have taken to the streets and to their representatives’ offices to demand safer conditions for them within our schools. That is a fight borne of unfathomable loss, a fight with momentum that cannot be lost. But while the Turpins and the Hart family sagas are dramatic, they underscore another reality that can’t be ignored — that the most dangerous place in the world for many kids is in their own homes, with their own parents. And that same American culture of “Don’t you dare tread on my freeeeeeedom” that gave us our gun obsession also feeds the lack of accountability in families that circumvent the intervention systems that schools can provide. 

Last week, Dana Dekalb told KOIN News about one of her last encounters with the Hart kids, an incident that prompted her to call CPS. “Their daughters telling us, ‘Please, please, please,’ begging us not to make her go back and that they were abusing her,” she said. “And then Devonte, coming over here and telling us he’s being starved to death.”

Winnie Mandela, known as the “Mother of the Nation,” dead at 81

Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela cheering crowd upon Mandela's release from Victor Verster prison. (Credit: Getty/Walter Dhladhla)

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the iconic anti-apartheid activist known as the “Mother of the Nation,” died Monday. The former wife of South African President Nelson Mandela was 81 years old.

Family spokesman Victor Dlamini said Madikizela-Mandela “succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones” at the Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. He added that Madikizela-Mandela struggled with “a long illness, for which she had been in and out of hospital since the start of the year.”

The #Mandela Family statement on the Passing of #WinnieMandela. #RIPWinnieMandela. #SABCNews pic.twitter.com/u7O7sK8WdV

— Thabiso Sithole (@ThabisoSithole) April 2, 2018

Madikizela-Mandela was married to Nelson Mandela for 38 years – the majority of which he spent incarcerated on Robben Island near Cape Town. The pair divorced in 1996, two years after Mandela’s election as South Africa’s first black president. The head of state later died in 2013.

But Madikizela-Mandela’s political contributions were not defined by her relationship to her famous husband. “While he was in prison, she took on an increasingly political role, partly because of constant harassment by the South African security police,” the BBC reported. “She became an international symbol of resistance to apartheid – and a rallying point for poor, black township residents who demanded their freedom.”

In light of Mandela’s incarceration, Madikizela-Mandela was officially “banned” from society, including being barred from moving and working freely. Five years later, in 1969, she was arrested and imprisoned for 18 months for anti-apartheid activities, 13 of which she spent in solitary confinement. Inside, she was beaten and tortured repeatedly. Madikizela-Mandela was incarcerated again for five months in 1976, the year of the Soweto Riots, and then banished to Brandfort – a remote and conservative white town.

“I am a living symbol of whatever is happening in the country,” she wrote in her 1984 memoir “Part of My Soul Went With Him.” “I am a living symbol of the white man’s fear. I never realized how deeply embedded this fear is until I came to Brandfort.”

When Madikizela-Mandela returned to Soweto in the mid-1980s, it was more violent as a result of police brutality and gangs. Her image began to shift as her rhetoric and tactics became more violent, too. “We have no guns — we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol,” she said at a rally in April 1986. “Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.” Here, she referred to “necklacing,” where suspected police informants or traitors were killed by forcing a gasoline-soaked tire around their necks and setting it ablaze. Later, she was protected by a vigilante gang, Mandela United Football Club. And in 1991, Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of ordering the kidnapping of four young people from Soweto from years prior.

In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was implicated in another scandal, when a court convicted her of fraud and theft in connection to a bank scam. However, her motivations were viewed by some as admirable. “The sentencing magistrate compared her to a modern-day Robin Hood, fraudulently acquiring loans for people who were desperately short of money, but he said that as a prominent public figure she should have known better,” the BBC wrote.

Throughout her later life, Madikizela-Mandela’s popularity remained as a politician and revered freedom fighter. “Without condoning her misdemeanors, we must acknowledge that she is a victim. She is damaged and hurt,” South Africa’s future president Kgalema Motlanthe, who at the time was the secretary general of the African National Congress (ANC), said. “When someone is subjected to the kind of consistent persecution and harassment she suffered from the apartheid system, something is bound to snap. We understand that, and will always be there for her.”

As the news of Madikizela-Mandela’s death became public, largely that is how she is being remembered — for her bravery and unwavering commitment to racial equality.

Herman Mashaba, Johannesburg’s mayor, wrote on Twitter: “My deepest condolences to the Mandela family for the passing away of the mother of our nation, Winne Mandela. She served our nation with distinction. May her soul rest in peace.”

My deepest condolences to the Mandela Family for the passing away of the mother of our nation, Winnie Mandela. She served our nation with distinction . May her soul Rest In Peace

— Herman Mashaba (@HermanMashaba) April 2, 2018

South Africa is heartbroken again. We are in mourning. RIP Winnie Mandela. A liberation icon who has inspired and empowered so many to fight against oppression and hate!

— Luke Waltham (@lukewaltham) April 2, 2018

https://twitter.com/idriselba/status/...

In the darkest hours of the struggle to free South Africa, with Nelson Mandela in prison, the face of hope and courage was #Winnie Mandela. May she forever rest in #Power. pic.twitter.com/VrJ6PjMr1F

— Rev Jesse Jackson Sr (@RevJJackson) April 2, 2018

The Most Famous Footage of the #Mandela Family… Via @SABCNewsOnline LIVE on @SABCTVNews & Rolling Coverage on #SABCNews Channel 404. #RIPWinnieMandela #WinnieMandela pic.twitter.com/fYqeEVon9z

— Thabiso Sithole (@ThabisoSithole) April 2, 2018

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in a statement that Winnie was a “defining symbol of the struggle against apartheid. She refused to be bowed by the imprisonment of her husband, the perpetual harassment of her family by security forces, detentions, bannings and banishment. Her courageous defiance was deeply inspiration to me and to generations of activists.”

ANC National Chairperson Gwede Mantashe said, “With the departure of Mama Winnie, [we have lost] one of the very few who are left of our stalwarts and icons. She was one of those who would tell us exactly what is wrong and right, and we are going to be missing that guidance.”

Boston will survive if it can prevent the effects of climate change

(Credit: Gillian Jones/The Berkshire Eagle via AP)

The city of Boston made news in March for receiving four nor’easters in just three weeks. The storms led to piles of snow and coastal flooding. While hurricanes may famously (and fakely) bring sharks to flooded streets, Boston’s floods really do bring swans.

That might be a sweet and peaceful picture. But the reality is that much of Boston was built on fill and subject to massive flooding. The city, known for its forward-thinking attitudes, takes the issue very seriously: Does it really want to surrender valuable real estate to mother nature?

Paul Kirshen, a professor of climate adaptation at UMass’ School for the Environment, is studying the idea of using barrier walls to protect Boston, though he stresses he doesn’t advocate for them. “We were asked to do it because people have had the idea for a couple decades,” he says. “The city thought we needed to look at the issue to see if it made sense.”

At this point, all options are on the table. The most glaring problem with the idea of barriers that would stretch from Swampscott to Cohasset, Winthrop to Hull, or from Logan Airport to the Seaport District, is that they would not prevent flooding from high tides. And Boston currently gets flooding at high tide regularly.

“As sea levels rise, that’s a bigger problem,” says Kirshen. Barriers are “only used in storm flooding, not tidal flooding.”

In addition, “we aren’t 100 percent sure of environmental impact,” he adds. “We’re fairly certain it wouldn’t have major impact on harbor environment.”

There’s another problem with that, and with all of Boston’s future climate change plans: “I can’t give the exact price, but it would cost billions.”

Kirshen suggests, “Shore-based solutions on land, flood-proofing buildings,” and learning to live with flooding are also viable options.

“Shore-based [solutions] have co-benefits,” he explains. “They protect from flooding, bring neighborhoods together, create bikeways and walkways.” East Boston, for example, “doesn’t have much open space, but if you elevate the land, you get co-benefits.” Like an elevated playground, for example, or a football field on elevated land.

According to Kirshen, Boston can expect three feet of sea level rise by 2070.

The city has a handy map where you can see just how likely it is that your home will flood. You can assess risk for low-income communities, the elderly, and for people with limited English skills, and once you add those layers, the entire city of Boston looks vulnerable very quickly.

Jay Wickersham, a lawyer and president of Boston Society of Architects, says that this season’s nor’easters generated the first and third highest recorded tides in Boston history, creating an “extra sense of urgency.”

The BSA, Wickersham, says, is “heartened by how much work and analysis has been done over the last several years. In terms of understanding the problem, Boston is a leader here. We take it very seriously.”

The city already has a short-term plan in place to help mitigate water in Charlestown and East Boston that includes building a floodwall and raising a road. Carl Spector, the city’s environmental commissioner, declined to return numerous calls for comment.

“Part of what good, sound engineering and design tells us is we need layers of protection around districts like East Boston, Charlestown and South Boston,” says Wickersham. “And then sound design tells us, at all scales, we’re really going to be building and rebuilding utilities, parklands, [and] buildings.”

“Everything,” he says, “will have to be rethought in a different way.”

Sea level rise is expected to hit nine inches by 2030, Wickersham says. He points to Kirshen’s report and says when it is released it will “heighten the discussion.”

Twelve years passes in a flash when it comes to the municipal and bureaucratic work that needs to be done to protect a large U.S. coastal city from rapidly rising sea levels. Will Boston be prepared?

“The architectural and engineering community is starting to develop best practices,” says Wickersham, “and that will need to be hard-wired into building code and state code. Right now, those are backward-looking systems. They need to incorporate best science looking forward.”

Wickersham continues, “we need systems that can provide evacuation in case of emergency, and when there isn’t a storm, they are public open space, and not just a wall against the harbor. We’ve done a great job restoring the Boston harbor ecology, and we’ve done a great job making the waterfront accessible to the public. It’s 40 miles long. We don’t want to turn our backs on that. We need to find ways to deal with the storms.”

Flood-Prone City

American parks innovator Frederick Law Olmsted knew Boston was flood-prone back in the 19th century, says Chris Reed, professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and founder of Stoss Landscape Urbanism. Olmsted designed Boston’s century-old Emerald Necklace park system from mud flats to create a floodway that stretches through town. Olmsted’s idea of parks “were fully integrated systems, they were flood control that had public transport in them,” Reed says. “In the 20th century, with the rise of specialties, everything he was working with was separated out. And parks were just parks, separate.”

In the 1990s and 2000s, Reed says, there has been an effort to reintegrate these components. “Any work we do on a river has to take into account flooding and flood control, and it’s integrated in a way you don’t even know it’s there.”

Yet, the dark cloud that looms over future planning isn’t found in the weather or climate change or the plans of the present or the past.

“How are we going to pay for this? That’s the huge question,” Wickersham says. “We need to be very imaginative. We’re going to have to find public [sources], bond sources. But that’s also going to have to have private contributions as well.”

Wickersham says there needs to be “some kind of principles of fairness that goes to equity. Public support goes first to most vulnerable communities. We think at the BSA, the principles of keeping the city livable and just have to be cornerstones of how planning moves forward.” Wickersham pointed to plans for the Suffolk Downs site in East Boston, and how new designs are taking flooding into consideration, allowing the water to come in and go out.

Contrary to Wickersham and the BSA’s principles of just planning, people in the East Boston community of mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants believe those plans are exploitative and do nothing to protect them, leaving them to cope with rapid and often unchecked development and gentrification.

“Can we do this in a way that keeps the city livable and keeps the city just?” says Wickersham. The bigger question though, is “And what’s the governance? And do we need a new governance system?”

“I think first of all, this is not going to be a public works,” he says. “This will require public and private investment. It requires we think of how we plan and design the city.”

When asked why not have Amazon kick in some of the cost of protecting Boston, everyone interviewed for this story laughed. Hard. Some laughed more sinisterly than others, but only one was able to mutter, “No comment.” (Amazon is receiving $10 million in tax incentives from the city, in addition to the dowry offer for HQ2 that should make anyone with an honest heart for public service squirm.)

Bostonians, Paul Kirshen says, “have to learn to live with more frequent coastal storms than we have now. People need to decide if they want to keep the flooding at bay or move away. Wealthy people might have resources to stay. Poor people won’t.”

Until Boston figures out its new water-prone present and future, Kirshen recommends residents figure out their evacuation route. Make sure their basement is clean. Have food and water on hand. Be prepared for what might happen.

“We’re going to have to learn to live with water,” Jay Wickersham says. “We can’t wall it out.”

Businessman Donald Trump Jr. is stumping for his dad’s political friends

Donald Trump Jr. (Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

Donald Trump Jr. is planning on campaigning for Republican candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, even though he is supposedly focused on running the family business empire.

Among the candidates who will benefit from Trump Jr.’s stumping are Greg Pence, the brother of Vice President Mike Pence who is seeking a congressional seat in Indiana, according to Axios. That event will take place on April 23 in New York. Trump Jr. will also make an early August appearance for an event benefiting Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y.

The decision by Trump Jr. to campaign for Zeldin suggests that he may be planning a more expansive tour, since Zeldin would hardly be the logical person for a prominent member of the Trump family to assist. He was one of 12 Republican House members to vote “No” on the president’s signature tax reform legislation in December, according to The New York Times. Zeldin later denounced the bill as “a geographic redistribution of wealth… when you are taking extra money from a state like New York or New Jersey to pay for a deeper tax cut elsewhere.”

Zeldin added, “If you are going to make a change, you phase it down over two-, three-, four-plus years to a number that fully protects middle-income itemizers. That’s better policy.”

Trump Jr. has aroused controversy in the past over his political activities. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the president’s son interacted with Wikileaks in a way that seemingly involved improper coordination between his father’s campaign and the interests of a whistleblowing organization openly hostile to the American government, according to The Atlantic. He also met with a lawyer connected to the Kremlin to obtain dirt on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, according to The New York Times.

On those occasions, however, Trump Jr. had not made any formal pledge to run the Trump businesses while leaving governing to his father. After he became president, Donald Trump left his business empire in the hands of his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump through a revocable trust, according to BBC News. Although the Trump sons promised that they would not discuss business with their father, Eric Trump later revealed that he may share quarterly reports with his father, and a report by ProPublica discovered that Trump could withdraw money from the trust at any time and without disclosure.

Trump Jr. has also at times seemed to trade in on his connection to the president to assist his business empire. In February, while selling Trump-branded luxury condominiums in India, the president’s son offered “conversation and dinner” with potential buyers willing to fork over $38,000, according to The Washington Post. He also headlined an event in New Delhi with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that was promoted through an advertisement which asked readers, “Trump has arrived. Have you?”

Julie McCarthy, a New Delhi correspondent for NPR, broke down exactly what was so problematic about Trump Jr.’s actions in India:

They invite investors to book their apartments, and for the privilege, they join Donald Trump Jr. for a personal conversation and dinner. Now, watchdogs on ethics say, look, this is nothing short of selling access, and therein lies the potential for the conflict of interest.

Trump Jr. has also been a controversial figure due to his association with the far right. He has retweeted or otherwise expressed support for outspoken misogynist Mike Cernovich, far right blogger Stefan Molyneux, Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and Infowars’ Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson. More recently, Trump Jr. got in trouble for expressing support on Twitter for conspiracy theories that attacked David Hogg, one of the students who survived the Parkland school shooting, according to The Washington Post.

While Trump Jr.’s decision to stump for Republican candidates is clearly not the first occasion when he has blurred the lines between the Trump business empire and Trump’s political activities, it raises further questions about whether the Trump family may take advantage of their political connections to unfairly aid their business interests, or vice versa. In addition, it raises questions about where the line is drawn between Trump Jr. merely stumping as a supporter of his father and actually using his father’s political activities to implicitly or explicitly promote the Trump business empire.

Live Nation gives us another reason to hate it

The Who's Roger Daltrey performs during at the Arena at Gwinnett Center. In 2013, Live Nation neglected to use the Gwinnett Center when the center switched from Ticketmaster to AEG. (Credit: Getty/Rick Diamond)

Department of Justice officials are looking into the business practices of Live Nation, the world’s biggest concert promoter after its 2010 merger with leading ticket company Ticketmaster.

The Live Nation empire has come under fire amid serious allegations, which the Justice Department is reviewing, according to a new report by the New York Times — that the company has pressured venues into using its subsidiary Ticketmaster as a vendor. “The company’s chief competitor, AEG, has told the officials that venues it manages that serve Atlanta; Las Vegas; Minneapolis; Salt Lake City; Louisville, Ky.; and Oakland, Calif., were told they would lose valuable shows if Ticketmaster was not used as a vendor,” the Times reported, adding that it would be considered “a possible violation of antitrust law.”

When the two already dominant companies merged in 2010, critics worried that ticket competitors would be disabled and that the industry would be monopolized. But federal officials who approved the merge tried to appease the warnings, indicating that a consent decree they negotiated would actually boost competition and bar oligopoly. The country’s leading antitrust regulator even said that the merge may reduce ticket prices and service fees, the Times noted.

However, as anyone who attends concerts knows in 2018, ticket prices and service fees are at record highs and, Live Nation currently tickets 80 of the top 100 venues across the country.

The Times cited an example from a 2013 Matchbox Twenty show in Atlanta when Live Nation opted to use a different venue instead of the  Gwinnett Center — now known as the Infinite Energy Arena.

“Gwinnett’s booking director, Dan Markham, worried his venue was being punished, according to emails he wrote at the time. The center had just replaced Ticketmaster with a service controlled by AEG,” the Times reported. “‘Don’t abandon Gwinnett,’ he wrote to a Live Nation talent coordinator. ‘If there’s an issue or issues let’s address.'” The Live Nation coordinator responded: “Issue? Three letters. Can you guess what they are?,” seemingly AEG.

“What happened in Atlanta is just one example of what has been occurring much more broadly,” Ted Fikre, chief legal officer for AEG, told the Times.

Ticketmaster president Jared Smith responded the Times report saying: “The New York Times article suggests that any benefits of being a vertically integrated company are, in and of themselves, anticompetitive. They insinuate that we ‘condition’ content.  That we ‘retaliate’ when Ticketmaster is not selected as a venue’s ticketing partner. In short, they say we have stifled competition.”

He continued, “The reality is that none of these things are true. It is absolutely against Live Nation and Ticketmaster policy to threaten venues that they won’t get any Live Nation shows if they don’t use Ticketmaster. We also do not re-route content as retaliation for a lost ticketing deal. Live Nation is the most artist-focused company in the world, and misusing our relationship with artists to ‘settle scores’ with venues would be both bad business and counter to our core beliefs.”

But many are not convinced. As two other major mergers are being reviewed by the Justice Department: AT&T with Time Warner and the Walt Disney Company with 21st Century Fox, some are pointing to the results of Live Nation’s and Ticketmaster’s merge as evidence that such high-stake mergers have proven “problematic.”

“The consent decree was supposed to prevent Live Nation from using its strength in live entertainment to foreclose competition in ticketing,” Beau Buffier, chief of the New York Attorney General’s Antitrust Bureau, told the Times. “But it is now widely seen as the poster child for the problems that arise when enforcers adopt these temporary fixes to limit the anticompetitive effects of deeply problematic vertical mergers.”

Not all of the controversy surrounding Live Nation in recent years has been confined to its alleged anti-competition. In 2015, the Washington Post published an exposé about how the company uses independent contractors at some of its venues in order to low-ball employees. The Post said this often results in workers being compensated at $10 an hour, with short shifts and no benefits for concert jobs that are often dangerous. And, especially in recent years, Ticketmaster has been highlighted for its astronomical service fees, sometimes adding 30 or 40 percent to ticket prices. Canada’s Competition Bureau announced a lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation in January for what it says is “deceptive” pricing.

In 2017, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino “admitted in emails that some of the fees Ticketmaster charges for the sale of tickets are ‘not defendable,'” Billboard reported.

Donald Trump comes to Sinclair’s defense and muddies the real news/fake news divide

(Credit: Getty/Mandel Ngan/AP/Steve Ruark)

President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday morning to stand up for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is in the middle of a bad news cycle for forcing all of its anchors across the country to read from the same propaganda script.

Here’s what the president tweeted Monday:

So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018

Sinclair has been requiring the nearly 200 local news stations that it owns to read from a right-wing script during their broadcasts. Many of the local networks were unhappy with this decision, and last week Deadspin created a compilation video of clips from various Sinclair-owned stations which showed them mouthing the same lines that had been sent to them as “must runs.” The running theme was that other news outlets used “fake stories” — a clear reference to Trump’s regular use of the phrase “fake news” to disparage media outlets which write unflattering things about him.

One line in the script read:

The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, national media outlets are publishing these same fake stories without checking facts first.

Commentators like John Oliver have pointed out that there was a two-pronged problem with Sinclair’s ability to force local news outlets to read from their right-wing scripts: It allowed a large corporation to manipulate local media outlets into spreading a pro-Trump message, such as by forcing them to air commentary clips by former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn. And, given that Sinclair Broadcasting is claiming that other media outlets spread fake news, it is ironic that they are shoehorning their own biases into ostensibly impartial broadcasts.

“It sickens me the way this company is encroaching upon trusted news brands in rural markets,” one investigative reporter from Sinclair Broadcasting admitted to CNN.

Journalist David Zurawik, who has covered local television for roughly 30 years, denounced Sinclair’s actions as far back as July, arguing at that time that the pernicious aspect of Sinclair’s actions was that they were sending people pro-Trump messages in a forum that they had previously been able to trust.

“People are getting this within the context of their 30 or 60 minute local news,” Zurawik told CNN. “So they’re getting where they get their high school sports scores from, where they get their local weather from, where they get it in the context of these people that they’ve come to trust.”

Despite the increased attention to Sinclair Broadcasting’s propagandizing efforts, the Federal Communications Commission is still deciding whether to approve the corporation’s takeover of Tribune Media, which would increase its hold from 193 local news stations to 233 local news stations.

Ironically, even as Trump was denouncing mainstream media outlets as “fake news” and defending Sinclair, a recent study by Monmouth University Poll found that Trump is held in lower regard than the journalistic venues he likes to malign. Aside from Republicans, fewer Americans trust Trump than they do the three major cable news outlets. This includes 48 percent of Americans who trust CNN more than Trump, as opposed to 35 percent who trust Trump more; 45 percent of Americans trust MSNBC more than Trump, as opposed to 32 percent who trust Trump more; and 30 percent of Americans who trust Fox News more than Trump, as opposed to 20 percent who trust Trump more (a plurality, 37 percent, trust both of them equally).

But there’s not all good news. Every partisan group has grown to distrust media outlets on the grounds that they think they promote “fake news.” This includes 89 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of independents and 61 percent of Democrats, with each group rising from between 12 and 18 percent over the past year. The regular drumbeat of accusations that certain media outlets peddle “fake news” has also led to dire real-world consequences. In January, a 19-year-old from Michigan was arrested for making threats against CNN. That same month, Facebook changed its news feed algorithm, unwittingly amplifying the reach of fake news stories. Meanwhile, innocent people like actress Fiona Dourif have been wrongly accused of promoting fake news to hurt conservative candidates, in stories that were themselves entirely fabricated.

The biggest danger of all, however, is that even though Trump hasn’t enhanced his own credibility by attacking the media, he has undermined American democracy’s ability to protect itself through honest reporting that receives the respect and trust it deserves.

“These findings are troubling, no matter how you define ‘fake news.’ Confidence in an independent fourth estate is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Ours appears to be headed for the intensive care unit,” Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, explained in a statement that was released with the survey’s results.

Here’s one issue blue and red states agree on: preventing deaths of expectant and new mothers

(Credit: effe45 via Shutterstock)

Alarmed that the U.S. is the most dangerous affluent country in which to give birth, state and local lawmakers around the country are adopting a flurry of bipartisan bills aimed at reforming how maternal deaths are identified and investigated.

In Indiana earlier this month, Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill creating a maternal mortality review committee to scrutinize deaths and near-deaths among expectant and new mothers and make policy recommendations to improve maternal health.

Oregon’s governor and Washington, D.C.’s mayor, both Democrats, are expected to sign similar legislation in the coming days. Proposals are pending in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey.

Legislators from several of these states credited the ProPublica/NPR “Lost Mothers” series with raising their awareness and concern about the issue. Maryland Delegate Jheanelle Wilkins, who introduced a bill there, said that the series, especially articles looking at why black mothers are at greatest risk of dying and nearly dying, inspired her and her fellow lawmakers.

“A friend of mine posted one of the stories on Facebook and she challenged her elected officials — Who’s going to do something about it?” Wilkins said.

About 35 states have now established review committees or are in the process of doing so, as well as four cities: New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. Two federal bills introduced last year, which would create a grant program to help states introduce or improve review committees, remain stalled in committee.

Between 700 and 900 women die each year in the U.S. from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth, and the rate has risen even as it has declined in other wealthy countries. The rate of life-threatening complications has also soared since the 1990s, endangering more than 50,000 U.S. women a year. A new report by the CDC Foundation — a nonprofit created by Congress to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — suggests that more than 60 percent of pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable.

The “Lost Mothers” project highlighted a number of reasons the U.S. has fallen behind other countries, including a greater focus on the health of the baby than of the mother, treatment guidelines that vary from one doctor or hospital to the next, and government failures to collect accurate data and to study maternal deaths and near-deaths to understand how they might be prevented.

Maternal mortality review committees can play a key role in this process, public health experts say, by identifying pregnancy-related deaths that might otherwise be overlooked, analyzing the factors contributing to those deaths, and translating the lessons into policy changes. That’s what happens in Great Britain, where a national committee investigates every maternal death and the findings help set women’s health policy across the country.

As recently as 2016, only about half the states had such panels. The number has been growing quickly, said Andria Cornell, senior program manager for women’s health and maternal health lead at the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs, a nonprofit advocacy group.

“This is a time of unprecedented political and social will for establishing maternal mortality review committees,” she said. “We’ve definitely come to a tipping point.”

Cornell credited two forces for driving the change: journalism focused on maternal deaths and a national project led by AMCHP, the Centers for Disease Control and the CDC Foundation.

With money from Merck for Mothers, a charitable initiative created by the pharmaceutical giant, the project has funded a web portal that provides information on starting and improving review committees and a tool, the Maternal Mortality Review Information Application, that shows jurisdictions how to standardize data collection from review panels so that it’s comparable from one state to the next.

Review committees do have limitations. Many are understaffed and poorly funded, with limited authority to dig deeply into systemic problems or implement meaningful reforms. It generally takes several years for them to produce their reports, in part because committee members — including doctors, public health experts, medical examiners, and the like — have other demands on their time and aren’t compensated.

Also, committee records and reports are de-identified — stripped of any information that might point to a particular woman, caregiver or hospital. Thus the review is of little use in assigning responsibility for individual deaths, or evaluating whether some hospitals, doctors or nurses are especially prone to error. Still, recommendations and findings from reviews have proven helpful in states such as California in shaping preventive efforts that have reduced maternal mortality rates.

Indiana epitomizes the national movement to use the review committee process to scrutinize maternal deaths. There, the focus had long been on reducing infant mortality: The state has the highest rate of neonatal deaths outside the South. Maternal deaths weren’t on the radar, even though the state’s maternal mortality rate is around 41 women per 100,000 births, according to a new analysis of federal data by United Health Foundation — or double the rate of maternal deaths in neighboring Illinois and Ohio.

“I’ll be honest,” said state Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican from rural southeastern Indiana. “I’m on the Health Committee … and I had no idea our maternal statistics were so lousy.”

The bill she sponsored — creating a committee for the next five years to study not just maternal mortality but also life-threatening complications, or severe maternal morbidity — sailed through the legislature, in part because of a change in governors. Holcomb, who replaced Mike Pence and is seen as more of a pragmatist, appointed a female obstetrician-gynecologist to be his .

The bill’s supporters drew a connection between maternal and infant mortality, said Dr. Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds, legislative chair for the Indiana chapter of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: “We could bring forth the idea that healthy moms have healthy babies.”

Oregon’s bill, which also passed easily this month, creates a review committee that will start by focusing on maternal deaths; by 2021, it will also begin looking at severe maternal morbidity. Over that period, it will cost the state more than $450,000 — a significant public commitment to a women’s health initiative.

“I did think, wow, that’s more money than I thought it was going to be, but no one blinked an eye,” said Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer of Portland, the bill’s chief sponsor. “That just shows how much support this idea has.”

In the District of Columbia, concerns about the high maternal mortality rate— in 2014, it stood at about 40.7 deaths per 100,000 births, according to the analysis by United Health Foundation, substantially exceeding the U.S. rate and those of neighboring Virginia and Maryland — have periodically sparked talk of a review committee, but not enough to push a measure through.

Last year, after two hospitals in Northeast and predominantly black Southeast Washington closed maternity units, concerns grew over access to quality care, particularly for low-income and minority women. Nationally, black women have a maternal mortality rate three to four times higher than white women, and the District suspects its gap is even wider.

“Those disparities were the more acute driver of why we felt we needed to take this action,” said Councilmember Charles Allen, who introduced the measure to establish the panel. “You have to know what is driving this wide disparity before you can really have the strategies for how to fix it.”

The D.C. bill still must be signed into law and, like all District legislation, reviewed by Congress before it becomes effective. It calls for one full-time employee to assist the panel’s work, a position that Allen said he expects to be funded in the budget that will be passed later in the year. In addition to health care professionals, a social worker and representatives of community groups that specialize in women’s health, the D.C. committee will also include “one person who has been directly impacted by a maternal mortality or severe maternal morbidity.” Maternal health advocates say listening to such voices is a critical step in addressing how disparities in race, income and education affect outcomes.

That’s what prompted Wilkins, the Maryland delegate, to introduce her bill, which passed the House this month and will be taken up in the Senate in April. Maryland established its review committee in 2000, but in the panel’s most recent report, the participants consisted almost exclusively of medical professionals, mostly doctors and nurse-midwives. Wilkins’s bill would require the committee to meet at least twice a year with a group that includes representatives from the Maryland Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Maryland Patient Safety Center, women’s health advocacy organizations, and a relative of a mother who died, and to incorporate their recommendations into its final report.

“The women who are impacted and the organizations that work with the communities they live in — we need to make sure they are at the table,” Wilkins said.

Other pending proposals would revamp New Jersey’s 80-plus-year-old review process and establish a new review committee in Connecticut.

Pennsylvania, which ranks sixth in the number of births in the U.S., is currently the largest state without a maternal mortality review committee, but lawmakers are advancing a measure to change that. It passed the House in December and recently cleared a Senate committee; it’s now headed for consideration by the full Senate.

State Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Lehigh, introduced the bill last October after doctors from his district showed him grim data on rising maternal mortality rates in the nation and the state. Pennsylvania’s rate has more than doubled since 1994, according to a December 2017 report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. When Mackenzie ran the idea of creating a statewide review process past House colleagues, several responded that media reports about maternal mortality, including our “Lost Mothers” series, had spurred them to consider similar measures.

Mackenzie’s bill calls for a committee of at least 14 members, most of them health care professionals, with a special emphasis on members working in communities most affected by maternal deaths and a lack of access to care. The measure does not include funding, and specifies that committee members would be unpaid, but Mackenzie said the state Department of Health would redirect existing staff to support it.

Another important aim in creating a statewide review process is making sure maternal deaths are being defined and tracked consistently, Mackenzie said. The state health department has tabulated annual totals for years, but counts only deaths that occur up to 42 days after pregnancy and not those that happen within a year, the standard used by the CDC and most review committees. When Philadelphia’s maternal mortality review panel compared the state’s numbers with its own for the city from 2010 to 2012, the state’s count was about 30 percent lower. Mackenzie’s bill would align Pennsylvania’s committee with the one-year standard.

“We’re hoping to save lives,” Mackenzie said in proposing the review committee. “Based on the results in other states, we think this is realistic.”