Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 179

Drug companies sell us remedies for problems caused by their own products���and the Federal Government

(Credit: AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

Like most folks, you dutifully rub shampoo into your hair daily or a few times each week. After it strips out your hair���s natural moisture and liveliness, you apply a conditioner to get that moisture and liveliness back.

Much about modern life seems to follow this general pattern.

Mounting evidence suggests multinational companies negligently sell products to the public that are leading drivers of public health issues, while at the same time another division presents the ���remedy��� to that same harm. A panacea for their own poison, as it were. In this way, they profit twice: once when they supply the cause of our ailments, and again when we come to them for the cure.

It is clear that all is not well in Big Pharma these days. Americans have yet to coalesce around a plan to impose transparency and integrity on health care and pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile, mounting evidence suggests the industry persists in the peddling hundreds of products each year with dubious claims and even more dubious real-world effects ��� all while maintaining stupefyingly high profit margins.

Sick and Getting Sicker

The real topics today are corporate consolidation and corruption. There may be no better figurehead for this problem than everybody���s favorite ���Family Company��� (their words): Johnson & Johnson. This is a family of more than 250 subsidiaries.

You will recall that the pharma giant���s talc-based baby powder is now inextricably linked to incidences of ovarian cancer. Websites which concern themselves with preventing this type of cancer specifically recommend omitting talcum powders from your daily constitutionals.

Fortunately enough for Johnson & Johnson���s bottom line, at least one company from their panoply of subsidiaries ��� Janssen Pharmaceuticals ��� charitably offers chemotherapy drugs for ovarian cancer patients for a mere $2,758 per dose. You can recognize it by the marketing-friendly name ���Doxil.���

Let���s do another example.

You���re probably familiar with the sugar alternative called Equal. Equal and Canderel represent the Merisant Corporation���s two most common and most profitable sugar substitutes currently on the market. Mind you, such products are largely marketed toward health-conscious consumers who wish to eliminate sugar from their diet.

The only trouble is, these products contain aspartame ��� and mounting evidence links aspartame with Alzheimer���s disease, various cancers and multiple sclerosis.

Thankfully, MacAndrews & Forbes �����the multinational that owns Merisant ��� also owns vTv Therapeutics, which (you guessed it) makes a pretty penny selling treatments for literally every health horror that aspartame allegedly contributes to.

Selling Snakeoil (With Government���s Help?)

The False Claims Act exists for a reason in America, theoretically. Under its guidance, corporations paid around $38.9 billion in damages and restitutionbetween 1987 and 2013 for lying to the public about what their products actually do.

But context is everything here. For scale, the United States��� entire GDP in 2016 was $18.5 trillion. What good is a $38-billion slap on the wrist, spread across 25 years and dozens of corporations? And where���s the evidence that these weak, punitive, reactionary measures actually get results? We need a system that prevents fraud ��� not one which reacts as an afterthought after it���s already taken place.

The Politics of Corporate and Human Dignity

How do we fix this?

To begin with, we have to recognize that America is one of only two developed countries in the world which allows pharmaceutical companies to market directly to consumers. They take advantage of this by spending, collectively, $3 billion on advertising to convince Americans to convince their doctors that they have a health concern worth writing a prescription for.

But what about the flagrant conflicts of interest like the ones we described above? How can it be that corporations wield power equal to governments and owns both the means to make us sick and to cure us?

The answer is simple: America stopped enforcing antitrust laws some time ago.

Part of the reason why is because nearly everything about commerce is vastly different than it was when anti-monopoly laws first hit our books. We didn���t envision a world where companies could grow so diversified in the products they sell. We wrote our laws to tackle monopolies within a single industry �����we didn���t anticipate that a single company could dominate several very different sectors. Look at what happened to the stocks of supermarket companies after Amazon bought Whole Foods. That shouldn���t really be possible.

Then, overlay all of this with the cancerous influence of money in politics. Money has always shaped policy, but it���s been getting worse and worse since the Supreme Court���s Citizens United decision. Now, if policy is on the table ��� which might rein in corruption in a given industry ��� that industry mobilizes its army of lobbyists to kill that particular piece of legislation. Think of how Big Telecom frequently buys off local politicians and then instructs them to put up roadblocks to municipal broadband projects, which would easily deliver faster and cheaper service than American ISPs are ���legally��� required to provide. And then they charge extra for higher speeds.

These are all symptoms of the same disease, and that disease is institutional greed. Greed is why health care and many other products in America ��� even those which serve the public good in an obvious way, such as health care, education and access to the internet ��� gets worse and worse while simultaneously more expensive.

As the saying goes, ���they���ve got us coming and going.���

Government for the Little People

When all else fails, we can turn to the smallest government there is ��� the minority ��� and vote with our wallets for the sort of companies and world we want. We have more information than ever before and we can share it more effectively than ever. Being aware is the first and most critical step in this fight.

But it���s also clear we need a more organized resistance against multi-continental, multi-national health, food, and cosmetics empires that operate with the autonomy of sovereign nations. We need greater public awareness and then we need homegrown public servants who act on it by speaking truth to power and greed, which often arrive conveniently packaged as a set, much like shampoo and conditioner.

Trump���s first State of the Union: A list of promises made ��� and broken

(Credit: Getty/Win McNamee)

At his first State of the Union address, President Donald Trump was arguably most animated when he returned to his favorite red-meat line: ���We proudly stand for the national anthem.��� That Trump brought up the contentious NFL anthem protests — not so subtly signaling at resentment against millionaire black athletes — during a speech previewed by the White House as a ���unifying��� address is all anyone has to know about the state of the union after a full year of the Trump presidency.

Light on details, devoid of any mention of election integrity or the Russia investigation and full of standard-issue conservative rhetoric, Trump���s first SOTU was a mix of his typical Twitter braggadocio and campaign promises left unfulfilled in his first year.

On lowering drug prices: ���One of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs.���

After being named Person of the Year in 2016, Trump told Time: ���I���m going to bring down drug prices. I don���t like what has happened with drug prices.��� While campaigning in New Hampshire, a state ravaged by the opioid epidemic, Trump offered a solution: ���If we competitively bid drugs in the United States, we can save as much as $300 billion a year.��� According to the latest data available, however, prescription drug spending in the U.S. only totaled $297.7 billion in 2014.

Politico reported in June that a list of the possible policy changes Trump is considering ���include policies that read like gifts to the drug industry.���

On the opioid epidemic: ���My administration is committed to fighting the drug epidemic and helping get treatment for those in need���

Despite declaring a 90-day public-health emergency over opioid abuse in October, Trump has done little or nothing to tackle the epidemic. Trump didn���t share any further details or promise any additional funding Tuesday night.

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Taylor Weyeneth, a 2016 graduate of St. John���s University who had worked on the Trump campaign, was installed as the second-in-command at Trump���s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). The agency is tasked with leading the federal government���s multibillion-dollar anti-drug efforts. (Weyeneth was later demoted and then resigned.)

On deregulation: ���We have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in the history of our country.���

As Bloomberg noted when the president held an event late last year to tout “the most far-reaching regulatory reform in history,��� Trump is taking credit for “killing” more than 100 regulations that were already dead under Obama:

While the president has succeeded in undoing some major environmental and financial industry rules, a Bloomberg News review of the administration���s list found almost a third of them actually were begun under earlier presidents. Others strain the definition of lessening the burden of regulation or were relatively inconsequential, the kind of actions government implements routinely.

On jobs: ���Unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low.���

Trump is operating on outdated figures.

As the Washington Post fact-checker noted on Tuesday, �����If Trump had given this speech last week, his claim might have been accurate.��� As of Jan. 20, however, new jobless claims had��risen��to 233,000, a slight uptick since December.

The decline in the unemployment rate began in 2009, which was, perhaps not coincidentally, the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. Trump���s first year was marked by 2.1 million jobs being added to the economy ��� not an atrocious number, but the slowest year of job growth in six years,��according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Obama���s final year, the economy created 2.2 million.

On wages: ���After years and years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.���

As with job growth, Trump���s victory lap takes place on Obama���s track. Wages rose in 2016.

On Obamacare: ���We repealed the core of the disastrous Obamacare. The individual mandate is now gone.���

This one sounds true, and got one of the biggest cheers of the night from the Republican side of the aisle. But of course the GOP hasn’t repealed Obamacare, despite several attempts at it. And even Trump’s specific claim, which sounded a lot like “we repealed Obamacare!” without quite saying that, is technically untrue.

As part of their recently-passed tax bill, Republicans effectively gutted Obamacare’s requirement that most people purchase insurance. But the individual mandate is not gone yet. The GOP’s tax bill doesn���t eliminate the penalty levied on those who don’t abide by the mandate until 2019.��

The Civil Rights movement, distorted: Weaponizing history against Black Lives Matter

Martin Luther King Jr., flanked by his wife Coretta and John Lewis, leads a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (Credit: AP)

Distorted renderings of movement history took on heightened danger as a new movement gained national attention. Galvanizing around the issues of police brutality, criminal injustice, and mass incarceration, Black Lives Matter came to national prominence after the killing of Trayvon Martin and subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman in 2013, and the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. The vision of Black Lives Matter was articulated by three Black queer women: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi; its various local incarnations have encompassed a broad palette of issues affecting Black lives, from enduring school inequality to living-wage struggles, and from police accountability to gender justice. Taking to the streets, blocking traffic, disrupting political events and commerce, and launching die-ins on college campuses, this new leader-full movement, organized predominantly by young Black people but joined by a rainbow of others and Black people of all ages, has forced the nation to grapple with issues of racial injustice in law enforcement and the legal system.

The civil rights movement has lurked everywhere in public discussion of Black Lives Matter. While there have been notable connections and moments of camaraderie���for instance, Harry Belafonte���s Justice League, as well as by many of the former members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee���an undertone of concern and fear about the protesters and problems with the movement they are building have come from many corners, the criticism laced with problematic allusions to the civil rights movement. Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee outrageously stated that Martin Luther King Jr. would be ���appalled��� by BLM���s strategy and called on protesters to be more like King. King���s niece, Alveda King, referred to BLM���s methods as ���inappropriate.��� Oprah Winfrey called for ���some kind of leadership to come out of this��� and cautioned young activists ���to take note of the strategic, peaceful intention if you want real change.��� CNN���s Wolf Blitzer criticized protests in Baltimore as not being ���in the tradition of Martin Luther King.��� And Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed invoked the history of King to celebrate Atlanta���s tradition of free speech, but then admonished protesters: ���Dr. King would never take a freeway.���

Even some former activists have gone this route. Congressman John Lewis, a former SNCC chair, initially spoke out against people critiquing BLM: ���Those people should do something. Make their own movement.��� But when BLM protesters disrupted a Hillary Clinton rally with Lewis in attendance, he cautioned: ���Most of the things that we did back in the 1960s was good trouble; it was necessary trouble. . . . But we have to respect the right of everybody to be heard. And you do that in a nonviolent, orderly fashion.��� Lewis cast these young activists��� protests as being far different from the ���necessary good��� trouble he and his comrades had made. In July 2016, as protests flared again following police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Lewis tweeted: ���I was beaten bloody by police officers. But I never hated them. I said, ���Thank you for your service.������ And former SCLC organizer Andrew Young, at a pep talk at a police precinct, went a step further in his criticism of the protesters: ���Those are some unlovable little brats out there. . . . They���re showing off. And not even with a clear message.���

Casting the young protesters as reckless and not living up to the legacy of the civil rights movement, a number of prominent voices have measured Black Lives Matter against the movement and found it falling short. Many who claim sympathy with BLM���s purpose have used the civil rights movement to decry their tactics���putting aside the fact that King took a highway many times over his life, that the movement was disruptive and unpopular, and that it made many Americans uncomfortable. The civil rights movement has become museum history, inaccessible for our grubby use today. While the actual civil rights movement was far more disruptive, demanding, contentious, and profound than it���s depicted, the mythologies of it get in the way of seeing the continuities between these struggles, the shoulders current movements stand on, and the ways people can learn from past struggles to approach the problems we face as a nation today.

In response to the repeated invocation of the civil rights movement to criticize their work, some activists have challenged a set of older Black leaders, along with scores of white commentators, who disapprove of their approach. As Ferguson activist-musician Tef Poe retorted in his song ���War Cry,��� ���This ain���t yo mama���s civil rights movement,��� proudly distinguishing BLM from the civil rights movement (or at least from the myth being brandished against them). ���Missouri is the new Mississippi,��� he explained. They wanted to know what these critics were doing today and stressed the importance and distinctiveness of the movement they were building. Activist-writer Rahiel Tesfamariam donated a T-shirt with this slogan to the Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture to document ���the history being made��� from this new movement: ���This looks different; it sounds different. It���s a comment of anger.���

Many saw the invocation of the civil rights movement against BLM as a way for critics to stand on the sidelines. ���The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander,��� actor-activist Jesse Williams made clear at the 2016 BET awards, in a speech that went viral. ���If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression.��� ���What I���ve learned from the [BLM] activists and what is going on today is, those of us who have lived almost a century, have no right to cynicism,��� Harry Belafonte joined in. ���Mostly, the people who turn away from radical thought are people who don���t like to be uncomfortable.��� Recognizing the need to steep themselves in fuller histories of Black struggle, popular education and study groups have become an important but much less covered aspect of the many Black Lives Matter groups and mobilizations. And many BLM activists have partnered with a set of elders willing to build on those lineages. But that has not caused commentators to stop using the civil rights movement to chastise the work of BLM activists.

Fed up with the prominent misuse of history against Black Lives Matter, sixty-six former SNCC activists published a statement in July 2016 marking the continuities of struggle:

���Fortunately, today, as in the past, the protesters who have taken to the streets against police violence will not be intimidated by slander or mischaracterization as ���racist��� or ���terrorist sympathizers��� born of the fear, ignorance and malice of their would-be critics. . . . We, the still-active radicals who were SNCC, salute today���s Movement for Black Lives for taking hold of the torch to continue to light this flame of truth for a knowingly forgetful world.���

As these SNCC activists made clear, memorializing a civil rights movement without young people in the vanguard, without anger, without its long-standing critique of the criminal justice system, missed what the movement was actually about. Julian Bond, visiting a class at Morehouse College in 2009, critiqued the respectability politics being pushed on this new generation, which many young activists were also rejecting: ���A nice suit is a nice suit. Get one. But it won���t stop a bullet, son.���

Key similarities exist between the civil rights movement and BLM��� from the forces they are up against to the criticisms they encounter to the expansive vision of justice they seek. Like the young activists propelling BLM, civil rights activists were regarded as dangerous and reckless by many and as downright seditious by others. The movement was pushed forward by young people, who made many people nervous sixty years ago, just as they do today. Thus, substantively considering new movements for racial justice in the context of the civil rights movement means seeing the ways they are tied to, rather than set apart from, this longer movement history.

More significantly, these mis-histories of the civil rights movement impoverish people fighting for social justice today by separating them from the perspectives and experiences of a long line of courageous freedom fighters. Sixty years ago, Rosa Parks drew solace and sustenance from the long history of Black resistance before her time, placing her action and the Montgomery bus boycott in the continuum of Black protest. Her speech notes during the boycott read: ���Reading histories of others���Crispus Attucks through all wars���Richard Allen���Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Jr. Women Phillis Wheatley���Sojourner Truth���Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune.��� For Parks, the ability to keep going, to know that the struggle for justice was possible amidst all the setbacks they encountered, was partly possible through reading and referencing the long Black struggle before her. By denying a new generation their place in that lineage, a key form of sustenance is taken away.

And perhaps most consequentially, the mythologizing of the civil rights movement deprives Americans of honest history that shows us where we are today in this country. The task, as James Baldwin put it, is ���to describe us to ourselves as we are now������to honestly reckon with the way the country feared the civil rights movement and its disruptiveness; to fully grasp the movement���s scope and tenacity; to understand the diversity of freedom fighters and what they did and imagined; to grapple with the robust resistance to change, not just in the redneck South but in the liberal North; and to examine what learning from that struggle shows us about the country today.

“Great Performances” gives us Nas’ Illmatic, orchestrated

Nas, on stage at the Kennedy Center (Credit: 13th Witness)

Four years ago the world was treated to the wondrous sight of Six Mix-A-Lot bumping ���Baby���s Got Back��� as the Seattle Symphony provided a live accompaniment. A bevy of women joined the rapper onstage at Benaroya Hall to shake it (shake it!) shake it (shake it!) shake their healthy butts as the strings section dutifully kept time with the percussion.

The effect was stunning. A video of the moment went viral soon after, entertaining most but causing a good deal of concern among classical music connoisseurs. Did it serve the cause of putting more (and younger) backs in audience seats or was it merely a risqu�� stunt? Heaven forbid the most hallowed form of high culture be in some ways sullied by a genre that grew up in urban streets.

Insinuated within that viewpoint is the supposition that beyond the occasional sampling from ���Carmina Burana,��� hip-hop and classical music are strange bedfellows at best, united in service of gimmickry or bombast. Sometimes, and with some songs, that���s the case.

But I defy anyone who watches this week���s ���Great Performances��� installment, ���Nas Live From the Kennedy Center: Classical Hip-Hop,��� to emerge on the other side of that hour without transforming their concept of classical music���s adaptability and the heights to which hip-hop can soar.

���Great Performances��� is no stranger to popular music by now. The Foo Fighters, for example, received their due on the venerable program and we���re guessing that few people blinked at having them. Rock has long been established as a classic form, mainstreamed enough by any number of documentaries and showcased on the likes of ���Austin City Limits��� and other series.

���Nas Live From the Kennedy Center: Classical Hip-Hop,��� premiering Friday at 9 p.m. on PBS member stations (check your local listings) represents the first time an episode of ���Great Performances��� is headlined by a hip-hop artist. The series has flirted with the genre in previous installments, such as last year���s documentary featuring excerpts from the Broadway hit ���Hamilton��� and an appearance by Naughty By Nature on 2016���s ���GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends.���

Naughty By Nature had a number of mainstream radio hits the average PBS viewer may have encountered while, say, shopping at the mall. Relatively speaking, they���re a ���safe��� choice. ��Just a few minutes into ���Classical Hip-Hop,��� as staid violinists play behind him, Nas blasts through ���N.Y. State of Mind,��� setting fire to lyrics about crack deals, blunts and guns. Then he gets the audience to call out its signature lyric, ���I never sleep, ���cause sleep is the cousin of death!���

���Illmatic��� is not a safe choice, and it���s also a masterpiece of modern American music that���s been praised and analyzed by music critics and academics time and again. That makes this first a long time coming, and leaves no room to dispute the artistic merit of mixing one respected form of music with another that seems completely disparate.

The concert was filmed in 2014, marking the 20th anniversary of Nas��� landmark hip-hop album ���Illmatic.��� That work is considered by many to be one of the finest, if not the definitive best, recordings of the genre, and the collaboration between Nas and the National Symphony Orchestra amplifies the work’s passion and drama in ways that are unexpectedly moving.

���Illmatic��� is a seminal work of hip-hop that speaks of the poverty and violence the artist was surrounded by while growing up in New York���s Queensbridge projects, as well as his determination despite the odds. Nas��� debut album initially attracted controversy for scoring a coveted and rare five mic rating from The Source magazine, an achievement that eluded other legendary hip-hop records by artists with more experience.

But ���Illmatic,��� like those other albums (some of which were subsequently re-rated to five mics), holds up even two decades since its release because it captures a feeling. The lyrics marry a raw, street-level energy with a signature East Coast chill, manifesting politics and metaphor in one spot. It���s a cultural statement, history and the news in one swoop.

Prime inspirational material for symphonic adaptation, in other words. Classical music is storytelling via individual instrumentation, with characters and acts performed by strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion, speaking to emotion via melody. ���Classical Hip-Hop��� recognizes this idea, this feeling, in a way rarely seen or experienced with such intimacy on television.

And while featuring a hip-hop artist, let alone one whose unedited lyrics are full of profanity and peppered with the N-word, may strike a portion of public television���s more genteel viewers as pandering to pop culture, this is not at all the case.

Sitting through a few minutes of ���Classical Hip-Hop��� clarifies that point beautifully, with the hour moving back and forth between Nas telling the story of his upbringing and the environment that inspired ���Illmatic,��� to members of the symphony sharing their experience of tuning up its orchestral accompaniment.

These non-musical excerpts add context to the narrative of the tracks on ���Illmatic,��� but they also contain moments of inadvertent humor. A favorite is when a very proper-looking symphony staffer relates her experience of getting to know the music via her son and says, with absolute sincerity, ���And now my very favorite line is, ���Life���s a bitch and then you die/ that���s why we get high/���Cause you never know when you���re gonna go.������

Giggle if you like, but the seriousness with which the Symphony Orchestra handles arranging its accompaniment comes out in the music. In a scene from rehearsal an expression of awe washes over Nas��� face as he marvels at walking into the hall, seeing an orchestra interpret his work. ���A bunch of white people with strings, and all of that, playing this album,��� he says. ���And they feelin��� it!

As does the audience, which cheers and applauds the orchestral swells with as much zeal as they meet Nas��� nostalgic trip through his best work. Here, then, is a marriage of genres treated with equal consideration, with each amplifying the power of the other.

Hip-hop and classical music have joined forces before ���Classical Hip-Hop��� and even since the event took place. In the film, the National Symphony Orchestra���s principal pops conductor Steven Reineke admitted that the ���Illmatic��� project struck him as exciting and daunting. A year later, the Symphony Orchestra accompanied Kendrick Lamar as they performed selections off of ���To Pimp a Butterfly.���

Whether performances like these succeed in injecting new blood into the classical music audience has yet to be quantified, and probably is beside the point. For ���Great Performances,��� though, this signifies the gravitas with which the series is taking its democratizing mandate to make the best artistic performances accessible to all viewers. Most people may never get to a chance to see Nas, Kendrick Lamar or any other top hip-hop performer performing live on one of the nation���s greatest stages.

Nas himself acknowledges, with no shortage of humility, that being on the Kennedy Center stage is breathing rare air. That there are writers, singers and performers that never make it to a stage so grand. He stands as an example that it can be done, and ���Classical Hip-Hop��� makes it joyful to bear witness.

The loneliness of addiction

(Credit: Getty/Mixmike)

Here���s a quote from the late, great David Bowie, from a 2000 interview: “Drinking even one glass would kill me. I’m an alcoholic, so it would be the kiss of death for me to start drinking again. My relationships with my friends and family has been so good for so many years now, I would not do anything to destroy that again. It’s very hard to have relationships when you’re doing drugs and drinking, for me personally anyway.” Those words illustrate the kind of isolation that come along with substance abuse.

In this episode of “The Lonely Hour,” I talk to Gerardo Gonzalez, the chef at at Lalito restaurant in New York City who comes from a family of people who struggle with addiction. (At the time of the interview, Gonzalez was the chef at El Rey, which is why I say that in the audio.)

“I’ve witnessed first-hand relatives who slowly withdrew from the family��. . . getting deeper and deeper into that addiction,” he says. “You can provide support��. . . but at a certain point, when the person is so self-destructive, you kind of have to step back and let them run their course. Otherwise you’re going to get involved in that destructive energy.”

Next I talk to Reina Zelonky, a family therapist whose work focuses on managing substance abuse and healing relationships. “One of the old sayings is that one’s greatest love affair is with a substance because in a lot of ways, substances are consistent,” she says. “They’re reliable��. . . in a way that relationships [sometimes aren’t]. So a lot of the work that I do, in working with individuals who are trying to remove substances from their life or have a different relationship with substances is really looking at the other relationships in their life and breaking old, negative patterns.”

And finally, I talk to Anne Bainbridge. Now sober, she has dealt with alcoholism for much of her life. She’s also my mother.

“For me, it was never my lover; it was always my powerful enemy����� my most hated, most feared and invincible enemy,” she says. She relied on alcohol, but she also detested it����� and herself.

“I don’t know a single alcoholic that is not also lonely, unless he’s so over the edge that he doesn’t know what’s going on,” she says. “And looking back now, I can see, it’s like a downward cyclone. I would begin to get depressed, and then I would begin to isolate, and as you isolate, you become more lonely and depressed��. . . it just feeds on itself, round and round and round.”

Listen to the full episode below.

Another constituent claims to have been silenced by Sen. Tom Cotton

Tom Cotton (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon)

Once again a report has surfaced that��the office of Sen. Tom Cotton, R.-Ark., has threatened to send a constituent a cease-and-desist letter for using an expletive.

On the politics podcast��The Sexy Pundits, guest Don Ernst,��of Little Rock, Arkansas, shared the following��story. Ernst claims��that he called Sen. Cotton���s Washington office, asking for Cotton���s response��to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and how��Cotton would combat the opioid crisis in the event that the Affordable Care Act��were repealed.��Ernst was interested because his��son suffered from an opioid addiction, as he��said on the podcast.

���The role of Obamacare and our son���s health was essential,��� Ernst explained on-air.

According to Ernst, he waited two weeks after his first phone call to Cotton���s office, and never heard back.

���I called seventeen times��� over a six month period from January to June, Ernst said. ���On the eighteenth time ��� and I have regrets about this to some degree ��� I said ‘you know it���s bulls**t that I can���t get a response to these, I think, quite clear questions.’���

Ernst said that when he said the word ���bulls**t,��� a young woman who answered immediately hung up the phone. He called back and asked to speak with someone ���of more authority.��� He was then told��that his name had been submitted to the U.S. Capitol Police and he should expect to receive a cease and desist letter. Ernst said he apologized.

���They indicated to me that this letter had been sent on June the 9th,��� he said.

Ernst said when he was told that the letter had been sent he ���kind of freaked out.”

���What does it mean to have your name submitted to the United States Capitol Police?��� Ernst asked.

He called the U.S. Capitol Police and didn���t receive any answers. A week later, an assistant counsel eventually responded and told him he didn���t need to worry about the report, according to Ernst. To date, Ernst has never seen the alleged cease-and-desist letter.

This isn���t the first��time that a constituent has suffered the wrath of��Sen.��Cotton cease-and-desist orders. A couple weeks ago Salon reported that Stacey Lane ��� a human resources professional of 19 years ��� received a cease-and-desist letter, obtained by Salon, from Cotton in the mail. Cotton’s office alleged that Lane called a 19-year-old intern a “c**t” ��� though��Lane��told Salon she didn���t recall calling��anyone��a “c**t,” and��said that it���s a word she���s maybe used ���two times��� in her life.

Cotton���s office issued a statement following the news about Lane.

���If an employee of Senator Cotton receives repeated communications that are harassing and vulgar, or any communication that contains a threat, our policy is to notify the U.S. Capitol Police���s Threat Assessment Section and, in accordance with their guidance, send a cease and desist letter to the individual making the harassing or threatening communication.”

Cotton���s office has not immediately responded to a request for comment regarding Ernst���s alleged letter.

Salon has been told that in addition to Ernst and Lane, other constituents have received cease-and-desist letters from Cotton’s office.

If Senator Cotton is indeed using cease and desist orders as a casual way of silencing protestors or constituents, it could��raise��eyebrows among��First Amendment experts.

���Senator Cotton’s apparent practice of sending ‘cease and desist’ letters to constituents with legitimate (or even illegitimate) grievances about his positions on matters of public policy is deeply disturbing and runs directly counter to the whole point of democratic politics and, indeed, the First Amendment,��� explained David Snyder, executive director of First Amendment Coalition. “If the First Amendment stands for anything, it stands for the idea that the people have a right to complain to their elected leaders about positions those leaders have taken on important issues of public policy.”

Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway���JPMorgan health care initiative isn’t the “solution” America needs

(Credit: Shutterstock)

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced today they will be forming an independent health care company, purportedly to better serve their U.S. employees.

Their ostensible goal is to improve employee satisfaction and reduce costs with an initial focus on ���technology solutions.��� The solution will reportedly be “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.���

“The three of our companies have extraordinary resources, and our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans,�����the press release quoted Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, as saying (emphasis mine).

From a business standpoint, it sounds like they are trying to vertically integrate healthcare into their business models in an attempt to save money. And while it���s an ambitious endeavor, it���s the antithesis of what some left-wing policymakers have been fighting for: universal healthcare.

An evaluation from The Commonwealth Fund��published in 2017 ranked America��last in “health care system performance” compared to other countries evaluated in the study���such as France, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands. One reason, the report points to, is because the U.S. is the ���the only high-income country lacking universal health insurance coverage.���

Solving America���s severely flawed health care system is a big task,��and it���s no coincidence that leaders of some of the biggest corporate giants are making it their undertaking. Since news broke about the announcement, health care stocks such as Cigna Corp. and Anthem have plummeted��according to Bloomberg�������emphasizing the lack of faith Americans have in the existing health care system, and the opportunity that exists��inciting��behemoths to partake.

Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO, called health care a ���hungry tapeworm.���

���The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we share the belief that putting our collective resources behind the country���s best talent can, in time, check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes,��� Buffett said in the statement.

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO who is now the wealthiest man in the world, according to Bloomberg���s Billionaire Tracker, said the system is ���complex��� but would be ���worth the effort.���

���Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare���s burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort. Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner���s mind, and a long-term orientation,��� Bezos said.

 

Collectively the three companies leading the initiative have 1 million U.S. employees, according to Bloomberg. At Amazon, where warehouse employees work for hourly wages ��� both part-time and full-time ��� some are only offered��health care benefits ���after 90 days.��� According to the Centers for Disease and Control (CDC), data from the 2016 National Health Interview Survey showed that nearly 28.2 million Americans under the age of 65 were uninsured (at the time of the interview).

But what would��the��Bezos-Dimon-Buffett collaboration mean for the fight for universal health care? What precedent does this set when big companies run off to find their own solution? It is debatable whether it is really��the responsibility of��big corporations to find a “solution” for health care in America. The use of the word “solution” suggests that health care is yet another business deal. Moreover, the United States pines for a system that views health care as a fundamental right, not a marketplace good with limited access.

While the U.S. is stuck with a hybridized privatized system (the��Affordable Care Act),��countries with universal health care have shown that when it works, it works. It���s a nice gesture for Bezos-Dimon-Buffett to take matters in their own hands, but their��proposed independent initiative won���t be the “solution” America needs. That would require viewing healthcare as a human right ��� not a “solution.”

Trump rules out peace talks with Taliban, undercuts U.S. strategy

Donald Trump speaks during a lunch with the United Nations Security Council (Credit: Getty/Chris Kleponis)

Following a wave of recent attacks claimed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Donald Trump made it clear that he was not open to any negotiations with the��fundamentalist group, despite potential U.S. efforts to engage in future talks.

“We���ll also discuss what more we can do to defeat the Taliban,” Trump said on Monday at an organized luncheon with members of the United Nations Security Council. “I don’t see any talking taking place. I don���t think we���re prepared to talk right now. It���s a whole different fight over there. They’re killing people left and right. Innocent people are being killed left and right.”

He continued, “Killing all over Afghanistan. So we don���t want to talk with the Taliban. There may be a time but it���s going to be in a long time. We���re all out and that���s taking place right now and it���s a whole new front and it���s a whole new set of principles that we���re being governed by.”

Pres. Trump on Taliban, violence in Afghanistan: "It is a whole different fight over there. They are killing people left and right. Innocent people are being killed left and right." https://t.co/qhXaZyNUOa pic.twitter.com/8YETTiQr4n

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 29, 2018

Trump’s threats to increase fighting on the battlefield come at a time when the Taliban has carried out several recent deadly attacks. On Saturday, an ambulance rigged with explosives was detonated on a busy street in Kabul, killing over 100 civilians an injuring at least 235 more, Reuters reported.

“When we see what they���re doing and the atrocities that they���re committing, and killing their own people, and those people are women and children, many, many women and children that are totally innocent, it is horrible,” Trump said. “So there���s no talking to the Taliban. We don���t want to talk to the Taliban. We���re going to finish what we have to finish. What nobody else has been able to finish, we���re going to be able to do it.”

But Trump’s words seem to undermine previous U.S. strategy, which involved engaging in “reconciliation” talks��with the Taliban.

WTF? We just spent two nights in Afghanistan w @CENTCOM���s Gen Votel this weekend where US commander after commander said they were GLAD they had a new S. Asia strategy SPECIFICALLY w the mission goal to pressure the Taliban to reconciliation talks. https://t.co/ukaiJutFxL

— Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron) January 29, 2018

The Taliban responded to Trump���s comments on Tuesday, citing the ongoing US intervention, and the US’s unwillingness to leave the nation, as justification for acts of terror��that have claimed the lives of scores of civilians.

“The true authority of war and peace is not with the Kabul regime, but with the American invaders,” the Taliban’s English-language statement read, according to��CBS News.

“Their main strategy is to continue war and occupation,”��Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman said in a statement��that Reuters reported on. “Donald Trump and his war-mongering supporters must understand that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you insist upon war, our mujahideen will not welcome you with roses.”

The��resurgence of the Taliban has been forceful, and the shadowy U.S. war that is now old enough to drive has been shrouded in secrecy for years,��perhaps more so under the Trump administration. As��the country faces a decline in Afghan government control, the Trump administration has sought to escalate American��presence there.

NPR elaborated:

The Pentagon continues to withhold facts such as the number of Afghan troops that have died and the number of the Afghan forces that have received training. This information was also not included in the report last quarter from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction ��� which was set up by Congress to audit U.S. spending in the country’s longest-running war.

Many military��brass believe Trump’s escalations in Afghanistan��are of questionable merit, and may only��bolster violence in the region. In August, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson admitted that the U.S. may not see a victory on the battlefield, though he also did not think the Taliban would either, as Salon previously reported.��“And so at some point we have to come to the negotiating table and find a way to bring this to an end,” Tillerson said at the time.

 

“The Passion of the Christ” sequel on the way from Mel Gibson with original film’s Jesus

Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ in "The Passion of the Christ" (Credit: Newmarket Films)

In 2016, Mel Gibson confirmed that a sequel��to his controversial, blockbuster portrayal of the crucifixion,��“The Passion of the Christ” ��in the works. Now,��Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in the original, says he will reprise his role for part 2, USA Today reported.

According to��Caviezel, the sequel will portray the resurrection of Christ.��“There��are things that I cannot say that will shock the audience,” Caviezel told USA Today. “It’s great. Stay tuned.” He added, “the film he���s [Gibson] going to do is going to be the biggest film in history. It���s that good.” There have been reports that his character will travel into the underworld for the��Harrowing of Hell.

Interestingly, Caviezel is not only 14 years older than he was when he filmed the original ��� which presumedly takes place only three days in narrative time before the sequel ��� he is also anywhere from 13 to 16 years older than Jesus ever was (not that this is a true problem with skilled makeup artists on hand).

According to USA Today, Randall Wallace, who worked with Gibson on “Braveheart” will write the script for what seems to be titled “The Resurrection.”

“The Resurrection. Big subject. Oh, my God,” Gibson told USA Today in 2016. “We���re trying to craft this in a way that���s cinematically compelling and enlightening so that it shines new light, if possible, without creating some weird thing.”

Without going into much detail, Caviezel said that Gibson finally “cracked”��the��film and potentially established a shooting window. “‘Braveheart,’��that���s a film that��took a��long time to be��able to crack,” Caviezel told USA Today. “The same thing for ‘Passion.’ And the same thing for this.��He���s finally got it. So that is coming.”

“The Passion of the Christ,” directed, co-written and produced by Gibson and following the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life��in grim, often gory detail, was a massive, if highly controversial, success��at the box office. Produced on a slight��$30 million budget with no bold-face names aside from Gibson and Monica Bellucci involved, it earned more than $611 million globally and remains the highest-grossing R-rated film in North America, racking in $370.8 million.

On release, “The Passion of the Christ” was widely praised by many Christian��groups, but criticized for its perceived anti-Semitic strains and tone. While much of the dialogue��spoken by Rabbis is in Hebrew (in addition to Aramaic and Latin), it offered up considerable anti-Semitic bait, including the��suggestion that the Jewish Temple was destroyed as a punishment for Jesus’ treatment at the hands of the Rabbinical leadership whereas the gospels only tell of a “curtain” ripping in the Temple upon Christ’s death. In 2004, whether there would be renewed Christian condemnation of Jewish people due to the film was a constant concern.

It’s easy to see that, if this sequel follows the same bent as the original, questions of anti-Semitism could again come to the fore. Currently, the Christian religious right is more��visible and influential in both culture, media, politics and government than it was just 14 years ago.��As well, a documented rise in anti-Semitic incidents, dialogue and crimes��began during the 2016 election and continued during President Donald Trump’s first year in office. Should Gibson’s forthcoming film be a sequel not just in subject matter, but in tone and attitude as well, the debate over it could be as polarizing and ultimately toxic as any we have seen in the last 18 months.

Nearly all District Attorneys are white ��� and that’s a huge obstacle to fighting mass incarceration

(Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The issue of mass incarceration is well-documented, and in some states, at least, local laws are starting to catch up. But one area of the justice system where progress has been much slower is the election of local district attorneys, who remain overwhelmingly white and tend to be conservative in their upholding of regressive and outdated laws.

Even in blue cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles, progressives have criticized DAs for decades for sticking to conservative tough-on-crime, “lock ’em up” tactics. But 2018 could bring a wave of��left-leaning local candidates��who view justice differently. In Florida, for example, a reform DA recently beat out her rival, the incumbent, whom��progressive attorneys had criticized for overzealously charging youths as adults for crimes.

The Reflective Democracy Campaign reports that of the more than 2,400 elected district prosecutors in the U.S., 95 percent are white and 85 percent regularly run unopposed. Just 1 percent of prosecutors are women of color. Certainly, this number could shift later this year, as a record-breaking number of women are expected to run for office to combat Trump���s retrogressive social policies. All but four states in the nation have elections to choose their area���s DAs.

A recent article in the American Prospect explains just how powerful DAs are in shaping a city���s priorities when it comes to crime and punishment. District attorneys ���are in many ways the most important figures in the system,��� Stanford law professor David Alan Sklansky told the American Prospect. ���They are crucial gatekeepers between the police and the courts. They get to decide who gets charged and what they get charged with.���

For decades, DAs have enacted punitive, harsh sentences and have been responsible for the millions of prison sentences that make the U.S. the keeper of 21 percent of the world���s prisoners. While those laws, and the lawmakers who voted for them, are certainly to blame, conservative DAs who uphold the laws without concern for reform must share responsibility.

Luckily, many are working to change the face of American district attorneys. The recent Prospect article details several organizations that are working to help reform-minded candidates get elected. Fair and Just Prosecution brings its network of nationwide DAs to ���move beyond incarceration-driven approaches��� and promote equity in law enforcement. As the American Prospect writes, it���s ���meant to connect newly elected district attorneys with more experienced DAs who can help them navigate common challenges.��� And the Fair Punishment Project has, in partnership with the ACLU, recently turned its attention to raising local awareness about the impact DAs have on their communities.

In Jeff Sessions��� hyper-conservative justice department, the push to elect more diverse and progressive district attorneys across the country is an important one. Miriam Krinsky, founder and executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, told AlterNet via email, ���we need more elected prosecutors like Cook County’s Kim Foxx (raised in a Chicago housing project and who broke a glass ceiling through her election to the state���s attorney job), Brooklyn’s Eric Gonzalez (who grew up in a poor neighborhood in East New York and is New York���s first Latino DA), or Nueces County’s Mark Gonzalez (born in a small Texas town to parents who primarily spoke Spanish) who understand the life circumstances of many of the people who come through the doors of our justice system. And we need DAs who understand what it’s like to make a mistake and not have a safety net and whose trust in our justice system has been weakened by past experiences.���

Nonwhite women are so rare in this position that those who boldly seek reform within their counties get national attention. Think of Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore’s African-American state’s attorney, who in 2015 decided to charge six police officers with the death of Freddie Gray. Mosby was praised for her bravery���law professor Paul Butler told NPR, ���there’s a new sense that African-American prosecutors can make a difference. We can call that the Marilyn Mosby effect.” Then the mainstream media turned against her, calling her a “lightning rod” after she��appeared onstage with Prince at a concert in Gray���s honor and accusing her of exploiting the case to build her own platform.

The importance of having nonwhite DAs can���t be overstated. Black Americans are imprisoned at five times the rate of whites. “The group of people who are really the managers of the criminal justice system in America are concentrated among one demographic group: white men,” Brenda Choresi Carter of the Reflective Democracy Campaign told NPR. In her view, that doesn���t reflect the population that elects them. ���If you’re a person of color, you know what it is to be treated with suspicion from a policing perspective.”

“Having women and people of color represented more fully in these positions is no guarantee of equality in the criminal justice system, but I do feel very confident that we’re not going to get equality with these numbers,” Choresi Carter said.

2016 saw a major launch of investment into backing a wave of diverse DAs. American Prospect identifies George Soros as the financial force behind the wave of activism around diversifying America���s DAs:

“In 2016, Soros spent more than $11 million on 12 candidates through various super PACs; ten of them won. He spent $1.4 million in support of Ayala, who ran successfully against the incumbent state���s attorney for the district covering metro Orlando. He also set up PACs in the Harris County election and for Foxx in Chicago. In 2015, he pumped more than $900,000 into a rather obscure DA���s race in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, helping elect challenger James Stewart. He also spent nearly $1.5 million on Krasner���s candidacy in Philadelphia���s Democratic primary. . . .��Soros���s Open Society Foundations gave the American Civil Liberties Union a $50 million grant to launch its Smart Justice campaign, which includes a goal of ten victories in key DA races.���

It’s too early to tell whether the momentum to bring more people of color to DA’s offices across the country will result in more equity in local justice. But experts backing diverse DA candidates say this approach will have a significant impact on who is punished and how. Moreover, it can shape a community’s relationship with its law enforcement.

Fair and Just Prosecution’s Krinsky said, ���Prosecutors serve as the gatekeepers for our criminal justice system, so it is important for prosecutors to reflect and understand their local community and the struggles of all parts of that community. Yet too many elected DAs fail to represent the rich diversity of our nation. Building a corps of prosecutors that reflect the people and places they serve is essential to fortifying bonds of trust and creating an effective criminal justice system.���