Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 666

The feds use their new muscle: Consumer protection agency fines Wells Fargo for massive fraud

FILE - In this Sept. 12, 2013 file photo, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Richard Cordray testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. The CFPB on Thursday, June 25, 2015 is releasing the first batch of its highly awaited database of consumer complaints filed against local banks, credit card and mortgage companies. The 7,700 public narratives, collected starting in March 2015, are only a fraction of the 627,000 complaints the bureau has fielded since its inauguration in 2011. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File) (Credit: AP)

For those who can drag their eyes away from the ongoing 2016 election shambles, the big news coming out of Washington this week was the fine the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau slapped on Wells Fargo for fraudulent banking practices. Per the agency’s press release, Wells Fargo employees “opened roughly 1.5 million deposit accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers” and “applied for roughly 565,000 credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers.” This was done over a period of several years, and the infractions were committed as part of aggressive “compensation incentive programs for its employees that encouraged them to sign up existing clients for deposit accounts.”

Wells Fargo will have to pay a $100 million fine levied by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as $55 million to the city of Los Angeles and $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The bank also has to pay $5 million in restitution to customers who were affected by the widespread fraud. It’s the largest financial penalty the consumer protection agency and it shows its value and how the it’s to employ different means of leverage to change the culture of banking.

Consumer advocacy groups are thrilled with the action and see it as something that could have come about only with a federal consumer watchdog group actively monitoring the banks. “The scope of the misconduct at Wells Fargo toward consumers is truly astounding, and the compensation and firings occurring there in response are more than appropriate,” Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert said in a statement to Salon. “This is yet another instance where we can be thankful for our new consumer watchdog, the CFPB.”

Much of the media coverage surrounding the Wells Fargo fine centers on both the historic nature of the penalty and the fact that more than 5,000 Wells Fargo employees have been fired in connection with the scandal. When we talk about this in terms of accountability, though, we have to throw in some important context.

First off, Wells Fargo will have zero difficulty paying $185 million in fines — the bank raked in $5.56 billion in profits in this year’s second quarter alone. Second, as Alan Pyke writes at ThinkProgress, the workers who got canned weren’t “pinstriped limo-riders who light cigars with hundred dollar bills.” They were retail bank employees: the people who were relentlessly pressured by Wells Fargo higher-ups to meet wildly aggressive sales quotas. The executives and midlevel managers who devised and implemented the strategy that precipitated this wave of fraudulent transactions are, by all accounts, still at the company.

According to consumer watchdogs, what the CFPB plans to accomplish through this action is to force change, partly through financial penalties but also through good old-fashioned shame. “The head executive of [Wells Fargo, John Stumpf], he’s going to be going to parties, he’s going to be going to events, his bank’s name has been sullied,” said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “Penalizing Wells Fargo is partly a matter of the money, but it’s also partly a matter of having their name dragged through the mud.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau order imposing the fine also requires Wells Fargo to hire an agency-approved independent consultant to conduct an overview of its sales practices and determine if they are in compliance with federal consumer protection laws. And it mandates that the Wells Fargo board of directors take an active role in enacting whatever changes are recommended by the independent review, monitoring their implementation and assisting agency in providing oversight.

The hope is that the combination of bad press, the threat of larger financial penalties in the future and whip-cracking on company brass will help remake the banking culture. “I absolutely think that this is a big thing that’s going to make a difference,” Mierzwinski told me, “not just at Wells Fargo, but across the industry.”

The only way that will happen, though, is if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is around to thump skulls and levy fines on banks that would be tempted to engage in this sort of behavior. Republicans in Congress have loudly attacked the agency and made promises to obliterate it at their first opportunity.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to “dismantle” the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that created the agency. It is clear at this point, though, that abuses like the ones committed by Wells Fargo would be easier to perpetrate and get away with absent the presence of a watchdog like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

You don’t have to read my book: What I want to say to those who say “pass” to reading about cancer

(Credit: Getty/hemera)

Dear kind person who wrote to say you got my book but you just can’t read it: I understand. Put it down. Give it away. Sell it on eBay. I’m fine. I promise. Because I’ve been there.

Let me backtrack a bit here. My memoir “A Series of Catastrophes and Miracles” came out earlier this year, an achievement of which I am enormously proud. It got very nice reviews and enabled me to go to some amazing places and meet wonderful people. Also, it’s about how I came pretty close to dying of cancer and how my best friend died of cancer, so you can probably imagine how happy I am just to be above ground in general. The book is about the scientific breakthrough that saved my life and about love and friendship, and I tried to make it as funny as possible, too. I like to tell people you don’t have to have cancer to enjoy it.

What I explicitly don’t want, however, is for anyone to feel obliged to read anything, ever. And I know from personal experience that when cancer stomps into your life, sometimes very well-meaning people hand you books like they’re homework. Sorry about that. I never wanted to be your assignment.

When I was first diagnosed six years ago, one of the first things that happened was somebody gave me a book by Louise Hay. Have you heard of her? I’ll cut to the chase: She’s an ill-informed, dangerous crackpot who says inane things like “If one thinks negative, unloving thoughts about the body and oneself, how will the cells know not to similarly attack themselves?” and that resentment causes cancer. Reading her book made me feel at first ashamed that I’d failed to keep my cells from rebelling and then angry at this pile of nonsense and then baffled why someone who didn’t have cancer would think it’s a hot idea to foist this crap on someone who did.

Over time, other people have landed closer to the mark. A friend who’d had breast cancer shyly presented me with a copy of Dr. David Servan-Schreiber’s “Anticancer,” but promised, “If you don’t want it, I understand.” I was advised to read Barbara Ehrenreich’s furious, righteous essay “Welcome to Cancerland.” And soon after my daughter tearfully tore through “The Fault in Our Stars,” she handed it to me and said, “I think you can handle it.”

But earlier this year, much too soon after the same daughter had spent five harrowing days in the ICU after going into septic shock, I was killing time at a bookstore and pulled “When Breath Becomes Air” off the table. I got through about three pages before I burst into tears. I left without purchasing it. Sometimes those mortality tales hit just a little too close.

I am spectacularly grateful to every person who paid money for the book that I wrote, poured my heart into and actually learned how T-cells work for. Yet every week I get very sweet messages from readers who say they’re so sorry; they just couldn’t. They tell me how a friend gave it to them, but when they read the jacket flap, they just went directly into NOPE mode. Or they read the first two chapters and put it down, and they want me to know it’s not personal. The last time this happened, the message came from a young mother with the same metastatic melanoma that I had. I told her that I guessed this meant I should write something she could read. Here it is.

I imagine that the reason someone gave you this book — or maybe you even curiously picked it up yourself — is because you have an intimate experience with cancer. It sucks, right? I mean, it really, really sucks. And sometimes you may feel like other people, the ones living in the not-cancer world, don’t even know how much it sucks, how hard and scary it is. A lot of the time, they say nothing or they say the wrong thing. Maybe they’re genuinely trying, but it doesn’t help. So they buy you a book, like cancer is one of your “interests” now, like gardening.

I swear I don’t want to make you cry. My book — despite the one potential publisher who groused that it’s “all cancer cancer cancer” — is not a bummer. But I get it if the subject matter is not something you need any additional exposure to. When I was in the thick of it, I found horror stories very therapeutic. How about some Stephen King? Or perhaps you’re more a sci-fi type? Or biographies of founding fathers who died in duels? You do you right now. Go read something light and beach-y. Go read a trashy magazine. Since you asked, you have my full and enthusiastic support. I want us to spend our reading time on things that feel like pleasure and not obligation. And that Amy Schumer memoir is really fun, if you’re looking for suggestions.

BREAKING “The New York Times is hiring a gender editor and I am the only (wo)man for the job!”: The Greatest Living American Writer

Jeffrey Tambor in "Transparent;" Caitlyn Jenner; Laverne Cox (Credit: Amazon/Getty/Salon)

As the Greatest Living American Writer, I have always sat at the dripping rim of contemporary thought when it comes to gender mores. As early as 1957, The Partisan Review named me one of “The Transgressives” in American literature, along with James Baldwin, Gore Vidal and several interchangeable women whose names have been lost to history. In 1963, I wrote a groundbreaking novella about gender identity, “Moira Brackenridge,” followed by a somewhat-less-groundbreaking but still amusing sequel, “Marvin.”

I also haven’t been afraid to take a counter-stand against the march of gender. All writers who have intellectual courage must present bulwarks against disparate evils like the theory of evolution, Mother Teresa or capitalism. That’s why I wrote my 1975 treatise “Hell Books: The Dangerous Advance of Bell Hooks,” and spent the years 1987 to 1989 fighting off a new gender studies curriculum at the University of Chicago by slut-shaming several of my fellow professors, while also publishing a sympathetic Phyllis Schlafly biography called “A Woman Apart: A Part of a Woman.” Like many gender experts, I go both ways. Regardless when it comes to writing about gender, no one who’s ever written about gender, no matter what gender, has written about it better than I have.

I say all this because I recently found myself in a bit of financial trouble, something that hasn’t happened since I accidentally murdered my editor at Doubleday many decades ago. This time the bitter settlement of my divorce from Janeane Garofalo had left me low on resources, and the upkeep of my Mount Winchester estate is enormous. So when my beleaguered manservant Roger brought me a proposal, I felt a prick of interest in my nether regions.

“What is it?” I said, annoyed. I was only halfway done with my excellent essay for the journal Commentary, which I was calling “Chabon, Lethem and Safran Foer: A Plague of Male Flaccidity.” Tea wasn’t meant to be served for another two hours.

“I thought you should see this job posting, sir,” Roger said, presenting me with a newspaper.

“The New York Times is looking for an editor to cover gender issues,” read the article in The New York Times.

 “The Times is a false prophet!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir, but I know you need a gig.”

I hadn’t worked for the Times since noted fatty Craig Clairborne beat me in an arm-wrestling match for the food-critic job. Was I willing to try again?

“Gender is a bullshit social construct,” I said. “Every fool knows that human gender identity flows smoothly, like shower water over a supple ass.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“There are two genders, male and female, and people can switch back and forth as often as they like, depending on available clothing.”

“Umm . . .”

“What?”

“I just . . .”

“What, you nincompoop?”

“You might be a little behind when it comes to gender, sir.”

“I happen to have an ample behind! And no one is more on top of gender issues than me. I fucked Dr. Renee Richards, for God’s sake! When she was a man!”

“Yes, but, well . . .”

And then Roger broke out a chart. There were now apparently hundreds of genders, a vast continuum of personal identifying and nonidentifying, more combinations than a Benjamin Moore catalog. I sat agape, like Keats first gazing upon Chapman’s Homer or more recently like me upon discovering Pornhub.

“Great Roxane Gay!” I exclaimed. “This universe is vast and fascinating.”

Suddenly I knew my truth: I wanted to become The New York Times’ gender editor.

“I’ll take that job!” I said.

“There’s one problem, sir,” said Roger. “You’re conventionally gendered. A cisgendered male, as you well know, is the worst thing to be.”

“Bollocks,” I said. “I’ve had more gay experience than Tennessee Williams ever did.”

“Sexual preference and gender identification are two different things,” he said.

“They are?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Shit.”

“There’s only one way you can even being to approach the Times for this job, sir. Now listen. I have a plan. . . .”

*****

Two weeks later, I approached The New York Times’ offices, which were more modern than when I eviscerated them in my 1974 Vietnam book “Gelb’s War” but still less modern than the average grocery-store vitamin aisle. And when I say “I” approached, I should say that “Paula K. Neal” approached, resplendent in the bright Mao-type jumpsuit that Hillary Clinton has brought into fashion this election season. My body hair had been electrolysised out of existence, save for a bit on the left thigh that I called my “secret fur patch.” At that moment, I identified as a woman who identified as a man who identified as a woman. It was a good start to my gender-editing career.

I was taken into a darkened chamber, decorated only with a long wooden table and six straight-backed chairs, for my interview. Each chair contained a hooded figure, whose facial features I could not discern. One of them spoke.

“We are the Council of Gender-Neutral Editors,” he/she said. “We are here to impartially determine the best choice for this position.”

“Of course,” I said. “My name is Paula K. Neal. And I am The Greatest Living American Writer. To my left stands Rogina, my beleaguered person-servant.”

“Rogina,” who was wearing a tuxedo that made him sexually unattractive to potentate black football players, nodded politely.

“What qualifies you, of all people, to be the The New York Times’ gender editor?” asked a second gender-neutral editor.

“Well,” I said, “I did write an article for Sports Illustrated entitled ‘Bruce Jenner Is Really a Woman.’ In 1977.”

“Very impressive.”

“And I wrote one for Rolling Stone in 1992 titled ‘k.d. lang: Voice of an Angel, Body of a Vespa.’”

“We know your history, ahem, Paula K. Neal,” said my chief inquisitor. “But that is American history. What can you write about now?”

“Well, what about ‘Transparent?’” I said. “That’s a pretty hot show.”

“Gender-neutral Christ, not another article about ‘Transparent!’” said an editor who I later learned was a woman transitioning into looking like Jeffrey Tambor.

“OK, fine,” I said. “How about male Nascar drivers who identify as female but hide it on race day to avoid the wrath of their fans?”

“Is that true?” said another editor.

“Maybe,” I said. “Hire me and find out.”

“I don’t believe you really are Paula K. Neal,” said still another editor.

“Isn’t this about who the best editor and journalist is, no matter their gender?” I said. “If the top gender writer were a cisgendered male iconoclast who once won a Southern Review sack race with a drunken William Faulkner as his partner, wouldn’t that qualify?”

With that, I began to take off my false eyelashes.

“You see,” I said. “I may be Paula K. Neal to you . . .”

I unbuttoned my pantsuit.

“But in reality, I am . . .”

It slid off my body, revealing an identical pantsuit, which I also slid off, revealing me in my velvet bathrobe.

“And always will be . . .”

I removed my wig to show my sparse but shining pate.

“Neal Pollack.”

“You didn’t fool us for a second, Pollack,” said an editor. “But the job is yours if you want it. It always was.”

“I’ll pass,” I said. “I just wanted to prove a point.”

And so I returned to my mountain hideaway to work on this essay, for which I was paid a princely sum or maybe a princessly one. Either way, it was a ton of cash. After all, no matter what my gender, I am still the greatest writer in the world.

The case against big data: “It’s like you’re being put into a cult, but you don’t actually believe in it”

Cathy O'Neil (Credit: Adam Morganstern)

If you’ve ever suspected there was something baleful about our deep trust in data, but lacked the mathematical skills to figure out exactly what it was, this is the book for you: Cathy O’Neil’s “Weapons of Math Destruction” examines college admissions, criminal justice, hiring, getting credit, and other major categories. The book demonstrates how the biases written into algorithms distort society and people’s lives.

But the book, subtitled “How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy,” is also a personal story of someone who fell for math and data at an early age, but became harshly disillusioned. As she looked more deeply, she came to see how unjust and unregulated the formulas that govern our lives really are. Though the book mostly concerns algorithms and models, it’s rarely dry.

We spoke to O’Neil, a data scientist, blogger, and former Wall Street quant, from New York City. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

So let’s start from the beginning. You were attracted to math as a kid, and you later became a quant. What drew you to to data, and what did seem to promise when you were first becoming fascinated by it?

Well, I was drawn to mathematics because it seemed to me so clean, so true. So honest, like people who are examining their assumptions are being extremely careful with their reasoning. It’s purely logical. And I had this extremely idealistic naive approach to leaving academic math and going into finance. I had this idea that we could bring this kind of true, pure logic into the real world. And I entered in 2007, just in the nick of time to get a front-row seat to the financial crisis.

And what caused the financial crisis — at a fundamental level, it relies on mathematics in the form of those AAA ratings on mortgage-backed securities which were trusted by the international community essentially because they were represented by mathematics.

Right. They seemed without bias and unimpeachable, objective because they were quantified, right?

Right. Because they were supposed to be representing a fair, objective measure of the risk inherent in the securities based on historical data and complicated, sophisticated mathematics.

Can you give us some other examples of the real-world stakes of what you write about in your book?

I left finance disgusted, and wanted to find a refuge to do my thing… In a morally positive way. And I found myself as a data scientist in the start-up world of New York City… Hoping to feel better about myself. 

What I found was that the stuff I was doing was actually, in its own way, also a mathematical lie, a mathematical deception.

It wasn’t the stuff I was working on, but in the very worst manifestation it was actually kind of a weaponized mathematical algorithm. I was working in online advertising. Most of the people working online advertising represented it as a way of giving people opportunities. That’s true for most technologists, most educated people, most white people. 

On the other side of the spectrum you have poor people, who are being preyed upon, by the same kinds algorithms. They’re being targeted by payday lenders or for-profit colleges. If you think about how Google auction works, the people that can get the most value out of poor people are the people that can squeeze them for the most money. Or for the most federal aid, in the case of for-profit colleges.

So I mean basically, I left finance to try to feel better about myself and then I ended up saying, “Oh my God, I’m, I’m part of the problem yet again.”

Right and part of what’s interesting about your book is that it looks at the kind of impact that data exerts, that it works on our lives at almost all the critical levels at sort of the big life-changing moments. Can you give us some examples of when it ends up shaping, limiting what we can do?

Yeah, so once I started realizing I was yet again in the soup, I really started looking around… One of my best friends was a high school principal. Her teachers were getting scored by this very opaque high stakes scoring system called the Value Added Model for teachers. I kept on urging her to send me the details. How did they get scored? She was like, “Oh I keep on asking… But everyone keeps on telling me I wouldn’t understand it ’cause it’s only math.” 

And this is exactly the most offensive thing to be for me to hear, right? Because here I am trying to think of mathematics as, you know, trying to be a sort of Ambassador of Mathematics, like mathematics is here to clarify. But instead it’s literally being used as a weapon.

And it’s just beating the heads of these teachers who are just getting these scores. They’re not getting advice like here’s how you can improve your score, nothing.

It’s just like here’s your score and this is your final say on whether you’re a good teacher or not. I was like, This is quite frankly not mathematical. And I looked into it.

But it’s opaque right? Which is also what a lot of these things have in common.

It’s opaque, and it’s unaccountable. You cannot appeal it because it is opaque. Not only is it opaque, but I actually filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the source code. And I was told I couldn’t get the source code and not only that, but I was told the reason why was that New York City had signed a contract with this place called VARK in Madison, Wisconsin. Which was an agreement that they wouldn’t get access to the source code either. The Department of Education, the city of New York City but nobody in the city, in other words, could truly explain the scores of the teachers.  

It was like an alien had come down to earth and said, “ Here are some scores, we’re not gonna explain them to you, but you should trust them. And by the way you can’t appeal them and you will not be given explanations for how to get better.” 

Yeah, it almost sounds like a primitive kind of religion: You know, the gods have decided this is the way it’s going to go — mortals can only worship these divine verdicts.

Absolutely and it’s a really good way of saying it. It’s like you’re being put into a cult, but you don’t actually believe in it. 

So once I found out it was being used for teachers, I was asking, Where else is this being used…

And I looked around, and it goes by many, many names. But it is everywhere, so we have it in lending, we have it insurance, we have it in job-seeking. For minimum wage jobs, especially, personality tests. But for white-collar jobs you have more and more resume algorithms that sort resumes before any human eyes actually see them.

You have algorithms that are the consequences of surveillance; they take surveillance at work mostly. Especially for people like truckers who used to have a lot of independence, but now are completely surveilled. And then they use all their data to create algorithms.

It is not going to get better just with better data… Because these things are being done in situations where people do not have leverage, they don’t have the ability to say “no,” like you can theoretically opt out of something online.

You cannot opt out of answering questions when you’re getting a job.

These models decide what people to police or who to put into jail longer. It’s additive: A person is going to be measured up by these algorithms, in multiple ways over their lifetime and at multiple moments. The winners are going to win and the losers are going to lose and the winners are not even going to see the path of the loser. It has an air of inevitability to it. Because we don’t see it. We don’t see it happening. It’s not like a public declaration, here’s how we figured this out and here’s who won and here’s who lost. It’s often secret.

It’s subtle. It happens different times for different people, so in some ways I realized that the failure of this system was a very different kind of failure than what we had seen in the financial crisis.

When the financial crisis happened, everyone noticed. People panicked, it was very loud. This, this is the opposite. This is like a quite individual level sort of degradation. Of civil society.

And because of that there’s been no public debate about it.  A lot of people don’t even know its happening; don’t even have a language with which to discuss it.

Absolutely and so that’s really why I wrote the book. I got to that point where I was like, “We need to know this.” Because we’re not going to figure this out just by doing our thing, especially technologists.

At this point I should say I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Your book looks at how unjust this all is at the level of education, of voting, of finance, of housing. You conclude by saying that the data isn’t going away, and computers are not going to disappear either. There are not many examples of societies that unplugged or dialed back technologically. So what are you hoping can happen? What do we need to do as a society to, to make this more just, and less unfair and invisible?

Great point, because we now have algorithms that can retroactively infer people’s sexual identity based on their Facebook likes from, you know, 2005. We didn’t have it in 2005. So imagine the kind of data exhaust that we’re generating now could likely display weird health risks. The technology might not be here now but it might be here in five years. 

The very first answer is that people need to stop trusting mathematics and they need to stop trusting black box algorithms. They need to start thinking to themselves. You know: Who owns this algorithm? What is their goal and is it aligned with mine? If they’re trying to profit off of me, probably the answer is no.

And then they should be able to demand some kind of consumer, or whatever, Bill of Rights for algorithms.

And that would be: Let me see my score, let me look at the data going into that score, let me contest incorrect data. Let me contest unfair data. You shouldn’t be able to use this data against me just because — going back to the criminal justice system — just because I was born in a high crime neighborhood doesn’t mean I should go to jail longer.

We have examples of rules like this . . . anti-discrimination laws, to various kinds of data privacy laws. They were written, typically, in the ’70s. They need to be updated. And expanded for the age of big data. 

And then, so finally I want data scientists themselves to stop hiding behind this facade of objectivity. It’s just … it’s over. The game, the game is up.

There was a recent CBC documentary on Google search and it was maddening to me to hear Google engineers talking again and again about how, “There’s no bias here because we’re just answering questions that people are asking,” you know.

The CBC interviewer kept on saying, “Yes, but you’re deciding which is first and which is second, isn’t that an editorial decision?” You know, yes it is. We need to stop pretending what we’re doing isn’t important and influential and we need to take a kind of Hippocratic Oath of modeling where we acknowledge the power we have and our ethical responsibilities. 

Warning U.S. is funding “disaster” in Yemen, senators take bipartisan action to stop arms sale to Saudi Arabia

Yemenis gather at a building destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in the northwestern city of Amran, Yemen on Sept. 8, 2016 (Credit: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)

The pressure on the Obama administration to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia is mounting.

Senators from both sides of the aisle introduced a joint resolution on Thursday, hoping to block a large U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

S.J.Res 39 was introduced by Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah). Explaining their motivation, all four cited the atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Murphy warned in a statement that the “war in Yemen, funded by the U.S., has become a disaster that is making our country less safe every day.”

“Thousands of civilians are being killed, and terrorist groups inside the country, like al Qaeda and ISIS, are getting stronger,” he added. “Until the Saudis’ conduct changes, the U.S. should put a pause on further arms sales.”

The arms deal they are hoping to block includes $1.15 billion worth of tanks and other military equipment. It was announced by the Pentagon in August.

Since President Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. has done more than $110 billion in arms deals with Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International has condemned the Obama administration for its “astounding,” “vast flood of weapons” to repressive regimes in the Middle East, accusing the U.S. of “hypocrisy.”

Rand Paul, known for his harsh criticism of belligerent U.S. foreign policy, slammed the deal with Saudi Arabia.

“Selling $1.15 billion in tanks, guns, ammunition, and more to a country with a poor human rights record embroiled in a bitter war is a recipe for disaster and an escalation of an ongoing arms race in the region,” Paul said.

On the same day the senators introduced the resolution, the U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition bombed an apartment building in Amran, Yemen, north of the capital Sanaa. At least nine civilians, including four children, were killed in the attack, and five more were injured.

“In Yemen, a Saudi coalition of fighters is unjustly killing civilians while at the same time not doing enough to address terrorism,” Sen. Franken said in a statement. “This is dangerous for the Middle East, for our other allies and for our nation.”

Murphy also took to Twitter to condemn the arms deal.

“Currently, weapons we provide to Saudi Arabia are being used to wage a war in Yemen that has killed civilians and aided our terrorist enemies,” he wrote.

The war in #Yemen has become a disaster. US should pause arms sales to our Saudi partners until we can be assured their conduct will change

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) September 8, 2016

“The war in Yemen has become a disaster,” the Connecticut senator warned.

This is not the first time U.S. lawmakers have tried to take action to block such arms sales.

Salon reported in April on S.J.Res.32, another joint resolution sponsored by Murphy. This legislation would limit the transfer of air-to-ground munitions to the Saudi monarchy. Since it was introduced, however, it has not gone anywhere.

Chris Harris,  Murphy’s communications director, told Salon that Murphy hopes the building momentum can increase support for this previous legislation.

“Sen. Murphy is still pushing for his other resolution as well — however that was slightly different in that it wasn’t pegged to one specific weapons sale, it was more general about air-to-ground munitions sales going forward,” Harris said via email.

“The previous one placed conditions on futures sales, where today’s resolution would halt the previously noticed sale,” he noted.

In April, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Cali.) also sponsored the House companion to the bill, H.J. Res 90. This joint resolution was supported by Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fl.).

Salon has reported on Rep. Lieu’s many attempts to raise concerns about U.S. support for the brutal war in Yemen.

Since March 2015, a coalition of Middle East countries led by Saudi Arabia, the richest country in the region, has pummeled Yemen, the poorest.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have thoroughly documented war crimes committed by the coalition. They have also documented atrocities committed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels and militants loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, which are fighting the coalition.

The U.N. has repeatedly said the coalition is responsible for approximately two-thirds of civilian casualties. It has documented coalition attacks on a slew of civilian areas, including hospitals, schools, refugee camps, markets, civilian homes and more.

A minimum of 10,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed or wounded in the war, according to the U.N. humanitarian coordinator.

The U.S. and U.K. have sold many billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, and have supported the coalition with intelligence and other forms of military assistance. American and British military personnel were even in the command room with Saudi bombers, and had access to a list of targets.

Oxfam applauded the senators’ new resolution. “For well over a year the people of Yemen have lived under constant bombardment, facing a humanitarian crisis that only continues to grow. The $1.15 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia put into motion by the Obama administration only adds fuel to the fire,” Oxfam America senior humanitarian policy advisor Scott Paul said in a statement.

“Today, Congress has taken a positive step towards easing the burden for Yemen’s people,” he added. “Oxfam fully supports the joint resolution introduced by Senators Paul, Murphy, Franken and Lee to stop the sale of these weapons to Saudi Arabia. Congress’ silence would signal to the Yemeni people that US support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is unconditional – no matter how cruel the parties’ methods of warfare or how unwilling they are to make peace.”

Oxfam urged “the Obama administration to withdraw its support to the Saudi-led coalition and for Congress to adopt this legislation and hold the Obama administration’s feet to the fire.”

The international humanitarian organization noted that more than 14 million Yemenis are going hungry, and one in three Yemeni children under five years old is suffering from acute malnutrition.

It warned, “As long as the Saudi-led coalition continues its campaign in Yemen this humanitarian crisis will continue.”

WATCH: John Kasich’s strange remarks chastising Daniel Radcliffe for being an atheist

(Credit: AP/Tony Dejak)

Wednesday, I reported a small but strange story about John Kasich, who was campaigning for Chris Sununu in New Hampshire, going off on an unprovoked rant about the British actor Daniel Radcliffe being an atheist.

Now, courtesy of American Bridge, we have video of the incident, and frankly, it makes the whole thing even stranger.

This video offers a lengthier quote than what Allie Morris of the Concord Monitor wrote down. The fuller context shows Kasich carrying on about how Radcliffe’s career “hasn’t really taken off”, as if implying there’s some connection between being an atheist and having a career that stalls out.

In related news, Deadline reports that Radcliffe has been tapped to star along Zachary Quinto in the upcoming drama “We Do Not Forget”, which is “a fictionalized account of a real battle between the ‘hacktivist’ organization Anonymous and the Mexican drug cartel known as Los Zetas.”

God was not available for comment.

There’s nothing shameful about sex work: Why can’t Logo’s “Prince Charming” be a gay escort?

Robert Sepúlveda of "Finding Prince Charming" (Credit: Logo)

Logo’s “Finding Prince Charming” is at the center of a firestorm of controversy following reports that the eligible bachelor vying for the hearts of 13 gay suitors used to be an escort. Robert Sepúlveda currently works as an interior designer in Los Angeles, but before that he had a profile on the now-defunct RentBoy.com. Rentboy, a once-popular site that connected sex workers and potential clients, was raided and shut down by federal authorities in 2015.

Since Sepúlveda’s history of sex work was made public knowledge, the reality star has been on a mea culpa tour to distance himself from his past. “I was young and it helped through college,” he told The Huffington Post. “But what I want people to focus on is who I am today as an entrepreneur, as an activist. I started a nonprofit and, you know, focusing on the show. That’s really what I want people to focus on.”

There’s been a nasty undercurrent of sex shaming in the backlash against the show — as if someone who used to be an escort could never be a desirable mate. “To call him ‘Prince Charming’ is a little reckless,” one critic told The Wrap. It shouldn’t be. Young gay men get into the sex industry for a myriad of reasons, many of which have to do with underemployment and higher rates of poverty and homelessness in the LGBT community. While sex work can — in some instances — be dangerous, there’s nothing shameful about choosing to make money off the limited resources you have.

For some, escorting is a choice. For others, it’s survival.

Sepúlveda’s case is actually extremely common among LGBT people. He has claimed that he enrolled on the Rentboy website after the furniture store where he was previously employed went under — leaving him, as a young student, with few other options. While escorting is often perceived as a full-time vocation, many engage in sex work on the side, whether to put themselves through school or to have a second job. In 2015, Fusion reported that 75 percent of Rentboy users were relying on it as a means of supplementary income, rather than their sole livelihood.

The number of male escorts has exploded over the past decade, partially due to accessible technology. In addition to Rentboy, there are sites like Craigslist and apps like Grindr, Jack’d and Scruff, where sex work continues to flourish with little scrutiny from admins. (Profiles advertising “personal training,” for example.) A 2002 report from the Czech Statistical Bureau found that just 5 percent of sex workers were male, but 12 years later, Import.io estimated that rate was much higher. The web data group found that 45 percent of escorts in the U.K. were men.

Another reason for the boom in gay male sex workers is the one Sepúlveda has cited: It’s a living. In many parts of the country, available jobs remain in short supply eight years after the onslaught of the Great Recession and gay men are profoundly affected by times of economic turmoil.

Although conventional wisdom suggests that the typical gay man leads a life of comfortable affluence, similar to the lifestyle led by Will Truman on “Will and Grace,” that’s far from the reality. Gay men, in truth, face disproportionately high poverty rates. In a 2013 report, the Williams Institute found hat gay men were 34 percent more likely to live under the poverty level than heterosexual men. This is especially true for men of color. Further research from Gallup indicates that nearly 20 percent of gay black men in committed relationships are impoverished, as opposed to just 8 percent of partnered black heterosexuals.

These discrepancies have to do with the compounding effects of race, class and sexual orientation on marginalization, but many groups throughout the LGBT community feel the burden of limited resources. An estimated 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT, as the Williams Institute has reported, and many of those youth — especially transgender women of color — take up sex work to survive.

When sex workers are depicted in popular culture, they are often portrayed as drug addicts or derelicts, immoral people whose bad decisions led to working the streets for a living. An eye-opening investigative look from Fordham University’s Urban Institute has shown that many young sex workers, however, were simply looking for basic necessities like clothing and shelter. More than half of the sex workers that Fordham profiled were using the money for the same things any of us would — to pay a phone bill or get something to eat. This correlates with statistics that show 29 percent of LGBT people experience food insecurity each year.

Sex work rates among homeless youth are extremely high, according to the Urban Institute. The Fordham researchers found that half of marginally housed young people had engaged in some form of escorting in order to obtain the resources cited above.

The high rates of poverty and homelessness that compel many young men to take up sex work are due to a number of phenomena. Despite recent gains in marriage rights, LGBT people remain economically vulnerable across the U.S. because of the lack of protections afforded to LGBT workers. You can still be fired from your job in 28 states because of your gender identity or sexual orientation — including in states like Texas, Arizona, Florida and North Carolina. Due to implicit hiring discrimination, it can take LGBT workers who have been let go from their positions longer to find another job, which is especially true for trans people. Currently, the unemployment rate in the trans community is twice the national average.

That crippling underemployment forces many into sex work because they have no other means to make money. The case is particularly grave for undocumented workers in Greece, where prostitution is legal so long as the transaction occurs in a brothel. “Thousands of migrants and asylum seekers live in Athens, hardly any of whom actually want to stay there,” Global Post reports through PRI. “The continent’s new border rules have left them trapped on their way to northern Europe, and when their money runs out there’s almost no legal way to earn more.” Because they can’t leave and they can’t earn income, sex work is their only real choice.

This paints a picture of sex work as an inherently depressing industry filled with bodies that totally lack agency. But that is not the case. According to a 2015 report from the Canadian Review of Sociology, just 15 percent of escorts are engaging in sex work solely to survive. Most sex workers get into the trade for a wide variety of reasons, including one we too rarely acknowledge: They like what they do. “I’m providing a professional service for my clients,” Maxime, an online male escort, told Out. “I chose this, and I enjoy it.”

Many sex workers compare what they do for a living — providing comfort and intimacy for those who might need the release — to the lifesaving services that other caregivers provide. “For men who are unable to get it in their ‘real lives’ and not bothered by the transactional nature of the encounter,” Fusion has reported, “paying a couple hundred dollars for sex or intimate behavior can help fill a painful void.”

The widespread stigma that paints gay male escorts as fallen individuals who are unworthy of love promotes a culture of sex negativity, while ignoring the myriad, complicated reasons that people choose to engage in sex work in the first place. That shame, however, also perpetuates the increased risk of HIV transmission for sex workers. While statistics vary from country to country, the HIV rate among sex workers in developing nations is as high as 12 percent. The stigma associated with the trade keeps many involved in it from getting tested from HIV, making it more likely they will transfer the disease to partners.

Instead of shaming Robert Sepúlveda for making the same decisions that countless other gay men make every year, we should be responding with compassion and understanding. Although the controversy might be great for Logo’s ratings, our sex negativity is hurting the men whose stories will never be told on a popular reality show. They need our advocacy and our support, not our scorn.

The New York Times gives GOP Zika obstruction and anti-Planned Parenthood crusade a pass

A mosquito control inspector sprays pesticide to kill mosquitos in Miami Beach, Florida, August 24, 2016. (Credit: Getty/Joe Raedle)

What liberal media? Nowhere is the false balance of mainstream media reporting more apparent than in coverage of the relentless Republican obstruction in Congress.

The latest episode: Republicans are refusing to pass a $1.1 billion package to fight the Zika virus unless it blocks Planned Parenthood from receiving funding. Yesterday’s New York Times print headline? “Senate Democrats Again Stymie Funding for Zika.”

This is false. Democrats are happy to support funding the Zika fight, which might soon run out of money for crucial measures like mosquito-control programs in Puerto Rico. It is Republicans who have made Zika funding the latest hostage to their crusade to defund Planned Parenthood.

Balance is often false because facts have a bias. Sometimes, reporters try to split the baby, suggesting that both parties have equal blame for gridlock even when this is untrue. (From June: “Whichever side is more to blame, it was clear that no new government funds would be approved to fight the Zika . . .”). In this case, however, The Times is apparently accepting the Republican premise that stigmatizing reproductive health as something other than a basic part of medicine is somehow related to Zika. It’s not.

According to the relevant experts at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, reproductive health should be considered a basic feature of normal health care. What’s holding up the passage of Zika funding is that Republicans want to ensure that it’s not.

As has been long the case with the news coverage of issues like global warming, government shutdowns and voter identification, reporting on the politics of reproductive health shoves expert opinions to the sidelines. Instead, it not only gives readers the false impression that all sides are putting forth an opinion that has equal empirical weight but also fails to honestly evaluate the nature of the conflict at hand. I get that the Times can’t assert as fact that the anti-abortion movement is a wrongheaded and religiously inspired effort to control women’s bodies in its news section. But the Times can make it clear that it is Republican opposition to abortion and Planned Parenthood that is holding up Zika funding and not Democrats.

Journalism about politics becomes reduced to theater criticism. Stagecraft is no doubt a critical part of all politics but reporters too often fail to probe below the surface. As Charles Homans wrote (in the New York Times Magazine!), “For avowedly nonpartisan and nonideological reporters, examining the substance of a politician’s beliefs and policy views is a professional minefield: The more deeply they venture into it, the more open they are to accusations of bias.”

About Zika, the Times reported, “Democrats regard any restriction on Planned Parenthood as setting a dangerous example, and they have shown they are willing to risk looking as if they are blocking funding for a public health crisis to prevent that precedent.”

Gee, I wonder where the public might get such an idea.

The result of reporters refusing to cover substance, Homans continued, is the obsession over “the gaffe,” which functions as “a safety mechanism” to move “a statement from the realm of substance to the realm of performance and strategy — allowing the reporters to critique it without incriminating themselves professionally.”

Instead of asking, “What are the facts?” the question becomes “How will this play?” But members of the media obscure the fact that they are the ones doing the playing. Too often, reporting focuses on how the media will interpret and frame a debate while obscuring the fact these very stories are what’s shaping the interpretation and framing.

With Zika and Planned Parenthood, as usual, there are two competing narratives but one is wrong. The project to stigmatize reproductive health care has nothing to do with funding the fight against Zika, and The New York Times can report just that in its news section without slipping into the feared territory of editorial bias. But whatever. As former Times national editor Sam Sifton once insisted,  “It’s not our job to litigate it in the paper. . . . We need to state what each side says.” Even if one side is objectively wrong.

How white racism and a complicit media are keeping Trump close in the polls — and why it won’t be enough

Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri)

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is a former United States senator and secretary of state with decades of experience as a public servant. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is a real estate developer and reality TV star. He has never held public office. According to new national polling data on the 2016 presidential campaign, Clinton and Trump are in a virtual tie. How did this happen?

There are many reasons. Primarily, both candidates are viewed negatively by large segments of the American public. The U.S. economy has also experienced a relatively anemic recovery (in terms of wages and wealth) from the Great Recession of the George W. Bush years.

Furthermore, the American electorate is highly partisan and polarized. As Election Day in November approaches — and despite whatever misgivings voters may feel — it is much more likely than not that individuals will solidify their support for their political party’s chosen candidate.

These foundational factors have combined to create a close presidential race.

The American news media, much of it owned and controlled by large corporations, has also played a significant role in keeping Hillary Clinton within reach of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is an atypical presidential candidate who has utter disregard for the standing norms of American politics and even less respect for the Fourth Estate. This has allowed him to outmaneuver and manipulate many journalists and pundits. They feel beholden, or perhaps enslaved, to norms of “objectivity,” “fairness” and “balance.” Trump feels no such limitations.

By some estimates, the American media has given Trump at least $3 billion worth of free coverage. The 24/7 cable news cycle and the media’s corporate culture have fueled an obsession with creating a “horse race” and a willingness to massage, distort and misrepresent events in order to sustain that narrative. For example, the media continues to manufacture “scandals” about Clinton’s emails while ignoring or underplaying Trump’s misdeeds, from the buying of political influence and various documented acts of political corruption to his encouragement of election tampering by a foreign power, his questionable business practices and other instances of unethical behavior.

The sum effect of these dynamics (aided by no small amount of cowardice among the pundit classes) is that the American corporate news media has buttressed and legitimated Trump. In all, this amounts to grading on a curve. Hillary Clinton is an A student being held to an impossibly high standard and punished for minor mistakes. Donald Trump is a D student, at best, who is being marked up to an A minus because the teacher is afraid of his parents.

The impact of white racism and racial resentment on American politics also plays a large role in explaining why Clinton and Trump are so close in the polls. Donald Trump is a racist, a bigot, a nativist and a fascist. The Republican Party in the post-Civil Rights era has become the United States’ largest de facto white identity organization. It also attracts white authoritarians. Trump’s selection as the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential nominee is the nearly inevitable outcome of almost five decades of the “Southern strategy” pioneered by Pat Buchanan in 1968, as well as a broader right-wing electoral politics that is based first and foremost on mobilizing white voters and demobilizing nonwhites.

Moreover, despite the media’s discussion of the so-called alt-right, which is little more than an ideological smoke screen, Trump and his supporters are not outliers or aberrations in the Republican Party. They are its unapologetic base and its political id. Right-wing elites may be turned off by Trump’s lack of polish, but his core message, attitudes and values resonate among mainstream Republicans. This gives Trump a deep reservoir of preexisting support.

In some ways, Trump began his 2016 political foray in 2011 with the racist conspiracy known as “birtherism.” Five years later, 72 percent of Republicans still express doubt that Barack Obama was born in the United States.

During the Republican campaign, Trump proposed banning all Muslim noncitizens from entering the United States. Seventy-one percent of Republicans supported it.

Social scientists have demonstrated that “old-fashioned” racism is resurgent in America and can now be used to predict whether a given white voter will support the Republican Party. Anti-black animus is also highly correlated with hostility to Barack Obama. Other work has demonstrated that racial animus has a “hangover” effect that can impact a given white person’s attitudes and beliefs about ostensibly race-neutral policy issues, like public transit and infrastructure projects, which may be perceived as benefiting blacks.

The ascendancy of Donald Trump has also empowered white supremacists and other hate groups to bolster their recruitment efforts. The Independent reports that white nationalist groups are growing at a higher rate than ISIS, at least in terms of social-media presence.

These are abstract facts and the results of social science research. They are essential and extremely important. The passions and rage that Donald Trump has summoned, however, also help to explain why he is able to be so competitive with Hillary Clinton.

Trump is the beneficiary of a populist moment of discontent in American and global politics. While Bernie Sanders’ progressive version of populism was inclusive, cosmopolitan and forward-thinking, Trump’s populism appeals to racism, tribalism and reactionary thinking. Trump is also a political necromancer, deftly skilled in manipulating white conservatives’ anxieties and fears of both generational and cultural obsolescence.

This political moment and broader atmosphere has resulted in some ugly events. Trump supporters have attacked and beaten immigrants. Violence against protesters at Trump rallies has become commonplace. Several weeks ago  a Trump supporter stabbed an interracial couple at a restaurant in Olympia, Washington. White supremacists have been emboldened by Trump’s rise to power in the Republican Party. They openly attend his rallies and other events and see him as a champion for their cause. In August a white supremacist killed a 19-year-old black teenager by running him over with a vehicle. Trump has embraced the implicit racist sentiment channeled by “All Lives Matter” and has described Black Lives Matter members as thugs and criminals who are a threat to public order. Paul LePage, the Trump-like governor of Maine, recently suggested that blacks and Latinos were the “enemy” of police and deserved to be shot.

While many political observers like to pretend that the racially toxic civic atmosphere that spawned Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party was an unexpected surprise, it was foreshadowed during Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008. While this factor may seem almost irrelevant at the end of his two successful terms in office, it is estimated that white racism cost Barack Obama 3 to 5 percentage points in the final presidential vote that year.

Obama’s election spawned a vicious reaction on the right. Racially resentful white conservatives flocked to the Tea Party faction. To undermine Obama’s constitutional powers, congressional Republicans refused to follow through on basic responsibilities of governance (such as raising the debt ceiling so that the government could continue to operate). Right-wing media outlets made increasingly inflammatory, racist and bizarre claims about the country’s first black president. Movement conservatives and the broader Republican Party openly discussed a second American Civil War with overtones of Southern slave owners’ beliefs in their right to “nullification” and “secession.”

At its core, politics is a struggle over resources and values. These struggles and their outcomes can be described as “push and pull factors,” “continuity and change” or “thesis and antithesis.” Political struggles, even in a democracy, do not usually result in a type of equilibrium where all parties benefit equally. Shorter version: There are winners and losers.

Donald Trump has been made competitive with Hillary Clinton because of a complicit media, the structural and institutional features of America’s two-party system and political culture and the power of white identity politics and racism. This will get Trump close to the finish line but not over it. Clinton has substantial leads in crucial swing states, and many more paths to victory in the Electoral College. Ultimately, Donald Trump burned all his racist, nativist and pseudo-fascist fuel in order to reach political orbit. He cannot sustain his altitude and will soon come crashing down. The question then becomes who gets caught in the political conflagration and what level of collateral damage will follow.

Look Again: The day’s most compelling images from around the globe

A pilgrim prays at Mount Al-Noor, where Muslims believe Prophet Mohammad received the first words of the Koran through Gabriel in the Hera cave, ahead of the annual haj pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia September 7, 2016. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTX2OHJP (Credit: Reuters)

 

Chios, Greece   Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

A Syrian boy plays next to the sea at a camp for refugees and migrants

If your social media feeds are like mine, you too could easily imagine this seaside shot being one of the many “summer’s last blast” photos which are followed, inevitably, by back to school photos. Only this Syrian child isn’t on a summer vacation and he isn’t going back to school — at least not in his hometown. He’s in a camp for refugees and migrants on the Greek island of Chios. And though his makeshift play thing — whether for fishing or sea-sifting — may speak to the boy’s industriousness and indomitable spirit, it should also remind us just how much he doesn’t have, including a home. All of which makes comments like Gary Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” all the more upsetting.

–Alex Bhattacharji, executive editor

 

San Francisco   Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

A man checks out the new ear buds after an event to announce new Apple products

This isn’t a marketing shot, but you could be forgiven for thinking it is. A vaguely hip user holds his hand gently in the air, as if tempted to caress the erotic curves of the wireless earbuds. But consumers will not be fooled. We’re not going to be bamboozled into buying a phone with no earphone jack, Apple. We’ve all had too many experiences with a Bluetooth refusing to connect. Efforts to convince us we’ll look like sexy hipsters with our shapely but discreet earbuds won’t budge those concerns.

–Amanda Marcotte, politics writer

 

Mecca, Saudi Arabia   Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

A pilgrim prays at Mount Al-Noor

These men are praying at Jabal al-Nour, a mountain near Mecca, the holiest city in Islam. Millions of Muslims will visit Mecca in mid-September for Hajj, a religious pilgrimage that all practicing Muslims are required to undertake at least once in their life (unless they are disabled, cannot afford it or are otherwise unable). Mecca is currently located in Saudi Arabia, which has been accused of failing to properly protect worshipers on Hajj. In September 2015, more than 2,400 people were killed in a massive stampede — although the Saudi monarchy claimed just 769 pilgrims died. Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s major political rival, lashed out at the Saudi monarchy this week, accusing it of “murdering” Muslims in last year’s disaster. The Wahhabi (Sunni extremist) Saudi regime’s top religious official, the grand mufti, shot back claiming Iranian Muslims, most of who are Shia, are not real Muslims.

–Ben Norton, politics writer