newrepublic--2020-08-28--The Women Who Built an Alternative to Bloomsbury

A lot of people found Mecklenburgh Square by accident .
T.S .
Eliot , who taught at nearby Birkbeck College , described it , on discovering it in 1917 , as “ a most beautiful , dilapidated old square , which I had never heard of before.
” And D.H. Lawrence , who lodged in one of its many low-cost boarding houses in the 1910s , called it the “ dark , bristling heart of London.
” A noted residence of Fabians , suffragettes , radical thinkers , Christian socialists , in the early twentieth century it was home to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the poet H.D .
and her husband , Richard Aldington ) and same-sex couples like the elderly classics scholar , Jane Harrison , and her 37-years-younger former student , Hope Mirrlees .
( Harrison and Mirrlees ’ s longtime home together was characterized by their neighbor , Virginia Woolf , as “ all Sapphism.
” ) As Francesca Wade writes in Square Haunting : Five Writers in London Between the Wars , Mecklenburgh was a “ radical address ” that drew artists , writers , poets , and intellectuals , many of them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reading Room , and secluded from much of the clatter and stink of industrial London , it provided the sort of “ furnished rooms ” that were variously described as “ second-rate boarding houses ” or “ high-class service flatlets.
” ( “ I read and write at the British Museum , ” wrote Dorothy L. Sayers in her early days of work and research , “ and have my meals and go to bed.
” ) And since women of the time weren ’ t entirely well treated by the universities and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actively opposed to the idea of women researchers and teachers ) , Mecklenburgh Square gave them a space to work and study .
Between the world wars , it was a place , Wade writes , “ where a new kind of living seemed possible , and where radical thought might flourish amid a political atmosphere founded on a zeal for change.
” While Virginia Woolf advocated that women find a “ room of one ’ s own ” in which to work—and Harrison urged women to move from the “ drawing room @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ the study ” —that was much easier said than done , especially for budget-conscious young women just out of university .
As both H.D .
and Sayers learned ( by a coincidence , they rented the same largeish single room several years apart ) , in the more affordable rentals of central London , the “ study ” often was the “ drawing room.
” And the kitchen and bedroom as well .
The residents of Mecklenburgh Square didn ’ t comprise a “ movement ” so much as a loose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which to establish their own private geographies .
The five women profiled by Wade pursued widely different intellectual careers in similar surroundings , and included an imagist editor and poet just embarking on her career ( H.D . )
, a well-established novelist and essayist coming to the end of her own ( Woolf ) , an errant young Oxford graduate who eventually fled academia to write comic drawing-room murder mysteries ( Sayers ) , a linguist and classical scholar ( Harrison ) , and a medieval historian ( Eileen Power ) who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Many residents saw themselves as “ an alternative Bloomsbury set … focused not on abstract discussions of art or philosophy but on practical policies designed to change society for the better.
” ( Power ’ s friend and colleague , R.H. Tawney , once referred to the Bloomsbury set as “ a mental disease.
” ) Woolf didn ’ t stay long , moving away shortly after the German bombs hit her home in 1940 .
Never could a neighborhood be better described as liminal .
The spaces of Mecklenburgh Square were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of gender , moral codes , and London ’ s wide economic extremes—with the City ’ s banks close by in one direction , and Bloomsbury ’ s “ lefties ” in another .
“ If you lived here , ” Margery Allingham wrote in 1938 , “ you were either going up or coming down .
”

Even when the Square’s various between-war residents didn’t know one another, they seemed to fuel one another by proximity and juxtaposition—walking the same streets, frequenting the same parks and benches, and sidling through the same busy byways to Bloomsbury, Holborn, and King’s Cross. Sure, a “room of one’s own” is important, even necessary, in order to imagine a way out of the many mindless restrictions and boring occupations that the world imposes, but enjoying free access to a common, multitudinous public world helps us make decisions about who we want to be when we return to those rooms. Most people have never “felt passionately towards a lead pencil,” Woolf wrote in her essay “Street Haunting,” but sending yourself on an expedition through London in search of one allows you to “shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one’s own rooms.” It’s nice to know who you are. But it’s sometimes equally nice to forget who you are altogether.
There is something anonymous about the approach Wade takes to these many interesting and significant women: While she provides a clear sense of when they each lived in Mecklenburgh Square, she often relies on speculation, or even comes up against the need for facts that aren’t available. For while all five women were important actors in London’s intellectual and social life, they didn’t (with the obvious exception of Woolf and maybe Sayers) leave behind the same mass of recorded material as their male contemporaries, such as Eliot, Lawrence, and Bertrand Russell. The surviving families and partners of H.D., Jane Harrison, and Eileen Power destroyed many of their papers after they died, and it’s fair to assume that most research libraries weren’t astute enough to collect the papers that did come available. Wade admits to encountering many “odd gaps in the record.”
It’s certainly unfair. Eileen Power was a powerful influence in the development of the London School of Economics and in medieval research. H.D. is now recognized as one of the period’s most significant imagist poets and editors. Jane Harrison’s arguments about how ancient cultures wrote female gods out of their religions influenced T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. At the same time, Harrison’s partner, Hope Mirrlees, wrote possibly the most significant long modernist poem of the 1920s to rival Eliot’s. It was called Paris: It is finally being reissued in paperback by Faber at the end of this year, and it is everything The Waste Land isn’t—funny, jazzy, optimistic.


newrepublic--2020-08-28--The Exclusionary White Men of the American Legion

Nestled in the heart of Indianapolis , Indiana , is the national headquarters of the American Legion , the largest and most influential veterans ’ service organization in the world .
Indianapolis is second only to Washington in its number of war memorials ; some of the monuments here stand on Legion grounds .
The most prominent—a granite black tomb surrounded on four sides by golden busts of regal eagles—expresses a solemn reverence to those who served and sacrificed in World War I .
Left unsaid is an uncomfortable fact : The Legion spurned countless veterans of color who came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on from the Great War , the organization remains exceedingly white and exclusionary .
Today , the atmosphere inside headquarters is so toxic that Black staff have been counseled to avoid it all costs .
One source summed up the warning they received as : “ Be careful when dealing with anyone in Indianapolis.
” A rare ray of diversity exists inside the Legion ’ s Washington outpost .
Yet staff here are frequently reminded of the organization ’ s homogeneity , including when they walk down a hallway displaying the Legion ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of whom are Black .
( The Legion installed a Chinese-born Vietnam veteran in 2012 and its first female commander in 2017 . )
While the veteran population today is increasingly diverse , the Legion ’ s current slate of vice commanders is entirely white , and its list of commission and committee leaders includes only one person of color .
( “ Most of our past national commanders are deceased and we do not speculate on their ethnicity , ” Legion national spokesman John Raughter said in a short email response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) This pattern of white rule and de-facto segregation runs deep throughout the Legion—from executive suites down to local posts—and has spurred at least one federal inquiry into potential civil rights violations .
( “ Every post has the right to select its members .
You ’ re not supposed to select them on race or creed , but sure they do , ” one Black legionnaire told the Chicago Tribune when that inquiry opened in 1991 .
“ It ’ s one of those things you ’ re going to live with.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Legion has avoided meaningful discussion or action on issues concerning gender , race , or sexual identity in the military and veteran communities .
Instead , white voices rise to the top , and regressive beliefs fester .
This was evident last summer , when National Commander James Oxford and his team visited Washington to be briefed on the Legion ’ s legislative priorities .
According to two knowledgeable sources , the meeting came around the time that President Trump was obsessing over migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invasion.
” This language was echoed by one of Oxford ’ s white deputies , who , upon seeing the Legion ’ s diverse D.C. staff , reacted in shock .
“ Look , ” he said , “ it ’ s an invasion !
” Such comments were nothing new for the attending staff .
“ Working there is like being in the Fifties , ” one former employee said .

Late last month, Oxford himself got in hot water after releasing a divisive screed on the Legion website, titled “That Other Virus,” warning that the Black Lives Matter movement “could cause more long-term destruction than COVID-19.” He cast protesters nationwide as anarchist thugs leaving “cracked skulls and burning buildings” in their wake: “[T]his other virus threatens lives, neighborhoods and infrastructures.” He called on every law enforcement agency in America to team up in the fight for peace. To do this, he invoked the Legion’s longtime guiding principle, “Americanism”—specifically, the organization’s extended 1962 definition of Americanism, which also announced that “law and order are essential to the preservation of Americanism while lawlessness and violence are distinctly un-American.”
Oxford’s statement seemed written to appease both Trump and the Legion’s membership base of older white conservative men. (While the organization’s annual reports account for every penny of its estimated $150 million in assets, they include no demographic statistics of the Legion’s members, and Raughter declined to provide The New Republic with any. He also refused to make Oxford available for an interview.) But it also further provoked a faction of Legion members and staff who, for years, have sought to drag the veterans’ group away from its prejudiced past into a more progressive future.
One of the most vocal voices in this work has been Melissa Bryant, a Black veteran and second-generation legionnaire who, until very recently, served as the Legion’s legislative director. According to emails provided by a current Legion staffer, Bryant went toe-to-toe with Indianapolis over how to respond to the killing of George Floyd and the issue of police brutality. Bryant first raised concerns after Oxford released a June media statement blasting the protests of Floyd’s death. “America’s veterans, who witnessed horrific violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Korea,” Oxford had said, “should not have to see the same death and destruction here at home.”


newrepublic--2020-08-28--Private Equity Is Cannibalizing the Post-Pandemic Economy

In April , just after the coronavirus had transformed into a full-blown public health emergency in the United States , The New York Times reported that investment firms were eyeing the unfolding disaster as yet another opportunity to make money .
As retailers and other businesses began to feel the squeeze of the economic downturn , large investors drew up plans to buy up or lend to the cash-strapped companies .
Their blueprint for finding profit in others ’ economic misfortune came straight from Wall Street ’ s pillaging of distressed businesses and foreclosed homes during the Great Recession .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ returns coming out of the global financial crisis , ” one investor told the Times .
Extracting as much as possible out of whatever they come across , of course , is essentially what such firms are designed to do , but the country ’ s staggering inequality , sharpened first by the Great Recession and now by the pandemic , makes it all but impossible to justify .
Now—a few months later in the thick of a new recession , with a retail sector collapse well underway—big investors have again profited while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Times report on Monday , several hedge funds and private equity firms—including the investment fund run by former Trump adviser Carl Icahn—made hundreds of millions this year on the demise of shopping malls by short-selling commercial real estate securities .
It ’ s difficult to summon much shock that malls didn ’ t quite survive the online retail boom and the pandemic ( or feel terribly gutted over the loss of chain department stores and Cinnabon counters ) , but there ’ s nevertheless something perverse about masters of the universe making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as low-wage workers in that very sector now face permanent job losses in the middle of general economic collapse .
Short-selling—essentially betting money that a company or industry will fail—is notoriously also the same practice that enriched a few Wall Street managers who bet against the housing market on the eve of the Great Recession and cashed in after millions of people had lost their homes .
Various financial vultures have always excelled at getting richer just as the working class is hung out to dry , and private equity appears increasingly well-positioned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ post-pandemic economy .
Private equity firms—which pool investment funds and buy up companies in order to restructure and resell them at a profit in a few years ’ time—have been encroaching for years into the very sectors that are now buckling under the strain of the pandemic , including retail , health care , and housing .
And the government ’ s failure to both rein them in and to guarantee Americans the basics like food , a roof over their heads , and essential workplace protections during the pandemic has created yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to flourish in the ruin .
According to Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt , two leading scholars on private equity , most private equity firms end up undermining the companies they acquire and , in particular , harm those companies ’ employees .
Studies over several decades show that employment and wages both tend to fall at companies acquired by private equity , while the firms themselves do just fine .
That ’ s central to their very business model .
“ Thanks to hefty management fees and other tricks , private equity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their tactics drive companies into bankruptcy ( tanking the investments of their limited partners , often pension funds , in the process ) and cost workers their jobs , ” Appelbaum wrote earlier this month .
Just a few years ago , for instance , when private equity took over Toys R Us and ultimately drove it to bankruptcy , 31,000 employees lost their jobs with no severance .
The firms , on the other hand , reaped at least $ 15 million each in transaction fees .
Private equity has also colonized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relentless profit-seeking measures there have hit patients as well as workers .
As several investigations have revealed , surprise medical billing—one of the cruelest and most financially devastating byproducts of a market-based health care system—is one ugly consequence of private equity takeovers of medical staffing companies used by hospitals and other medical practices .
Once in control of those staffing companies , private equity firms are free to charge patients exorbitant “ out of network ” prices for any medical services rendered by doctors and other professionals employed by them .
When a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surprise billing last year , the same firms then poured money into fighting those proposals ; as a result of that stalemate , surprise billing has continued throughout the pandemic , with a number of patients receiving unexpected medical bills as high as nearly $ 2,000 for obtaining the “ wrong ” kind of coronavirus treatment or testing ( according to insurers ) .
Surprise billing has now reached such an absurd scale that even the Trump administration has pledged to end it .

Likewise, a growing number of nursing homes—now the tragic site of more than 40 percent of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S.—also fell prey to private equity over the last few years, and residents and employees alike are now paying the price. As journalist Eleanor Laise wrote toward the beginning of the pandemic, private equity takeovers of nursing homes often reduced staffing and eroded the quality of care at those facilities, making them especially vulnerable to Covid-19 outbreaks. Some private equity–run nursing homes, particularly chains, also appear to have neglected to craft a coherent Covid-19 response. “We never had a meeting. No administrator ever said, ‘Covid’s in here. This is what we need to do,’” one nursing assistant who worked for a large private equity–owned nursing home chain told Laise more recently.
All of this is to say that private equity had a heavy (if largely unseen) hand in weakening a number of crucial industries right before a national disaster. Not only will it likely face no consequences for indirectly facilitating a portion of the suffering, but it also now stands to profit from the wreckage of the economic recession it helped flame. For instance, though private equity was explicitly excluded from the stimulus, last month the Project on Government Oversight found that more than 1,300 businesses owned by private equity firms had managed to secure forgivable bailout loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, for a total amount between $1.5 and $3.4 billion. As it did in the aftermath of the Great Recession, private equity is also now moving to sweep up foreclosed homes and other distressed real estate on which it can eventually charge high rents. “Families see a looming catastrophe. But private equity firms just see dollar signs,” Elizabeth Warren and Carroll Fife, the director of Oakland’s Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, wrote earlier this month in a call for new regulations on investors.
That very disconnect illuminates the failure of an economy that encourages disaster profiteering. Though private equity may seem uniquely villainous, in the end, those firms are only doing what they were created to do and always explicitly promised to do: generate profit for their investors above all else. Their predations are made possible by a government that condones them or is content to simply turn away, as it has so many times before. That calls not just for a general condemnation of financial greed—which most politicians are happy to offer—but real measures to end it. As Warren and Fife put it, “Wall Street has already shown us what it will do if left unchecked.”


Meander/ΜΑΙΑΝΔΡΟΣ

on a silver ring I used to wear /it was always nationalist actually I would say dawn is fruity what @ @ @ @ @ of ethnicity was this green once ?
unknown the cicadas go on passed by the @ @ @

decorative hellenic borders
on paper coffee cups
on a silver ring I used to wear
it feels nationalist now
/it was always nationalist
actually I would say dawn is fruity
not milky, not gold
what to do with the lie of ethnicity
at dinner T says
‘Greece’ is an invention
of the nineteenth century
was this green once? unknown
the cicadas go on
a law against refugees
passed by the children of refugees


ESL

The tongue as a debut ribbon to slice and applaud : to lose consciousness & wake up indoors : when the smell of cooked chicken creeps into your nose , & teeth remember what it means to chew : to make the mouth a gulley for the first pale stranger who cradles your head & says , drink : when the glistening neck of his canteen prods your pink lips , & words you ’ ve never heard raid in : when the names of the room ’ s dead fill your throat , & bedloads of migrants cover their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knock : when loose threads of tongue fall on your stubby fingers , & soon you unravel how you arrived here : to mourn the Jordans hung on telephone wires , the muscle memories of a coupe that stopped mid-street , a tinted face lowers the glass curtain , & suddenly your pick-up game ’ s one man short : to still hear his jump shot : when the court chuckled as his elbows locked in , & 21 ’ s just a game , never an age reached : when the pale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ marvel at your mouth ’ s archaeology : when wives paw its rot , decide to form book clubs around your grief : when a smile lurks in the corner of your jaw , as they proclaim you their latest myth .

After Roger Reeves’s “Cymothoa Exigua”
The tongue as a debut ribbon
to slice and applaud: to lose
consciousness & wake up indoors:
when the smell of cooked chicken
creeps into your nose, & teeth remember
what it means to chew: to make the mouth
a gulley for the first pale stranger
who cradles your head & says, drink:
when the glistening neck of his canteen
prods your pink lips, & words you’ve never heard
raid in: when the names of the room’s dead
fill your throat, & bedloads of migrants
cover their children’s mouths each time
they knock: when loose threads of tongue fall
on your stubby fingers, & soon you unravel
how you arrived here: to mourn the Jordans
hung on telephone wires, the muscle memories
of a coupe that stopped mid-street, a tinted face
lowers the glass curtain, & suddenly your pick-up
game’s one man short: to still hear his jump shot:
when the court chuckled as his elbows locked in,
& 21’s just a game, never an age reached:
when the pale stranger invites his neighbors,
how they marvel at your mouth’s archaeology:
when wives paw its rot, decide to form book clubs
around your grief: when a smile lurks
in the corner of your jaw, as they proclaim you
their latest myth.


The Queen’s Room

Note the tasteful draperies over the windows , the view of the canneries .
Salt air-gagged , we arrived west @ @ @ @ @ , most of us .
Like tanagers .
Over the sea , we were red-winged @ @ @ @ @ who made us come here feinted betrothal .
Had us on our backs and talked @ @ @ @ @ many pretty girls lewd and unaccompanied .
Debarking the ship , we were led to @ @ @ @ @ waited .
Why call it a Queen ’ s room ?
A hundred and fifty @ @ @ @ @ rags up for the highest bidder .
Our mouths , cash cows for our “ @ @ @ @ @ contracts we could not read did not know the words did not know merchant or @ @ @ @ @ know debt or price or concept of worth

San Francisco, 1849
Note the tasteful draperies over the windows,
the view of the canneries. Salt air-gagged, we
arrived west. Sunburnt necks. Teenagers, most of us.
Like tanagers. Over the sea, we were red-winged,
ready. The men who made us come here feinted
betrothal. Had us on our backs and talked of gold.
Now so many pretty girls lewd and unaccompanied.
Debarking the ship, we were led to the barracoons.
The bidders waited. Why call it a Queen’s room?
A hundred and fifty jewels clothed in lice and rags
up for the highest bidder. Our mouths, cash cows
for our “husbands.” Forced to sign contracts
we could not read did not know the words
did not know merchant or earthquake or gold
did not know debt or price or concept of worth


newrepublic--2020-08-28--Donald Trump is Rooting for Chaos

Donald Trump is Rooting for Chaos

Over the last four days , Republicans have painted a bleak portrait of life in Donald Trump ’ s America .
Cities are on fire .
Race relations are at an all-time low .
Free speech is under attack .
The economy is teetering on the edge of collapse .
The country itself is rapidly becoming a dystopia—and is on the verge of revolution .
With just a little push , the United States will be over , for good .
The country itself is about to become the Soviet Union , controlled by China , undone by crooked far-left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden .
That push could occur in just over two months ’ time .
Elect Biden and , as Rep. Matt Gaetz tells it , Democrats will “ empty the prisons , lock you in your home , and invite MS-13 to live next door.
” Rudy Giuliani , raving even by his standards , told viewers that the opposition was “ just waiting to execute their pro-criminal ” agenda .
“ Don ’ t let Democrats do to America what they have done to New York , ” he said .
Giuliani @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pat Lynch suggested that Democrats were purposefully letting crime rise in their cities for reasons they never got around to articulating .
( Reading between the lines , it seems they just really like crime , you know , like Paul Manafort . )
It is more accurate to say that Republicans are exploiting protests of police killings and violence in cities , and much more hopeful that the mayhem might be sustained for the near-term .
This isn ’ t conjecture : “ The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very clear choice on who ’ s best on public safety , law and order , ” senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Thursday , giving away the game .
Four years ago , Donald Trump ran a “ law and order ” campaign that was a barely disguised dog whistle : Contrary to his claims , crime was not actually rising , but it was a useful way of articulating his desire to turn back the clock to a time when America had , among other things , a whiter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t manage this impossible feat of time-travel .
But he also failed at a great many possible things , such as adequately respond to a pandemic and not destroy the soaring economy he inherited .
It ’ s all left Trump and his enablers in a position they perhaps didn ’ t foresee : They need to cheer on , if not actively exacerbate , anarchy and misrule .
They are rooting for failure , in the desperate knowledge that Trump ’ s electoral success depends on it .
Rooting for chaos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In 2016 , he painted a similar portrait : A country collapsing under corruption , outsourcing , and rising crime .
Back then , throwback law and order messaging was the theme that tied together the threads of his otherwise improvised campaign—it unified all of his slapdash focus on immigration , racial resentment , foreign policy , and Hillary Clinton .
It was also a useful way of grounding an outsider candidate with an out-of-control temperament and no qualifications for the job in an idea that felt relatively normal .
As my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ His primordial message is one of imminent risk : You could be killed , and I ’ m the one who can save you.
” But for all the dystopian edge , Make America Great Again was also utopian , albeit in a David Duke kind of way .
Trump was promising that only an outsider like himself could solve intractable problems .
The country was falling apart and needed to return to an ill-defined Golden Age when problems like immigration , globalization , and diversity were non-existent .
He alone @ @ @ @

“If the Radical Left takes power,” he continued later in the speech, “they will apply their disastrous policies to every city, town, and suburb in America. Just imagine if the so-called peaceful demonstrators in the streets were in charge of every lever of power in the U.S. government, just think of that.”
In Trump’s telling, he must be reelected because only he can hold back the onslaught of the assumed Democratic voters—essentially coded as nonwhite throughout this convention—who are currently tearing apart cities while being applauded by Democratic leaders. The president and his allies have relentlessly hyped this issue during the convention, making the case that Trump is a necessary bulwark between the country and chaos. Without any accomplishments or a second-term agenda, this is all Trump has: Vote for me, or Democrats kill your family. It’s a significantly more authoritarian vision than the one he advanced in 2016, because it posits that voting against Trump is, in itself, an act of illegitimacy.
These efforts to portray America as fragile and on the brink of collapse were at times undercut by the convention’s other theme: That Donald Trump is not only very different from the way he comes across on Twitter (as a sunburnt blancmange with constantly foaming anger issues), he is actually a quite humble, deeply focused, and empathetic individual. It’s very head-snapping to see—after all, his main appeal in 2016 was that he was a politically incorrect meathead who’d say the things everyone else was afraid to speak aloud, freer by dint of his reckless, insult-comic schtick. But four years later, it seems it’s become necessary to give Trump the Dear Leader treatment. Much like the way Pyongyang propagandists depict Kim Jong Un as a kind of superhero who excels at whatever task is put in front of him, Trump isn’t just very good at some things, he’s maximally great at everything. When he has to be tough, he is tough. When he has to be gentle, he’s gentle. When he has to awkwardly talk to truck drivers about things he clearly doesn’t understand, he does so with total and ultimate authority.


newrepublic--2020-08-28--The Violent Delights of the Trumpian Right

Kyle Rittenhouse , the 17-year-old gunman who shot and killed two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha , Wisconsin , on Tuesday night , is now a folk hero for some conservatives even as he awaits trial for murder .
“ I want him as my president , ” Ann Coulter , referring to Rittenhouse , wrote on Twitter .
“ Kyle Rittenhouse is about to be 18 , wealthy from all the lawsuits ( “ WHITE SUPREMACIST !
!
” ) , AND with a couple pelts on the wall , ” Jesse Kelly , a right-wing radio host @ @ @ @ @ @ @ na have to fight off hot conservative chicks with a bat.
” Baseball player Aubrey Huff wrote that Rittenhouse was “ a national treasure.
” Others tried to blame his actions on the protesters he shot , or on the movement itself .
“ Two people died in [ Wisconsin ] last night because of rioters , & its governor still turned down help , ” Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler , a Republican , wrote on Twitter .
Charlie Kirk , who delivered the first speech at the Republican National Convention on Monday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats in Wisconsin are now directly responsible for the two deaths in Kenosha , ” he wrote .
“ The only solution to this massive terrorism is to defeat these insurrectionists at the ballot box—vote Trump !
” Tucker Carlson , the Fox News host who regularly espouses white nationalist views , even offered a forceful defense of Rittenhouse ’ s motives in his Wednesday broadcast .
“ Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it .
People in charge , from the governor of Wisconsin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law .
They stood back and they watched Kenosha burn , ” Carlson said .
“ So are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder ?
How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would ?
” The reactions are jarring in isolation : a host of prominent conservatives praising , excusing , or justifying an apparent vigilante for opening fire on Black Lives Matter protesters .
They are even more troubling in context .
For years , many right-wing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use of political violence against their ideological adversaries , often under the guise of stopping “ tyranny ” or defending American values .
As political tensions rise ahead of the November election , these tacit calls for bloodshed could have deadly and disastrous consequences .
Rittenhouse offered some insight into his own views during interviews in Kenosha shortly before he opened fire .
“ People are getting injured , and our job is to protect this business , and part of my job is also to help people , ” he told a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ someone is hurt , I ’ m running into harm ’ s way .
That ’ s why I have my rifle .
I ’ ve got to protect myself , obviously.
” There is no evidence Rittenhouse works for any business in Kenosha ; he lives more than 20 miles away , in Illinois .
His rifle , and the tacit support he received from local police , was all he needed to justify his involvement .

After his arrest, news outlets found that Rittenhouse was an enthusiastic admirer of law enforcement and the military. The Washington Post’s Teo Armus found that his social media posts were “almost entirely dedicated to honoring police, with Blue Lives Matter graphics, photos of officers killed in the line of duty, and the ‘thin blue line’ flag associated with support for law enforcement.” According to BuzzFeed, a video on Rittenhouse’s TikTok page showed him in the front section of President Donald Trump’s rally in Des Moines, Iowa, earlier this year.
Perhaps no single person has done more to normalize political violence than Trump himself. As I noted in May, he appears to see physical violence as a means to demonstrate strength, as well as a source of psychological comfort. “It makes me feel so good to hit ‘sleazebags’ back—much better than seeing a psychiatrist (which I never have!),” he claimed on Twitter in November 2012. As civil unrest spread earlier this year after the police killing of George Floyd, Trump inflamed the situation by tweeting “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and threatening to send the military into major U.S. cities to suppress the protests.
Trump’s tendency toward hyperbole only makes things worse. He casts every political setback or policy defeat as part of a nefarious threat against the country and his presidency. During the impeachment saga last year, Trump described the proceedings as part of a “coup d’état” and shared warnings that his removal from office could lead to “civil war.” As his poll numbers plummeted earlier this year, he grew increasingly strident in falsely claiming that Democrats would rig the November election through mass voter fraud. The underlying message appears to be that he is the only rightful leader of the nation, and that any efforts to remove or replace him are not only inherently illegitimate but an attack on the United States itself.


newrepublic--2020-08-28--The Republicans Still Don’t Know How to Run Against Biden

Since Donald Trump fancies himself a president comparable to Abraham Lincoln , we can describe his marathon acceptance speech in words that are lifted from the Gettysburg Address : “ The world will little note , nor long remember what we say here.
” What will be remembered—with horror , I hope—is what Trump and his minions did Thursday night .
Turning the White House lawn into the setting for a superspreader political rally was more than merely a flouting of political norms .
It was a sacrilege that should embarrass a military junta in a banana republic .
Confining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minutes was seemingly a triumph of the professionalism of his new campaign manager , Bill Stepien .
But , in reality , it was a reminder that a disciplined Trump is a deadly dull Trump .
The only act that still holds our attention is deranged Trump , the bilious conspiracy theorist immortalized in Sarah Cooper videos .
Not even Fox News and a sycophantic White House staff will be able to shield Trump from the harsh reviews and the blah ratings of the GOP convention .
The likely outcome is that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confined for the rest of the campaign .
As a result , September and October will become a time of wild improvisations and even wilder charges .
Trump unplugged will inevitably lead to a new round of vicious attacks on people of color and women more outspoken than Karen Pence .
As soon as the president unloads on these familiar targets , all the determined efforts by convention planners to provide wavering suburban voters with a soothing and cynical rewrite of the Trump years will be forgotten .

Democrats worry that this GOP strategy will work as skittish suburbanites reluctantly vote for Trump in a flight to safety. If this were the 1960s or even 1988, as Republicans linked Michael Dukakis with rapist Willie Horton, these concerns might be justified.
What may change these political calculations are the wildcat strikes that have frozen the basketball playoffs and the baseball season this week following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This level of activism on the part of athletes might have been expected in basketball. But baseball is a largely white sport known for its cultural conservatism. In fact, the last major political statement in baseball was in 1984, when it was revealed that three-fifths of the starting rotation of the pennant-winning San Diego Padres were members of the John Birch Society.
Sports matter in the Trump universe. That’s why the GOP convention planners trotted out wizened former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz to offer theological commentary on the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s Catholicism. So it’s one thing for Trump to claim that only Biden and the Democrats stand with the rioters. But it’s quite another when Biden is metaphorically standing with LeBron James in a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and Mookie Betts, who led the Los Angeles Dodgers in a walkout.


newrepublic--2020-08-28--The Police Are Pretty Sure They’re Going to Get Away With It

As my colleague Adam Weinstein noted a few weeks ago , it has become a minor cliché in American political rhetoric to ask your audience to imagine how the media would cover some domestic development if it were taking place overseas , in one of the countries we consider less “ free.
” But the device does make clear the extent to which we are willing to tolerate authoritarianism and petty tyranny here in the United States .
How can anyone accurately describe what is happening in Portsmouth , Virginia , for example , without lapsing into the language of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are threatening to detain their political opponents .
In June , protesters beheaded a few Confederate statues in Portsmouth and tore down another , which landed on and injured a demonstrator .
Several months later , Portsmouth police , taking advantage of Virginia ’ s magistrate system , which bypasses elected prosecutors in these decisions , charged various local civil rights leaders , public defenders , and the president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate , Louise Lucas , with felony charges of conspiracy to injure a monument .
Lucas had left the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were harmed .
The charges seemed timed to interrupt a Virginia Senate special session to debate new police reform legislation .
The local prosecutor was bypassed , perhaps on account of her reformist tendencies .
The police named her a possible witness , in what appeared to be an attempt to remove her from the process entirely .
All of this , especially when you take into account the attempt to sideline the prosecutor , is very ham-fisted and obvious .
Here it is , again , in foreign correspondent voice : The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opposition .
On behalf of the people whose interests they truly represent , the police were persecuting people like Lucas , whose only claim to authority is that they were “ elected ” by “ citizens.
” This week , a white Portsmouth resident brought charges against Lucas ’ s daughter , the city ’ s vice mayor , Lisa Lucas-Burke , for the apparent crime of demanding that Portsmouth ’ s police chief resign .
As HuffPost ’ s Ryan J. Reilly reports , “ Since a magistrate judge signed off on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appear in court to respond to the allegation that her political speech against Portsmouth ’ s police chief violated the ‘ noninterference in appointments or removals ’ provision of the city charter.
” And , “ if found guilty , she would be forced to forfeit her position as a city council member and give up the vice mayor ’ s post .
”

All of that stuff about the city charter and Virginia’s magistrate system is meant to sound dull and arcane. It is designed to give cover to police as they work to stop the political opponents of local power brokers from gaining or exercising too much power.
The Virginian-Pilot’s Ana Ley and Gary A. Harki reported that “elected officials, activists and historians” have identified a “clear pattern” in which Portsmouth’s “majority-Black population pushes its government to repair strained police relations, spend more tax dollars on children and pass countless other measures to make Portsmouth more equitable,” only for that majority to find its representatives hounded out of power by the police.
The man who got the police to arrest Lucas-Burke has said that his decision to file charges had “nothing to do with race,” adamant that people play “the race card” (a term he used frequently in his HuffPost interview) “way too much.” But he does at least seem to understand what the police are and what they are for: The Portsmouth Police Department has been functioning like a political agency, clearing out anyone who dares challenge the accepted way of things. Kyle Rittenhouse, who seemingly deputized himself as an honorary cop mainly on the strength of his commitment to Blue Lives Matter memes, and then allegedly shot multiple people in the name of maintaining (a particular) order, had a similar understanding of the purpose and role of the police.


newrepublic--2020-08-28--Larry Kudlow’s Economic Hallucinations

Larry Kudlow’s Economic Hallucinations

Thanks to the Covid-19 lockdown , convention speeches this year are crafted for the camera rather than a crowded exhibition hall , a limitation that makes them seem more intimate .
Many commentators saw that as a virtue during the Democratic convention , but you didn ’ t hear them say that after the Republican convention began .
When the camera traded Michelle Obama for Larry Kudlow , what had seemed like a cozy fireside chat now looked more like a late-night infomercial to cure toenail fungus .
Kudlow ’ s speech aired on Tuesday , but it took me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with it .
The assignment before Trump ’ s Fox News–trained director of the National Economic Council was unusually difficult : Defend an economy pushed into severe recession by a pandemic that the Trump administration is mishandling badly .
In general , the GOP strategy has been to insist that it isn ’ t fair to grade Trump on anything that happened after March 1 .
Kudlow raised the stakes in this already fraught gambit by saying that the pandemic is over and the recovery already begun .
That isn ’ t remotely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Hello folks , you know me from TV and radio , ” the classic refrain of the down-on-his-luck former celebrity turned pitchman .
He then proclaimed Trump ’ s economic plan “ a roaring success , inheriting a stagnant economy on the front end of a recession.
” But the economy was not stagnant when Trump entered office .
It was more than seven years into recovery from the recession that Barack Obama inherited from Trump ’ s fellow Republican George W. Bush .
The only recession that ’ s occurred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this spring under Trump .
Gross domestic product growth before Covid was about the same on an annualized basis under Trump ( 2.5 percent ) as it was during Obama ’ s second term ( 2.3 percent ) .
When Trump ’ s final year is averaged in , his GDP scorecard will be considerably worse .
A better comparison is to match Obama ’ s last three years to Trump ’ s first three .
By that yardstick , GDP growth under Obama was faster .
( So was job growth .
@

Thanks to the Covid-19 lockdown, convention speeches this year are crafted for the camera rather than a crowded exhibition hall, a limitation that makes them seem more intimate. Many commentators saw that as a virtue during the Democratic convention, but you didn’t hear them say that after the Republican convention began. When the camera traded Michelle Obama for Larry Kudlow, what had seemed like a cozy fireside chat now looked more like a late-night infomercial to cure toenail fungus.
Kudlow’s speech aired on Tuesday, but it took me a couple of days to catch up with it. The assignment before Trump’s Fox News–trained director of the National Economic Council was unusually difficult: Defend an economy pushed into severe recession by a pandemic that the Trump administration is mishandling badly. In general, the GOP strategy has been to insist that it isn’t fair to grade Trump on anything that happened after March 1. Kudlow raised the stakes in this already fraught gambit by saying that the pandemic is over and the recovery already begun. That isn’t remotely true.


newrepublic--2020-08-28--The Risk of Watching the World Burn on TV

Fire is a natural element of many landscapes of the American West .
It provides periodic ecological resets , infuses the soil with nutrients , allows the growth of new vegetation , and rejuvenates the habitats of fire-dependent animals and plants .
Influenced by timber-industry interests and their questionable forest science , the past century of government-backed fire suppression , especially on the public wild estate that covers so much of the western United States , has yielded poor results .
But the wildfires now burning in California , which I witness at a digital distance from my home in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by an even more far-reaching human mismanagement of the living world .
Nature and chance play a role , to be sure : Lightning strikes ; transformers spark .
But as most Americans are coming to understand , the greater frequency and intensity of such fires in the West , like the greater frequency and intensity of hurricanes along the Gulf Coast , is an artifact of runaway climate change , which we ’ re causing and , so far , extravagantly failing to curb .
To watch the fires , even from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the blazing spectacle of our hubris march forward under a rippling battle flag .
The fires kill people and destroy homes .
Yet following the money , sprawling development projects continue to be approved smack in the midst of fire-prone areas .
( Two of these , pending in Southern California at the moment , are Northlake and Centennial . )
Fires particularly threaten those who lack the means to pick up their lives and start afresh elsewhere .
And they also threaten those that , unlike people , can ’ t move—in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the ancient groves of Big Basin Redwoods State Park and the endangered condor chicks in Ventana Wildlife Preserve .
The majestic redwoods of Big Basin , some of which have been growing for 2,000 years , took a hit , but most look likely to survive : When we allow trees to grow big and old , they ’ re more resilient to fire .
When we cut them down for lumber and more of our forests are made up of younger , thinner trees , those forests are far more likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ condors , a species painstakingly brought back from the brink of extinction through the good graces of the Endangered Species Act and an intensive captive-breeding program , eke out a tenuous existence on the state ’ s central coast .
Of the eight nests with chicks in them this year , five are in the fire zone .

The Bighorn fire, which lasted for weeks, may have destroyed as many as 2,000 of these long-lived, painfully slow-growing cacti. Many at lower elevations simply burst into flame when fire, carried by the buffelgrass once imported to feed cattle, reached them. Buffelgrass, which spreads and intensifies fires, hasn’t yet taken over the higher elevations of the fire’s footprint. The damage could have been far worse—and one day, it likely will be.
Back in June, I’d drive by the smoking Santa Catalina mountains and see pink swaths of fire retardant striped across their faces. These chemical retardants, mostly ammonium phosphate, kill off fish when they get into waterways and, after the fire, promote exotic undergrowth like buffelgrass, which is fire-adapted and will come back with a vengeance to spread future fires. I saw airplanes and helicopters fly overhead, while long lines of cars pulled over to the side of a road called Oracle in the 100-degree-plus heat so that people could watch the plumes of smoke and emergency air maneuvers as their engines pumped frigid air into the cabins for comfort.
The scene imparted a sense of futility: an inevitable fire that would eventually be contained and its inevitable observers, few deep in the fray of the climate battle or the actual firefighting. Some of us, whose neighborhoods were near the fire lines, had to evacuate—or, in the case of a writer friend of mine, decline to. But most of us were voyeurs, watching an increasingly alienating show. In the worst fire season in Australian history this past winter, many of us also watched as more than 15,000 fires burned, killing 34 humans directly and more than 400 indirectly and killing or displacing some thee billion animals. It was a staggering toll, half a world away and yet also as close, in pictures and data, as our laptops and tablets and TVs.


newrepublic--2020-08-28--Donald Trump Is Rooting for Chaos

Donald Trump Is Rooting for Chaos

Over the last four days , Republicans have painted a bleak portrait of life in Donald Trump ’ s America .
Cities are on fire .
Race relations are at an all-time low .
Free speech is under attack .
The economy is teetering on the edge of collapse .
The country itself is rapidly becoming a dystopia—and is on the verge of revolution .
With just a little push , the United States will be over , for good .
The country itself is about to become the Soviet Union , controlled by China , undone by crooked far-left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden .
That push could occur in just over two months ’ time .
Elect Biden and , as Representative Matt Gaetz tells it , Democrats will “ empty the prisons , lock you in your home , and invite MS-13 to live next door.
” Rudy Giuliani , raving even by his standards , told viewers that the opposition was “ just waiting to execute their pro-criminal ” agenda .
“ Don ’ t let Democrats do to America what they have done to New York , ” he said .
Giuliani @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pat Lynch suggested that Democrats were purposefully letting crime rise in their cities for reasons they never got around to articulating .
( Reading between the lines , it seems they just really like crime , you know , like Paul Manafort . )
It is more accurate to say that Republicans are exploiting protests of police killings and violence in cities , and are much more hopeful that the mayhem might be sustained for the near-term .
This isn ’ t conjecture : “ The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the very clear choice on who ’ s best on public safety , law and order , ” senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Thursday , giving away the game .
Four years ago , Donald Trump ran a “ law and order ” campaign that was a barely disguised dog whistle : Contrary to his claims , crime was not actually rising , but it was a useful way of articulating his desire to turn back the clock to a time when America had , among other things , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ couldn ’ t manage this impossible feat of time-travel .
But he also failed at a great many possible things , such as adequately responding to a pandemic and not destroying the soaring economy he inherited .
It ’ s all left Trump and his enablers in a position they perhaps didn ’ t foresee : They need to cheer on , if not actively exacerbate , anarchy and misrule .
They are rooting for failure , in the desperate knowledge that Trump ’ s electoral success depends on it .
Rooting for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course .
In 2016 , he painted a similar portrait : a country collapsing under corruption , outsourcing , and rising crime .
Back then , throwback law and order messaging was the theme that tied together the threads of his otherwise improvised campaign—it unified all of his slapdash focus on immigration , racial resentment , foreign policy , and Hillary Clinton .
It was also a useful way of grounding an outsider candidate with an out-of-control temperament and no qualifications for the job in an idea that felt relatively normal .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 , “ His primordial message is one of imminent risk : You could be killed , and I ’ m the one who can save you.
” But for all the dystopian edge , Make America Great Again was also utopian , albeit in a David Duke kind of way .
Trump was promising that only an outsider like himself could solve intractable problems .
The country was falling apart and needed to return to an ill-defined Golden Age when problems like immigration , globalization , and diversity were nonexistent .
He @ @ @ @ @


newrepublic--2020-08-29--The NBA Strike and the Limits of the Left’s Class-Centric Politics

Reeling from the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha , Wisconsin , last weekend and the violent unrest that followed , the Milwaukee Bucks opted not to take the court for their playoff game against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday .
The decision set off a cascade of similar postponements throughout the NBA and across the sporting world .
After a day and a half of tense negotiations that briefly jeopardized the NBA postseason , the league and its players association announced a deal to resume the playoffs on Saturday and establish a social justice coalition .
The coalition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and coaches , will promote civic engagement , advance criminal justice reform , and improve voting access ( namely , by converting some arenas into polling locations for the November election ) .
It ’ s no secret that Black people are more readily granted a platform in the sports and entertainment industries than elsewhere in American life , which means our most culturally visible figures are those whose wealth and renown would seemingly insulate them from racism ’ s sharpest arrows .
At best , though , success expedites their access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ occupy a liminal zone uniquely conducive to triangulating between the country ’ s ruling class and those in its yoke .
They ’ re close enough to the struggle for the pain to penetrate them , and at the same time they ’ re even more proximal to the power to take action .
Some of the debates about whether “ identity politics ” cloud the pursuit of economic justice seem to turn on the lack of a consensus about how class inflects race , and vice versa .
But the current mobilization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ class are intertwined for Black people in a way that is difficult for non-Black people to understand or imagine—and this perplexity at times hamstrings the left ’ s ability to build multiracial class solidarity .
For the Milwaukee Bucks specifically , the experiences of their players cast doubt on the notion that anti-Blackness is reducible to economic causes .
In 2018 , Bucks guard Sterling Brown was arrested , mocked with racist language , and tased over a parking violation .
Three years earlier , former Bucks center John Henson was racially profiled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 911 call reveals that employees described calls placed by Henson and his friends as “ suspicious ” and “ that they didn ’ t sound like they were legitimate customers.
” The concept of identity politics is often skewered as tribalist reductionism , and admittedly , the slack-jawed census-taking that sometimes passes for identity politics is a poor substitute for vigorous engagement with the quality of ideas .
But it is just as often the case that the knee-jerk denial of substantive intragroup difference—which is often shaped by identity—undermines the potential for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Milwaukee Bucks and the other NBA teams that followed their lead are righteous class traitors ; they wittingly risked massive earnings and destabilized their livelihood in the hope of improving the welfare of Black people as a whole , including those who are several tax brackets removed from them .
The Bucks players in some respects have more in common with the people who own NBA teams than someone like Jacob Blake , but the players have spoken passionately and persuasively about their identification with Blake and others like him .
NBA team @ @ @ @ @ @ @ symmetrical identification with ordinary working white people .
The solidarity that drove NBA players to strike is thus about caste rather than class .
For the most part , when Black people mention their “ community , ” they don ’ t mean only those who physically reside within a given zip code .
The Black community includes all those who share a social and political predicament that wealth and access can offset but never definitively solve .

Black people of varying class levels mostly recognize that their destinies remain entangled with the fate of Black people as a group regardless of how much or how little money they make.
There’s a popular misconception that the NBA primarily consists of players who hail from challenging backgrounds. The current crop of stars largely skews suburban, and the league is also increasingly international. It’s telling, then, that anti-racist consciousness permeates the NBA, even as it relies less upon decapitalized neighborhoods as a pipeline. Black people of varying class levels mostly recognize that their destinies remain entangled with the fate of Black people as a group regardless of how much or how little money they make. Economic status may fluctuate, but the subordination and vulnerability to state violence that come with being Black is something most Black people expect to contend with from cradle to grave. That’s why, when it comes to incorporating Black people into leftist coalitions, any appeal to class identity that does not encompass this nuance is unlikely to resonate with a critical mass of us.
It might seem intuitive that the most privileged representatives of a minority group would take it upon themselves to amplify the plight of their community’s less fortunate members. As some critics of the NBA strike see it, though, you can’t take exception to anti-Black racism if you’ve exceeded some imaginary economic threshold. “NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially,” White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said on CNBC Thursday.
This quote illustrates why class affinities aren’t easily transposed across the color line. A beneficiary of fortuitous birth, Kushner frames NBA players as pouting malcontents too pampered to recognize the triviality of their hardships. But just because Kushner and NBA players both gained entry to the power elite doesn’t mean they paid the same admission price. Nor does it mean that Kushner and Black athletes are equally likely to sustain that status. He miscasts the platform ballers enjoy as a function of luck rather than a grueling and improbable ascendance to the apex of their field, in a league that employs only the best 450 players alive.


newrepublic--2020-08-31--A Pandemic Winter Could Blow Up the Housing Crisis

“ Coronavirus hasn ’ t devastated the homeless as many feared , ” the Associated Press reported earlier this month .
The piece went on to detail how some public health officials were surprised that they had not seen major spikes in the coronavirus among the houseless population in cities like San Francisco , though most also said that it ’ s difficult to draw firm conclusions .
“ This may be an example where being outside and unsheltered , just in terms of Covid , maybe let people be at lower risk , ” one explained .
“ But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we just don ’ t really know.
” In Denver , the positivity rate among those tested at nine local shelters was , at 6 percent , double that of the city ’ s general population .
In Chicago , 22 percent of the city ’ s houseless population and shelter staff came back with positive test results , though that number has been declining .
At the San Diego Convention Center in July , the positivity rate was 15 times lower than the rest of the city ’ s ; in New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positivity rate was half that of the general population .
These numbers are necessarily fluid and incomplete : Cronkite News reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development , the federal agency that oversees programs meant to directly service the houseless population , has so far refused to direct the programs under its control to report the number of positive cases or deaths .
And while Congress set aside $ 4 billion for homeless programs in the Cares Act , reporters found that four months out from the bill ’ s passing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allocated funds had been dispersed .
Even the funding that had been released is on hold as cities and counties wait for federal guidance on how to spend it .
What all of this points to is that we don ’ t really know the full impact of the pandemic on unhoused people across the country .
But the question of how to keep people without stable housing safe during the pandemic only gets more urgent as summer fades .
It isn ’ t just one thing : Flu season is approaching , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another spike in Covid-19 cases .
The coming cold weather will also make it more dangerous to live outdoors , especially in Northern and Midwestern cities , where houseless populations have thus far managed to avoid some risk of illness by staying in outdoor encampments .
On top of that , an eviction crisis is brewing because rent relief on a mass scale has largely been abandoned by state and local governments .
Congress failed to approve another round of stimulus checks before taking off for vacation , while the distribution of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s hastily conceived reduced stimulus still has to reach millions of qualifying adults .
All of this is dangerous and inhumane on its own .
Taken together , it ’ s catastrophic .

The fact that New York, a city that already outpaces its Western counterparts in permanent shelters for the houseless, continues to struggle to commit to long-term housing solutions speaks to a larger need for America to move beyond the temporary shelter system.
Several cities and counties have already taken steps toward this. The Salt Lake City Coalition to End Homelessness drafted five viable options for the local government to undertake, among them: granting hotel vouchers, leasing existing buildings, buying a facility outright for long-term use, opening a hotel for the houseless, and maintaining the funding of public housing. (The coalition has already checked two items off the list, having secured 80 hotel vouchers and a local dining hall that will be used as an overflow space for 58 more people.) In northern California, Napa County officials announced that they will keep the shelter at the state-owned Napa Valley Expo fairgrounds open through the winter months—they had previously been renting out a motel that housed 66 residents, as local shelters had to reduce their capacity by roughly a third across the board to keep in line with social distancing measures. And in San Diego, the city bought and refurbished a 42-room motel in 2017, initially planning to use it as a rehabilitation center; when the coronavirus broke in the spring, the city decided to use it instead for housing.
Not all local governments have been so proactive, though. And in the void of government action, some communities have pursued this fix without waiting for official approval. In June, in the wake of the protests over Minneapolis police killing George Floyd, a group of houseless Minneapolis residents transformed a vacant hotel into a temporary shelter, complete with the support of local organizers. Lucy Geach was one of the Minneapolis residents who stepped in as a volunteer organizer following Floyd’s death and assisted at the hotel. “My neighborhood was on fire and there was a violent military occupation going on,” Geach said of her decision to volunteer. “It was an opportunity to use my skills, and the hotel was the perfect environment for me to put those skills to work.” But after just under two weeks of operation, the property owner, with the help of Minneapolis police, evicted the residents from the hotel following several overdoses on the premises.


newrepublic--2020-08-31--Trump’s Republican Party Is Erasing Reagan’s Memory

From 1964 , when he first took the political stage as a supporter of Barry Goldwater , until some point during the last four years , Ronald Reagan was among the most dominant figures in the Republican Party .
His ideas , accomplishments , and followers could be counted upon to be well represented at every Republican convention .
No more : Reagan has virtually disappeared , replaced by Donald Trump as the object of all Republican adulation and reverence .
So pervasive is the focus on Trump and only Trump , one would think that the Republican Party wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by its convention last week , nothing that happened pre-Trump seems to be a matter of any interest to the party .
Its organizers didn ’ t even ask George W. Bush to speak .
Part of this is the cultlike fealty Trump demands from his followers , Cabinet , and every GOP elected official .
No disagreement with the Dear Leader is permitted , and every order he gives must be obeyed without question—wearing a mask to prevent catching or spreading a deadly disease became a rebuke to the Leader that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only medicines prescribed by the Leader , even though they are ineffective ; and only those related to the Leader by blood , marriage , or girlfriend status are trusted to speak for him in prime time .
Trump wouldn ’ t even allow his party to write a platform of its views , normally an important way to craft an ecumenical set of beliefs and policies that unites the universe of Republicans .
This is just one way the Republican Party of the United States is morphing into the Communist Party of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Kim Jong Un : He has been emulating his leadership style for years .
And one part of the transformation is that as history is deemed to begin with the Dear Leader , previous leaders must be downgraded , lest they dim the light that must shine only on the one true Leader .
The exclusive focus on Trump has caused the memory of Reagan to be pushed aside , filed away for occasions when Trump can milk it for political gain .
Flushing Reagan down the memory hole also avoids inconvenient @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effective conservative policies and the insanity and incompetence of Trump ’ s .
Immigration is the most obvious area where Trump ’ s and Reagan ’ s policies are polar opposites .
Reagan was from California , where the state ’ s Spanish roots go deep and where a large segment of the state ’ s population has always shared a heritage that reaches down to Mexico .
Reagan understood the symbiotic relationship between Mexico and the U.S.—as well as the foolishness of pursuing a harsh anti–illegal immigrant policy .

We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. It’s time we stopped it…. What we’re trying to move against is institutionalized unfairness. We want to see that everyone pays their fair share, and no one gets a free ride. Our reasons? It’s good for society when we all know that no one is manipulating the system to their advantage because they’re rich and powerful. But it’s also good for society when everyone pays something, that everyone makes a contribution.
It’s also worth remembering that Reagan enacted the largest tax increase in California state history when he was governor. His policy was always to keep taxes as low as possible, but he didn’t cut them willy-nilly as Republicans are wont to do under Trump. Today, the Trump-dominated GOP acts as if tax-cutting is an end in itself, rather than a means toward an end: the end being a tax system that pays for government’s legitimate functions as fairly as possible with the least negative impact on economic incentives.
Reagan was also far more enlightened on the environment than today’s left gives him credit for. Early in his administration, he made clear his belief that the living had a responsibility to future generations to safeguard and protect the environment. As he said in 1984:
We want to protect and conserve the idea that is at the heart of our national experience, an idea that can be reduced to one word: freedom. And we want to protect and conserve the land on which we live—our countryside, our rivers and mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. This is our patrimony. This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it.
Reagan was proud about his role in negotiating the Montreal Protocol, an early effort to address the climate crisis. “The Montreal Protocol is a model of cooperation. It is a product of the recognition and international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both in terms of its causes and its effects,” he said at the signing ceremony. “The Protocol is the result of an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among representatives of the business and environmental communities, and international diplomacy. It is a monumental achievement.”


newrepublic--2020-08-31--The Climate Activists Who Dismiss Meat Consumption Are Wrong

Last month , the United Nations set off a furor in the climate community when it clumsily tried to raise awareness about the global problem of meat consumption .
“ The meat industry is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the world ’ s biggest oil companies , ” it wrote on Twitter .
“ Meat production contributes to the depletion of water resources & drives deforestation.
” The UN then implored its 12.7 million followers to “ eat less meat ” because “ every climate action counts.
” The tweet triggered meat industry spokespeople , government officials , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to consensus estimates showing that the livestock industry contributes 15 percent of global emissions , while the largest oil companies generate considerably more .
Influential climate scientist Michael Mann called the tweet “ not true by any defensible accounting.
” The UN ’ s social media team might have been referring to a recent report suggesting that the largest meat and dairy companies ’ emissions are on track to overtake the largest oil companies ’ , or more aggressive estimates suggesting meat and dairy make up as much as 51 percent of all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ related deforestation into account .
But the UN didn ’ t cite their sources and , rather than debate the matter , deleted the tweet .
The broader discussion of meat ’ s environmental toll—the two-thirds of the tweet that were indisputably right—thus disappeared in an uproar over a questionable calculation .
You could not find a more perfect illustration of the problem with modern climate discourse .
All too frequently , activists , politicians , and scientists reduce the all-consuming crisis of global warming to a question of greenhouse gas emissions : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best to bring them down .
The natural world and its nonhuman inhabitants are reduced to a series of models and equations .
The modern climate movement has many advantages over the environmental movement of decades past—aggressively targeting fossil fuel companies , utilities , and other major emitters while striving to address earlier environmentalists ’ failings on questions of race and social justice , for example .
But in other ways , the climate movement ’ s scope has narrowed , mainstreaming its message by rendering it more mathematical and anthropocentric—paradoxically more consistent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us here .
The Canadian political theorist Will Kymlicka has called those who champion animals ’ interests “ orphans of the left.
” They are also orphans of the climate movement .
Despite a growing scientific consensus that animal agriculture must be massively reduced as part of a comprehensive climate strategy , many prominent climate advocates have resisted working meat and food politics into the climate conversation .
Mann , for example , pilloried Goldsmiths University in the United Kingdom in 2019 for removing beef from its on-campus menus as a sustainability measure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Penn State history professor Jonathan Brokopp , have called veganism “ virtue signaling ” Progressive climate writers like David Wallace-Wells have responded to plant-based dietary guidelines by arguing that “ conscious consumption is a cop-out.
” Others have gone further , advocating giant fish farms , championing “ low-methane ” cows , or arguing for the expansion of animal agriculture in the Global South .

Replacing beef with chicken or fish might be enough if you only care about emissions. But most of the nine billion chickens slaughtered in the United States each year come from confined animal feeding operations, where animals bred for rapid growth go from chick to slaughter in just over a month, living out their brief lives crammed wing-to-wing on fetid, disease-ridden factory farms. And the chicken processing industry has its own problems with pollution, and labor exploitation, and zoonotic disease. Increased fish farming, both offshore and through mass-scale, land-based salmon agriculture, isn’t the paragon of sustainability either, raising its own questions about pollution, disease, and the ethics of raising migratory fish in confinement. To suggest that better factory farms are environmentally desirable—or just—solutions is to efface all ecological and ethical concerns in the name of greenhouse gas reduction.
And it’s not even clear this is a good political strategy. Climate advocates defending burgers because they think it makes their messages more palatable might want to consider research showing that reducing their own carbon footprint increases the public’s support for their message. It’s true that climate change needs policy, not just individual actions, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that individual actions—and the norm changes they can lead to—are a distraction. This may be part of Greta Thunberg’s appeal, in addition to the obvious impact of a teen scolding adults for imperiling her future: As a non-flying vegan, she practices what she preaches.
So what might this more holistic version of climate politics look like? There’s a strong ethical and environmental case for eating entirely plant-based diets, where possible. At a policy level, eliminating factory farming—which could be paired with better food assistance and affordability programs and planned transitions for meat workers to less hazardous jobs—would reduce meat production, and therefore consumption, in the U.S. by over 90 percent. Not only would this help animals and reduce toxic runoff, but a plant-forward diet would increase our capacity for total food production and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in the high-income countries most responsible for global warming.


newrepublic--2020-08-31--How Black Cops Can Transform the Police

How Black Cops Can Transform the Police

Bill Monroe , now 75 years old , completed his service in the U.S. Army in 1967 .
The same year , he joined the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department .
He told me about an altercation from those early years that has stuck with him and that has taken on a special resonance this year , in the midst of a once-in-a-generation debate over reforming American law enforcement .
“ I was leaving the old Eighth District station , ” he said , “ and two white officers were bringing this brother they had in custody into the station @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : double-knit slacks , silk shirt .
Our eyes met .
He said , ‘ Brother don ’ t leave , don ’ t leave me , they ’ re going to fuck me up.
’ But I went on and got in my car and drove off .
Then something hit me , something told me to go back , and I did .
Sure enough , they had beat him bloody , took off part of his ear , blood all over his slacks and shirt.
” Monroe lashed out against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men , one white , one Black , fought right there in the station .
Monroe described a vicious fight while other officers looked on .
He later learned that the two white officers had stopped the Black man because he had been in a car with a white woman .
They didn ’ t like that .
It turned out she was his wife .
Monroe got a three-day suspension for the fight .
Those were different times , you might say .
But when I was a young officer in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had to physically restrain a white officer who had suddenly begun brutally assaulting a young Black man .
We were standing on his porch .
The young man was already injured , on crutches , leaning on them in the doorway of his home .
He had committed no crime ; he had merely refused the officer , who had no warrant , entry to his home .
So the officer decided to kick his Black ass .

Attorney General William Barr claims that American policing does not suffer from institutional racism. Any Black officer will tell you that isn’t true. And I’m not only talking about an unarmed Black man being murdered by the likes of Derek Chauvin—a murder so vicious, so reprehensible, that it precipitated anti–police brutality protests across the world this summer. I’m also talking about the racist abuse that police in this country participate in daily, covering a range of harmful acts: violence, intimidation, trumped-up charges, plain old meanness.
Attorney General William Barr claims that American policing does not suffer from institutional racism. Any Black officer will tell you that isn’t true
And I’m talking about the racism against Black officers themselves. Over the course of his career, Bill Monroe carried multiple guns for his own protection—mostly from his fellow officers. This tension between white and Black officers has always been there, mitigated only by the personal relationships that develop between colleagues in a common space. But when something happens, that camaraderie falls apart. Quick.
Black officers know all of this. Many are looking to fight it. Thanks to the George Floyd protests, and now the protests in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, there has been a lot of discussion about how to “reform” the police. People talk about sensitivity training and accountability and oversight. Some talk about defunding the police altogether. Black officers across this country are talking about something different: about how to fight institutional racism and white supremacy from within police departments; about how to hitch their efforts to the movement for Black Lives and for a true account of our national origins in slavery and genocide.


newrepublic--2020-08-31--The “Oath Keepers” Are Today’s Blackshirts

Hours after the body of Donald Trump supporter Aaron Danielson began growing cold on the streets of Portland , Oregon , the latest casualty in the ongoing domestic unrest of the Trump era , frothing far-right backers immediately jumped to a single conclusion .
Unlike all of the other deaths of the Trump era—of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville , Virginia , at the hands of a neo-Nazi Trump supporter , or of Chuck Davis in Washington state at the hands of a Trump-backing conspiracy theorist—the death of Danielson was apparently a watershed .
Little matter that the circumstances of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Little matter that Danielson was apparently part of a pro-Trump caravan flooding Portland in order to assault protesters with paintballs and pepper spray , or that he was a backer of the brownshirt-adjacent “ Patriot Prayer ” group .
Little matter that , if Danielson ’ s death is connected to violence from so-called antifa protesters , it would be the first body ever attached to explicitly far-left protesters in the United States in years—magnitudes fewer than the number of fatalities connected to far-right violence , which has only continued to climb @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that matters , apparently , is that Danielson now lies dead , the newest victim of a surge of domestic turbulence that the U.S. hasn ’ t seen in decades .
For the militant far right , there ’ s only one logical conclusion , or one logical outcome , to follow : civil war .
A war that these forces have thirsted for for years , ever since America ’ s future demographic trajectory became clear—ever since 1865 , really .
“ The first shot has been fired brother , ” Stewart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Keepers , America ’ s largest militia , tweeted early Sunday morning .
“ Civil war is here , right now .
We ’ ll give Trump one last chance to declare this a Marxist insurrection & suppress it as his duty demands .
If he fails to do HIS duty , we will do OURS.
” It ’ s unclear why Rhodes believes peaceful demonstrators—those leading the greatest protest movement the country has ever seen—are “ Marxists , ” or why he believes the insane notion that they represent an “ insurrection.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rhodes views as the Oath Keepers ’ “ duty , ” though it ’ s not difficult to imagine a range of devastating possibilities .
But when I asked Rhodes for clarification about what he thinks Trump should do , he was direct .
“ [ Trump ] should declare a nationwide insurrection to be in effect and call all of the National Guard units into federal service , under his command , and use them to suppress the insurrection in the streets , ” Rhodes told me .
And when I asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Portland—my hometown , where my family and friends and loved ones aplenty still live—or whether Trump should consider directing such forces elsewhere , Rhodes was clear : “ Nationwide .
”

This stance unsurprisingly reeks of outright hypocrisy. When Rhodes launched the Oath Keepers in 2009, he positioned the group as a disinterested platoon of law enforcement officers, military members, and other assorted volunteers looking simply to uphold their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Their fear was that an unscrupulous, overreaching president might order cops and service members to violate the rights of their own countrymen.
This had nothing to do with the fact that America had just elected its first Black president, Rhodes and his supporters insisted. Instead, they claimed, the Oath Keepers were a simple response to a nascent security state, a post-9/11 miasma of rights restrictions and militarized federal forces, no matter the occupant of the White House. “Too many conservatives relied on Bush’s character and didn’t pay attention,” Rhodes said in 2010. “Only now, with Obama, do they worry and see what has been done. Maybe you said, ‘I trusted Bush to only go after the terrorists.’ But what do you think can happen down the road when they say, ‘I think you are a threat to the nation?’”
The past four years, though, have demonstrated definitively that these Tea Party–era groups were part of a broader upswell of white revanchism, one that launched Trump to the presidency. Now, with a fellow traveler in the White House, the Oath Keepers and their ilk are little more than Blackshirts in the fascistic, authoritarian swell buoying Trump’s tenure: Once given to lofty defenses of “freedom from federal tyranny,” they are now openly interested in little more than maintaining an America where whites are first among equals.


newrepublic--2020-08-31--Far-Right Militias Are Learning Impunity From the Cops

There have only been 12 days in 2020 in which police did not kill someone in the United States .
As of August 22 , the day before Officer Rusten Sheskey of the Kenosha Police Department shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake , police nationwide had killed 751 people this year , according to the Mapping Police Violence database .
Going by years past , it ’ s entirely reasonable to assume that very few of the officers who have killed people in 2020 will be charged with a crime , and even fewer will be convicted .
It is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day in this country , police get away with murder .
Police know this .
So do others who see themselves as agents of law and order , like the ad hoc militia assembled on Facebook in the days following the Kenosha police shooting , with the call , “ Any patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from evil thugs ?
” One who answered , Kyle Rittenhouse , stalked the streets of Kenosha with a rifle on the night of August 25 .
The white 17-year-old probably @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his head—of how many police have killed , how many have gotten away with it .
Before the night was over , Rittenhouse had allegedly shot and killed two people and injured another .
Afterward , Rittenhouse wandered past police cars , still armed .
He was allowed to flee the state .
Before his first court appearance , he had already become a hero to the far right .
We know the police take the side of white vigilantes , as my colleague Alex Pareene wrote earlier this summer .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hoc formations of right-wing novices descend on a town to wage violence against Black Lives Matter protesters , he wrote that police allow them to do so with “ something more than impunity : an endorsement.
” And these groups , in turn , are learning something from law enforcement ’ s stance toward them : Police and their tacit support endows right-wing militias with some of that impunity .
Trump ’ s supporters in law enforcement and government play Kenosha as both a threat of what ’ s to come and an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the senior Republican senator from Wisconsin , said on CNN that one way to stop “ the violence ” and “ the rioting ” was to call on “ citizen soldiers.
” ( In a statement to The New Republic , Johnson ’ s communications director said that the senator was referring to the National Guard when invoking “ citizen soldiers ” and that “ he was not calling for vigilantes.
” ) The head of New York ’ s largest police union , Pat Lynch , said on a Trump campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a “ Democratic apologist ” for violence , who , if elected , would turn the whole country into Kenosha or Portland .
The same day , when asked if the White House would say anything about Kyle Rittenhouse , or if it believes vigilantes should stop showing up in cities to allegedly protect buildings , press secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not give an answer .
She did say , though , that the U.S. “ should have more police , not less.
” On Tuesday , Trump will travel to Kenosha @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He has remained silent as someone apparently took his own words as a directive : “ When the looting starts , the shooting starts .
”

There have only been 12 days in 2020 in which police did not kill someone in the United States. As of August 22, the day before Officer Rusten Sheskey of the Kenosha Police Department shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake, police nationwide had killed 751 people this year, according to the Mapping Police Violence database. Going by years past, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that very few of the officers who have killed people in 2020 will be charged with a crime, and even fewer will be convicted. It is not an exaggeration to say that almost every day in this country, police get away with murder.
Police know this. So do others who see themselves as agents of law and order, like the ad hoc militia assembled on Facebook in the days following the Kenosha police shooting, with the call, “Any patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from evil thugs?” One who answered, Kyle Rittenhouse, stalked the streets of Kenosha with a rifle on the night of August 25. The white 17-year-old probably didn’t have those precise numbers in his head—of how many police have killed, how many have gotten away with it. Before the night was over, Rittenhouse had allegedly shot and killed two people and injured another. Afterward, Rittenhouse wandered past police cars, still armed. He was allowed to flee the state. Before his first court appearance, he had already become a hero to the far right.


newrepublic--2020-08-31--The Violent Contradiction of California’s Reliance on Incarcerated Firefighters

The lightning storm started in the early hours of August 15 , electricity snaking the sky , looking for a place to land .
California ’ s fire season is traditionally a six-month affair lasting from May to October and peaking in early fall .
But as climate change progresses , the fires have grown more frequent and fire season has expanded .
By this time last year , fires burned through 59,000 acres , compared with the 7,000 fires so far this year that have claimed nearly 1.5 million acres .
Even as the escalating severity of each year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expected , an obscene kind of normal in the Anthropocene , the pandemic has brought new dangers : Home evacuations and shelter relocations are now riskier ; relief funds and service organizations are stretched as mass unemployment has dropped the floor out from families across the state .
There is also the matter of the labor force California has long relied on to tend to a landscape set ablaze : incarcerated firefighters .
In May , when prisons in California reported the first Covid-19 infections , the state responded to the crisis by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little time left to serve on their sentence .
In doing so , the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation off-loaded some of its most exploitable workers .
( This was precisely what California ’ s then–Attorney General Kamala Harris predicted when , in 2014 , her office argued against a new parole program that expanded eligibility for early release .
Incarcerated laborers were simply too essential to California ’ s economy to deserve freedom . )
As fires tear through the state—often in places where Indigenous peoples were banned from conducting controlled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a nascent California government—the depravity of this sense of dependence has been more fully exposed .
“ This situation right now really shows the intersection of multiple challenges within the state , ” Brandon Smith , who served as a firefighter when he was incarcerated , told me .
“ There ’ s an environmental challenge here , there ’ s a criminal justice challenge here , there ’ s the current Covid crisis , [ and ] the need to decarcerate these prisons.
” We are dealing with co-created crises : California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ survival , while it ’ s the opposite narrative—their supposed unfitness for or debt to society—that justifies locking them in cages .
The story of how we got here is the story of that contradiction .
Since 1915 , California has conceived of its incarcerated residents as willing and able for and deserving of low-wage labor , which was exploited to build roads , construct public parks , and yes , fight fires .
That effort grew when California expanded its prison system in the 1980s and ’ 90s , peaking in 2006 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facilities located in low-income communities , where the land was less expensive .

Despite a steady decline in the number of people (often and disproportionately Black and brown) shadowed away behind concrete and wire since 2006, state spending on prisons actually increased by 7 percent between 2010 and 2015. This year, it will cost just over $80,000 to lock someone up. By paying incarcerated firefighters poverty wages, many people involved in these systems say that California “saves” money, which could be a confounding misunderstanding of the difference between government and for-profit business or a blatant admission that exploitation is a worthy, profitable business practice.
The circularity of systems that spin our collective suffering has revealed what incarcerated firefighters already knew: that these issues build one another and, together, perpetuate a violence that’s both American and unoriginal—theft of land; genocide of those who stewarded that land; construction of prisons on land with little arable value; investment of public funds into mechanisms of control; and a refusal to address climate change.
California’s Conservation Camp program ramped up during World War II, bringing the welfare-warfare model to the Golden State. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reports that there are currently 3,100 incarcerated firefighters working, earning up to $2 or $3 per day with an additional pay of $1 when they’re on an active fire, and all told, they’ll complete three million hours of this poverty-wage work each year.


newrepublic--2020-09-01--Rotting Produce, Vacant Luxury Apartments, and Fake Scarcity in a Pandemic

The other day my landlord mentioned that he was having trouble filling several open apartments in the building .
“ It ’ s the first time the units have been vacant in 20 years , ” he said glumly .
Though the building happens to be attractively located near a park , several train lines , and a cluster of restaurants and bars , the lack of prospective renters wasn ’ t much of a shock .
According to Curbed , the supply of available apartments in Brooklyn now outpaces the demand for them .
As the pandemic drags on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can afford to leave the city for less cramped quarters have already fled ; at the other end of the economic spectrum , those who have been laid off struggle to afford rent at all .
The glut of vacant apartments , then , comes just as New York slides closer and closer to the eviction crisis that ’ s already started to overtake other parts of the country .
That unsettling coexistence of scarcity and overabundance has also sharpened around other basic necessities during the ongoing recession .
On Monday , Bloomberg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in food insecurity around the globe .
An additional 132 million people worldwide are expected to go hungry this year , and that widespread starvation , perversely enough , won ’ t be the result of a crop shortage or natural disaster .
“ The massive spike is happening at a time of enormous global food surpluses , ” the Bloomberg authors wrote .
“ And it ’ s happening in every part of the world , with new levels of food insecurity forecast for countries that used to have relative stability.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States on indefinite hold , farms that once supplied restaurants with produce are now so overwhelmed with unsold crops that they ’ re forced to destroy them or let them spoil .
Meanwhile , in Queens last week , the wait at a food bank was approximately the length of an entire workday .
Though there ’ s too much food , people are going hungry and the price of groceries remains high .
There ’ s a long-standing myth , beloved by capitalism ’ s boosters , that an unbridled market generates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suppliers are forced to abandon perfectly good fruits , vegetables , eggs , and other foods while millions of people experience hunger , it ’ s clear that leaving essentials like food and shelter to the whims of the so-called invisible hand produces its own extreme kind of disorganization .
The waste is built into the system : As one cabbage farmer struggling to deal with excess crops told Bloomberg , though he wanted to donate his unsold cabbages , the cost of harvesting them without earning any money in return was prohibitive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the crops go bad in the fields .
“ There are times when there is food available and it ’ s because of logistics that it doesn ’ t find a home , ” he said .
“ Logistics , ” in this case , arguably includes the profit relationship itself , which means that a farmer can ’ t afford to give away food for free even when there ’ s no chance of anyone buying .
The same goes for housing , which constitutes yet another crisis in the making with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ digits and various eviction protections across the country starting to expire .
The chance that the market might somehow “ correct ” or stave off that disaster is about as good as the chance that the market will resolve mounting food insecurity .
Last month , apartment vacancies in Manhattan reached a 14-year high , and as a result , the median rent in the borough dropped all the way down to the bargain price of $ 3,167—a sum still entirely unaffordable for the vast majority of residents .
As New York state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , without serious ( and sustained ) government intervention like a long-term extension of eviction protections and more financial assistance for both tenants and landlords , the city would be opening the “ eviction floodgates ” come October , when the state ’ s eviction moratorium ends .
At the same time , economists have predicted that more and more apartments will remain unrented over that same time period .
“ There ’ s going to be even higher vacancy rates , and even more supply coming into the market , ” StreetEasy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yet there are rather straightforward resolutions to the seeming paradox of such vacancies coinciding with mass evictions that a few municipalities have put into practice .
In July , for instance , Barcelona ’ s city government simply commandeered unused units and converted them into public housing .

The other day my landlord mentioned that he was having trouble filling several open apartments in the building. “It’s the first time the units have been vacant in 20 years,” he said glumly. Though the building happens to be attractively located near a park, several train lines, and a cluster of restaurants and bars, the lack of prospective renters wasn’t much of a shock. According to Curbed, the supply of available apartments in Brooklyn now outpaces the demand for them. As the pandemic drags on, the relative few who want and can afford to leave the city for less cramped quarters have already fled; at the other end of the economic spectrum, those who have been laid off struggle to afford rent at all. The glut of vacant apartments, then, comes just as New York slides closer and closer to the eviction crisis that’s already started to overtake other parts of the country.
That unsettling coexistence of scarcity and overabundance has also sharpened around other basic necessities during the ongoing recession. On Monday, Bloomberg released a harrowing report on the surge in food insecurity around the globe. An additional 132 million people worldwide are expected to go hungry this year, and that widespread starvation, perversely enough, won’t be the result of a crop shortage or natural disaster. “The massive spike is happening at a time of enormous global food surpluses,” the Bloomberg authors wrote. “And it’s happening in every part of the world, with new levels of food insecurity forecast for countries that used to have relative stability.” With the restaurant industry in the United States on indefinite hold, farms that once supplied restaurants with produce are now so overwhelmed with unsold crops that they’re forced to destroy them or let them spoil. Meanwhile, in Queens last week, the wait at a food bank was approximately the length of an entire workday. Though there’s too much food, people are going hungry and the price of groceries remains high.