Tongans warned of acid rain after volcanic eruption


White gaseous clouds rise from the Hunga Ha'apai eruption, 

seen from near Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa (AFP/Mary Lyn FONUA)

Tue, December 21, 2021

A toxic cloud spewing from an erupting volcano in Tonga could dump acid rainfall across the Pacific kingdom, potentially poisoning drinking water and damaging people's skin and eyes, emergency services have warned.

The remote Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted Monday, sending plumes 18 kilometres (11 miles) into the air, Tonga Geological Services (TGS) said.

Police reported no injuries from the eruption but TGS said late Tuesday that the dust and gas could result in acidic rainfall if mixed with water in the atmosphere.

It advised residents to remove guttering systems from their rainwater storage systems until the all-clear was given.

"Symptoms of exposure to acid rain are itchiness and skin irritation, blurry and discolouration of vision if exposed to the eye," it said.

"If eyes or skin are exposed to acidic rain, please see a medical doctor or physician for appropriate treatment."

The volcano sits on an uninhabited island about 65 kilometres (41 miles) north of the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa.

The volcano last came to life in 2015, creating a new island structure on its caldera.

An aviation code red was issued after the eruption, advising airlines to avoid the area, resulting in Air New Zealand cancelling a flight from Auckland to Nuku'alofa on Tuesday.

ns/arb/jah

ONTARIO VS SIX NATIONS
Appeal court rules with Land Back Lane activist, saying he was denied a chance to be heard

Dan Taekema 

Ontario's highest court has ruled a judge denied Land Back Lane spokesperson Skyler Williams fairness and an opportunity to be heard, and has set aside injunctions around a housing development in Caledonia. Ont.

The Ontario Court of Appeal decision released Tuesday allows Williams's appeal, and says Ontario Superior Court Justice R.J. Harper conflated contempt and abuse of process when he dismissed Williams's arguments for staying on the disputed territory.

Appeal Court Justice Lorne Sossin, writing for the panel of three judges who heard the case, said more than $100,000 in costs imposed against Williams must be set aside.

The ruling also states that the developers involved in the project must pay Williams $20,000, a figure the parties involved in the case agreed would be paid to whichever of them was successful.

Barry Yellin, a partner with Hamilton-based Ross & McBride LLP, argued in October that the legal process that led to permanent injunctions around the development was "procedurally unfair" and a new hearing should be ordered.

Yellin said Harper's decision last year to dismiss arguments Williams had for staying on the disputed territory meant questions around the history of the land and Indigenous rights were silenced.

Doing so "left no room for reconciliation," according to the lawyer.

The land in question is a housing project in Caledonia, Ont. Foxgate Developments — a joint venture between Losani Homes and Ballantry Homes — planned to build more than 200 homes on the site it called McKenzie Meadows.

© CBC A rally was held outside the court of appeal in late October. Demonstrators showed a map of the Haldimand Tract, which was granted to Six Nations of the Grand River in 1784. The land ran roughly 10 km on each side of the Grand River. Six Nations now has less than five per cent of its original land base.

Williams and other Six Nations land defenders began occupying the site in July 2020. The demonstrators say it is unceded Haudenosaunee territory and have dubbed it 1492 Land Back Lane.

Paul DeMelo, a lawyer with Kagan Shastri LLP, represented the developers at the court of appeal and said Harper's decision should stand.

He argued Williams continuing to visit the site in defiance of the judge's order lessened the status of the court in the eyes of the public.

"Simply because one disagrees with a court order doesn't give one the right to disobey that court order," said DeMelo.

He said at the time that if someone wants to argue before the court, then they should follow its process.

"If one does not accept the decision of the court … your remedy is to appeal," DeMelo said.
Development on disputed land

The development sits on the Haldimand Tract, which was land granted to Six Nations of the Grand River in 1784 for allying with the British during the American Revolution. It covers roughly 384,451 hectares along Ontario's Grand River, and includes parts of municipalities such as Waterloo, Brantford and Caledonia.

The months that followed saw blockades go up across area roads, OPP raids and dozens of arrests.

In October, Harper ruled two injunctions, one to stop blocking roads and the other requiring the demonstrators to leave the development, would be made permanent.

But the demonstrators did not leave, and in July, roughly a year after the occupation began, the developers announced the project had been cancelled.

The Court of Appeal found Williams was denied fairness in the following ways:

Harper did not take appropriate steps to notify Williams about the exact nature of the proceeding against him — whether it was contempt, abuse of process or both.

Harper did not provide particulars of the exact conduct that was an issue.

Harper did not set out the potential consequences Williams could face, including costs.

Harper did not give Williams an opportunity to consult or arrange for a lawyer before the order was made.

Harper did not give Williams an opportunity to respond to the specific allegations against him before making the order.

One dead, at least 70 missing after landslide at Myanmar jade mine: rescue team

A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar Wednesday killed at least one person and left dozens missing, a member of the rescue team told AFP.

© Ye Aung THU

 Hpakant is at the heart of Myanmar's jade trade in northern Kachin state and frequently sees deadly accidents

Scores die each year working in the country's lucrative but poorly regulated jade trade, which uses low-paid migrant workers to scrape out a gem highly coveted in neighbouring China.

The disaster struck at the Hpakant mine close to the Chinese border in Kachin state, where billions of dollars of jade is believed to be scoured each year from bare hillsides.

"About 70-100 people are missing" following the landslide that struck around 4:00 am (2130 GMT Tuesday), said rescue team member Ko Nyi.

"We've sent 25 injured people to hospital while we've found one dead."

Around 200 rescuers were searching to recover bodies, with some using boats to search for the dead in a nearby lake, he added.

A photo posted on social media by a local journalist who said he was at the scene showed dozens of people standing on the edge of the lake, with some launching boats into the water.

Local outlet Kachin News Group said 20 miners had been killed in the landslide.

Myanmar's fire services said its personnel from Hpakant and nearby town of Lone Khin were involved in the rescue effort but gave no figures of dead or missing.

- Deadly industry -

Civilians are frequently trapped in the middle of the fight for control of Myanmar's mines and their lucrative revenues, with a rampant drug and arms trade further curdling the conflict.

Last year heavy rainfall triggered a massive landslide in Hpakant that entombed nearly 300 miners.

A February military coup also effectively extinguished any chance of reforms to the dangerous and unregulated industry initiated by ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi's government, watchdog Global Witness said in a report this year.

The coup has also sparked fighting in Kachin state between the Kachin Independence Army, which has waged a decades-long insurgency, and the Myanmar military, Global Witness added.

In May, the military launched air strikes against the group, which later told AFP it had downed a helicopter gunship during fierce clashes in the country's far north.

bur-rma/oho

AHS SETS UP NDP CRITIC
Alberta NDP politician steps aside while RCMP investigate computer privacy breach

EDMONTON — A member of the Alberta Opposition has left the NDP caucus after reporting he is involved in a criminal investigation.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Thomas Dang, the member of the legislature for Edmonton-South, said he was notified Tuesday by a family member that the RCMP had executed a search warrant on his home.

He said he believes the search warrant is connected to his efforts to check vulnerabilities with COVID-19 vaccination records on an Alberta government website.

"In September, a concern was raised to me as a member of the legislative assembly about the security of the vaccination system, " he said late Tuesday on Twitter.

"I tested these concerns and found that a security flaw did exist."

Dang said he immediately notified Alberta Health with the information so the vulnerability could be corrected. He said the problem was resolved shortly after.

"I have offered my resignation from the NDP Opposition caucus to our leader while the investigation is ongoing and she has accepted it."

Earlier Tuesday, NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Dang had stepped down as per caucus policy.

“Our caucus has a long-standing policy that members under active police investigation will not sit in the caucus, and Thomas understands this,” she said.

Notley said she believed the investigation is related to anecdotal reports that surfaced in September about Albertans being able to get access to the private health information of others through glitches on the province’s COVID-19 website.

She said Dang visited the government’s website at the time and called Alberta Health about his concerns.

RCMP said in a release that its cybercrime team executed a warrant at an Edmonton home on Tuesday but did not name Dang, noting that no arrests or charges have been laid.

The release said a criminal investigation started in November after it received information about suspicious activity related to the access of private information of vaccination records.

It described the investigation as a priority and involved a significant volume of digital evidence that will take time to complete.

Notley said she wasn't sure of the specifics of the investigation.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 21, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Fish show quick improvement when mercury releases into lakes cut off: study

Mercury contamination in freshwater fish populations falls quickly once new sources of the toxic chemical are cut off, says new research.

Paul Blanchfield, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, said the finding that lakes can rebound quickly from mercury pollution is good news.

"I think it's a very good news story," said Blanchfield, an aquatic ecologist for the federal government. "Response to reductions was very quick in the fish populations."

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin often emitted into the atmosphere by burning coal. Once it enters a lake and changes to a form that organisms can absorb, it accumulates in the tissues of fish and other animals.

The Portable Heater That Has Taken The World By StormSEE MORESponsored by ALPHA HEATER

As less coal gets burned, Blanchfield and his colleagues wanted to find out if that would affect fish. Would existing amounts of mercury in the ecosystem work to keep levels in fish high, or would the lack of fresh input reduce the population's contaminant load?

It sounds like a simple question. But it took 15 years to answer it.

"Human activities have increased the amount of mercury coming into lakes for years, so there's a large amount that's stored in the lakes," Blanchfield said. "It comes down to the question of whether new mercury or old mercury is important."

The researchers used one of the watersheds in the Experimental Lakes Area, a unique series of Ontario lakes that have been used for decades in real-world, whole-ecosystem studies.

For seven years, from 2000 to 2007, they added carefully calibrated doses of mercury to the lake and the surrounding wetlands and uplands. Each type of environment got a different isotope of mercury, so the scientists were able to track where they all wound up.

Eventually, mercury levels in the lake were up 60 per cent, almost entirely from mercury added directly to the lake. Levels of the mercury added to the lake in insects and small fish increased between 45 and 57 per cent and in large fish such as northern pike by 40 per cent.

Then the team stopped adding mercury.

Not only did levels in the lake fall, fish stopped accumulating mercury in their tissues. Within eight years, lake mercury concentrations declined by 76 per cent in the northern pike population and by 38 per cent in the lake whitefish population.

Older fish still had high levels of mercury, but levels in younger fish were getting lower and lower, bringing overall concentrations down.

"There was the potential that that mercury that we'd added to the food web for seven years could also have continued to contribute for quite a while," Blanchfield said. "But we saw it reduced very quickly — especially in the lower food web."

Where did the mercury go? Blanchfield suspects it wound up in lake sediments, transformed into forms that aren't absorbed by plants or animals, and gradually getting buried.

"It's still all there. It's just getting less and less bioavailable all the time."

Blanchfield said the study shows that environmental regulations can work to reduce contaminant loads — even for pollutants that have been widespread for many years.

"The positive message in there is that policies that lower the amount of mercury coming into lakes will indeed be effective," he said.

"That's a pretty clear demonstration from our study — these policies will work and they are effective."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 21, 2021.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

FOX NEWSMAKERS

Jesse Watters: Fauci calls for Fox News host to be fired 'on the spot' for 'kill shot' comments

By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said that Fox News host Jesse Watters should be fired for using violent language at a conservative conference to encourage attendees to conduct an ambush interview with him in hopes of creating a viral moment

.

© Provided by CNN

"I mean, that's crazy," Fauci added. "The guy should be fired on the spot."

Fox News defended Watters. A spokesperson said in a statement, "Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it's more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context."

Watters made his remarks Monday at the right-wing Turning Points USA conference where he gave students a playbook on how to record a viral moment that Fox News would air and that other right wing outlets would amplify.

"Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn't see it coming," Watters said.

Fauci reacted with shock to the "awful" comments on Tuesday, but also acknowledged that it's "very likely" Watters would go "unaccountable" at Fox News.

"The only thing that I have ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices: to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask," Fauci said on "New Day."

"And for that," Fauci continued, "you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot to ambush me? I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days?"

Watters' comments come just weeks after Lara Logan, another Fox News personality who hosts a show on the channel's streaming network, compared Fauci to a Nazi doctor infamous for experimenting on prisoners at the Auschwitz death camp.

At the time, Fauci called out Fox News for staying silent and not commenting on Logan's comments.

"What I find striking, Chris, is how she gets no discipline whatsoever from the Fox network," Fauci said at the time to MSNBC host Chris Hayes. "How they can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action. I'm astounded by that."

Fauci says Fox News 

and RFK Jr. attacks 

'accelerated' death threats

Dylan Stableford and Kate Murphy

Tue, December 21, 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he and his family continue to receive death threats amid inflammatory statements made by critics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaxxer whose new book is filled with wild claims attacking the nation’s top infectious disease expert.

“It’s very unfortunate because I don’t think he is inherently malicious,” Fauci said of Kennedy in a wide-ranging interview with Yahoo News on Tuesday. “I just think he’s a very disturbed individual.”

The former environmental lawyer’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” was published last month.

“It’s a shame because he comes from such an extraordinarily distinguished family, many members of whom I know personally,” Fauci continued. “I was very close to Sen. Ted Kennedy, who was such an extraordinary person and a real warrior for public health and to have RFK Jr. just spouting things that make absolutely no sense ... I’m so sorry that he’s doing that.” 

Fauci added: “Not just because he’s attacking me — that seems to be the rage among some people — but because ultimately it is going to hurt people.”

His comments came a day after Fox News host Jesse Watters encouraged attendees at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference to “ambush” Fauci with questions about the National Institutes of Health’s alleged funding of “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

“Now you go in for the kill shot,” Watters said. “The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci at a press briefing at the White House earlier this month. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Fauci told Yahoo News that such statements are often followed by death threats.

“It even gets accelerated when you have the inflammatory statements that are made, [by] people like RFK Jr. and some of the Fox media personalities,” Fauci said, adding that he finds it “strange that they go unchecked with no consequences for people to say that.”

“And when they do that publicly, that’s when I get more death threats and people harass me, my wife and my children,” he added.

“The only thing I’ve ever said or done is to encourage people to get vaccinated, to wear a mask and to do things that would be good for their health, the health of their family and the health of the community,” he said. “So to get villainized because of that is a sad testimony on our society.”

Fauci was also asked whether he believes former President Donald Trump has the power to change minds among his supporters who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“I would think so, because of so many followers that he has — people who hang on his every word,” Fauci said.

In a live interview with Bill O’Reilly on Sunday, Trump revealed that he received a COVID-19 booster shot after previously saying he was not going to get the additional dose — and was booed by a smattering of those in attendance.

“One of the things that surprised me is that when he publicly made that statement, he was actually booed by his followers,” Fauci said. “Which tells me that the depth of the divisiveness in society, where people are so intent on not doing something almost for ideological reasons, without dropping back and taking a look at the big picture — that it’s for one’s own good to protect one’s self, to protect one’s family, but also for your communal responsibility to not allow this virus to run rampant through society.

“So I was pleased that the former president said publicly that he was vaccinated and boosted,” Fauci added. “I was dismayed that even his own followers booed him. It was rather disturbing to see that.”

Germany Is Closing Half of Its Reactors at Worst Possible Time

KNEE JERK REACTION TO FUKUSHIMA

Rachel Morison
Mon, December 20, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Germany is set to close almost half of its nuclear power capacity before the end of the year, putting further strain on European grids already coping with one of the worst energy crunches in the region’s history.

The shutdowns of Grohnde, Gundremmingen C and Brokdorf -- part of the country’s nuclear phaseout -- will leave just three atomic plants, which will be taken offline by the end of 2022. Beyond the squeeze on supply, the closures remove a key source of low-carbon power in a nation where emissions are on the rise.

After the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Germany vowed to ditch all of its reactors. At the time, the country was a leader in renewables, but the phaseout has left it more reliant on coal and lignite for electricity generation. The nation fell behind in the net-zero race after making major concessions to the coal lobby, to protesters against wind farms and to manufacturers, particularly carmakers.

“From a pure emissions perspective, it was always a questionable idea to shut down German nuclear before the plants have reached the end of their lifetime,” said Hanns Koenig, head of commissioned projects at Aurora Energy Research. “It was always clear that the nuclear phaseout would need coal and gas plants to run more and therefore cause substantial extra emissions.”

Atomic plants are designed to generate power around the clock, providing valuable backup when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. While the shutdowns have been known about for years and are unlikely to cause a spike in prices, the removal of 4 gigawatts of baseload output highlights a dwindling reserve of buffer capacity in Germany. It’s one reason why prices are higher next year: electricity for delivery in 2022 has jumped more than fivefold this year.

The timing could hardly be worse. Power prices are near record levels across Europe, and Germany will need to rely on generation from costly gas and coal for another 20 years or so -- before they too are phased out. Keeping the nuclear stations open any longer isn’t an option since that would require hundreds of millions of euros of investment, Koenig said.

Increased reliance on fossil fuels will boost emissions further, and Germany is not alone. A number of countries in Europe have ramped up coal-fired power production in recent months as gas supplies failed to meet rebounding demand and wind generation fell short.

Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by 2038, with the lignite power-plant fleet reduced almost 16% by 2024. By that year, high carbon prices and an expansion of renewable power will have cut Germany’s coal production “strongly,” according to the International Energy Agency.

And that trend is set to be replicated, with much of Europe deciding to “get out of coal,” leading to a likely increase in renewable-power assets in the long term, said Sabrina Kernbichler, an analyst at S&P Global Platts.

Yet in the short term, coal is helping to bridge the supply gap. One German utility, Uniper SE, has postponed the planned decommissioning of its Scholven-B coal plant beyond the end of 2022 following delays in building a replacement gas unit at the site.

That’ll provide some relief as market tightness persists. But it won’t help Germany meet net-zero goals.

FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE U$A
'Get that money!' Dermatologist says patient care suffered after private equity-backed firm bought practice


Gretchen Morgenson
Mon, December 20, 2021, 5:59 AM·9 min read

The email to the health care workers was like something out of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” “We are in the last few days of the month and are only 217 appointments away from meeting our budget,” the August 2020 memo stated. “Don’t forget the August bonus incentive for all patients scheduled in August! That’s the easiest money you can make. Get that money!!”

The “Get that money!!” entreaty wasn’t addressed to a bunch of hard-charging, coke-snorting stockbrokers. It went to Michigan-based employees of Pinnacle Dermatology, a private equity-owned group of 90 dermatology practices across America.

The memo was shared with NBC News by a former Pinnacle employee, Dr. Allison Brown, a board-certified dermatologist and dermatopathologist. Brown says Pinnacle terminated her shortly after she advised management of questionable practices that she contends were hurting patients.

Among the practices Brown alleges: overlooked diagnoses, lost patient biopsies, questionable quality control in the company-owned lab and overbooking of patients without sufficient support staff.

Physicians have a duty to put their patients’ interests first. But when aggressive financiers take over medical operations, the push for profits can take precedence, doctors in an array of specialties have told NBC News. Paying bonuses for increased patient visits may result in unnecessary appointments and costs, for example.

Among the most aggressive health care financiers in the market today are private equity firms. The new titans of finance, these firms have taken over broad swaths of U.S. industry in recent years. Using large amounts of debt to finance their acquisitions, private equity firms acquire companies, aim to increase their profits and then try to resell them a few years later for more than they paid.

Outside investors, such as public pension funds and endowments, commit big money to the deals in hope of generating high returns.

Private equity is reshaping the health care industry, practitioners, economists and academic researchers contend. Private equity funds dedicated solely to health care operations have been especially busy, raising $350 billion from investors over the past decade, according to Preqin, a private equity data source. Last year, almost $50 billion was raised from investors for health care buyouts, up from $8 billion in 2010.

A focal point in such takeovers has been physician-owned dermatology practices, a highly fragmented sector of small operations that private equity firms have considered ripe for consolidation over the past decade. Just before the pandemic, researchers counted more than 30 private equity-backed dermatology groups in the country and said about 15 percent of dermatology practices were private equity-owned. The number has probably grown, the researchers say.

Private equity firms contend that they create jobs, support businesses and help provide comfortable retirements for pensioners invested in the strategy. But many outside the industry are especially critical of the industry’s involvement in health care. One private equity-owned hospital staffing company, for example, was behind many of the surprise emergency department bills that outraged hospital patients and resulted in a new law to curb the practices. It takes effect next month.

“The private equity business model is fundamentally incompatible with sound health care that serves patients,” concluded a paper in May co-authored by Richard M. Scheffler, professor of health economics and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley; Laura M. Alexander, the vice president of policy at the American Antitrust Institute, a nonprofit organization; and James R. Godwin, a Ph.D. candidate at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

The researchers found that private equity’s focus on short-term profits “leads to pressure to prioritize revenue over quality of care, to overburden health-care companies with debt, strip their assets, and put them at risk of long-term failure, and to engage in anticompetitive and unethical billing practices.”

In addition, economists and practitioners who have studied private equity-backed health care entities say they often try to increase revenue by providing services typically outsourced to third parties. For example, many dermatology practices backed by private equity acquire their own labs to analyze specimens. They can be a source of additional revenue, research shows, and may provide incentives for the practices to run extra tests, presenting possible conflicts of interest.

Pinnacle Dermatology, which is based in Brentwood, Tennessee, and operates in 11 states, has been buying small physician-owned practices and outpatient services.

Dr. Jose Rios, Pinnacle’s president and chief medical officer, provided the following statement: “Our top priorities are always patient safety and clinical quality. Pinnacle Dermatology’s compliance and quality assurance programs lead the industry. We are proud of our track record, our high levels of patient satisfaction and the equally high patient loyalty that results and will continue to provide valuable dermatological care at the highest possible levels.”

Backing Pinnacle is Chicago Pacific Capital, a private equity firm founded in 2014. The firm “invests in companies that it believes are positioned to lead innovations in health-care delivery and in caring for aging populations,” a regulatory filing says. Chicago Pacific had $1.8 billion under management, including borrowings, as of December 2020.

Chicago Pacific didn’t respond to a phone call and a detailed email seeking comment about Pinnacle.

Brown, the former Pinnacle physician, who has also taught dermatology at two medical schools, said she decided to share her experience at the company out of concern for patient safety. “I worked in an office that was physician-owned until the physician passed away and we were bought out,” Brown said. “I experienced from the inside what happened to the practice” after private equity arrived.

Among the changes Brown said she saw after Pinnacle took over were an increase in patient biopsies that got lost and a drop in the quality and number of instruments purchased for the practice. She said the office booked her for 40 patient appointments a day without adequate support staff. Brown also described cases of patients were seen multiple times for problems that could have been resolved in single visits, raising the patients’ costs.

Brown says that when private equity firms take over health care practices, it hurts the quality of health care and is bad for patients. (Sarah Rice for NBC News)

Even worse, Brown said, patient diagnoses fell through the cracks; for months, the office didn’t follow through on treating a patient’s melanoma, for example. “If you miss a melanoma and you’re not being treated, there could be significant morbidity and mortality with that,” she said.

A letter Brown’s lawyer sent to Pinnacle in the fall of 2020 and reviewed by NBC News detailed her criticisms. Shortly after the letter went out, Brown was let go.

The company contended that she had behaved unethically, Brown said, but she said she and her lawyer obtained her personnel file and found nothing in it to support the claim. “They started targeting me,” Brown said. “They weren’t happy with me sending emails up the chain about stuff going wrong.”

Pinnacle declined to answer detailed questions about Brown’s criticisms and termination.

Brown said she got along well with her associates in the practice, some of whom called her Dr. Awesome and gave her a drinking glass with that title embossed on it.

The company’s laboratory in Lombard, Illinois, where Pinnacle offices sent specimens for analysis, was also problematic, Brown said. The operation was very disorganized; slides and specimens sent for second opinions and quality control got lost more than once, she said. She filed a complaint with the Illinois Public Health Department.

Rios, of Pinnacle, said Brown’s criticisms of Pinnacle’s lab “are baseless allegations brought by a disgruntled former employee.” He added that Pinnacle’s lab is accredited by the College of American Pathologists and certified under federal regulations associated with the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments.

Dr. Sailesh Konda is a Mohs surgeon — someone who performs a type of surgery used to treat skin cancer — and an associate clinical professor of dermatology at the University of Florida. He has also conducted extensive research into private equity’s impact on the dermatology field.

Konda said Brown’s experience isn’t unusual. “Dermatologists from all over the country have shared with me their experiences with private equity-backed groups promoting profits over patient care,” he said. “Many are shackled with non-disparagement agreements and are afraid to publicly share their experiences. These stories need to be told.”

Independent academic research also indicates that negative outcomes have resulted from private equity firms’ involvement in dermatology. A main source of problems is the tendency among private equity-owned practices to hire more “physician extenders” to see dermatology patients, including physician assistants and nurse practitioners who cost less to employ. An academic study from last year in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology concluded that private equity-backed dermatology practices employ greater numbers of physician assistants and a higher rate of such professionals to physicians. Rios declined to discuss the company’s reliance on physician extenders.

Physician extenders’ lack of experience can pose problems for patients by not identifying skin cancers, a 2018 investigation published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found. The study, which examined more than 33,000 skin cancer screenings among 20,000 patients, found that physician extenders failed to identify cancers significantly more often than doctors did.

The extenders also ordered more biopsies than doctors, generating increased fees for their patients. Physician extenders are supposed to be monitored by doctors, but private equity-backed companies often assign remote supervising physicians, in far-off locations, who have never met the people they are supervising. That diminishes effective oversight.

Research in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology in 2018 found physician extenders working at a private equity-backed group performing “dermatologic procedures of questionable medical necessity” on nursing home patients in Michigan. In the study, 75 percent of the treated patients had diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease.

Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Dermatology found that private equity-backed practices were more likely to offer appointments with physician extenders than with doctors. If physician extenders fail to make appropriate diagnoses, it can be a problem.

Rios declined to comment on the research showing negative outcomes among dermatology practices backed by private equity firms.

Five other former Pinnacle workers shared concerns about the company’s practices but asked not to be identified for fear of retribution or because they had signed non-disparagement agreements. They corroborated Brown’s experience of the push for more appointments, not ordering enough or high-quality supplies and problems with the lab.

Such agreements are common among medical practices bought by private equity firms. That’s why it’s so rare, practitioners say, for a physician like Brown to speak out about her experiences. Brown never signed such an agreement with Pinnacle, she said.

Brown and her lawyer continue to fight for three months of back pay she says she is owed, as well as reimbursement for insurance coverage that she paid out of her own pocket. The company’s most recent offer, Brown said, was $5,000 plus her signature on a non-disparagement agreement. She rejected the deal.

“Dermatology is often not a life-and-death situation,” Brown said. “But it’s still a specialty, it still requires expertise, and patients deserve to see the best-trained professionals at all times.”

THIRD WORLD USA

U.S. families fear hunger after child-tax credit expires


FILE PHOTO: Schumer holds a press conference on the Child Tax Credit payments at the U.S. Capitol in Washington

Mon, December 20, 2021
By Moira Warburton and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The phone calls to Yvonka Hall's health nonprofit in northeastern Ohio from families begging for help feeding their children started in March 2020, and slowed down only when an expanded child tax credit came into effect last summer.

Now, Hall fears the calls will ramp up again as U.S. lawmakers quibble over renewing this program that expired after making final payments on Dec. 15, despite having been credited with helping millions of poor children.

"It's easy when you make $200,000 a year to drag your feet on someone that may be making $10,000 a year," Hall said referring to the $174,000 annual salaries earned by members of Congress.

The expanded Child Tax Credit's monthly payments of $300 for each child under the age of 6 and $250 for children 6 to 17, lifted some 3.6 million American children out of poverty in October, according to Columbia University research.

"It allowed our families to be able to live," Hall said.

The Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition in Cleveland, where Hall is executive director, has had to start setting aside $10,000 per month to fund an ad hoc food bank since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

When the expanded Child Tax Credit monthly payments kicked in, the calls to the ad hoc food bank dropped off and many families were able to move into better, more stable housing.

Hopes for a one-year extension dimmed on Sunday after moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin https://www.reuters.com/world/us/schumer-says-senate-vote-biden-plan-despite-manchin-objections-2021-12-20 said he would not vote for President Joe Biden's $1.75 trillion "Build Back Better https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/whats-bidens-175-trillion-build-back-better-package-2021-11-05" program, which includes the tax credit provision.

In so doing, he joined Republicans who are in lock-step opposition to Biden's plan, instead wanting a scaled-back child tax credit.

'INFLATIONARY BOMB'

Republicans oppose the size of the credit, as well as the aim of Democrats to attach it to the $1.75 trillion "Build Back Better https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/whats-bidens-175-trillion-build-back-better-package-2021-11-05" program.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the senior Senate Budget Committee Republican, described the Democrats' tax credit provision as an "inflationary bomb."

Without the expanded tax credit, the program for poor families reverts to a lump-sum payment that families need to file a tax return to claim, and a reduction to $2,000 annually per child from up to $3,600 this year. The Treasury Department in June estimated that families with as many as 2.3 million children did not file returns in 2019 or 2020 because their incomes were below the threshold for filing.

That presents a problem for Tiquanda Newton, a 43-year-old mother of daughters aged 21, 17, seven and four.

"I walk into the store and I have to figure out who gets what and who doesn't get what. The truth is, I don't get. I just make sure I stay hydrated," Newton said in a telephone interview from her home in New Haven, Connecticut.

Newton has been unemployed since the birth of her 7-year-old and has guardianship of her eldest daughter, who has a life-long disability.

A broken heater in her car goes unrepaired and she despairs over the rising costs of basics like food and school supplies.

"These babies are growing quicker than we can even buy clothes," she said.

Despite the breakdown in negotiations, "The fight to pass Build Back Better is not over," said House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro, a leading advocate for maintaining the expanded tax credit.

Already, there have been hints Democrats could move to shrink the $1.75 billion plan to win support from Manchin and Democratic Senator Krysten Sinema, who together oppose various parts of the bill.

Meanwhile, Mary Beth Cochran, 52, worries she may have to quit her job in western North Carolina if the expanded tax credit vanishes and she no longer can afford the used car she bought with the extra federal funding.

"I'm not asking for a handout," she said. "This money is to help us get by so our children don't have to struggle."

(Reporting by Moira Warburton, Richard Cowan and Jonelle Marte in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)

Joe Manchin Privately Told Colleagues Parents Use Child Tax Credit Money On Drugs

Tara Golshan
Mon, December 20, 2021

WASHINGTON — After months of haggling with President Joe Biden and other Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) dashed his party’s hopes on Sunday by announcing he wouldn’t vote for the Build Back Better legislation.

Publicly, his biggest gripes are about the cost of the bill. But privately, Manchin has told his colleagues that he essentially doesn’t trust low-income people to spend government money wisely.

In recent months, Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments.

Continuing the child tax credit for another year is a core part of the Build Back Better legislation that Democrats had hoped to pass by the end of the year. The policy has already cut child poverty by nearly 30%.

Manchin’s private comments shocked several senators, who saw it as an unfair assault on his own constituents and those struggling to raise children in poverty.

Manchin has also told colleagues he believes that Americans would fraudulently use the proposed paid sick leave policy, specifically saying people would feign being sick and go on hunting trips, a source familiar with his comments told HuffPost.

Manchin’s office declined to comment for this story.

In a statement on Sunday, he said he opposed the Build Back Better agenda largely because of its cost.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in November. On Sunday, he announced he would not be voting for President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill, essentially ensuring that it will not pass. (Photo: Tom Williams via Getty Images)

“My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face,” Manchin said. “I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight.”

Manchin’s refusal to support the bill likely means December’s child tax credit payment will be the final one for the 36 million households that have been receiving the benefits since July.

The credit pays $300 per child under 6 and $250 for kids under 18 for two-parent households earning less than $150,000 annually and single parents earning less than $112,000. Parents don’t need to have earned money or to owe taxes in order to qualify.

Manchin previously suggested Democrats should impose “work requirements” on all the social programs in Build Back Better, but he seemed to drop that demand after the White House released a framework of the legislation in October. The White House said the framework resulted from negotiations with Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

Low-income households that receive the credit have reported spending the money mostly on necessities like food, utilities, clothing and school supplies, according to monthly survey data from the Census Bureau. Four percent of households have reported using the money for “recreational goods” such as sports equipment or toys.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a top proponent of the child payments, said he had heard of Manchin’s remarks about the money going toward drugs but wasn’t paying any mind to it.

“The stories I hear the most, if you put it in categories, are child care, school supplies, college fund, phone bills,” Brown told HuffPost last week. “My focus is getting this program — which is the best thing Congress has done in 25 years — making sure it continues.”

If Mr. Manchin and Republicans and anybody else who thinks struggling working families, who have a hard time raising their kids today, should not be able to continue to get the help ... they’ve got to come forward to the American people.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

The concern that some parents would use the benefit for drugs echoes years of conservative talking points on welfare. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans in Congress and state legislatures around the country sought to add drug testing to requirements to nutrition assistance, unemployment benefits and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which provides monthly cash benefits to poor parents.

More than a dozen states enacted drug testing policies from 2011 through 2017, resulting in less than 1% of applicants actually testing positive for drugs. States lawmakers have generally lost interest in the policy in recent years.

Since West Virginia launched its TANF drug screening program in 2017, just 131 applicants have tested positive for drugs ― a small fraction of the thousands of program beneficiaries. Nevertheless, state lawmakers this spring opted to continue the screening program for another five years. The puny number of welfare recipients kicked off the rolls might not save the state any money, but it sends a message: People on welfare can’t be trusted, and we’re making them prove they deserve help.

Manchin told HuffPost last week that he has always supported the child tax credit, but he refused to say whether he supported the version of it that Democrats were hoping to extend through 2022, calling the question “bullshit.” He later said that if Democrats want to continue the policy, they should do so for 10 years instead of just one.

Since the credit costs more than $100 billion per year, a longer extension would be costly, and it would force Democrats to drop other programs from the Build Back Better agenda. Democrats want their enhanced child tax credit to be permanent, but included a one-year extension to reduce the cost of the bill, arguing that it would be easy to extend the credit at a later time. Now the policy may expire after just six months.

Democrats’ frustration with Manchin began to boil over last week even before he announced he wouldn’t support the bill.

“If Mr. Manchin and Republicans and anybody else who thinks struggling working families, who have a hard time raising their kids today, should not be able to continue to get the help — that’s their view — they’ve got to come forward to the American people and say, ‘we don’t think you need help,’” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Thursday.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Corporate donations to Sen. Joe Manchin's PAC surged as he fought President Biden's agenda
Brian Schwartz 
CNBC

Sen. Joe Manchin's PAC saw a surge in corporate contributions this fall before his decision to oppose President Biden's $1.75 trillion social and climate legislation.

The political action committee received 17 contributions in October and 19 last month, according to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.

Corporations, business leaders and groups have pressured Manchin to oppose the agenda since the Democrats gained a slight majority in the Senate.

© Provided by CNBC U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) returns to a basement office meeting with other senators at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, December 15, 2021.

Sen. Joe Manchin's political action committee saw a surge in corporate contributions this fall, ahead of his decision to oppose – and apparently kill – President Joe Biden's $1.75 trillion social safety net and climate-change bill.

Manchin's leadership PAC, Country Roads, received 17 contributions from corporations in October and 19 last month, according to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. None of the four months prior to October saw as many corporate contributions.

The White House unveiled its framework for the bill, dubbed the Build Back Better Act, in October. It included about $550 billion to battle climate change by investing in green technologies. Manchin, a conservative Democrat who has profited from his links to the coal industry, opposed key climate provisions in the legislation.

In November, the Country Roads PAC received corporate contributions ranging from $2,500 to $5,000. Donors included financial giants such as American Express and Goldman Sachs, aerospace and defense leader Lockheed Martin, health insurance companies UnitedHealth Group and Blue Cross Blue Shield, and natural gas company CNX Resources. The PAC raised over $110,000 in November.

Country Roads raised over $150,000 in October from corporate donors such as Verizon, Union Pacific, Wells Fargo and PACs tied to the coal and mining industries. Manchin, a conservative Democrat, represents West Virginia, which overwhelmingly voted for former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. The state is a key location for the fossil-fuel industry.

Corporations, business leaders and outside groups have pressured Manchin to oppose key parts of the Democratic administration's agenda ever since his party gained a slight majority in the Senate following the 2020 election.

The Koch network has lobbied Manchin to oppose key elements of the legislation, while billionaires such as Nelson Peltz and Ken Langone have cheered him on as he moved against his own party. Langone has said he plans to host a fundraising event for the West Virginia lawmaker, who is weighing running for reelection in 2024.

Jonathan Kott, who once worked for Manchin as a communications advisor and is now a lobbyist, gave $2,500 to Manchin's leadership PAC at the end of November. Kott started lobbying for energy giant ExxonMobil in the third quarter after he was hired by Capitol Counsel earlier this year.

Manchin said on Sunday that he won't support Biden's $1.75 trillion social spending and climate policy bill after months of negotiations with the president, his team and leaders in Congress. It was the latest in a set of issues that Manchin has pushed back on against his own party.

In October and November, a period that coincided with Manchin fighting his own party on the agenda, his PAC spent thousands of dollars on hotel arrangements and travel.

In November, the leadership PAC spent over $40,000 at The Greenbrier, a luxury resort in West Virginia, which is owned by the family of Republican Gov. Jim Justice. The November FEC filing says the money was used for catering, lodging, food and beverages.

In October, the PAC spent over $1,000 on travel for Manchin's son, Joseph Manchin IV, according to that month's filing. The Intercept reported that Manchin's son has leadership roles at companies with ties to the West Virginia lawmaker.

The PAC spent another $1,000 on the Sawgrass Marriot, a golf resort in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and over $2,000 on catering an event at RPM Italian, a restaurant in Washington, D.C. The PAC also spent just over $10,000 that month as a deposit for an event at The Greenbrier.

The purpose of the thousands of dollars spent on hotels, meals and travel is unclear. A representative for Manchin's office did not return a request for comment.

Lawmakers often use their leadership PACs on issues that watchdogs say are lightly regulated outside of politics, according to research from nonprofit groups Issue One and the Campaign Legal Center.

"Issue One and Campaign Legal Center found that the leadership PACs of 120 members of Congress spent less than 50% on politics between January 2019 and December 2020," the research says. Manchin's PAC, according to the report, spent about 65% of the funds over that time period on what the researchers describe as politics, leaving nearly 35% to be put toward travel, hotels, meals, campaign staffing and other investments.

While leadership PACs are meant to help fund candidates running for office, the report from the nonprofits says it appears that many lawmakers simply use the money at fancy resorts and restaurants.

"Instead, such spending patterns give the impression that some politicians are simply raising money at one posh location to pay for the next fundraiser at the next fancy destination — creating an endless fundraising cycle at luxurious restaurants and resorts, much of which is paid for by special interest money, with no cost to lawmakers' own pocketbooks," the report says.

Manchin's PAC did donate some of its money to a political campaign, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The PAC sent $10,000 to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto's, D-Nev., political operation in the early stages of the 2022 reelection campaign cycle. The Nevada race is expected to be competitive.

Manchin and Biden's agenda

Manchin has put himself in the thick of several policy debates that affect corporations in recent months, in no small part because he alone can swing a simple majority vote in the 50-50 Senate.

In June he voiced his opposition against the For the People Act, a bill that could make changes to future elections. The bill passed the House but has yet to go through the Senate.

When a debate ensued on Capitol Hill about raising taxes on corporations, Manchin said he wouldn't go above raising the corporate tax to 25% from 21%. After Democrats proposed enacting a billionaires tax, Manchin said he wasn't for it.

Manchin did end up supporting the Democratic plan to enact a 15% minimum corporate tax on declared income of large corporations. He also helped to craft and then advocated for the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan that became law last month.

In addition, the conservative Democrat voted with Republicans to block the Biden administration vaccine mandate for private businesses.

Manchin's most prominent role has come in shaping Biden's Build Back Better Act legislation that would transform social services for workers in the U.S., set the minimum tax rate on corporations and make the biggest federal investment ever in curbing climate change.

The senator pushed Democratic leaders to cut the bill's price tag in half, to $1.75 trillion from an initial $3.5 trillion.

When the White House announced a framework agreement on the bill in October, the administration noted that it came about after officials negotiated "in good faith" with Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat from Arizona.

The West Virginia lawmaker never publicly supported the agreement, even as the House passed it in November along with the complementary infrastructure bill.

Russians Have Suddenly Stopped Buying Putin’s Anti-American Propaganda

Anna Nemtsova
Sun, December 19, 2021

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

MOSCOW—It’s easy to see why President Vladimir Putin might have thought ratcheting up tensions on Ukraine’s border and blaming it all on NATO and the U.S. would rally his faltering support back home, but this time something different is happening.

Most Russians aren’t buying it.

Domestic propaganda levels have reached near-hysteria this year after anti-Putin protests swept the country following the attempted murder and imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The drumbeat of war against Ukraine is becoming louder by the week and Putin has made ever wilder demands of NATO, which was the primary focus of his talking points in the video conference summit with President Biden earlier this month. He must surely know those demands can never be met.

Ukraine: America Dropped the Ball on Russia’s Invasion Threat

If you follow the local—state-owned—TV stations in Russia, you are constantly warned that a new war is on the horizon; that Russia will bravely stand up to the West; and that America is the real enemy.

That message is increasingly falling on deaf ears.

A study published this week by the Levada Analytical Center showed that for the first time in years more Russians think positively than negatively about the U.S.—by 45 percent to 42 percent.

When Levada asked the same question in May, only 31 percent said the U.S. was “good” vs. 54 percent “bad.”

In those intervening months, Moscow has accused Washington of “fueling tension” over Ukraine, gas pipelines, Navalny, and hacking. Tit-for-tat diplomatic spats have led to the U.S. embassy cutting 75 percent of staff in Moscow and no longer processing visas, meaning Russians wanting U.S. travel visas and green cards now have to apply in Warsaw. An agreement is in the works to fix that particular stand-off, but it shows the real world impact of diplomatic wrangling on ordinary people.

“Politicians and ordinary people often have different agendas,” said Susanna Emirali, a young advertising producer. “Most of my friends understand that ordinary Americans are cool.”

Emirali is typical of the Russians who are now rejecting state propaganda. She says she avoids watching political talk shows on television and prefers to read her news on independent outlets online. She believes the United States has nothing to do with Russia’s biggest problems and hopes the conflict between Moscow and Washington will soon end.

While Moscow and Washington are at loggerheads over “red lines” and security guarantees, ordinary Russians are growing tired of the aggressive anti-Western propaganda thrown at them from their TV sets every night. This flies in the face of years of assumptions that Putin can turn up the dial on anti-Americanism feeling among Russians at will.

The Russian Public Is Being Primed for Another of Putin’s Wars

During the pandemic last year Emirali said she saw her mother and father’s eyes begin to open. Both engineers in their late forties, they stopped watching television and began to read news on independent sites, learning first about the poisoning attack on Navalny, then about his arrest and about the mass opposition protests in both Russia and Belarus.

“They began to sympathize with arrested peaceful protesters, so their political views have changed, they openly blame Putin for domestic problems,” Emirali said.

The author of Levada’s report, Lev Gudkov, said there had been a fundamental shift in Russia. “We see increasingly deep public disillusionment in Putin’s leadership: incomes have decreased by 13 percent since 2010 and during the pandemic many more people lost jobs and grew poorer; there are nearly twice as many cases of political persecutions,” he said. “It is important to understand that Russians now have much less tolerance for anti-American propaganda, it makes people angry during the pandemic to see that the state spends more money on buying arms and preparing for wars than on new hospitals, district clinics—our medical service is in poor condition.”

Gudkov says a majority of Russians believe that it is Putin who is responsible for their woes. “Russians realize that it is not the United States that is responsible for domestic problems. As for the international issues, people are worried about the war—an absolute majority of our respondents, 75 percent, say that the military tensions on the border with Ukraine might blow up into a war between Russia and Ukraine,” he told The Daily Beast.

The winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, used the ceremony this week to invoke the words of another former Peace Prize winner, ex-president Mikhail Gorbachev. He once told ministers that were agitating for further military adventure to “stop your hawk squawk.”

Muratov repeated that demand, and called for journalists and politicians to “stop the hawk squawk” now.

Ordinary Russians dream of an end to the Cold War rhetoric and for the authorities to stop painting Washington as public enemy No. 1.

And yet, when The Daily Beast approached a pro-Kremlin analyst with questions about Russia’s tensions with the West and Ukraine, we were told it was all the fault of the U.S.

“Americans should understand the word ‘undo’ and restore the situation we had in Ukraine back in 2013 when it was in Russia’s sphere of influence,” Dmitry Drobniysky said.

On television, the propagandists continue to spin. After the Putin-Biden talks, one of the Kremlin’s key supporters Dmitry Kisilyov told viewers that Americans were beginning to realize that Russia is now the dominant force: “Ever since the 1990s America behaved as though it was the winner in the Cold War but their feeling of superiority has been melting as the decades passed and after the two-hour long Putin-Biden conversation there was nothing left of it.”

In reality, many people are now questioning the propaganda. Olga Alekseyeva, a retired doctor from Saint Petersburg, said she has been following the viral reports of inhumane practices, including torture, in Russian prisons where political dissidents like Navalny are confined.

She is one of nine million people who viewed an explosive recent Yuriy Dud documentary on YouTube. “People analyze the outrageously unfair court system, lawlessness in security services here, so I am not surprised more Russians like the West,” Alekseyeva told The Daily Beast. “My friends in San Francisco tell me how hard and expensive life is in the U.S. but I am personally thankful that the U.S. tries to help Russia. Maybe they have no genuine sympathy for our political prisoners, it’s just a political agenda, but at least they talk with Putin and he listens to them—that is wonderful. As sometimes, I think, maybe Putin is totally isolated.”

Biden’s First International Test: Can He Save Ukraine From Putin?

Many young Russians pay little attention to political news. Karen Shainyan films young Russians for his journalistic “Queerography” project on YouTube.

So far, he has filmed life stories of LGBTQ people in eight Russian regions, including Yakutia in the far north, Vladivostok in the east, Sochi on the Black Sea and Tatarstan on the Volga river. “We interviewed 10 people in Kazan, three of them were IT experts planning to move to the United States. There is a lot of respect for the West in our community, to countries like United States where queer people have rights.”

Putin is facing a slow moving generational issue, with young people striving for independence, but the coronavirus has also accelerated his problems.

There have been over 800,000 excess deaths in Russia since the pandemic began. Crowds of voters appealed to Russian politicians, complaining about poor medical service, tiny salaries, miserable pensions, and unemployment during recent parliamentary and local elections. “I have spoken with dozens of Russians unhappy about their lives who blame the government but I have not met anybody in Saint Petersburg who would blame the U.S. for their domestic troubles,” opposition deputy Boris Vishnevsky told The Daily Beast. “It does not surprise me that the propaganda does not work.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.