STATE CAPITALISM AMERICAN STYLE
Restaurant Owners Got 30 Times More Federal Covid Aid Than Workers: Report

"If the subminimum wage for tipped workers persists, the restaurant industry is unlikely to recover from its growing labor crisis, regardless of how much money the federal government hands out to business owners."

A waitress serves guests as people dine outdoors in Pasadena,

 California on December 2, 2020.

 (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)


KENNY STANCIL

COMMON DREAMS

February 3, 2022

Federal coronavirus relief programs gave U.S. restaurant owners 30 times more money, on average, than their poorly paid workers who have struggled to keep up with rent and grocery bills throughout the deadly pandemic, according to a new analysis released Thursday.

"Workers are making it clear that they will not return to an industry that refuses to pay competitive wages."

The report from advocacy group One Fair Wage and the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, urges congressional lawmakers who are "now considering allocating tens of billions more dollars in taxpayer funds to restaurant owners" to make further aid contingent on employers providing a livable wage.

Restaurant owners have collectively received more than $73.2 billion in federal relief since March 2020 thanks to grants, loan forgiveness, and tax credits authorized by Congress, notes the report. Meanwhile, subminimum wage workers—a majority of whom are women and disproportionately women of color—have struggled to obtain assistance.

Researchers contrast the experiences of restaurant owners and workers:

To help them face the challenge of keeping their businesses afloat during the pandemic, restaurant owners had access to three different federal relief programs: the Paycheck Protection Program, the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, and the Employee Retention Tax Credit. If they were able to access all three programs at their average amount awarded, an average restaurant owner with fewer than 500 employees could have obtained a total of up to $775,439 in grants, forgiven loans, and potential tax credits.

While they also faced tremendous challenges in paying their rent and feeding their families, restaurant workers throughout the pandemic had access to two much smaller and harder to access federal relief programs: federal unemployment insurance and a stimulus cash payment. In May 2021, One Fair Wage estimated that only 56% of initial unemployment claims reached workers several months after the onset of the pandemic. Nearly two-thirds of workers surveyed reported that they faced challenges obtaining benefits. If they were able to access the full amount of both programs, a restaurant worker could have obtained at most a total of $26,300 over 74 weeks (a year and a half) in additional assistance.

As the authors explain, the National Restaurant Association—led by major chain CEOs with multimillion-dollar salaries—successfully lobbied for billions of dollars in subsidies for restaurant owners while "simultaneously lobbying against any wage increases for their workers," allowing the industry to maintain the nation's lowest-paid workforce.

Congress—which has kept the federal subminimum wage for tipped workers at $2.13 an hour for more than 30 years—obliged, allowing businesses to access funds that came with few, and sometimes no, worker-friendly strings attached.

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From the inadequate requirements governing employee retention, wages, and treatment in restaurant owner rescue programs to the structure of federal and state unemployment aid, restaurant workers have largely been left behind when it comes to Covid-19 relief, the report shows.

"In the first year of the pandemic," the authors write, "many restaurant workers found themselves locked out of the unemployment benefits offered in the $2 trillion federal stimulus relief package," with some receiving $3,200 in stimulus checks "at most."

The report continues:


The CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan gave workers a combined potential of 74 weeks of unemployment insurance, totaling at most up to $23,100 in extended benefits on top of the base unemployment insurance weekly benefit. However, to be eligible for state unemployment insurance, workers were required to submit a minimum [number] of hours worked or minimum amount of wages earned over a specific "base period"—usually a time frame equal to one year (though this varies state by state). In June 2020, two-thirds of service workers who applied to the One Fair Wage Service Workers' Relief Fund noted challenges in accessing unemployment insurance; many noted that they were deemed ineligible due to their subminimum wage.

Subminimum wage workers' dependence on tips left them vulnerable to incidence of wage theft and under-reported cash tips that led to workers receiving smaller weekly unemployment benefits or even being denied these benefits outright. In the case of employers under-reporting restaurant workers' tips, workers only qualified to receive part of their salary or appeared to earn "too little" and thus failed to qualify for unemployment insurance altogether.

Given widespread difficulties in securing unemployment benefits, the report notes that "millions of workers returned to working in restaurants in the summer of 2020."

By the fall of 2020, however, "tipped workers reported that their tips had declined, while health risks, customer hostility, and sexual harassment had increased," says the report. "When asked to enforce social distancing, mask rules, and Covid vaccination card rules on the same customers from whom they had to get tips to survive, workers reported that their tips decreased even further—a key breaking point for millions of workers."

There has been a "mass exodus" from the restaurant industry due to a "lack of relief and stagnant wages"—especially in the 42 states where tipped workers are still allowed to be paid a subminimum wage, the authors write. Compared with their counterparts in the eight states that guarantee a full minimum wage plus tips, restaurant workers making a subminimum wage are more likely to live in poverty and to be victims of sexual harassment

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Nearly one million workers have left the restaurant industry during the pandemic, "unwilling and unable to tolerate poverty wages any longer," the report states. "Of those who remain, 53% say they are leaving, and 76% say the only thing that will make them return to work in restaurants is a full, livable wage with tips on top."

Now that they are "hemorrhaging" workers after "decades of uncompetitive labor practices," restaurants face "the greatest staffing crisis of any industry," the report points out.

Thousands of restaurants nationwide have responded by increasing pay. One Fair Wage has tracked nearly 3,000 restaurants across all subminimum wage states that are now offering workers a full minimum wage plus tips in a bid to recruit staff.

"These restaurants are demonstrating that it is possible to pay livable wages and should be supported in their efforts to recruit staff by limiting relief to these responsible employers," the report argues. "Providing all restaurants with relief regardless of their pay and treatment of workers places these responsible restaurant owners at a competitive disadvantage to restaurant owners, particularly large corporate chains, persisting with a subminimum wage for tipped workers."

"If members of Congress and state legislators are considering providing more taxpayer-funded restaurant relief," the report continues, "they must simultaneously ensure these restaurants' employees receive a full, fair, livable wage with tips on top."

"Workers are making it clear that they will not return to an industry that refuses to pay competitive wages," the authors add. "If the subminimum wage for tipped workers persists, the restaurant industry is unlikely to recover from its growing labor crisis, regardless of how much money the federal government hands out to business owners."

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The Fed's War on Inflation Is Really an Attack on Workers

The takeaway for American workers: The Fed is not your friend.


Workers at a distribution station in the 855,000-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City, on February 5, 2019.

 (Photo: Johannes Eisele / AFP via Getty Images)

JAMES K. GALBRAITH

February 2, 2022

 by Project Syndicate


US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has now committed to putting US monetary policy on a course of rising interest rates, which could boost the short-term rate (on federal funds and treasury bills) by at least 200 basis points by the end of 2024. Thus, Powell yielded to pressure from economists and financiers, resurrecting a playbook that the Fed has followed for 50 years—and that should have remained in its vault.

The stated reason for tightening monetary policy is to "fight inflation." But interest-rate hikes will do nothing to counteract inflation in the short run and will work against price increases in the long run only by bringing on yet another economic crash. Behind the policy is a mysterious theory linking interest rates to the money supply, and the money supply to the price level. This "monetarist" theory goes unstated these days for good reason: it was largely abandoned 40 years ago after it contributed to a financial debacle.

In the late 1970s, monetarists promised that if the Fed would focus only on controlling the supply of money, inflation could be tamed without increasing unemployment. In 1981, Fed Chair Paul Volcker gave it a try. Short-term interest rates soared to 20%, unemployment reached 10%, and Latin America spiraled into a debt crisis that nearly took down all the large New York banks. By the end of 1982, the Fed had backed off.

Since then, there has been almost no inflation to fight, owing to low global commodity prices and the rise of China. But the Fed has periodically shadowboxed with "inflation expectations"—raising rates over time to "preempt" the invisible demons, and then congratulating itself when none appeared.

The shadowboxing also ends badly. Once borrowers know that rates are going up over time, they tend to load up on cheap debt, fueling speculative booms in real assets (like land) and fake assets (like 1990s internet start-ups, 2000s subprime mortgages, and now cryptocurrencies). Meanwhile, long-term interest rates remain unmoved, so the yield curve flattens or even becomes inverted, eventually causing credit markets and the economy to fail. We now will likely see this feedback loop once again.

Of course, this time is different in one respect. For the first time in more than 40 years, prices are rising. This new phase was kicked off a year ago by a surge in world oil prices, followed by rising used-car prices as the semiconductor supply chain snarled automobile production. Now, we are also seeing rising land prices (among other things), which feeds into (somewhat artificial) estimates of housing costs.

Inflation rates are reported on a 12-month basis, so once any shock hits, it is guaranteed to generate headlines about "inflation" for 11 more months—a boon for the inflation hawks. But since oil prices in December were about the same as they were in July, the initial shock will be out of the data in a few months and the inflation reports will change.

True, the effect of more expensive energy will continue to percolate through the system. That's unavoidable. Whenever there is a structural change like an increase in energy costs or a reshoring of parts of the supply chain, "inflation" is inevitable and necessary. To hold average price increases to the previous target, some other prices would have to fall, and that generally doesn't happen. The economy always adjusts through an increase in average prices, and this process must continue until the adjustment is finished.

By reacting now, the Fed is saying that it would like (if it could) to force down some prices in order to offset rising energy and supply-chain costs, thereby pushing the average inflation rate back down to its 2% target as quickly as possible. Assuming the Fed understands that this is what it is doing, what prices does it have in mind? Wages, of course. What else is there?

Powell himself declared that the United States has a "tremendously strong labor market." Citing the ratio of job openings against "quits," he thinks there are too few workers chasing too many jobs. But why would that be? Considering that the US economy is still several million jobs below the actual employment levels of late 2019, it seems that many workers are refusing to go back to crummy jobs at lousy pay. As long as they have some reserves and can hold out for better terms, they will.

As wages rise to bring back workers, and because most jobs nowadays are in services, higher-income people (who buy more services) will have to pay more to lower-income people (who provide them). This is the essence of "inflation" in a services economy. Energy and most goods prices are set worldwide, so service wages are the only part of the price structure that the Fed's new policy can affect directly. And the only way the policy can work—eventually—is by making working Americans desperate. Obviously, logically, inevitably, and despite all the crocodile tears about inflation harming ordinary Americans, the Fed is determined to stop rising wages.

The takeaway for American workers: The Fed is not your friend. Nor is any politician who declares—as US President Joe Biden did this month—that "inflation is the Fed's job." And I write that as a Democrat.

© 2021 Project Syndicate


JAMES K. GALBRAITH

Economist James K. Galbraith is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too" and "Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know."

'I Remember WMDs in Iraq': Reporter Calls Out US Official on Russian Intel Claims

"You just come out and say this and expect us just to believe it without you showing a shred of evidence that it's actually true," said Associated Press reporter Matt Lee.

JAKE JOHNSON

February 4, 2022

Veteran Associated Press reporter Matt Lee grilled a State Department spokesperson Thursday over the U.S. government's refusal to provide direct evidence for its claim that Russia is planning to fabricate a mass casualty event as a pretext to invade Ukraine, an allegation that the Pentagon said is backed up by intelligence.

During a press briefing, Lee asked the State Department's Ned Price—a former CIA official—to furnish concrete proof of the government's accusation, which suggests Russia is plotting an elaborate false flag attack involving a graphic "propaganda video... depicting corpses, crisis actors pretending to be mourners, and images of destroyed locations or military equipment."

Lee said he has every reason to be skeptical of U.S. government assertions, given the lies that the Bush administration used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"I remember WMDs in Iraq," said Lee.

Watch the exchange:

After Price outlined the U.S. government's allegations, Lee noted that the Biden administration has "shown no evidence to confirm" the alleged plot. As the New York Times reported earlier Thursday, "Officials would not release any direct evidence of the Russian plan or specify how they learned of it, saying to do so would compromise their sources and methods."

But Price insisted during Thursday's briefing that the Biden administration's decision to go public with the false flag accusation constitutes, in and of itself, evidence that Russia is planning such an operation.

"This is derived from information known to the U.S. government, intelligence information that we have declassified," Price said.

"Okay, well, where is it?" Lee asked in response. "Where is this information?"

"I just delivered it," the State Department spokesperson said.

When Lee continued to press the matter, noting that "a series of allegations and statements" is not evidence, Price accused the longtime journalist of wanting "to find solace in information that the Russians are putting out."

The exchange circulated rapidly and widely on social media, with observers applauding Lee for his persistent and straightforward questioning and arguing that Price's responses were indicative of the U.S. government's intolerance of skeptical inquiry.

"This is wild," NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, tweeted in response to the back-and-forth. "The State Department's spokesman can't comprehend why the Associated Press feels the need to distinguish between a claim and a fact, and becomes visibly offended—and then angered—by the suggestion that his claims may require evidence to be accepted as credible."

---

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AP Reporter Presses State Dept on Amnesty's Israel Report

"Why is it that all criticism of Israel from these groups is almost always rejected by the United States and yet accepted, welcomed, and endorsed when the criticism is of other countries?" asked Matt Lee.

State Department spokesman Ned Price speaks during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C. on February 1, 2022.

 (Photo: Susan Walsh/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)


JULIA CONLEY

February 3, 2022

Associated Press reporter Matt Lee called on the Biden administration to explain its rejection of Amnesty International's new report on Israel, which explicitly said this week that the country's U.S.-backed policies in Palestine amount to "apartheid."

After State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters Tuesday, "I reject the view that Israel's actions constitute apartheid" and noted that the department has "never used such terminology," Lee asked about the administration's inconsistent reception of Amnesty International's exhaustive research into human rights violations around the world.

"The [State Department's] last human rights report cited Amnesty International on Ethiopia and Cuba and China...on Burma, on Syria....and those references are endorsements of this group, Amnesty, and other groups as well," Lee said, referring to the department's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

"Why is it that all criticism of Israel from these groups is almost always rejected by the United States and yet accepted, welcomed, and endorsed when the criticism is of other countries, notably countries with which you have significant policy differences?" he asked.


The State Department cited Amnesty International's reporting on Cuba as recently as 2019, quoting the group on political prisoners. In the department's report on human rights in China in 2017, Amnesty was cited regarding prison conditions in the country.

The group was also cited extensively in the State Department's 2020 report on the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China.

"You can't savage Amnesty International's and Human Rights Watch's work on Israel-Palestine without undermining their work everywhere else."

"It says in the report, 'Amnesty International found 'x' with Xinjiang and the Uyghurs and we determine that we think it's a genocide,' and you guys come out and cite that and say, 'We also agree that it's a genocide,'" said Lee, who then asked Price when the State Department has disagreed with the group's human rights findings on countries such as Iran, China, and Syria.

Price dismissed Lee's remarks, saying the State Department has a "vehement disagreement" with Amnesty's report on Israel and Palestine, which detailed Israel's "segregation and control of Palestinians" through restrictions on movement and other policies; the unlawful killing of Palestinians; the deprivation of Palestinians' economic and social rights through illegal blockades, military offensives, and unequal allocation of resources; the unlawful killing of Palestinians; and other violations.

Along with Price, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides denounced the report as "absurd," while Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said he was "deeply disturbed" by Amnesty's conclusions and accused the group of making "outrageous" accusations. Other human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have similarly assessed Israel's policies toward Palestinians as amounting to genocide.

Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart applauded Lee's line of questioning.

"So important to recognize that the U.S. and American Jewish establishment can't have it both ways," he tweeted. "You can't savage Amnesty International's and Human Rights Watch's work on Israel-Palestine without undermining their work everywhere else."

On Thursday, human rights groups in Israel condemned attacks on Amnesty's work in Israel and Palestine and accusations that the group's report was antisemitic.

"We wholeheartedly reject the idea that Amnesty International's report is baseless, singles out Israel, or displays antisemitic animus," wrote the groups, including Breaking the Silence, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and B'Tselem.

"Attempts to distract from Israeli violations and to avoid substantive debate by hurling spurious accusations is the standard and ongoing practice of successive Israeli governments and their echo chambers overseas," they added.

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SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/02/amnesty-joins-other-rights-group-in.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/02/israel-calls-on-amnesty-not-to-release.html

Amnesty Settles It: It's Time for U.S. Accountability on Israel | Opinion

OMAR BADDAR , 

DIRECTOR OF THE ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE
ON 2/3/22

Amnesty International, the world's largest human rights organization, has just issued an extensive report titled "Israel's apartheid against Palestinians." As the report documeents, "Israel has imposed a system of oppression and domination over Palestinians wherever it exercises control over the enjoyment of their right." The report further found that Israel's policies are part of a "systematic as well as widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population, and that the inhuman or inhumane acts committed within the context of this attack have been committed with the intention to maintain this system and amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid."

Palestinians have been saying this for decades, and in recent years, even some leading Israeli human rights organizations have started using the word apartheid to describe their government's systems of oppression. Last year, Human Rights Watch, one of the best-known American human rights organization, similarly accused Israel of apartheid. Amnesty International following suit this week has solidified the human rights community's emerging consensus on Israeli apartheid.

The most important consequence of this consensus is that it lays to rest the false but popular notion of an "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" between two equal sides. The new consensus instead frames the issue more accurately as a struggle between an oppressor and an oppressed people. In the same way that Apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the American South denied people the ability to live in freedom with their full rights simply because of who they are, Israel also denies freedom to Palestinians and many basic rights to Palestinians just because they are Palestinians.


Like the Human Rights Watch report before it, what's remarkable about the new Amnesty report is how extensive and detailed it is. Amnesty did its due diligence and made sure that its central claims are backed by a mountain of evidence, meticulously documenting unlawful killings, forced displacement and systemic discrimination on a massive scale. Unsurprisingly, the devastating and irreproachable nature of this report triggered a meltdown among Israel's apologists.

Unable to argue with the substance of the Amnesty report, pro-Israel groups have resorted either to blindly asserting—as AIPAC did—that Amnesty was lying, or baselessly claiming—as the ADL did—that the report would spark antisemitic attacks.

Israeli soldiers evict settlers from a Palestinian land as villagers plant olive trees near a settlement outpost west of the Palestinians village of Salfit on February 3, 2022 in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The latter is nothing short of a cynical weaponization of antisemitism—which, in fact, is a serious and rising scourge in America and across the world—unscrupulously exploited in order to silence criticism of Israeli government policy.

We cannot have the open debate we need in a free society if speaking honestly about Israeli policy results in smears of bigotry. By misusing the charge of antisemitism in this fashion, Israel's apologists aren't just harming the human rights defenders being smeared by it; they're also harming the real effort to eliminate antisemitism—a goal that we all have a moral obligation to come together and accomplish.

What this Amnesty report should have done is serve as a wake-up call to an American political establishment that prioritizes pandering over sensible policy, and that has turned a blind eye to a grave injustice for far too long. After all, it is U.S. military funding, to the unrivaled tune of $3.8 billion per year, which enables the Israeli military to maintain its suffocating grip on the occupied Palestinian population, and it is U.S. diplomatic protection, through more than 40 vetoes at the UN Security Council and beyond, that shields Israel from accountability for its crimes.

And yet, despite repeatedly claiming to prioritize human rights in its foreign policy, the Biden administration's reaction to this report was utterly disappointing. The administration rejected it out of hand.

The Amnesty report bemoans the fact that, "for over seven decades, the international community has stood by as Israel has been given free rein to dispossess, segregate, control, oppress and dominate Palestinians." It criticizes countries like ours that have "actively supported Israel's violations by supplying it with arms, equipment and other tools to perpetrate crimes under international law and by providing diplomatic cover, including at the UN Security Council, to shield it from accountability." The report also reiterated its call for "states to immediately suspend the direct and indirect supply, sale or transfer of all weapons, munitions and other military and security equipment."

But the Biden administration seems content to stick its head in the sand, anachronistically rambling about the long-dead "peace talks" —a meaningless charade to begin with.

Even if the Biden administration were serious about pursuing a diplomatic effort toward peace, that doesn't change America's moral obligation to cease funding oppression right now. Arming and supporting Israel in its current state is the opposite of peace; it's a guarantee for an emboldened Israeli government to remain committed to the same track of intransigence, oppression and violence.

The time for debate is over. The Biden administration now has a simple decision to make: Either side with the human rights community that's fighting for a world free of oppression and remove this moral stain from our national conscience by ending U.S. support for Israel's government, or carry on with "politics as usual" in maintaining an immoral foreign policy that history will not judge kindly. As our democracy remains at least semi-functioning at this stage, it's up to all of us to make sure our government does the right thing.

Omar Baddar is a political analyst and the former director of the Arab American Institute.

The views in this article are the writer's own.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/02/amnesty-joins-other-rights-group-in.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/02/israel-calls-on-amnesty-not-to-release.html

Here's how abortion access would

change if Supreme Court erodes Roe

Posted Feb 3, 2022
Christine Vestal 

Stateline

As the nation awaits a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could significantly erode abortion rights, state laws on the issue have taken on a whole new meaning. Soon, more than at any time in nearly half a century, obtaining an abortion will depend on where you live.

In 1973, the high court guaranteed the right to abortion everywhere in its landmark Roe v. Wade decision. That ruling made state abortion bans largely symbolic, and federal courts routinely invalidated them.

In many cases, the strictest laws represented political posturing without the risk of a public backlash because the statutes never took effect, said David Karol, an associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland.

Likewise, state laws protecting the right to abortion if Roe were to fall have been considered theoretical for much of the past nearly 50 years. That era has ended, he said.

This year the stakes are at an all-time high.

“Abortion-rights advocates have worried about Roe for a long time, but certainly from the moment [abortion rights supporter Justice Anthony] Kennedy resigned in July 2018,” said Jessica Arons, senior advocacy and policy counsel for reproductive freedom at the American Civil Liberties Union. “That’s when we knew this was the future we were facing.”

In what would be its most significant abortion ruling in three decades, the Supreme Court is considered likely to weaken or topple Roe this year. That would mean that abortion bans on the books in at least 21 states could be enforced, according to abortion advocacy and research group the Guttmacher Institute.

The abortion-rights group also predicts that given the political climate in at least five other states—Florida, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska and Wyoming—new bans are likely to be enacted that would immediately have the force of law.

In addition, Kansas and Pennsylvania are possibly an election away from banning abortion, Arons said. “But for judicial precedent supporting abortion rights in state supreme courts, they also would be inclined to ban abortion.”

On the other side of the issue, residents in 15 states and the District of Columbia are insulated against future bans. New Jersey earlier this month joined California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington in encoding the right to abortion in state statutes.

Anticipated in June or July, after most legislatures close and before elections for some governors and state lawmakers, the high court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health is widely expected to uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Roe v. Wade and a 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, guarantee the right to abortion until a fetus is considered viable outside of the womb, at roughly 26 weeks of pregnancy. Abortions after viability also are allowed to protect the life of the patient.

In this year’s legislative sessions, the challenge for state lawmakers on both sides of the abortion issue will be to set the stage for a future in which bans on early-pregnancy abortions may become enforceable, possibly resulting in zero access to a legal abortion in many states.

The precise outcome of the high court’s pending decision in the Mississippi case is unknown. But based on comments from justices in oral arguments held in December, legal experts agree that a majority of the justices are likely to uphold the Mississippi law. It’s unclear whether such a decision would erode or overturn Roe.

“Either way,” Karol said, “states will have much more leeway than they do now to restrict abortion.”

A busy season

Every year since Roe was decided, state legislatures have enacted dozens of laws banning or restricting abortion access. A smaller number of states have enshrined the right to abortion in their state laws and constitutions.

“This year, we expect lawmakers will be even busier than they were in 2021, both in states that are hostile to abortion rights and those that have been historically supportive of abortion rights,” said Elisabeth Smith, director for state policy and advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group.

Clarke Forsythe, senior legal counsel at Americans United for Life, which opposes abortion rights, agreed that state legislatures likely will pass a flurry of bills both for and against abortion rights, despite uncertainty in the months ahead over the outcome of the Mississippi case.

While courts have consistently shut down abortion bans, they have upheld state restrictions on health care facilities that provide abortions, mandates that doctors provide patients scripted details about the fetus and the procedure, prohibitions against Medicaid funding and laws requiring parental notification or consent.

Those policies have chipped away at the rights guaranteed by Roe in many states, said Jessie Ulibarri, co-executive director of State Innovation Exchange, which assists liberal lawmakers in crafting policies on abortion and other issues. Those most harmed by restrictive abortion laws, he said, are low-income people and women of color.

Already, state abortion restrictions have had the effect of sharply limiting access to abortion in large swaths of the country. As of 2017, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia each had only one abortion provider.

But if the court erases or significantly erodes Roe, most states in the South and much of the Midwest likely would end up with no abortion clinics. That would force many seeking abortions to travel out of state—and to find the money and possibly child care to enable them to do so.

Even medication abortions, which can be used to end a pregnancy up to 10 weeks of gestation, could become harder to come by. Anti-abortion rights advocate Forsythe said his organization is pushing states to enact laws that would limit the use of abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol by requiring patients to see a doctor before obtaining the pills and follow up afterward to ensure there are no complications.

GOP lawmakers in Georgia, for example, introduced a bill this week that would ban the delivery of abortion pills by mail and require patients to visit a doctor, receive a physical exam and sign 15 different statements before returning to the doctor to pick up the medication.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in December that it will permanently allow abortion pills to be sent by mail after a telemedicine visit.

In addition, a variety of nonprofit organizations are helping patients find and pay for abortion pills online. In 2017, medication abortions accounted for 39% of all abortions, according to Guttmacher.

Turbulence ahead

In 2021, states enacted at least 106 laws restricting abortion access, more than in any year since the Roe decision.

Among states with early-pregnancy abortion bans that likely would take effect if the high court overturns Roe, several enacted even stricter bans last year. More are expected this year.

In South Dakota, for example, Republican Gov. Kristi Noem announced Jan. 11 that she would push for a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when most people don’t know they’re pregnant. That’s in addition to a so-called trigger or conditional law already on the state’s books that would make most abortions illegal if Roe is overturned.

Noem’s proposed bill is patterned after a controversial law enacted in Texas last year that the Supreme Court has allowed to stay in force while lower courts decide its fate. GOP lawmakers have introduced similar legislation in Alabama, Arizona, Missouri and Ohio, and an Oklahoma representative has said he plans to do the same this session.

In a handful of Republican-led states that don’t already have statutes banning abortions, lawmakers and governors are expected to enact new bans.

In Florida, for example, GOP lawmakers in both houses of the legislature introduced a bill that would ban abortion after 15 weeks unless two doctors agree a fetus has a fatal abnormality. The bill, which is expected to pass in both houses, has no exceptions for rape or incest.

In Kansas and Pennsylvania, where the governors are Democrats but the legislatures are led by Republicans, constitutional amendments to remove abortion rights protections are in progress.

An initiative will be on the ballot in the August primary elections in Kansas.

In Pennsylvania, a similar measure has been introduced. But under state rules, the legislature would have to approve the measure a second time next year before it could go on the ballot. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has said he would veto any anti-abortion rights legislation, but Republicans are pushing a bill that would amend the constitution without the governor’s signature.

In sharp contrast, California and possibly other states are looking beyond their own borders with the goal of making it easier for patients in neighboring states to obtain legal abortions in their states.

Political scientist Karol argues that rather than settling the issue or calming the abortion debate, a high court decision giving states more latitude would deepen divisions both within and among them.

A broader decision overturning Roe would stir even more debate at the state level and could renew efforts to pass a federal abortion rights law, Karol said. In September, U.S. House Democrats passed a bill to protect abortion rights, but it faces stiff opposition from Senate Republicans.

A federal law would be impossible for Congress to enact because of the filibuster rule, Karol said, but hearings on the issue could raise the specter of abortion becoming a major political issue in the November elections.


Stateline is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts that provides daily reporting and analysis on trends in state policy.

Abortion rights are under attack in the United States, should we in Canada be worried?

by Judy Rebick

January 28, 2022

While legal abortion is not threatened in Canada, anti-abortion groups never stopped organizing. If there is an attempt to seriously challenge abortion rights in Canada, will we be ready to fight back.

Young protestor stands for the protection of Roe v. Wade. 

Credit: Gayatri Malhotra / Unsplash


January 28 marks the 34th anniversary of legal abortion in Canada. On that date, the Supreme Court struck down the 1969 abortion law and declared abortion a legal medical procedure like any other. Known as the Morgentaler decision, after the heroic doctor Henry Morgentaler who opened illegal abortion clinics in Quebec in the 1970s and Ontario in the early 1980s, successfully challenging the law.

On January 22, 1973, the famed Roe v. Wade case in the Supreme Court of the United States effectively legalized abortion. After refusing to strike down a restrictive Texas law allowing citizens to sue anyone seeking, counselling or providing an abortion, the majority conservative U.S. court will soon decide whether a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks, will be upheld. Roe v. Wade will, in effect, be struck down with devastating impacts on women across the country; at least 12 states, including Texas and Mississippi, will trigger laws that automatically ban abortion and other Republican-led states will no doubt follow.

It is important to consider how this will affect us in Canada.

In the U.S., abortion rights are a political dividing line. If you are a Democrat, you are pro-choice. If Republican, you are pro-life. Polls in U.S. show 49 percent of population consider themselves “pro-choice” and 48 percent “pro-life.” In Canada a similar poll finds 62 percent “pro-choice” and 13 percent “pro-life.” More significantly, 75 percent of people in Canada support the present abortion laws. Still, I think we should not be complacent

While legal abortion is not threatened, anti-abortion groups never stopped organizing. In the recent past, they tried to put on a more acceptable face, even calling themselves feminists. Yet, they continue to harass women at clinics and set up so called crisis pregnancy centres where they lure young women with the promise of help, only to convince them not to have an abortion.

Anti-abortion groups continue to organize inside the Conservative Party. Last year, 82 MPs voted to restrict abortion rights. That is a majority of the caucus. If the Conservatives ever win a federal majority government, there is little question that there will be more attempts to restrict access, especially if the leader themselves is anti-choice.

Until now, Conservative Prime Ministers like Stephen Harper stayed away from attempts to recriminalize abortion because of popular support for reproductive rights across party lines — established because of the broad pro-choice movement starting with the Abortion Caravan in 1970 and consecutive founding of abortion clinics across the country. But after the next federal election and Covid as the far-right gets stronger in Canada, popular support for abortion rights could fade. In America, individual states reduced access to abortions despite the long-standing right to choose, established by the Supreme Court. In Canada, the anti-choice movement might follow a similar strategy.

There are already serious access problems. New Brunswick has only one abortion clinic and the provincial government still refuses to cover the procedure. Joyce Arthur, Executive Director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, ARCC, summarizes the access problems this way:


“we still need to work… improving access to abortion and sexual healthcare, especially for marginalized and rural populations. Access is generally more difficult for folks living in rural areas and the North, and in more conservative provinces. Many people still have to travel to services, which of course has been more difficult during the pandemic. Telemedicine and the abortion pill have helped a lot, but there’s still not nearly enough doctors or pharmacies who provide this drug. Plus taking Mifegymiso [the abortion pill] is only possible up to nine weeks, otherwise you need an aspiration or surgical abortion. Most hospitals don’t provide that care (maybe one in six) and clinics are located only in larger cities.”

Another concern is the stubborn stigma around abortion. Working in an abortion clinic or being known as a doctor that performs abortions still leads to harassment. While the federal government is strongly and publicly pro-choice and promises to improve access, it has not followed through with actions. There remains a need for pro-choice advocacy groups like ARCC and the Action Canada for Sexual and Reproductive Health. ARCC has successfully fought every anti-abortion private member’s bill since 2006. But the powerful movement myself and other pro-choice advocates were part in the 1980s around the Morgentaler clinics, is no longer mobilized.

Yet, I am hopeful that if there is an attempt to seriously challenge abortion rights in Canada, we will be in a position to fight back.

When we organized to defend Toronto’s Morgentaler clinic in 1981, we learned from the American feminists who assumed Roe v. Wade solved the problem and let the anti-abortion forces get strong before they fought back. We cannot make the same mistake now. The 1980s pro-choice movement was one of the most powerful and successful social movements we have ever had in Canada. On this anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in Canada, all of us must be ready to mobilize against any threat to the reproductive rights that we have won.

JUDY REBICK
Judy Rebick is the author of Transforming Power: From the Personal to the Political and was the founding publisher of rabble.ca. She also holds the CAW Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy. More by Judy Rebick

Danielle Larivee, former NDP cabinet minister, returning to politics

by David J. ClimenhagaFebruary 4, 2022


Larivee, first VP of United Nurses of Alberta, will seek the NDP nomination in Lesser Slave Lake, the riding she served in the Legislature from 2015 to 2019.

Former NDP cabinet minister Danielle Larivee, left, and former premier Rachel Notley in 2015

 (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).


After all the grim, disturbing and strangely familiar Groundhog Day news, it was nice to learn Thursday morning of a positive development in Alberta politics—the return of Danielle Larivee to public life.

(Full disclosure: I am an employee of UNA and have had the privilege of working closely with Larivee since 2019. I think very highly of her talents as a manager, communicator and advocate for health care.)

Larivee, a public health nurse and capable former NDP cabinet minister, said in a news release she intends to seek the NDP nomination in Lesser Slave Lake, the riding she represented from 2015 to 2019 and where she still lives.

Larivee said she is putting her name forward because Premier Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party “have made life worse for the people of our region, from making things like utilities and insurance more expensive, to bringing in a curriculum that will hurt our kids, to completely mismanaging the response to COVID.”

“That’s not the kind of leadership I want in the province that our kids are growing up in,” she stated. “Our families deserve better.”

In her news release, Larivee observed that “our communities have really suffered from poor representation since 2019.”

This is something of an understatement given the disengaged attitude of the riding’s current absentee UCP MLA, Pat Rehn, who spent so much time tending to his business in Texas he had municipal officials in the riding calling for his head in 2021.

He experienced a short exile on the Independent benches of the Legislature after he took a controversial mid-pandemic winter holiday in Mexico in December 2020, but was invited back to the UCP Caucus to shore up Premier Kenney’s flagging support in mid-January last year.

By contrast, despite her loss in the 2019 UCP sweep, Larivee had a reputation as a hard-working constituency MLA and an effective member of former premier Rachel Notley’s cabinet, where she oversaw the NDP’s response to the Fort McMurray Fire in 2016 as minister of municipal affairs.

In 2017, she was named minister of children’s services with the job of getting that troubled ministry back on track.

In her current role as first vice-president of the United Nurses of Alberta, Larivee is a prominent spokesperson for health care issues. “Our public health care system is not safe in the hands of Kenney and the UCP,” she said. “They keep moving forward with privatizing our public health care, they attacked the front line instead of supporting it, with little care for the crisis they have created. I am prepared to fight for high quality public health care instead of dismantling it.”

She has lived in the Town of Slave Lake for more than 40 years. “The people of Lesser Slave Lake are like family to me,” she said. “I’m ready to get back to spending time with and listening to people across the constituency so that I can be a strong voice for our families and communities.”

The ‘Freedom’ convoy: Canada’s far right revolt

Unfortunately, some of those involved in the convoy and on online forums dedicated to it have called for a January 6th style event in Ottawa

By

 Derek Royden

 -

February 4, 2022

SOURCENationofChange

Image credit: Photo: Nate Tabak/FreightWaves

Last Saturday in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, a self proclaimed ‘Freedom Convoy’ of vehicles traveling from different parts of the country converged to protest a mandate that forces long haul truckers who cross the border with the United States to quarantine for 14 days and take a Covid 19 test when they return if they aren’t vaccinated. This rule was copied by the Biden administration soon after, making the convoy somewhat useless even if it were to somehow manage to achieve its original goal.

Contrary to a lot of the reporting around it, the convoy is not the first of its kind. In 2019, what was called the United We Roll Convoy traveled from the western province of Alberta to Ottawa for a two day protest against a carbon tax and in support of pipelines and the oil and gas industry.  A darker side to this earlier protest was revealed by some of those in this much smaller group who had ties to the far right and tried to shift the focus towards immigration and fear mongering about Muslims.

The latest rolling protest led to one of those rare occasions when something happening in Canada caught the attention of some politicians and the press in its much larger southern neighbor. This was especially true for America’s rightwing media and politicians, including the former president and his oldest son, as the arguments being made against public health mandates in response to the pandemic both influence and are influenced by these kinds of voices on both sides of the border.

WednesdayThose following this story couldn’t help but notice that American outlets like Fox News were often inaccurate in their descriptions of what was happening and who was involved. Fox newsreader and opinion host Sean Hannity at one point claimed that there were 10,000 trucks headed to Ottawa. On social media the number of trucks converging on the city was inflated to as many as 50,000.

Claims like Hannity’s were widely refuted by Canadian media, with the Toronto Star reporting that the smaller convoy traveling from the east was said by police in Kingston, Ontario, through which it passed on the way to the capital, to consist of, “17 full tractor-trailers, 104 tractors without trailers, 424 passenger vehicles and six RVs.” 

Although aerial images of the larger convoy traveling from the west were impressive in terms of its length, the number of actual trailer trucks involved didn’t reach the bloated number cited by Hannity, let alone some of the exaggerations that have been making the rounds online. Pretending that crowds are much larger than they appear is a tactic embraced by the right at least since Donald Trump claimed he had the largest number of people at a presidential inauguration in his country’s history.

While the convoy traveling from the west grew steadily as it crossed the country and the numbers at the capital and at a separate protest at the Alberta/Montana border can’t be denied, the truth of the matter is, in line with the rest of the population, almost 90% of Canadian truckers are fully vaccinated and are continuing to work.

The convoys are also not supported by mainstream organizations representing the industry’s workers, including the Canadian Truckers Alliance, the country’s largest, which released a statement last Saturday, which said, “While a number of Canadians are in Ottawa to voice their displeasure over this mandate, it also appears that a great number of these protesters have no connection to the trucking industry and have a separate agenda beyond a disagreement over cross border vaccine requirements. As these protests unfold over the weekend, we ask the Canadian public to be aware that many of the people you see and hear in media reports do not have a connection to the trucking industry.” 

Nonetheless, following a trend that’s been visible since the beginning of the pandemic, there were images of people carrying Trump flags and signs, swastikas and the Canadian version of the ‘Blue Lives Matter’ flag at the protests. One pickup truck was even adorned with a Confederate flag.

News reports showed placards and messages on vehicles concerned with conspiracy theories like Qanon, the ‘Great Replacement’ and paranoia about the ‘Great Reset’ called for by the neo-liberal billionaire class associated with the World Economic Forum.

This is not to imply that those involved in the convoy don’t have the right to protest, and the majority of the crowd still in Ottawa are ordinary citizens from many walks of life exhausted by what we’ve all suffered through for the past two years, even if a lot of the anger is misplaced and fueled by misinformation.

Unfortunately, some of those involved in the convoy and on online forums dedicated to it have called for a January 6th style event in Ottawa, incitement to violence that’s not protected under the country’s constitution. There have also been reports of harassment of those wearing masks and people of color by some of the protesters. 

This is not the only bad behavior on display in the country’s capital so far. Disruption caused by the noise of car and truck horns blaring alone has to be driving people unlucky enough to live in central Ottawa to distraction. Many businesses in the area have closed to avoid having to police belligerent customers who refuse to wear masks. Media trying to cover the protests have been harassed and in some cases chased away by protesters who at the same time complain about a lack of coverage.

Parts of the city have been gridlocked by vehicles, some with their wheels removed, making commutes difficult and more time consuming with no end in sight as convoy organizers have promised the blockades will remain until their unrealistic demands are met. What started out as a very specific cause quickly expanded to include all mandates, including those requiring citizens to wear masks, most of which were not imposed by the federal but by provincial governments and, in many cases, private businesses themselves.

As the protests began on Saturday, with the temperature a frigid -18.4 F in Ottawa, large numbers of these protesters invaded the Rideau Center mall refusing to wear masks and causing its closure to protect those working there. As of this writing the shopping center has yet to reopen.

As if to show how little they know about their own country’s history, a large group of these protesters played drums and chanted “yabba, dabba, doo” in a disrespectful imitation of the music of some indigenous North Americans.  Anecdotally, these are likely some of the same people who post in online comments sections about how the systemic campaign of murder and cultural genocide directed at Canada’s indigenous people over centuries happened ‘long ago’ (which is untrue) and shouldn’t weigh on their consciences.

In yet another incident, some of the protesters descended on a soup kitchen serving the unhoused demanding food and harassing staff.

As the president of Shepherds of Good Hope, which runs the kitchen, Deirdre Freiheit, told a local news radio station, “Staff and volunteers were verbally harassed by people who came to the kitchen looking for meals. We also had a situation where the trucks were blocking our drop-off in front of the shelter, which is where police and paramedics come to bring people to us for care. That was blocked and that could have cost somebody a life.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a separate convoy consisting of about 100 vehicles, including farm equipment in oil rich Alberta blocked the Coutts border crossing, likely adding to supply chain issues in the short term and essentially blockading the small town of the same name as the crossing, where citizens were cut off from the closest grocery store and pharmacy in the area, some school children were unable to attend classes and locals have been told they will not receive mail until the convoy disperses. 

Bowing to the pressure brought by authorities, the protesters freed up two lanes to traffic on Wednesday.

Just like other protests targeting public health measures across most Western democracies, the far right have attached themselves to the Freedom Convoy and are using it to spread unscientific opinions, hateful messages and probably to recruit.

Many on the left have argued that if this protest involved them and the movements they support the crackdown would have been swift and likely brutal, something we have seen time and again at protests against police brutality in Canada over the years. With no end in sight and so many illegal acts on the part of the protesters it remains to be seen if authorities have the will to do their jobs.

*For those with an interest in those who organized the convoy and how it’s being funded, Global News Canada has a detailed report on these issues here.

Why the ‘Flu Trux Klan’ movement needs to be

 taken seriously

Trucks line Wellington Street in Ottawa on January 30, 2022.  Credit: News 360 TV / Wikimedia Commons This week rabble’s staff writers and contributors continued coverage of the so-called “Freedom Convoy 2022”.  Karl Nerenberg, senior politics reporter and Ottawa resident, shares what he and his Ottawa neighbours have been experiencing since the beginning of the protests last week, while the police stand idly by: “Never before has a protest movement in the Canadian capital been accompanied by hundreds of massive, multi-wheel rigs, spewing clouds of noxious diesel fumes, and blaring their oversized horns in a 24-hours-a-day cacophonic symphony,” he writes, noting the hateful signage and behaviour of some associated to protest. The presence of all these trucks and protestors poses a challenge the city - one that has experienced thousands of protests - “has never before had to deal with.”  While Ottawa police, with reinforcements from across the country, claim they are doing their best to keep the peace, activists are seeing a double standard in how protest movements on the Hill are dealt with. Contributor David Climenhaga explains why the convoy protests must not be permitted to continue.  Climenhaga was one of the first to break the story of the far right involvement in the convoy’s GoFundMe page, where this protest began online. This week he ponders whether some of those funds might go towards damages from the protests. Climenhaga has also been keeping the spotlight on Alberta’s political leaders - and reporting on their involvement in the protests and in far right ideology. He ponders, for example,  whether Premier Jason Kenney encouraged the copycat Coutts blockade which he now condemns? It would be ironic, Climenhaga writes, if Kenney’s dubious claim a week ago that Ottawa’s vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers was leading to empty shelves in grocery stores, ended up being what is causing real shortages. Where has the organized Left been on all this? In their must read piece, Judy Rebick and Corvin Russell argue that while it may be appealing to dismiss the ‘Flu Trux Klan’ convoy as an assemblage of the fringes that needn’t be taken seriously, “this mobilization provides one of the few outlets for many people to visibly express anger and frustration around legitimate grievances with government failures during the pandemic.” The left, they point out, has been entirely absent on Covid and the vaccine mandates, and must engage.   Civil disobedience is important. That’s not what the 'Freedom'  Convoy is. by Rick Salutin February 4, 2022 The keys to breaking the law for a political goal are (1) you’re prepared to take the consequences and (2) you’ve made the justice of your cause clear enough that there’s wide public support, and the authorities—cops, mayors etc.—have to worry about suppressing you for fear of offending their electorates. I confess I’m a sucker for people going into the streets. It hooks me every time and renews my faith. In what? Democracy. (“The streets belong to the people!”) Voting is such thin gruel. Then you belt up again for years. And it’s secret, so it keeps politics compartmentalized inside individuals. It’s anti-social! When my kid was small, I took him to a G20 protest. He didn’t get the point and was reluctant. But when we arrived, he got it. There were people we knew; it was festive, collective and funny. (UNDERCOVER COPS FOR PEACE!) Just being there transformed who we were as citizens. I could go on and on. There’s also something about acting directly. Years ago, during the campaign against South African apartheid, Stan Persky wrote about buying a bottle of South African brandy in Vancouver and smashing it on the store floor. He called it exhilarating. I’m aware that Hitler’s brownshirts went into the streets, from the 1923 Munich Putsch to Kristallnacht in 1938—as did the Ku Klux Klan and the Jan. 6 rioters in D.C. Going into the streets can be for good or ill, like almost any public act. A lot depends on who might be manipulating it surreptitiously. Still, I can’t help feeling that frisson of real democracy, or a touch of its breeze. It’s also possible the actors will learn something from misguided actions. It’s in concrete practise that understanding advances. When I worked as an organizer in the textile industry, union leader Kent Rowley used to encourage well-meaning but naive leftists to infiltrate factories to try and organize workers. “They might learn something,” he said, “beyond their ideology and rhetoric.” One can hope that a few of the idiots interviewed in the cabs of their trucks (“We are here for freedom!”) could hear the loonie drop. Idiots? Of course. I’m not totally blinded by my infatuation with going into the streets. “We’re here till they end the mandates!” But why would “they”? Or the inane notions in their loopy “Memorandum of Understanding” about how change happens and government works: they meet with Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and then run the country together. But what they really don’t get is civil disobedience, which this action falls under. The keys to breaking the law for a political goal are (1) you’re prepared to take the consequences and (2) you’ve made the justice of your cause clear enough that there’s wide public support, and the authorities—cops, mayors etc.—have to worry about suppressing you for fear of offending their electorates. It depends on an implicit moral appeal to the population, which leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. factored in, in advance. That’s an actual strategy. These folks are intellectually rather more limited. It’s as if they realize there’s a thing called protest, but their notion is vague and ill-formed. If you think you’re in the right, you just stay put till everyone surrenders. It’s basically infantile: I want what I want, when I want it. “The fastest way to get us out of the nation’s capital, is to call your elected representatives and end all C-19 mandates,” wrote a “senior convoy leader.” That’s a fantasy, not a strategy. IMO, the Ottawa police know these principles of civil disobedience, and took their time till public opinion developed vigorously against protesters—then began moving carefully, with arrests and tickets. This, BTW, has little in common with the Jan. 6 riots in D.C., which surely inspired the tiny minds occupying Ottawa now. The problem there wasn’t so much the rioters, who’ve been arrested. It’s that a mainstream party, the Republicans, backed them and used them to advance their own fortunes. It’s part of the establishment there that’s the deep danger, not the mob. Here, the Conservatives are courting the occupiers, but indecisively so far. Why? Because the overall political culture of Canada isn’t—certainly not yet and maybe not at all—receptive to that stuff. This column first appeared in the Toronto Star.