U$A

Child Labor and Immigration

Mostly a policy lament.

STEVEN L. TAYLOR · SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2023 ·

Via WaPo: A cleaning company illegally employed a 13-year-old. Her family is paying the price.

At 13, she was too young to be cleaning a meatpacking plant in the heart of Nebraska cattle country, working the graveyard shift amid the brisket saws and the bone cutters. The cleaning company broke the law when it hired her and more than two dozen other teenagers in this gritty industrial town, federal officials said.

[Since the U.S. Department of Labor raided the plant in October, Packers Sanitation Services, a contractor hired to clean the facility, has been fined for violating child labor laws. The girl, meanwhile, has watched her whole life unravel.

First, she lost the job that burned and blistered her skin but paid her $19 an hour. Then a county judge sent her stepfather to jail for driving her to work each night, a violation of state child labor laws. Her mother also faces jail time for securing the fake papers that got the child the job in the first place. And her parents are terrified of being sent back to Guatemala, the country they left several years ago in search of a better life.

I suspect that this case, and others like it, are a bit of a Rorschach Test. Some will see it as a corporation exploiting desperate people, while others will see a family who shouldn’t be in the United States (and who exploited their own child by letting her work).

I will state from the onset that I am more sympathetic to desperate people whose desperation leads them to engage in, well, desperate behavior, but will certainly acknowledge that there are reasons to lay some blame in their direction. Packers paying a fine and the consequences for the family are ultimately not equivalent in my mind.

A sweeping investigation of Packers found 102 teens, ages 13 to 17, scouring slaughterhouses in eight states, part of a growing wave of child workers illegally hired to fill jobs in some of the nation’s most dangerous industries. Driven in part by persistent labor shortages and record numbers of unaccompanied migrant minors arriving from Central America, child labor violations have nearly quadrupled since 2015, according to Labor Department data, spiking in hazardous jobs that American citizens typically shun.

[…]

Packers has faced no criminal charges, despite evidence that it failed to take basic steps to verify the age of its young employees. Last month, it quickly resolved the case by paying a $1.5 million civil fine. The families of the teen workers, by contrast, have been exposed to child-abuse charges and potential deportation. None have applied for work permits and the protection against deportation that is available to the child workers, fearing retaliation in a company town where almost everyone’s job is somehow tied to the meatpacking industry.

[…]

Packers officials said they have dismissed all the minor workers and fired two managers in Grand Island. They accused “rogue individuals” of using counterfeit documents to prove that the children were of legal age and emphasized that the 102 workers made up a tiny share of the company’s 17,000-member workforce. The full statement from Packers is available here.

For anyone who has paid attention to this general topic will recognize the broad outlines here. Companies need employees and immigrants need work. Both either break, bend, and/or ignore the law to make the transaction happen. Once someone gets caught the company basically says “whoops” and pays a fine, and the employees (and often their broader communities) tend to suffer very direct consequences.

Let me pause and note that there is no easy solution to any of this. The easiest of them all is “seal the border” (or similar formulations) and it is an utter impossibility. As I have noted on multiple occasions, there are too many legitimate transactions across the border to “seal” it or “close” it in any meaningful fashion. Calls to “seal” the border are just a way of saying “I wish this problem would go away” with all the efficacy such a statement implies.

What I am constantly struck by when I read stories about immigrants and immigration policy are the very real market forces that help drive all of this behavior. There is a market for labor in this country that is not being satisfied and there is a supply of labor south of the border willing to do the work in question. There is also a very real demand for security and opportunity in many people living south of the border (especially in places like Guatemala and El Salvador) and the ample supply of security and opportunity in the United States. Combining these two push-pull circumstances means that US policymakers have some very, very powerful forces to contend with if we are going to find solutions to deal with this situation in any way that actually makes it better.

(I have held this view for decades, in fact).

Instead, we remain in a spiral of nonsensical approaches. We don’t want to really deal with the labor demands (which would include better enforcement of existing labor laws and, quite frankly, things like paying better wages to attract workers, but that would lead to higher prices that no one wants to pay). We don’t want to figure out a better way to allow labor to enter the country legally. We don’t want to pay to increase the bureaucracy needed to deal with migrants.

We really don’t want to do anything.

And I realize that at the base of my assumptions about this situation is that migrants are going to come and we need to figure out how to deal with that fact. This automatically makes the “seal the border” faction of the population want to ignore me as being an “open border” type. But the issue to me is simple: the empirical reality is that migrants are going to come. If the US really is the land of opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave, as well as a shining city on a hill, people are going to come. Desperation is a major motivator. Indeed, it seems to me that the desire for self-improvement, broadly defined, is a major motivator for a lot of humanity and human history shows that people will endure much to improve the lives of their children.

While I have no easy solution (and if an easy solution was possible in a Sunday morning blog post, well, the problem wouldn’t be inspiring blog posts), I will say this: if we had a flooding problem you solve that problem through the construction of dams, levies, dikes, canals, and the like to control the flow. Such systems do not guarantee universal fixes, but it allows for control of the flow of water, to help stop catastrophic flooding and to help direct the water where needed. You don’t just send out the bucket brigade while complaining that we need to “seal” the horizon.

I suspect that if we had a more rational process to deal with migrants, it would be possible to better control the flow (but it would never stop the illegal crossings).

Instead, we refuse to really do anything.

THE REPUBLICAN CHILD LABOR AGENDA

 BY ERIK LOOMIS

 

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ON MARCH 5, 2023

 

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As Timothy Noah notes, the rise of child labor in America is directly connected to Republican policies on the issue, as in Republicans are objectively pro-child labor.

Child labor is back. The Labor Department’s wage and hour division recorded a 37 percent increase in 2022 in the number of minors employed in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which outlawed most child labor way back in 1938 and imposed strict limits on the rest. The 37 percent increase was over the previous year. Over the previous decade, the number of minors employed in violation of the act was up 140 percent. 

The surge in child labor reverses what had been, for most of the past 20 years, a significant decline in the number of minors employed in violation of the FLSA. Nobody knows exactly why the numbers started to climb in 2015, but probably it was because the labor market was getting tight. The unemployment rate, which had been falling since 2010, dropped in 2015 to 5 percent, which was then considered full employment. Workers were getting hard to find. The unemployment rate has since fallen further to 3.4 percent. 

The violations began piling up just as Republican state legislators, many of them newly in the majority, went on the attack against child labor restrictions, pressing in various ways to expand the number of work hours and work settings available to teenagers aged 14 to 17. (With exceptions for farm families, child actors, and a few others, child labor under age 14 is illegal.) One Wisconsin bill went so far as to ban the phrase “child labor” from state employment statutes, requiring that the offending term be replaced by “employment of minors.” A bill introduced in Iowa last month would allow 14-year-olds to work in meatpacking plants. If the youngster gets hurt due to his own negligence (whatever that means at 14), the meatpacker will be indemnified against civil liability. 

Only a few of these Dickensian pro-child-labor bills got enacted, but some did. In June, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu signed into law a bill that allows 14-year-old busboys to clear tables where liquor is served and expands from 30 to 35 the number of hours 16- and 17-year-olds may work during the school year. These restrictions had “become too cumbersome,” New Hampshire Deputy Labor Commissioner Rudolph Ogden explained to The New Hampshire Bulletin. Sununu is weighing a presidential bid in 2024. Working campaign slogan: Bring Back Warren’s Blacking Factory. (Just kidding.)

With this political backdrop, it’s little wonder that an investigation published Saturday by Hannah Dreier of The New York Times revealed a “shadow work force” of migrant children “across industries in every state”: 12-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee; 13-year-old girls washing hotel sheets in Virginia; a 13-year-old boy in Michigan making auto parts on an overnight shift that ends at 6:30 a.m.; a 12-year-old working for a Hyundai subsidiary in Alabama (this last courtesy of Reuters). The good news is that the Cheetos you’re snacking on or the Fruit of the Loom socks warming your feet may have been manufactured right here in the United States. The bad news is that they may have been made with child labor. It’s no longer just a Third World practice, or a bad memory from How the Other Half Lives.

Worried about the debt: Tax the rich

BY AMY HANAUER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 03/05/23

Supporters of taxes on the very rich contend that people are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic with a bigger appetite for what they’re calling “tax justice.” Bills announced Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023, in California, New York, Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Washington and Connecticut vary in their approaches to hiking taxes, but all revolve around the idea that the richest Americans need to pay more.

Republicans are using the need to raise the debt ceiling to demand cuts to spending. They are not showing much enthusiasm for saying what spending to cut and for good reason. Americans, it turns out, support most of what the federal government spends money on.

When President Biden said during the State of the Union that some Republican politicians want to cut Social Security and Medicare, it generated boos from Republicans in the room. But what would they support cutting? Many won’t say, probably because Social Security, Medicare and other health care and the military are the bulk of what’s in the federal budget.

For those concerned about the debt, here’s a better idea. Do more to tax rich people and corporations.

In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly cut and rarely raised taxes on wealthy people or corporations. Over 80 percent of the tax cuts passed since 2000 went to the wealthiest 40 percent. Nearly two-thirds of those went to the wealthiest 20 percent and most of that to the richest five percent. This enriched the uber-rich and simultaneously ballooned the deficit, fueling today’s debt ceiling drama.

The corporate minimum tax and other reforms in last summer’s Inflation Reduction Act show we can break that pattern. In contrast to the Bush and Trump eras, Biden-era tax changes raise hundreds of billions of dollars to preserve the planet, improve people’s health and reduce the national debt. But the increased revenue from last summer’s reform is just the beginning of what’s needed to catch up to what people and communities deserve.

In the State of the Union, the president proposed changes that would add revenue and improve tax fairness. The Billionaire Minimum Income Tax would phase in for those with wealth over $100 million, requiring they pay at least a 20 percent tax rate on all income including unrealized capital gains. Currently, the very wealthy can accumulate capital gains and pay no taxes if they don’t sell their assets. Correcting this could raise over $350 billion over a decade from only the extremely wealthy.

The president also proposed expanding the tax on stock buybacks from 1 to 4 percent. The tax hasn’t slowed stock buybacks, which are at record levels. Forecasters conservatively estimated that the 1 percent level will raise about $75 billion over 10 years. Increasing the rate to 4 percent will further increase revenue for public needs.

There are other ways, beyond those the president proposed, to raise more while addressing inequality. On the corporate side, we could close the loophole corporations get for offshoring jobs and tax huge “passthrough entities” that are currently allowed to dodge the corporate income tax. Each would raise hundreds of billions over a decade.




On the individual side, we could raise hundreds of billions of dollars by eliminating the tax break for capital gains income, making investors pay the same rate on income from wealth as workers pay on wages. And we could tax capital gains on assets at the point of inheritance, so dynastic wealth doesn’t permanently escape taxation, generating over $100 billion.

If Congress chooses, it could use some of the proceeds for debt reduction. And we’d still have more resources for essentials that citizens of other nations get, like low-cost college, universal paid leave and quality childcare.

The United States used to channel much more corporate profits toward broad support for the economy and society that made those profits possible. In the middle of the 20th century when economic growth was fastest and most broadly shared, corporations paid dramatically more, and the U.S. put more toward tackling collective challenges

Corporate profits hit a new record of $2.8 trillion in 2021. Yet, corporate income taxes now cover just 10 percent of federal revenue, down from more than 30 percent in the 1950s High egg prices: Getting to the bottom lineThe performative politics of Marjorie Taylor Greene

The U.S. ranks sixth from the bottom among peer nations in the share of resources spent on public needs (less than a third of GDP). In contrast, European countries put closer to half of their economy into societal investments. That’s why our competitors have universal health care, universal parental leave and lower poverty. And it pays off: People live longer throughout western Europe than here.

As one of the most prosperous countries in human history, we have enough resources for our collective needs. By better taxing corporations and the wealthiest, we can generate revenue to improve family security, strengthen our communities, and reduce the debt too.


Amy Hanauer is the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Tal Bachman: Remembering Getz/Gilberto

by Tal Bachman
The Bachman Beat
March 5, 2023

It's Monday morning, March 18, 1963. Blustery day. New York City. Three Brazilians—two men and a woman—take a cab to a building at 112 West 48th Street. The sign on the building says, "Manny's". It's New York's premier music store.

But the Brazilians aren't interested in buying any instruments. They walk up three flights of stairs to the fourth floor, directly above Manny's, where they enter a recording studio.

There, a young recording engineer named Philip Rabinowitz greets them. So does Verve Records producer Creed Taylor. Jazz saxophonist Stan Getz arrives shortly thereafter, with a bassist and drummer in tow. The three Brazilians are composer and pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim; his friend, guitarist and singer João Gilberto; and Gilberto's 22 year old wife, Astrud. Antonio and João are there to record an album with the American musicians. Astrud is tagging along just to watch.

The studio itself isn't much. It's a simple, high-ceilinged room with fairly basic recording equipment. It doesn't cost much to rent. For more polished recordings, musicians go to one of New York's fancier recording studios—the kind with top-of-the-line recording machines, dozens of mics, strategically built-in sound baffling, miniature echo chambers, slick glass, fine carpets, wood paneling, fancy reception area, lounge with a pool table, and a mixing room acoustically-tuned so as to minimize odd frequency pockets. This one, at least up until very recently, musicians visit only to record rough, or "demo", versions of their new songs.

But recently, some good records have come out of the spartan little affair in midtown Manhattan. Its reputation is growing. Musicians are starting to book it to make real records.

After all, Philip—the house engineer and minority co-owner of the operation—is easy to work with. And he knows his stuff. The room itself—precisely because it hasn't been professionally redesigned to deaden or balance the acoustics—retains its natural, idiosyncratic sound. That unique sound comes through the microphones just enough to lend a certain character to all the music recorded at the studio. And right next door to the building is Jim & Andy's Bar, a watering hole increasingly popular with musicians in town. Word has it that Charlie Parker had a drink there once. Or was it Chet Baker? Or John Coltrane? Rumors have started to fly, but the attraction of them all, to New York musicians, is that if you book a session at Philip's new studio, you might just bump into one of the world's greatest musicians during a break down at Jim & Andy's. Maybe you could even become friends. You never know.

And so, the little studio has started to make its mark. And as a result, much to the delight of young Philip, Verve Records has rented his A & R Studio for this two day project with the Brazilian and American musicians.

Producer Creed and engineer Philip—who has decided to change his last name from Rabinowitz to Ramone—spend that day and the next recording various versions of eight songs. The songs don't quite sound like standard jazz. They don't quite sound like samba, either. They're best categorized as belonging to a new genre called bossa nova (literally, "new wave"), developed by Jobim himself, the man playing piano on the sessions, and the man who's written most of the songs on the album.

Now, you might ask: How the heck does anyone invent a whole new genre of music?

From a distance, we can guess the answer—you take bits and bobs from pre-existing styles, put them together in a new way, add in a couple of features of your own—and voila! You've just created your own new genre. It doesn't have to be radically different from other genres. It just has to be identifiably different. And that only takes a few little adjustments, in the same way that humans and chimps share 98% the same DNA. It's that two percent that makes all the difference.

But still...how do you invent a whole new genre of music? To know in theory what that looks like is one thing. To actually do it, and do it well—to create a brilliant new genre—that takes genius. But the man now sitting in Philip's studio, playing piano, Antonio Carlos Jobim, is just such a genius. He's actually done it.

Sure, he's had help. He's had musical ancestors and colleagues. But for the most part, bossa nova is his thing. He's taken jazz chords, samba rhythms, classical guitar, light piano, his own unusual melodic and harmonic sense, put them all together, and come up with something new, fresh, and exciting. And supremely creative.

Here are a few specifics:

Jobim uses the same quirky little pulse to drive each song—accents on beat 2 and beat 3 and. Each song he writes is a marvel of casual-sounding complexity. The chords he uses include just about every combination of notes you could ever come up with: diminished chords, half-diminished chords, seven with a six on top, augmented chords, major sevenths with a flat five, seven flat-nines, seven sharp-nines, minor sixes, and dozens more, which he then strings together in alluringly strange sequences. He even throws in unexpected key changes, yet he always finds a way to get back to the original root chord.

Over and through all those strange and beautiful chords, he threads seductive, twisting melodies. His lyrics range from witty to wistful to deeply romantic. His instrumentation is string bass, light drums, classical guitar, piano, single vocal, and often a sax.

He plays around with standard song structures. For example, some of his songs have unusually long bridges—sometimes double or more the standard length. In others, the melody and chords change slightly on the final verse. He uses enough repetition in each song to make it memorable, but more variation than you ever hear in a standard jazz or popular song. Back to the recording:

The American and Brazilian musicians at the studio record various takes throughout the day. The sax player Getz, the son of impoverished, Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants, is a difficult man to work with. He's nasty, short, mercurial, stingy, and damaged from past drug addiction, incarceration, and a challenging childhood. Yet somehow, the musicians manage to forge on, hour after hour. And surprisingly, the cantankerous Getz turns in some of the most evocative, emotionally compelling sax solos ever recorded.

The recordings progress as expected until a lyricist arrives with English translations for two of Jobim's songs. Sensing an opportunity to spice up the album, producer Creed Taylor decides someone should sing those two songs in English. But he also says he wants to get the record done on schedule—that is, by the second day of recording.

Maybe the solution, he thinks, is for João's wife Astrud to try singing them. She isn't a professional singer, but she's in the studio, and she can speak English. It's worth a quick shot. Astrud obligingly steps up to the mic and sings "Girl From Ipanema" and "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars". The effect is instant. Creed loves what he hears. Astrud doesn't sound like any other singer he's ever heard. She certainly doesn't sound like a jazz singer. Her voice is almost entirely devoid of affectation—no vibrato, no trills, no acrobatics. She sounds utterly guileless. She also sounds charming, feminine, alluring, innocent, and intimate. It perfectly fits the music. It's magic.

The musicians finish the album. To their frustration, Verve Records sits on it for the next year, afraid it will bomb. But when Verve finally releases it a year later under the title Getz/Gilberto, "Girl From Ipanema" becomes a smash. Astrud Gilberto becomes famous and begins a long singing career. The album hits #5 on the Billboard charts, wins four Grammys (including Album of the Year), and makes saxophonist Stan Getz a rich man. It also puts the upstart A & R Studios squarely on the map, along with its young house engineer, now known as Phil Ramone. Phil in fact wins a Grammy—his first, but not his last— for his engineering on the album. Through his choice and precise positioning of mics around the room, his spacing of the players, and his clever use of EQ and compression, he has captured not just world class performances, but conveyed an intoxicating atmosphere of seductive intimacy.

Phil goes on to become one of the most successful record producers of all-time, winning fourteen Grammys, and selling hundreds of millions of records. (Just a few years after his work on Getz/Gilberto, Ramone also helps record a brand new band out of Canada. Called The Guess Who, it features my dad, Randy, on guitar. Ramone records the band's breakthrough song, "These Eyes" at A & R Studio's new location).

Beyond the commercial success and industry awards, Getz/Gilberto cements bossa nova's status in global music consciousness as a distinct, enduring genre. It also cements the characteristics of the genre: instrumentation, singing style, lyrical topics, chord progression styles, rhythm, vibe, etc. Jobim, with help from the Gilbertos and Stan Getz, does for bossa nova what Bill Monroe had earlier done for bluegrass, and what Bob Marley would later do for reggae: he establishes the phenotype.

There's something else—something more than just music. Getz/Gilberto, and bossa nova more generally, conveys a particular mood, attitude, life aesthetic—a way of being. The bossa nova world is unhurried. It's smooth. It's understated class—awesomeness without any exhibitionism (just like Astrud's voice). It's effortlessly sexy and devastatingly smart. It's a leisurely stroll along a warm beach by day, with cocktails (and romance) at night. It's not a tuxedo or a ballroom gown. It's not a ball cap with jeans. It's a tanned, fit guy wearing a crisp, casual collared shirt and well-fitting trousers, and a tanned, fit woman wearing light makeup and a dazzlingly simple dress. It's deep comfort with oneself and the world around you. It's an ultra-pleasant world within the world.

Some American musicologists will later claim that American jazz in essence created bossa nova. It would be much truer to say bossa nova re-created American jazz. No sooner did Getz/Gilberto hit than virtually every jazz songwriter began trying to write bossa nova-style songs, and virtually every jazz singer began adding bossa nova songs to his repertoire.

Here, for example, you can see Frank Sinatra perform a medley featuring "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" with Antonio Carlos Jobim. Here, you can see a joyously-sauced Dino play second fiddle to Caterina Valente in a performance of the Jobim song "One Note Samba". Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr., Ella Fitzgerald—you name 'em, they sang 'em. Even Andy Williams got in on the new craze. Almost everyone did. And almost everyone still does. To this day, it's hard to find a lounge act who doesn't roll into "Girl from Ipanema" at some point. Heck, I've done it myself during those late night impromptu jam sessions on the Mark Steyn Cruise, up in the Crow's Nest. You should come along with us next time and sing along.

In any case, in my books, Getz/Gilberto is a huge moment in the history of popular music. It's what really blasts bossa nova on to the world musical stage, and insinuates that difficult-to-define bossa nova way of being into popular consciousness. And it all came from a recording session sixty years ago this month.

Not bad for two days work.

Zimbabwe bank workers, employers hammer out US dollar wage deal
by Staff reporter
MAR 5,2023


Bank workers and their employers have agreed on a wage structure that would see salaries split into local currency and US dollars at a ratio of 60:40 percent respectively.

The resolution was made when parties held a meeting 24 February his year.

Parties included the National Employment Council (NEC), the Banking Employers Association of Zimbabwe, and the Zimbabwe Banks and Allied Workers Union (ZIBAWU).

According to the NEC circular, 40 percent of the salary minimum for grades N/C (lowest grade) to DPV (highest) will be paid as hard currency in USD or alternatively in ZWL indexed at the prevailing inter-bank rate on the date of payment.

The parties also agreed to increase the industry minimum basic salary which is inclusive of housing allowance from ZWL$295,000 to ZWL$418,951.17.

The 60 percent ZWL component will be ZWL$ 251,370.00 and the US$40 percent component will be US$203.66.

Grade DP V wages will be increased from ZWL$468,141.13 to ZWL$758,079.25.

The 60 percent ZWL component will be ZWL$454,847.55 and the US$40 percent component will be pegged at US$368.52.

The agreement will run retrospectively from January to 31 March this year.

"Further, the parties have agreed to apply an 8 percent inter-band differential for grades N/C up to DPV and a 5 percent differential on all sub-band grades.

"Notwithstanding the dates of registration and publication hereof, this agreement shall be deemed to have come into effect on the 1st January 2023 and shall run for a period of three months up to 31st March 2023," reads the circular.

ZIBAWU assistant secretary general Shepard Ngandu said the agreement will not preclude them from engaging employers for further wage review.

"We agreed to negotiate quarterly and our aim is to get full USD salaries from the current 40 percent threshold," he said.

Bolsonaro Floats Return to Brazil in March in US Media Interview

Rachel Gamarski, Bloomberg 

Jair Bolsonaro speaks during the CPAC 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 4. 

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said he intends to return this month to Brazil, where he faces multiple investigations, NBC News reported.

Bolsonaro, who traveled to the US after losing last year’s presidential election and applied for a six-month visa on Jan. 30, made the comment in an interview while attending the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, NBC reported.

He has previously mentioned return dates that lapsed, telling CNN Brasil at one point that he planned to be back by the end of January.  He also told his lawyer, Marcelo Bessa, that he can postpone his return until April, O Globo reported. He didn’t mention a return date during a speech he gave to CPAC on Saturday.

Bolsonaro is under investigation on multiple fronts, including his alleged involvement in the Jan. 8 riot targeting Brasilia, the capital, by supporters who refused to accept his election defeat by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. 

The former president denied responsibility for the attack, saying he was no longer president and out of the country and that his supporters wouldn’t back such events, according to NBC.  

Lula’s administration wants Bolsonaro to appear before Brazilian courts and is considering options to force him to return to the country if he doesn’t voluntarily come back by the end of March. 

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

At CPAC, Brazil’s Former President Jair Bolsonaro Blames the Left for Insurrection

“Our people would never do what the people did on January 8th.”


ISABELA DIAS

Reporter Mother Jones

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

 Alex Brandon/AP

On Saturday, Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has become a darling of the US far-right, attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC. After losing his reelection bid last October to three-time president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro self-exiled in Florida, where he has been living the life of a retiree, with occasional public appearances at right-wing events. Bolsonaro was greeted with enthusiasm and cheers at the conference. “It’s indispensable for me to tell all of you that my relationship with President Donald Trump was simply exceptional,” he told the crowd.

The so-called Trump of the Tropics gave his usual spiel about a socialist threat in Brazil and claimed credit for not making the Brazilian people get vaccinated. Speaking with the assistance of a translator, he also suggested his “mission is not over yet.” Bolsonaro’s son and Brazilian Congressman Eduardo, who is behind the organization of CPAC’s Brazil-based version, also took part in the event and spoke on a panel titled “The Red Menace Comes to the Americas.”

Backstage, Bolsonaro told NBC News he has plans to return this month to Brazil, where he faces several investigations, including over his alleged role in inciting the January 8 insurrection in the Brazilian capital this year. The former president denied having any responsibility for the violent attack, saying he was no longer president and was outside of the country. Instead, he said he was “fighting for an investigation” into what he baselessly claimed was the work of leftist infiltrators. “All the Right rallies of the last four years were peaceful and we don’t have anything to do with that,” he said. “Our people would never do what the people did on January 8th. So we are more and more certain that it was people from the left that planned all of that.”

As I reported for Mother Jones earlier this year, Bolsonaro’s extreme far-right supporters lay siege to three government buildings in the capital’s Three Powers square: the Supreme Court, Congress, and Palácio do Planalto:

With revolting and gut-wrenching images of destruction that were eerily evocative of the January 6 invasion of the US Capitol, what transpired was far from surprising. Several experts in the United States and Brazil have noted that Sunday’s violence is the product of a transnational far-right movement. For weeks after Bolsonaro’s defeat, his fanatic followers who bought into the collective delusion of stolen elections engaged in various forms of civil disobedience: blocking roads, attacking police headquarters, and camping outside the army headquarters in Brasília and elsewhere in the country. Their convictions were similar to those who believed Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” and these were crafted and fueled over time by their leader and US-based far-right demagogues. “Just as Bolsonaro is a cheap imitation of Trump, this was a cheap imitation of the [US] Capitol [invasion on January 6, 2021],” Lula’s former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told the Guardian.

When asked about the 2022 election results, Bolsonaro refused to acknowledge his loss. “The Brazilian people on the conservative side protested the results of the election,” he said. “I had much more support in 2022 than I did in 2018 [when first elected president].” In some ways, Brazil has become a laboratory for the global far-right and Bolsonaro has borrowed from Trump’s playbook, questioning the integrity of the electoral system and spreading misinformation about Brazil’s electronic voting machines. In the aftermath of the election, prominent US far-right supporters of the “Big Lie” said without evidence that the election had been rigged and encouraged Bolsonaro to refuse to accept defeat.

Bolsonaro’s appearance at CPAC, whose influence appears to be dwindling, is fitting. The event, as Media Matters’ Madeline Peltz told CNN, “no longer launches the careers of hopefuls looking to make an impact, rather; it’s now simply a box to check off. And without much otherwise on his to-do list, Bolsonaro might as well check it off.”

We Must Overturn SCOTUS Decisions That Effectively Deny Rights to Black People

George Floyd’s murder is part of a through line of police violence first enabled by the "Dred Scott" ruling.

By Taru Taylor , 

TRUTHOUT

March 5, 2023

A group of protestors march to the White House advocating for LGBTQ liberation and the Black Lives Matter movement on June 13, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

SAMUEL CORUM / GETTY IMAGES

The 2020 protests against police brutality after the death of George Floyd were the biggest in United States history. Not since the 1960s assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. has our nation, and indeed the world, witnessed a more significant martyrdom. Many scoff at the notion of Floyd as martyr. Floyd was no statesman nor great moral leader. But his everyman quality resonates. His extrajudicial murder is part of a through line of police-perpetrated violence first enabled by the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that has metastasized since 1857.

Floyd is a martyr to the truth that Dred Scott persists as the law of the land. Justice Roger Taney’s pro-slavery majority opinion held that Black people could never be citizens and that, “The negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

While Black people today are not enslaved like in 1857, Justice Peter Daniel’s concurring opinion continues to frame them, at best, as mere “freedmen” and “freedwomen.” Yet Black Americans have been freeborn citizens since July 9 a century and a half ago.

“Freedman” and “freedwoman” are thus slurs to every citizen born on U.S. soil after July 9, 1868. On that day the states ratified the 14th Amendment, declaring natural-born citizenship. The formerly enslaved persons that the 13th Amendment freed were “freedmen” and “freedwomen.” When Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (known as the Freedmen’s Bureau) in 1865 to incorporate Black people and white refugees into mainstream society, they named it appropriately. But all Americans born after that epochal July 9 have been freemen and freewomen.

This distinction between “freeman” and “freedman” is critical. As is Justice Daniel’s concurring opinion. Justice Daniel argued that U.S. society mirrors the three classes of ancient Rome. The ingenui (freemen) were freeborn citizens making up the ruling class. The libertini (freedmen) were quasi-citizens who behaved by obsequium, the official custom that made them compliant and dependent on their patrons or former masters. The servii were slaves. Here in the U.S., Black people were considered natural-born slaves although a few were “freedmen.” Only white men could be “freemen.”

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Daniel’s concurring opinion frames today’s 40 million U.S. citizens who are Black as freedmen and freedwomen with no rights that white persons are bound to respect. The original intention of the 14th Amendment was to overrule Dred Scott, to recognize Black people as citizens with the same constitutional rights as whites.

But the Supreme Court, in the four decades after the Civil War, nullified the 14th Amendment when it came to Black people through several cases, such as the 1873 Slaughterhouse cases, which neutered the privileges or immunities clause; the 1883 Civil Rights cases ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional; and the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision establishing the “separate but equal” doctrine, which sanctioned U.S. apartheid. More recently, the court voided the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and gave police officers “qualified immunity” in the 1967 Pierson v. Ray case. In short, the Supreme Court revived Dred Scott. The key issue is whether Black people who are born on U.S. soil should be recognized as freemen and freewomen with the full rights of citizens.
Lawless Law Enforcement

More than 18,000 police departments across the U.S. abuse citizens who are Black as if they are mere freedmen and freedwomen. For example, cops and their apologists explain away police brutality under the mantra: “He should have complied!” They evoke the ancient Roman custom of obsequium.

But our democratic republic only recognizes one class of citizen: the freeman or freewoman. The theory of popular sovereignty underpins the ideal of democracy in the U.S. and around the world. The citizen reigns. Public servants rule in his or her name. This is the fundamental “separation of powers.” The citizen votes and serves on juries and otherwise “checks and balances” the other three branches of government.

According to the Declaration of Independence, the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. Black people do not consent to becoming George Floyd or Breonna Taylor, nor to any of the other martyrs who have suffered the extrajudicial death penalty.

Notwithstanding Indigenous tribal sovereignty, the preamble to the Constitution underscores popular sovereignty: “We the people do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Note the present tense, which means that every generation must define constitutional meaning. The preamble also mandates that we “secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” But to get beyond liberty as buzzword, let’s consider legal scholar William Blackstone’s definition of the term in his 1765 Commentaries on the Law of England, a master text for the constitutional framers.

Personal liberty “consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.” In short, liberty is unrestrained locomotion.

The freeman or freewoman enjoys unrestrained locomotion. Meanwhile, the tyrannical U.S. majority criminalizes 40 million Americans for driving while Black, walking while Black or pretty much doing anything while Black. Yet half a century ago, one Supreme Court justice did see lawless law enforcement for what it was.

Justice William Douglas championed Black liberty. He was the lone dissenter in two landmark cases that sanctioned the modern police state through the judicial doctrines “qualified immunity” and “reasonable suspicion” — respectively the 1967 Pierson v. Ray and the 1968 Terry v. Ohio decisions.
Justice Douglas’s Dissent in Pierson v. Ray

Pierson made “qualified immunity” the law of the land. The case involved white and Black clergymen who attempted to desegregate a bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi. A municipal court convicted them of violating a state statute that made it a crime to congregate in a public place if they breached the peace and then refused to disperse when so ordered by a police officer. They were acquitted on appeal.

The clergymen then sued the municipal court judge, and the police officers who arrested them, under Section 1 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Pierson held that the act had in no way impaired the common law’s absolute immunity for judges in their judicial acts. It held that the police officers had a “qualified immunity” which would protect them from liability if the court found, on retrial, that the officers acted in the good-faith belief that the statute they were enforcing was constitutional.

The Pierson ruling effectively put judges and police officers above the law. It nullified a Civil Rights Act that was meant to protect Black Americans from neo-Confederate terror. Congress passed the Civil Rights Acts largely to void the Black Codes that the former Confederate states were using to deny Black people’s right to vote, make contracts, own property and move about freely etc. The Ku Klux Klan Act mandated that public officials recognize the rights of Black citizens.

The Ku Klux Klan Act states that “every person,” who under color of state law or custom, “subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen … to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.” Justice Douglas insists that when the act says “every person,” it means every person — not every person except judges or police officers.

Justice Douglas notes the “lawlessness” that pervaded the South after the Civil War and thus necessitated the Civil Rights Acts. Lawlessness was not limited to the South nor to the namesake of the act in question, the Ku Klux Klan. Justice Douglas describes some judges as “instruments of oppression.” He describes some state courts as “instruments of suppression of civil rights.” Writing in 1967, he makes plain the continuing relevance of the Civil Rights Acts enacted during the Reconstruction era: “The methods may have changed; the means may have become more subtle; but the wrong to be remedied still exists.”

As for the argument that judges and police officers need immunity from liability to be independent and to do their jobs effectively, Justice Douglas replied: “The argument that the actions of public officials must not be subjected to public scrutiny because to do so would have an inhibiting effect on their work, is but a more sophisticated way of saying, ‘The King can do no wrong.'”

But he was in lone dissent. Fifty-six years later, apologists for lawless law enforcement continue to argue, “The King can do no wrong.” “Qualified immunity” persists. The “king” thus sits on a bench or flashes badge and gun.

We the people must insist that our public servants, our tax-paid government employees, even those who wear black robes or blue uniforms, recognize our rights as freemen and freewomen. We must overturn Pierson.

Justice Douglas’s Dissent in Terry v. Ohio

Terry v. Ohio removed the probable cause limitation of the police power. This further criminalized Blackness and thus made inevitable George Floyd’s extrajudicial murder 52 years after it was decided.

The Fourth Amendment secures the citizen against any unreasonable search or seizure of their person or property. Before Terry, the reasonableness of a police officer’s seizure or search was defined by the magistrate’s authority to issue a warrant on a showing of probable cause.

Terry redefined “reasonableness” in more subjective terms. Before 1968, police officers operated, at least in theory, with reference to the magistrate’s authority. Ever since Terry, cops have had the despotic discretion to search or seize any U.S. citizen based on a “reasonable suspicion” that they are a criminal or are about to commit a crime.

Terry allows police officers to operate by their own standard of reasonableness — “reasonable suspicion.” By coining the phrase, the Supreme Court put its imprimatur on circular reasoning. Much as the doctrine of “papal infallibility” deemed the pope incapable of error when teaching on certain matters of faith or morals, “reasonable suspicion” sanctioned a sort of police infallibility. Police officers, especially when making “split-second decisions,” now arbitrarily determine what is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

“Reasonable suspicion” is an oxymoron worthy of 1984’s “newspeak.” For suspicion is inherently unreasonable. Merriam-Webster defines “suspicion” as “the act of suspecting something wrong without proof or on slight evidence: mistrust.” Compare the probable cause standard.

“Probable cause” means “having more evidence for than against” a crime being committed or having been committed, according to Black’s Law Dictionary. Whereas suspicion is based on “slight evidence,” probable cause denotes the preponderance of evidence that a cop needs to arrest a suspect. Actually, there is no standard definition of probable cause. But the concept evolved in the British colonies that later became the U.S. to protest the general warrants that allowed British authorities to search colonists wherever and whenever they wanted. Probable cause thus mandates specific warrants. Out-of-control policing is not new.

Justice Douglas discusses how the American Revolution was largely a reaction against Redcoats’ policing colonists as if they were all suspects. The Crown imposed writs of assistance on Massachusetts to crack down on smuggling. Writs of assistance were general warrants that permitted customs officials to enter any office or home without notice or probable cause. Lawyer and colonial legislator James Otis resigned his position as advocate general of the admiralty court in protest. He then challenged the legality of these writs per the maxim: “Every man’s house is his castle.” Otis inspired the Fourth Amendment’s later codification of the castle doctrine and the need for probable cause.

Justice Douglas invokes Otis to suggest an analogy between Redcoat oppression of the colonists and likely aggravated police oppression thanks to “reasonable suspicion.” What Otis argued against in 1761 Justice Douglas dissented against in 1968 — police arresting and searching on suspicion unchecked by probable cause. Justice Douglas saw the unraveling of the Fourth Amendment as a matter of history repeating itself. He wrote: “Police control took the place of judicial control, since no showing of ‘probable cause’ before a magistrate was required.”

Today, “reasonable suspicion” enables police to seize on suspicion. The Orwellian device subverts the Fourth Amendment’s original intent. Probable cause had been a limit on police discretion. Through Terry, magisterial authority gave way to police authoritarianism. It enabled police inquisition to encroach the judicial function. Thus, the Supreme Court abdicated judicial control in favor of police control.

“Reasonable suspicion” gave police officers, in effect, general warrants to seize or search (“stop and frisk”) Black people with impunity. Cops routinely ignore Black Americans’ right to the presumption of innocence, for Terry allows them to vent their prejudices and to treat 40 million citizens as criminals. “Reasonable suspicion” denotes white supremacist paranoia.

Otis foreshadows today’s complaints against lawless law enforcement. So does the Declaration of Independence. Consider its complaints about King George III permitting Redcoat police brutality: “For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.”

Justice Douglas wrote: “To give the police greater power than a magistrate is to take a long step down the totalitarian path.”

We must overturn Terry.

The judicial doctrines of “qualified immunity” and “reasonable suspicion” allow government employees with badge and gun to abuse their citizen-bosses who pay their salaries. Under current legal jurisprudence, Black people have no rights which men and women in blue uniforms are bound to respect. Dred Scott persists. Nevertheless, Justice Douglas’s Pierson and Terry dissents provide the blueprint for fighting racist police violence. Let’s take his heed.

Copyright © Truthout. 


TARU TAYLOR is a recent law school graduate who studied I Ching while teaching English in Korea and is president of Black Belt Chess Academy. He recently helped get the name “John Marshall” removed from Cleveland’s public law school on account of the former chief justice’s unrepentant slaveholding and lawless jurisprudence that conduced to Dred Scott.

US military commander in Syria briefed on anti-IS operations

By Bassem Mroue, AP and Lolita C. Baldor, AP
Mar 5, 2023

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley answers questions during a press conference at NATO headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 14, 2023. 

(DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

BEIRUT — The top U.S. military commander on Saturday visited northeast Syria where American troops and their allies are launching a campaign against the Islamic State group, a U.S. military official said.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley met commanders and troops who updated him on the ongoing operations against IS, said Col. Dave Butler, spokesman for Milley.

Butler did not say whether Milley met with commanders of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that have been the main ally of U.S. forces in Syria in the fight against IS.

Milley’s visit came a day after the U.S. Central Command said American troops and their allies carried more than a dozen joint operations in northeast Syria in February during which five IS operatives were killed and 11 detained.

“While there, he received updates on the counter-ISIS mission, inspected force protection measures and assessed repatriation efforts for the Al Hol refugee camp,” Butler said referring to a camp housing tens of thousands of mostly IS-linked women and children.

At al-Hol, tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis are crowded into tents in the fenced-in camp. Nearly 20,000 of them are children; most of the rest are women, wives and widows of IS fighters.

In a separate, heavily guarded section of the camp known as the annex are an additional 10,000 people: 2,000 women from 57 other countries — they are considered the most die-hard IS supporters — along with about 8,000 of their children.

Over the past few months several countries, including France, Spain and Iraq, repatriated scores of women and children from al-Hol.

Kurdish authorities currently operate more than two dozen detention facilities scattered across northeastern Syria, holding about 10,000 IS fighters. Among the detainees are some 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them, including about 800 Europeans.

There are currently about 900 U.S. forces on the ground in northeast Syria, according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Dana Stroul.

Despite their defeat in March 2019 during which IS lost the last sliver of land it once controlled, the extremists sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

In February, IS sleeper cells attacked workers collecting truffles near the central town of Sukhna, killing at least 53 people, mostly workers but also some Syrian government security forces. Several similar attacks have occurred since.

Baldor reported from Washington.

US FARM AGENCY TO DISTRIBUTE DISCRIMINATION PAYMENTS THIS YEAR

REUTERS

March 5, 2023

REUTERS/Rachel Mummey

On the heels of an agency-wide plan to address inequity in its programs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it will distribute billions of dollars to farmers who faced discrimination by the agency by the end of this year.

The Biden administration has pledged to repair the USDA’s fractured relationships with farmers of color. Historical discrimination in the agency’s lending programs contributed to Black farmers losing $326 billion worth of land in the 20th century, a study found last year.

The agency’s latest effort is the distribution of $2.2 billion funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to farmers who have experienced discrimination in the USDA lending programs. The agency will contract with vendors and community groups to administer the payments by the end of 2023, it said on Wednesday.

“These funds are yet another stepping stone in the long march towards justice and an inclusive, equitable USDA,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement.

The administration is also issuing debt relief to farmers based on economic distress, which will disproportionately aid farmers of color, according to USDA data. But the administration’s failed attempt to target that relief by race, stalled last year by lawsuits from white farmers, disappointed some Black farmers.

On Tuesday, a commission set up by the agency recommended sweeping reviews and changes to USDA’s internal and external operations to ensure racial and gender equity.

USDA will select its partners in distributing the IRA funds by late spring, it said.