Wisconsin Republican says 'Barbie' movie shows communist China’s influence on Hollywood

Baylor Spears, Wisconsin Examiner
July 10, 2023, 

Australian actress Margot Robbie meets fans during a pink carpet event to promote her new film "Barbie" in Seoul © Jung Yeon-je / AFP

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher said this week that he hopes a cartoon map in the highly-anticipated and excessively pink “Barbie” movie by Warner Bros. is not a statement on territorial claims in the South China Sea.

“While it may just be a Barbie map in a Barbie world, the fact that a cartoonish, crayon-scribbled map seems to go out of its way to depict the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] unlawful territorial claims illustrates the pressure that Hollywood is under to please CPP [Chinese Communist Party] censors,” Gallagher said in a statement.

Gallagher’s critique comes in response to a dashed line on a colorful “World Map” that appears in images from the movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Critics have interpreted the line that appears near a blue misshapen blob labeled ‘Asia’ as the nine-dash line, which is a disputed boundary on various maps that represents Beijing claiming large portions of the South China Sea as its territory.
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The nine-dash line was first depicted on a Chinese map in 1947 and since then has been included on various maps of the country. However, an international court ruled in 2016 that China has “no legal basis” for claiming the territory inside the line.

Gallagher, who chairs the U.S. Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said he hopes that “Warner Brothers clarifies that the map was not intended to endorse any territorial claims and was in fact, the work of a formerly plastic anthropomorphic doll.”

Gallagher, who has said that countering China should be a top issue for the U.S. and has centered much of his work in Congress on doing just that, joined other GOP U.S. lawmakers including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn in criticizing the movie.

U.S. lawmakers are not alone in their critique of the movie, set to release in the U.S. on July 21. It was recently banned in Vietnam because of the map and the Philippines may soon follow. The nine-dash line has been interpreted by China’s neighbors as threatening their sovereignty.

Warner Bros said in a statement that “the map in Barbie Land is a child-like crayon drawing,” and “the doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the ‘real world.” The entertainment company added that the map “was not intended to make any type of statement.”

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After Vietnam, the Philippines could be next to ban 'Barbie.' Here's why

Updated July 7, 2023

Ashley Westerman


Margot Robbie poses for the media prior to a news conference of the movie Barbie in Seoul, South Korea, Monday. The film is to be released in the country on July 19.Lee Jin-man/AP

MANILA, Philippines — Who knew the next kerfuffle over the longtime territorial dispute between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors over the South China Sea would be so... PINK?

The upcoming Barbie movie by Warner Bros. has not even hit theaters yet and a second Southeast Asian nation may ban it from being shown because of a scene that includes a map that appears to depict a controversial nine-dash line — the U-shaped contour China uses on maps where it lays disputed claim to nearly all of the South China Sea.

Many of Beijing's neighbors in and around the South China Sea say these claims threaten their sovereignty.

Warner Bros. says the map is a "child-like" doodle that wasn't intended to make a statement.

Territorial claims in the South China Sea are complex and overlapping

Beijing's claim, shown here as a thick red dotted line, is often represented on Chinese maps with nine long dashes — hence the term "nine-dash line."

Notes These are the approximate claims by China and other countries. In many cases, countries are intentionally vague about the extent of their claims.
Credit: Katie Park/NPR

On Tuesday, the Philippines' Movie and Television Review and Classification Board posted a notice confirming that the Barbie movie was under review. The film regulator did not say why the movie was being reviewed, nor did it say when a decision to allow it to be showed in theaters across the country would be rendered.

The movie was supposed to hit theaters across the Philippines on July 19.

The review comes on the heels of Philippine Sen. Francis Tolentino urging that the film regulator block the movie over its map. He told CNN Philippines that to screen the film domestically would denigrate Philippine sovereignty.

"This will not just be injurious to the Republic of the Philippines, but it would be contrary to what our country fought for and achieved under the Arbitral Ruling in 2016," Tolentino said, mentioning the decision by the Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration that rejected China's expansive claims in the South China Sea, saying they had no basis in international law.

However, Beijing has ignored that ruling and continues to build artificial islands and patrol large swaths of the crucial waterway — angering neighboring countries.

Earlier this week, Vietnam's National Film Evaluation Council banned all domestic screenings of Barbie over the map that included the nine-dash line. The move puts Barbie on a growing list of films banned in Vietnam, including DreamWorks' 2019 animated film Abominable, Sony's 2022 film Uncharted, and the 2021 Australian spy movie Pine Gap.

A screenshot from the Barbie trailer showing a world map that appears to depict a controversial nine-dash line.Warner Bros. Pictures

The map in question is shown in the movie's main trailer. It appears briefly in a scene when Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, goes to another Barbie's house to seek help for her existential crisis. In that house is a brightly colored world map that appears to show the nine-dash line protruding from the east coast of the Asian continent, presumably China.

Warner Bros. has not responded to a request for comment from NPR. But in a statement to Reuters, the movie studio defended its use of the map.

"The map in Barbie Land is a whimsical, child-like crayon drawing," Warner Bros. told the news agency. "The doodles depict Barbie's make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the real world. It was not intended to make any type of statement."

Philippine military historian Jose Antonio Custodio says showing the nine-dash line is "crass capitalism" because even though it would be favorable to Beijing, it's very insulting to everyone else.

"Because precisely it legitimizes China's illegal claims on the entire South China Sea, which not one government around the world supports," he told NPR. "Most specifically, the United States itself. So to have an American company legitimize what the Chinese are doing is patently outrageous."

While Sen. Tolentino has floated the idea of a compromise that could come in the form of editing the map out, such a move could risk angering China "where Barbie has already been approved for a release and is expected to earn far more than it does in Southeast Asia," reports The Hollywood Reporter. However, the outlet said, Vietnam and the Philippines aren't negligible markets, where a Hollywood hit "can earn anywhere from $5 million to over $10 million in each country."

Custodio says "it's not unthinkable that the Philippines may actually end up banning the movie, just like Vietnam did."

How ‘Barbie’ crossed a line in Vietnam’s dispute with China and ended up banned


“Barbie” depicts a map that includes the controversial “nine-dash line” in the South China Sea.
(Warner Bros. Pictures)

BY JONAH VALDEZ

LA TIMES

STAFF WRITER 

JULY 5, 2023 
The upcoming movie “Barbie” has been banned in Vietnam.

Now, the Philippines is considering its own ban on the Warner Bros. film.

And it has nothing to do with the film’s excessive use of pink, or Ryan Gosling’s Ken-doll spray tan (or, self-tan?).

Greta Gerwig’s highly-anticipated summer flick has crossed a line by drawing a line — the controversial “nine-dash line” to be exact. It’s a dotted line that China uses when drawing its borders in the South China Sea. Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines disagree with the line. Much of the international community, including the United States, also disputes the border.

It’s a political mess that “Barbie” most likely didn’t intend to step into, but here we are. Here is why such a small dotted line on a map — and how it’s depicted in the film — matters to Vietnam, China, and nearby countries.

Where does the map show up in the movie?

There are actually several maps with borders in the full-length “Barbie” trailer, released in May. The first is one of fictional Barbie Land — the city appears to be nestled along a body of water and at the foot of a mountain range, with pink clouds lining its borders that are fashioned into the shape of a heart.


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The second map, which Vietnamese entertainment writer Nguyên Lê pointed out on Twitter, depicts the world as we know it. The map appears as Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, is having an existential crisis. Her showers have gone cold, she’s fallen off her roof and her high-heeled feet have gone flat. During a disco party, she abruptly asks aloud, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” The record stops spinning, and fellow Barbies and Kens stop dancing and stare with mouths agape.

For answers, Margot turns to another Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon, who appears to live in a less-pink gated mansion, secluded from the the others. Inside the house, audiences see the map of our world, as Margot’s Barbie asks, “What do I have to do?”

“You have to go to the Real World,” McKinnon’s Barbie responds.

The map of “the real world” looks as if it’s been drawn in crayon by a child. Accompanying the wacky shapes are labels for each continent — Africa, “Australia, and the one that counts most in the story you’re reading right now, Asia. Alongside the coast of what should be China, a trail of dashes jut out into the map’s ocean.


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It is not immediately clear whether the dashes were a reference to the “nine-dash line.”

Representatives for Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to The Times’ requests for comment.

Later in the trailer, we see Robbie’s Barbie driving her convertible car as she crosses the border of Barbie Land and into ours.

The nine-dash line’s origin

After World War II, China published a map in the late 1940s, showing a U-shaped line. The original map had 11 dashes, but two were given away in the 1950s, commonly accepted by historians as a concession to the fellow communist government of North Vietnam.

The U-shaped zone stretches 1,200 miles south of the Chinese mainland and encompasses more than 80% of the South China Sea. China’s government has claimed everything inside it, citing “historical rights.” And that includes islands and archipelagos. Some of those land masses are also claimed by Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam and the Philippines. To complicate things further, a large continental shelf stretches from mainland Vietnam beneath the eastern part of the sea, within China’s apparent “nine-dash line.”

But the land is only a way to justify who controls the waters: The South China Sea is among the world’s busiest fishing and trade hubs, and includes areas of untapped oil and natural gas.

In recent years, China has built up its islands by dumping sand onto reefs as a way to lay claim to more of the zone’s waters. The island-building activities have led to military clashes between China and Vietnam, as well as the Philippines. The United States also entered the conflict with China, setting up military bases in the Philippines this year. In the past the U.S. has deployed warships and fighter jets, and have conducted military exercises in the area.

However, in 2016, an international tribunal at the Hague ruled that China’s “nine-dash line” is invalid and that China’s island-building efforts violate international law. Even so, the Chinese government has rejected the ruling and clashes in the sea, which threaten Vietnam’s ability to fish in the area, have continued. Vietnam sees China’s defiance as a threat to its sovereignty.
Will Vietnam and Philippine audiences ever see Barbie?

“Barbie” was originally set for a July 21 theatrical release, the same day as the United States, according to state-owned Vietnamese publication Tuổi Trẻ, which was first to report the news of the ban Monday.


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The ban was issued by the nation’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Cinema Department, which cited the movie’s depiction of what appears to be “the illicit ‘nine-dash line’ that China uses to illegally claim its sovereignty over most of the East Vietnam Sea,” according to Tuổi Trẻ.

Hours before U.S. media outlets caught wind of the ban, Lê had reported the announcement late Sunday evening on Twitter, quoting the Vietnamese government’s language of the film’s use of “offensive political imagery.”

Both Lê and Tuổi Trẻ pointed out that this isn’t the first film to be banned in Vietnam over depictions of maps with the “nine-dash line.” Dreamworks’ 2019 animated film “Abominable” was also banned, along with the 2022 film “Uncharted,” starring Tom Holland. The Philippine government had called for a boycott of “Abominable” but stopped short of a ban.

The Philippine government also seemed poised to restrict “Barbie” viewership in the country after its Movie and Television Review and Classification Board placed the film under review. However, the agency did not specify the reason for its review.

“We confirm that the Board has reviewed the film ‘Barbie’ today, 04 July 2023,” the government said in a statement posted on the movie board’s website. “At this time, the assigned Committee on First Review is deliberating on the request of Warner Brothers F.E. Inc. for a Permit to Exhibit.”


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Although some disappointed moviegoers in Vietnam have suggested censoring the problematic map in the film, it remains unclear whether Warner Bros. would be able or willing to edit its final cut, and if the Vietnamese government would lift the ban under those conditions.

The Vietnamese government is also reportedly considering a ban on Christopher Nolan’s biographical thriller “Oppenheimer,” according to Viêt Nam News. The Universal Pictures period piece was also set for a July 21 release (the clashing releases have prompted the “Barbeinheimer” meme phenomenon).

A spokesperson for Vietnam’s cinema department did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

It’s also unclear how much revenue Warner Bros. could lose because of the ban. Vietnam’s highest-grossing film in 2022 was Warner Bros. “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which raked in more than $11,000,000, according to IMDb. Overall, the “Avatar” sequel grossed more than 10 times that amount in the U.S. during its opening weekend alone.

Jonah Valdez is a reporter at the Los Angeles Times. Before joining The Times as a member of the 2021-22 Los Angeles Times Fellowship class, he worked for the Southern California News Group, where he covered breaking news and wrote award-winning feature stories on topics such as mass shootings, labor and human trafficking, and movements for racial justice. Valdez was raised in San Diego and attended La Sierra University in Riverside, where he edited the campus newspaper. Before graduating, Valdez interned at his hometown paper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, with its Watchdog investigations team. His previous work can be found in Voice of San Diego and the San Diego Reader. When not working, Valdez finds joy in writing and reading poetry, running, thrifting and experiencing food and music with friends and family.

Hunter Biden's lawyer claims he has proof J6 masterminds also 'fabricated' laptop lies
Sarah K. Burris
July 9, 2023

Hunter Biden attends a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony honoring 17 recipients, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, July 7, 2022. 

(Saul Loeb/AFP)


Former Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman (VA) has joined the legal team for Hunter Biden, similar to what he did for the Jan. 6 committee in exploring the tech pieces of the conspiracies that the GOP has pushed for the past three years.

Speaking to CNN's Jim Acosta on Sunday, Riggleman explained he has been working on the "technical and analytical report compared to phone forensics" as it pertains to the infamous laptop. "And I've been tracking data over the past two years."

He explained that a big reason he wanted to take on the role is "I hate bullies." Another point he realized is that many of the people pushing the Hunter Biden conspiracy theories are the same people pushing Jan. 6 conspiracies, like Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Peter Navarro, and others.

"There are some things I can't talk about, unlike the grifters. I have to have transparency and verification to stand up in a court of law, but I can tell you this," Riggleman continued. "What we want to look at first is the data out there purported to be Hunter Biden's laptop, and we wanted to see if there was any forensic format, and make sure there was no forensic validity to it and Jim, there was none. Jim, if you're looking at 4chan or from a site like MarcoPolo, you have to have forensic validity. And I am shocked that anybody in Congress would use that data, or any journalist would use those sources because [of] what we found out. We do have the data, we have the 1s and 0s. We do have the facts based on the 1s and 0s that we have found that it's the very same folks. We have videos. We have them self-identifying and manipulating the data. We have people like Steve Bannon using words like 'editorial creativity,' and we have specific instances of fabrication and manipulation of the data.

He went on to say that Congress should know that whatever data is in the public domain "has no relation to any forensic copy attached to a Hunter Biden laptop. And it looks like, to us, that most of the data is curated. It's almost like a mixtape of multiple data sources that's gone through the hands of 30 or 40 people."

Rudy Giuliani has been the source of a lot of the allegations involving the Bidens and Ukraine. It was just last month that Raw Story connected Giuliani to a document Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is using to claim that there was a bribery scheme involving the Bidens. Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) went so far as to claim that there were 15 tapes that existed that would prove the bribery scandal. Only a few weeks later, Giuliani claimed that the person who had the tapes had been killed and alleged "mysterious circumstances."

Giuliani didn't say the person's name but claimed she was the late wife of a former CEO of Burisma, who also died of mysterious circumstances. According to the Fox website, the person who made the tapes was male, and Giuliani claimed that the tapes were made by that dead CEO. The only problem is that the man Giuliani referenced died in 2011, before either Biden was involved. Now Giuliani is claiming that the "wife" of that CEO, who had the tapes, was killed.

"A lot of the things they say are not validated and ridiculous, and we've found cases of fabricating data," Riggleman said of the far-right.

He went on to attach the so-called "IRS whistleblowers," who have never gone through the legal process to be declared actual whistleblowers. According to Riggleman, the men seem to have facts and witnesses that somehow disappear. They're also refusing to speak to investigators. They're only speaking to Republican lawmakers and the media.

"Witnesses turn up missing or dead, and sometimes the data disappears into the twilight, and people can't spell words correctly or actually go through how a laptop was broken down into these types of notes. And there's no background information when it comes to what the WhatsApp message is or what the forensic validity of that is," said Riggleman. "So, that's my job to break that kind of stuff down. But for me, what individuals need to realize out there is that the truth does matter, and when you have an invasion of privacy like this, is this amount of data that's been stolen or pilfered, and the impressive ecosystem for someone to make money it's an abomination."

Riggleman explained that it's already well known that Hunter Biden did very bad things, was addicted to drugs, and did many other things. To make something up to use for an election, he called it unacceptable.

"The thing is, if it's just a flank to an election, that's an awful thing that you want to use," he continued. "So, I'll say this, for any type of whistleblower, you've got to have proof. You've got to have validity. And now that we know that there's even text messages that were made up, and I think Jim, May 24, 25 and 26 of 2018, we had text messages that were actually made up. Fabricated between a United States Secret Service agent and were reported by the New York Post, which said they had forensic validity. That was just BS."

He went on to say that it's possible that the IRS agents perhaps "weren't trained properly" or "they're credulous idiots, other liars, or their grifters or some kind of combination of all of that."


Still what bothers him is that it's the same people peddling the same claims, and he says they're lies just the same as the other conspiracy theories they invented.

See the full conversation with Riggleman below or at the link here.

World's war on greenhouse gas emissions has a military blind spot



By Sarah McFarlane and Valerie Volcovici
2023/07/10

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When it comes to taking stock of global emissions, there's an elephant in the room: the world's armed forces.

As temperatures hit new highs, scientists and environmental groups are stepping up pressure on the U.N. to force armies to disclose all their emissions and end a long-standing exemption that has kept some of their climate pollution off the books.

Among the world's biggest consumers of fuel, militaries account for 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2022 estimate by international experts.

But defence forces are not bound by international climate agreements to report or cut their carbon emissions, and the data that is published by some militaries is unreliable or incomplete at best, scientists and academics say.

That's because military emissions abroad, from flying jets to sailing ships to training exercises, were left out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases - and exempted again from the 2015 Paris accords - on the grounds that data about energy use by armies could undermine national security.

Now, environmental groups Tipping Point North South and The Conflict and Environment Observatory, along with academics from the British universities of Lancaster, Oxford and Queen Mary are among those pushing for more comprehensive and transparent military emissions reporting, using research papers, letter campaigns, and conferences in their lobbying drive.

In the first five months of 2023, for example, at least 17 peer reviewed papers have been published, three times the number for all of 2022 and more than the previous nine years combined, according to one campaigner who tracks the research.

The groups also wrote in February to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) calling on the United Nation's climate body to include all military emissions given their significance for comprehensive global carbon accounting.

"Our climate emergency can no longer afford to permit the 'business as usual' omission of military and conflict-related emissions within the UNFCCC process," the groups wrote.

Emissions accounting will come into focus in the first global stocktake - an assessment of how far behind countries are from the Paris climate goals - due to take place at the COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates starting on Nov. 30.

"The omission of conflict-related emissions in UNFCCC accounting is a glaring gap," said Axel Michaelowa, founding partner of Perspectives Climate Group, adding that hundreds of millions of tons of carbon emissions may be unaccounted for.

'RECOVERY AND PEACE'

For now, however, there are few signs there will be any tangible response to the lobbying drive this year.

The UNFCCC said in an emailed response to questions that there were no concrete plans to amend guidance on military emissions accounting, but that the issue could be discussed at future summits, including at COP28 in Dubai.

Asked whether military emissions would be discussed at the U.N. summit, the UAE presidency said one of its thematic days during the two-week summit would be "relief, recovery and peace", without giving further details.

There are signs, however, that some militaries are preparing for changes in their reporting requirements in the coming years, while others are making strides to cut their climate impact.

NATO, the 31-country Western security alliance, for example, told Reuters it has created a methodology for its members to report their military emissions.

Countries such as New Zealand are exploring whether to add previously excluded areas, such as emissions from overseas operations, while Britain and Germany are looking to address grey areas in their reporting, defence officials said.

And Washington sent U.S. Army and Navy representatives to the COP27 climate summit in Egypt last year, the first time a Pentagon delegation has attended the global climate summit.

"What I think that signified is that we are part of the conversation, we are certainly emitters when it comes to fossil fuels and energy," Meredith Berger, assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment at the U.S. Navy and one of the Pentagon delegates, told Reuters.

The U.S. military's oil use and emissions are falling.

The U.S. Defence Logistics Agency, which oversees oil buying, said 84 million barrels were purchased in 2022, down almost 15 million from 2018. Emissions in 2022, meanwhile, fell to 48 million tonnes from 51 million tonnes the previous year.

The U.S. Department of Defense said those figures included all emissions, but that it stripped out international transport and bunker fuels from the numbers reported to the UNFCCC.

MORE DRONES

Neta Crawford, a professor of international relations at Oxford University, said U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq, the adoption of renewable energy technologies, more fuel-efficient vehicles, as well as fewer and smaller military exercises, had contributed to the declines in the fuel use.

The wider use of drones may also have helped.

"One of the biggest emissions reduction technologies has been the used of unmanned aerial vehicles - drones," said a senior U.S. defense official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. "When you take a human out of the aircraft, you get dramatically improved energy performance."

Groups lobbying the U.N. to lift the military exemptions point to a surge in emissions related to the Ukraine conflict as a good reason for the change.

"Ukraine has absolutely brought the spotlight onto this issue in a way that other conflicts have not," said Deborah Burton at environmental group Tipping Point North South.

A report from Dutch carbon accounting expert Lennard de Klerk estimated the first 12 months of the war in Ukraine will trigger a net increase of 120 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual output of Singapore, Switzerland and Syria combined.

And academics from Oxford and Queen Mary University of London are holding a conference on military emissions in Oxford on Sept. 26, with the aim of generating new research that could help inform changes to reporting requirements.

Ukraine's environment ministry spokesperson said it supports the efforts and would seek backing from governments at COP28 for more transparent military emissions reporting.

'FREE RIDE'

While the Ukraine war has heightened the focus among climate activists on military emissions, some experts say it is a distraction for governments focused on regional security, and that could slow discussions in the near term.

"It's important to understand the Ukraine crisis has made this a little bit more complicated," said James Appathurai, NATO's deputy assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges.

Some militaries say publishing details on their oil use would be a window into their overseas operations.

"We would not want to let everybody know how much fuel we use in these missions – how far we fly, how far we drive, and what our exercise patterns are," said Markus Ruelke, from the German defence ministry's environmental protection unit.

Some military emissions are recorded under unspecified fuel combustion in the U.N.'s reporting tables, the UNFCCC said.

In the meantime, global military emissions will remain poorly understood, said Stuart Parkinson, executive director of the group Scientists for Global Responsibility.

"It's all very well telling people to stop flying or switch to an electric car, whether that's an expense or inconvenience to them, but it's hard to do that when the military gets a free ride," he said.

(Reporting by Sarah McFarlane and Valerie Volcovici; Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and David Clarke)





© Reuters

US Women with opioid use disorder face stigma in getting help, seeking treatment

2023/07/10

Two residents hug after a resident's testimonial during a recovery education meeting at Phoenix Recovery Support Services. - John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/TNS

CHICAGO — Heather Beaubien doesn’t believe in rock bottom.

Not when she dropped her son off at school in the morning and stopped at a liquor store five minutes later. Not during the moments she’d dig through clothing drawers for stashed drugs and liquor and light up with a Christmas-morning feeling upon finding it. And not when she went for months without a proper shower and found herself crawling naked to let the cops in at the door of her own home.

No matter how deep she sank into addiction, it was the recovery community that helped her find her way out. After decades of alcohol and opioid addiction, Beaubien said her life changed permanently when she finally got tired of digging, but also tired of hiding.

Now, as a resident at Phoenix Recovery Support Services and addiction and recovery support counselor at Family Guidance Centers, Beaubien doesn’t hide anything. She’s one of the lucky few in recovery who has been able to get residential treatment in Chicago, as many people in her situation aren’t housed because of a lack of insurance, insufficient government-supplied beds and space — and stigma, which disproportionately affects women.

“The stigma is huge and it’s a shame. A lot of it has to do with funding. There’s not enough funding. People still don’t believe this stuff is a disease,” she said. “It’s exhausting to hide who you are and what you’ve been through. And there’s no reason to feel ashamed.”

Traditionally, individuals affected by past drug epidemics have been overwhelmingly male, said Andrew Kolodny, medical director for the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University. But in the past quarter-century, those who developed an opioid addiction mostly started on prescription opioids, he said, and there is now a more even split between genders.

“Once you have this even split, you need to increase your capacity to treat women. And so despite the fact that this current epidemic began 25 years ago, we’re still playing catch-up and we still don’t have adequate treatment resources for women,” said Kolodny.

The standard of care for opioid use disorder is to at least assess if people need residential treatment, said Lindsay Allen, a professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who recently published a study about the use of residential opioid use disorder treatment among Medicaid enrollees in nine states.

The American Society for Addiction Medicine has an established criteria to determine the most appropriate treatment path for a person’s needs, strengths and support system, among other variables. But just 7.5% of Medicaid enrollees with opioid use disorder receive residential treatment, Allen’s study shows.

State mental health agency expenditure per capita in Illinois is in the bottom 20% of all states, according to data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Women bear the brunt of this lack of support, said Allen.

Following the closure of The Women’s Treatment Center in the West Loop about two years ago, support from Phoenix Recovery, a residential home offering services to people with diagnosed substance misuse issues, is filling a large gap in recovery home care in Chicago.

Phoenix Recovery currently provides recovery home support to 30 women and 65 men. Residents attend outpatient programming and in-house groups, 12-step meetings, life skills training, financial literacy and more, according to Hernandez. They stay for up to a year, or as long as is necessary to get on their feet, start working and transition into their own housing.

“We definitely get a lot more calls from men than women,” said Vauna Hernandez, executive director of Phoenix Recovery.

She has been through recovery herself, she said, but for years she wouldn’t talk about it.

Hernandez sat on a wooden chair to the side of a routine Tuesday night “Recovery Education Meeting” at Phoenix Recovery in early June and clapped and laughed as residents stood up to share. She has a professional demeanor, and wore her hair slicked back into a bun, a blue blazer and dress flats.

“People who are in recovery look just like everybody else. There is no difference. We pay taxes, we vote, we’re involved in our communities,” she said.

Phoenix Recovery accepts residents of all kinds, including those on medications for opioid use disorder, or MOUD, previously referred to as medication-assisted treatment, according to Kolodny. MOUD is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as treatment with the use of methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone, in combination with counseling without medication.

Kolodny said that while MOUD has garnered a lot more support than it did when it was originally introduced, there are still many residential treatment programs across the country that don’t admit people who use the combination of FDA-approved drugs with behavioral therapy.

“We take people who are on it and there is no difference to us with MAR (medication-assisted recovery) than it is with diabetes medication or high blood pressure medication. It is medication,” said Hernandez.

Thirty-two of the 95 Phoenix Recovery residents use MOUD, 15 of whom are women. Even though she condones it, she still advises residents to avoid talking about their medication, she said.

“It’s nobody’s business. We don’t run around talking about how many milligrams of insulin we take. Right? So why should you be talking about the medication your doctor prescribed for your recovery?” she said.

Beaubien isn’t on MOUD herself, but said it helps many people who have been using for years stay comfortable. It’s for survival and maintenance of the treatment of the disease, she said.

“Because once you have the disease, it doesn’t not go away,” she said. “Your body is chemically and physically changed forever. It’s changed. It’s like having congestive heart failure.”

At the recovery education meeting, Phoenix Recovery residents gathered in the fluorescently lit basement of a large brick building in Austin recounting their recovery processes — shaking, crying, laughing. Of all different ages and backgrounds, people shared how many kids were in their families, their goals, breakthrough moments and career aspirations.

Their messages of vulnerability were met with roaring applause and encouragement from other residents at the house.

“Last week, I lost my best friend. Thursday, which I hadn’t shared, I lost my brother,” said resident Sherri Burdine through tears, pressing her hands together and putting them to her forehead.

Murmurs came from the crowd.

“It’s OK, Sherri, we got you,” residents said. “God has got you, Sherri.”

Allen from Northwestern said substance use disorder can affect women throughout their journey as mothers.

“Women tend to keep their drug use private, for a whole bunch of reasons — cultural and practical,” Allen said. “They’re fearful their kids will be taken from them.”

Service chief of inpatient addiction medicine at PCC Community Wellness Center Dr. Ruchi Fitzgerald works with other addiction medicine specialists to provide hospital-based addiction medicine treatment to medically underserved populations on the West Side of Chicago, including older adults and pregnant and postpartum persons with substance use disorders.

“(Fitzgerald) is dealing with these women who are afraid to come in,” said Hernandez.

Fitzgerald is well-versed in the legal and child care welfare system, and helps women create family care plans for “at-birth crises” — situations where the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services can be called due to a patient’s substance use during pregnancy.

“There’s no question about it, this population — pregnant and parenting — is the most stigmatized and shunned population,” Fitzgerald said. “They’re often using alone, and they’re very fearful.”

Fitzgerald said the federal and state governments should prioritize programs that allow mothers to access treatment with their children, and allow them to have evidence-based treatment and prenatal care with access to a long-term recovery home. The rise in fentanyl, xylazine and stimulants has only increased the need for services for pregnant and postpartum women who are at high risk of maternal mortality, she said.

“There are a paucity of resources available for pregnant and postpartum patients, especially those who live in poverty, who have substance use disorder and are involved in the child welfare system — despite the fact that Illinois law is supposed to prioritize pregnant and postpartum women for substance use disorder treatment,” she said.

Peer doula Michelle Kavouras at PCC has lived experience having a child while using substances and said it was “just horrific how (she) was treated and not provided resources.” She works with people who are pregnant and using to demonstrate what resources might be helpful, and to be an advocate for them during their pregnancy journey, birth journey and postpartum journey.

She makes sure they understand all their options for care. There is a team of specialists that help them get connected to partners in the community to find the best possible outcome for them and their family, she said.

“Unfortunately, a lot of people who come to us are unhoused,” Kavouras said.

Fitzgerald worked with statewide organizations on proposed legislation that would have repealed punitive policies affecting pregnant and parenting individuals with a substance use disorder, but the bill never made it out of committee this session despite support from multiple agencies across the state including DCFS and the Illinois Collaboration on Youth.

“A punitive approach must end and we must use our federal and state dollars allocated for our children and families appropriately — for treatment, prevention and for services; not for separation. Otherwise we will continue to see rising rates of homelessness in women, children, rising foster care rates and rising maternal mortality rates due to drug overdose,” said state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat from Chicago who sponsored the bill.

Beaubien said addiction is different for everyone, never-ending, hour to hour.

She has a light red tattoo on her forearm that reads “My story isn’t over yet,” and wore a lace cardigan with and balanced sunglasses on her temple.

“Women are supposed to carry themselves in society in a certain way. People don’t realize that women can experience addiction just as bad, if not worse,” she said.

She said she wished she had registered for residential treatment years earlier, when her son, Brodie, was 3 or 4.

“God, I would have saved so much time,” she said. “The worst thing you could steal from anyone is time.”

Just because she’s not taking a pill or having a drink now, she said, doesn’t mean she’s not still exhibiting addictive behavior, scrolling on Amazon marketplace or running to Whole Foods after work to buy a pint of ice cream.

She glowed when she talked about son Brodie, who’s nearly 11, but recalled his fourth birthday party at a waterpark when she experienced serious withdrawal symptoms and started seizing.

“I feel like the ultimate loser mom. I haven’t seen my kid since April of last year, since I got myself stuck up here in recovery,” she said.

Beaubien has been sober for about two years, she said. She’s been at Phoenix Recovery almost a year.

Hernandez said the best part of her job is seeing residents transform. Sometimes they show her mug shots of what they looked like before they went into recovery and they look unrecognizable from the people they are today, she said. Many arrive without a birth certificate, Social Security card or ID.

But Phoenix Recovery has only 100 beds and an extensive waiting list, even though the cost to house someone in a recovery home is less than the costs of repeated hospital stays from overdoses and treatments, Hernandez said.

“We just can’t house everybody,” she said. “There aren’t enough recovery homes.”

Patrick Love, who led the recovery education meeting, repeatedly thanked the government funds Phoenix Recovery received to make the meeting possible.

Beaubien sat on a couch against the wall, her head cocked slightly to the side.

“It’s like family. We love, we hate, we fight. It’s like having a ton of brothers and sisters. We have to be resilient,” she said.

Love paced as he spoke to the crowd. Some residents in the audience took notes as he spoke. Some wiped tears from the corners of their eyes.

“Be consistent with it. Are you familiar with the dance of life? Two steps forward, one step back,” Love said.

He stepped forward and back on the gray tiled floor.

Executive Director Vauna Hernandez, left, and Heather Beaubien talk after a recovery education meeting at Phoenix Recovery Support Services in the Austin neighborhood on June 13, 2023. - John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Resident Sherri Burdine pauses while giving a testimonial during a recovery education meeting at Phoenix Recovery Support Services. - John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Residents Patrick R. and Heather Beaubien hug after attending a recovery education meeting at Phoenix Recovery Support Services in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago on June 13, 2023. - John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/TNS

© Chicago Tribune

Why the GOP wants to destroy Zoomers last chance for the American dream

Is it just that they’re evil?

Thom Hartmann
July 10, 2023

Photo by Kimson Doan on Unsplash

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was pulling no punches in calling out her six Republican colleagues on the Supreme Court in the student loan case, Biden v Nebraska.

None of the Republican states suing would have lost a penny had Biden’s student loan forgiveness program gone forward; there was no injured party and therefore no standing to even be before the Court.

“[T]he Court,” she wrote, “by deciding this case, exercises authority it does not have. It violates the Constitution.”

Additionally, the law being debated (the HEROES Act) specifically gave the administration the power — it’s literally spelled out in the statute — to forgive student debt. Which is why Kagan called out the radical Republicans for rewriting a law authored by Congress and signed by a president, a power that is not found anywhere in the Constitution.

“That is no proper role for a court,” Kagan wrote. “And it is a danger to a democratic order.”

But six Republicans on the Court blew up the program anyway, replacing the power and authority of the United States Senate, House of Representatives, and the President with their own.

So, why would Republican state Attorneys General bring such a lawsuit to try to deny millions of students in their own states debt relief? Why would six Republicans on the Supreme Court go along with such a stupid thing?

Particularly when our 30-year experiment with the G.I. Bill shows that for every $1 the federal government invests in college-educating young people, we as a nation get back $7 in tax revenue and economic benefit (as I noted at length here on July 3rd)?

Similarly, why would Republicans fight tooth and nail to filibuster passage of the PRO Act (legislation that gives workers the right to easily form or join a union) that had already passed the House? If a corporation is organized money, why do they believe it’s wrong for workers to have a small bit of power by organizing themselves and protecting their labor?

Why, when the rights of queer Americans were before the Supreme Court, would a Republican majority allow companies to violate Colorado’s public accommodation laws and openly discriminate against them? What was so important to the Republicans on the Court that it would provoke a decision so vicious that Justice Sotomayor was moved to write:

“Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class. … This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women's rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims.”

Why are Republicans in state after state working so hard to deny citizens the right to vote?

Why are they outlawing abortion, forcing women out of the workplace and into situations where, without a husband to support them and their child, they may end up destitute and homeless?

Why are they targeting birth control next?

Why do Republicans work so hard to destroy public education?

Republican politicians in both Arizona and Florida have instituted statewide voucher programs which, history shows, gut and ghettoize public schools for all but the upper middle class and wealthy children whose parents have the money to match the vouchers with tuition payments. Why would they do this? And why are they exclusively attacking public school teachers and public librarians?

Why, in the affirmative action case where students were merely asking for enforcement of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, would the Republicans on the Court strike down race-based considerations that are minor compared to those given to “legacy” students of mostly-white wealthy alumni?

The decision was so brutal it prompted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to write:

“[I]t would be deeply unfortunate if the equal protection clause actually demanded this perverse, ahistorical, and counterproductive outcome. …
“To impose this result in that clause’s name when it requires no such thing, and to thereby obstruct our collective progress toward the full realization of the clause’s promise, is truly a tragedy for us all.”

There’s clearly a strategy at work here — from Republican actions at the state and local level all the way up through Congress and onto the Supreme Court — but what is it?

It’s way too facile, too easy, to simply say they enjoy hurting other Americans, although that’s the clear outcome of their action.

While these and other policies are broadly supported by conservative billionaires, outside of the unionization angle there’s really little financial incentive for them. So what’s driving this nationwide, across-the-board effort to strip everybody except people of great wealth from what little power and assets they still have?

Why have Republicans nationwide been working so hard at this project since 1980?

It turns out there’s a real backstory here, one that explains it all. Most older conservatives can tell you about it, although they almost never discuss it in public. And, because it’s considered “history,” our national media never discusses it.

It all started in the decades after World War II.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought America out of the Republican Great Depression with a plethora of programs in the 1930s designed specifically to enrich and financially stabilize working class people: those policies were then carried on by presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and even expanded by Lyndon Johnson.

They included Social Security, the minimum wage, the right to unionize, Medicare and Medicaid, the 40-hour work week, federal support for home mortgages, anti-discrimination laws, massive support for public education, the construction of highways, airports, and new hospitals, and top tax brackets that maxed out at 91 percent on the morbidly rich and 50 percent on the most profitable corporations.

These policies literally built the American middle class, the first in the modern world. Prior to the “big government” interventions of these five presidents, most Americans were dirt poor and the country was ruled by a corrupt corporate oligarchy.

As recently as 1900, for example, women couldn’t vote, senators were appointed by the wealthiest power brokers in the states, and poverty stalked America. I heard stories of that time growing up: it was the year before both my mother’s parents were born.

As the President’s Council of Economic Advisors noted in their 2000 Annual Report:

“To appreciate how far we have come, it is instructive to look back on what American life was like in 1900. At the turn of the century, fewer than 10 percent of homes had electricity, and fewer than 2 percent of people had telephones. An automobile was a luxury that only the very wealthy could afford.

“Many women still sewed their own clothes and gave birth at home. Because chlorination had not yet been introduced and water filtration was rare, typhoid fever, spread by contaminated water, was a common affliction. One in 10 children died in infancy. Average life expectancy in the United States was a mere 47 years.

“Fewer than 14 percent of Americans graduated from high school. ... Widowhood was far more common than divorce. The average household had close to five members, and a fifth of all households had seven or more. …
“Average income per capita, in 1999 dollars, was about $4,200. … The typical workweek in manufacturing was about 50 hours, 20 percent longer than the average today.”

But after World War II, as FDR’s, Truman’s and Eisenhower’s programs really took hold, the middle class began to grow like never before in American history. Cities and suburbs boomed, and even rural areas became wealthier as farming technology improved by leaps and bounds.

It looked like the best of times, like it could last forever, like it would finally fulfill the Declaration’s goal of “the pursuit of Happiness” for well over half our country.

But Republicans were worried about all this middle-class prosperity and what it would mean for the country.

Russell Kirk published his 1951 book The Conservative Mind, arguing that without clearly defined “classes and power structures” — essentially without the morbidly rich in complete control — society would devolve into chaos.

The middle class growing as rapidly as it was, Kirk and his colleagues warned, was a threat to the social and thus political stability of America. It threatened the American experiment, because middle class people just didn’t have the class sensibilities, the upbringing, the education to handle the kind of wealth they were being handed by all those good union jobs and the social safety net that backed them up.

If not stopped, Kirk and his acolytes warned, disaster was imminent. Not just disaster for rich people: disaster for all Americans.

Socialism, communism, social unrest, political chaos, the rise of demagogic politicians who would be embraced by the ignorant masses: these were all things Kirk believed would naturally come out of the rapid enrichment of a class of Americans who had just a generation earlier been mostly dirt poor.

He and his followers essentially predicted in the early 1950s that if college students, women, working people, and people of color ever got even close to social and political power at the same level as that generation’s educated white men, all hell would break loose.

Throughout the 1950s, Kirk only developed a small following: the most prominent of his proponents were William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater.

Most Republicans, though, considered him a crackpot. After all, things seemed stable and happy as the middle class relentlessly continue to grow. The biggest controversy was whether TV cameras should show Elvis’ hips on the Ed Sullivan show.

But then came the 1960s and, forgive the expression, the sh*t hit the proverbial fan.

The birth-control pill was legalized in 1961 and by 1965 was in widespread use; sexual liberation and the women’s movement swept the land.

In 1964, President Johnson told the country one of our warships had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam and we were going to war: later that year he instituted the first draft since WWII.

Psychology professor Dr. Timothy Leary introduced America to LSD and in June of 1964 Ken Kesey began his acid-fueled Merry Pranksters bus trip across America to spread the word. An acolyte of Leary’s, Keith St. Clair, came to MSU in 1966 and gave me my first LSD experience in the local Methodist church; it was spreading across the nation like wildfire, along with the Maharishi’s and Beatles’ meditation.

Tom Hayden’s 1962 Port Huron Statement had energized the Students for a Democratic Society, first dedicated to racial and social justice; by 1965, the year before I joined, the movement had become the tip of the antiwar movement’s spear.

President Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963; Martin Luther King was murdered on April 4, 1968; JFK’s brother Robert, a candidate for president that year, was killed two months later on June 6, 1968.

America was on fire. Young men were burning draft cards, women were burning bras, and Black people, horrified by King’s murder and the ongoing brutality of white police against unarmed African Americans, lit America’s cities afire.

Suddenly, Russell Kirk didn’t look like a crackpot anymore. He looked more like a prophet.

The wise elders of the GOP — the morbidly rich — and Kirk’s and Buckley’s conservatives who’d been warning for decades that the New Deal would end in disaster needed a plan.

Tobacco lawyer Lewis Powell put together his infamous Memo outlining a way to guarantee the “survival of what we call the free enterprise system” in 1971; President Richard Nixon put him on the Supreme Court in 1972; he authored the Bellotti decision — that overturned the 1907 Tillman Act and thus let billionaires and corporations pour virtually unlimited amounts of “free speech” money into politics — in 1978.

Nixon’s “War on Drugs” designed to get the antiwar hippies and “uppity” Blacks under control was spreading across America like rot on an orange; prison populations were exploding, as the days of peace and love turned into heroin, meth, and violence. Hell’s Angels and the murders at Altamont in 1969 signaled the end of the era.

Thus, by the 1970s, the die was cast. The middle class had to go. FDR’s “Great Experiment,” Republicans believed, was over and it was up to them to put the country back together again.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president and sworn into office on January 20, 1981, about two-thirds of Americans were solidly in the middle class.

And it was explicitly his job to cut that middle class down to size to save America from herself.

First, he went after the main source of working-class wealth, which coincidentally funded the Democratic Party: unions. Roughly one in three American workers was a union member, and two-thirds of Americans had the equivalent of a union job because unions set local wage and benefit floors.

One of Reagan’s first actions was to destroy one of only three unions that had supported his presidency, the PATCO group of unionized air traffic controllers.

Shifting that middle class wealth working people had accumulated since the 1940s into the money bins of the elite classes who knew how to properly run a country — after all, Reagan’s men would tell you, they’d been doing it for thousands of years — he cut the top income tax bracket down to 27 percent and drilled so many loopholes in the tax code that today the average American billionaire pays 3.4 percent in income taxes.

He raised taxes on average working people 18 times, ended the deductibility of credit card interest used exclusively by the middle class, and cut Social Security by raising the retirement age to 67 and making its benefits taxable.

Reagan thus kicked off a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the homes and savings accounts of the middle class to the top one percent, a theft that continues to this day. So far just this year, America’s billionaires have added an additional $852 billion to their personal wealth, and much of that was extracted from America’s working class people.

When Reagan started, two-thirds of Americans were unionized or had the equivalent of a union job. Today, because of Reagan’s policies, only about 10 percent of Americans in the private economy are union members.

Eight years ago, in 2015, National Public Radio commemorated the success of Reagan’s efforts with the headline:

“The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class.”

Next, Reagan went after students, cutting federal aid to education by over 25 percent, setting in motion the ongoing destruction of public schools, and creating what is today over $2 trillion in student debt — an obscenity unknown in any other developed country in the world.

Republicans since Reagan have continued his war on working people.

The NAFTA agreement he and GHW Bush negotiated and Clinton signed (along with the GATT and the WTO) have since shipped over 60,000 factories — an estimated 15 million good-paying union jobs — overseas.

George W. Bush initiated a private takeover of Medicare with the Medicare “Advantage” scam that has now trapped half of America’s retired people into plans where insurance companies routinely deny coverage, tests, treatments, and reimbursements. (Real Medicare can’t do that by law and doesn’t put itself between you and your doctor.)

He gave China “Most Favored Nation” trading status, accelerating our nation’s dependence on that dictatorship for pretty much every item you can find in a Walmart or on Amazon. We now can’t build a fighter jet or missile without parts from China, although the real goal was to pit American workers against cheap labor overseas to drive down wages.

Bush’s tax cuts for billionaires and the two wars he lied us into added another $8 trillion (so far) to the US debt, providing Republicans with an ongoing excuse to demand further cuts to social programs benefiting what’s left of the middle class.

And, of course, Trump tripled down on the whole GOP agenda, between his tax cuts, trade policies, gutting federal regulatory agencies that protect workers and the environment, and pitting the two-thirds of Americans who can no longer withstand the shock of an unexpected $400 medical or car repair bill against each other.

“It’s the Black and Brown people out to get you,” he regularly implies in his rants and statements to his mostly all-white audiences; Ron DeSantis adds, “It’s the gays, too!”

He put three ideologues on the Supreme Court who’ve succeeded in kneecapping millions of American women’s ability to participate in the workplace and stand up to men and employers because they’re going to have to stay home and care for babies they didn’t want or expect.

The six Republicans on that Court, meanwhile, continue to drag America down the path Russell Kirk and Lewis Powell set for us, bringing back legal discrimination, empowering employers, supporting cuts to education and ending student loan relief, and making it easier for Republican governors to throw voters in Blue cities off the voting rolls, stick them in eight-hour lines, or otherwise make it hard to vote in the months leading up to elections.

Thus, today’s wreckage of the once-great American middle class litters this country’s economic, political, and physical landscape.

If Kirk’s analysis and predictions had been right, you’d think Republicans could today declare “mission accomplished.” They’ve succeeded in gutting the middle class they thought was so dangerous.

For example, when my Boomer generation was the same average age as the Millennial generation is today, back in 1990, our generation held 21.3% of the nation’s wealth. Louise and I shared in that wealth; although we were still in our 30s, in 1990 we owned a profitable small business (our fourth) and a nice home in suburban Atlanta.

That was, in fact, the “American dream.” It was normal then.

My dad (born 1928), who worked in a tool-and-die shop, was able to buy a house, a new car every two years, and take a two-week vacation every year because the middle class in America before Reagan had a pretty damn good life. He retired in the 1990s with a full pension that let him and my mom travel the world.

Millennials today, in contrast, are about the same number of people as Boomers were in 1990 but hold only 4.6% of the nation’s wealth and, if they’re the same age I was in 1990, they’re most likely struggling to own a home, are deeply in debt, and find it nearly impossible to start a small business.

Yes, you read that right. Boomers in their 30s owned 21.3 of the nation’s wealth; Millennials in their 30s today own 4.6% of the nation’s wealth.

And the story for Zoomers is pretty much the same. As a Bank of America research report noted:

“Like the financial crisis in 2008 to 2009 for millennials, Covid will challenge and impede Gen Z's career and earning potential.”

Similarly, a Stanford University study that looked at Zoomers shows the consequence of 40 years of Republican policies keeping the economy soft:

“[C]ollege graduates who start their working lives during a recession earn less for at least 10 to 15 years than those who graduate during periods of prosperity.”

But the women’s movement, the antiwar movement, the hippies and psychedelic 60s, and the civil rights movement weren’t the dangers to America that Kirk, Goldwater, Reagan, and Buckley believed: instead, they were each moments of inflection and growth toward a more egalitarian and caring nation, just like today’s embrace of multiracialism and gay marriage.

Nonetheless, Republicans are still at it because the project of taking back 80 years of wealth from the middle class on behalf of America’s billionaires has taken on a life of its own.

It’s not, as I asked at the open of this article, that they’re evil (although some clearly are): it’s that Reaganism and then Trump’s subsequent embrace of naked fascism unleashed forces that they can’t control. Kevin McCarthy is essentially helpless, even if he was inclined to do what’s best for the country (and, of course, he isn’t).

Since five Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery in Bellotti and Citizens United — and thus legalized the handouts they themselves have been receiving from billionaires for decades — it’s going to take major and radical action to stop and then reverse the Reagan Revolution.

Rightwing billionaires are now pouring literally billions of often untraceable dollars into every election cycle to keep the gravy train on track, and that dark money goes to the GOP at a 9:1 ratio.

Much of it is coming from the fossil fuel industry and petro-billionaires, dedicated to supporting Republicans who will block any efforts to stop climate change. The momentum is still theirs and, in many ways, growing.

Biden has tried and done a lot: united Republican opposition, however, along with sellouts like Sinema and Manchin, have defeated many of his efforts.

Still, I have a lot of hope.

An entire generation is coming up now — the Zoomers — who see clearly what’s going on, even though they haven’t lived through it. And those of us Boomers who saw every moment of it and understood what was going on (I was born the year Kirk published The Conservative Mind) are increasingly waking up and returning to their political activist 1960s roots.

They may be the Raging Grannies, but they’re getting more and more involved in electoral politics and get-out-the-vote efforts.

The climate crisis is opening the eyes of people who’ve been believing GOP lies about fossil fuels and carbon pollution for decades.

The criminalization of abortion has energized women in a way I don’t think we’ve seen since the 1960s.

Healthcare and Big Pharma ripoffs are pissing Americans off in ways guaranteed to produce a blowback.

Electoral dynamics are changing all across the nation. The Fourth Turning is upon us, says Neil Howe.

If we can just get out enough votes to retake the House, hold the Senate and the White House, and get a few more states to flip like Michigan and Wisconsin have done, there’s considerable hope for the future of this nation.

The Zoomers may be able to lead a rebirth of the American Dream. If enough of us get involved.

Tag, you’re it.

AUSTRALIA

SARDI researchers take ocean ride with endangered seals through 'sea lion cam'

ABC Eyre Peninsula / By Jodie Hamilton

Australian sea lions are taking scientists underwater for the first time thanks to cameras attached to their backs, leaving researchers stunned by the "absolutely astounding" footage.

Key points:

Cameras were fitted to six endangered Australian sea lions in South Australian waters

The video footage revealed diverse feeding grounds, from coral reefs to sandy bottoms and kelp grounds

It also provided evidence that the species uses social learning to pass on foraging techniques to pups


A sea lion, or Neophoca cinerea, was filmed nipping the tail of a bronze whaler shark and swimming through dolphins feeding on baitfish, while the first evidence of mothers teaching their pups to hunt and forage for food was also captured.

South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) Marine Ecosystems lead Professor Simon Goldsworthy said watching the "sea lion cam" footage was like being "right there with the animal".

"You're kind of getting a joy ride on the back of a sea lion, so it's a bit of a rollercoaster sometimes," he said.

"They're zooming very close to the seabed, gliding over the surface.


"There's little canyons and caves that the animals are zooming in and out of."

A sea lion swims through dolphins feeding on a school of bait fish.

(Supplied: SARDI/NESP Marine and Coastal Hub)

Australian sea lions are the rarest seal species in the country's waters, with 82 per cent of the population found off SA and 18 per cent off Western Australia.

Their numbers have declined by about 60 per cent over the past 40 years — decimated by sealers and shark fishery gillnets in the past and now facing threats of marine debris, pollution and disease.
Cameras glued to fur

Six sea lions on two South Australian islands were fitted with cameras to record 12 hours of their life at sea, diving and foraging for food.

The sea lions were sedated while the camera was glued onto their fur, and then sedated again so it could be retrieved when a satellite tracker showed the animal had returned to land three to four days later.

"It's a pretty quick process. We position the camera just behind the shoulders," Professor Goldsworthy said.

The camera [L] and GPS tag are glued onto the fur of a female Australian sea lion.(Supplied: Simon Goldsworthy, SARDI)

He said satellite tags had been used on sea lions for 20 years, so researchers knew some fed close to their colonies while others spent days at sea swimming out to areas of the continental shelf.

But they knew little of the types of habitats critical for the sea lion's survival until the camera project began with two animals at Olive Island near Streaky Bay on Eyre Peninsula in December last year.

Four more were attached with cameras off Seal Bay at Kangaroo Island earlier this year.

"When you're travelling over wafting kelp you really feel like you're right there with the animal," Professor Goldsworthy said.

"Some of the footage we've been getting while they're down there has been absolutely astounding."
Diverse habitats revealed

Professor Goldsworthy said the project had revealed diverse habitats, from animals feeding in algal reefs or seagrass meadows, to deeper high reefs covered in sponges and other invertebrates, to animals feeding on bare sand.

A playful pup interacts with its mother on an eight-hour foraging trip.

(Supplied: SARDI/NESP Marine and Coastal Hub)

"[We've seen] animals feeding on little stingrays called stingarees, lots of cuttlefish, octopus, flathead, small sharks — you name it. They've got a pretty diverse diet," he said.

The project had also recorded evidence of a mother teaching her pup how to forage for food — a theory behind why their pups were nursed for 18 months.

"We've got amazing footage of a mother and pup exploring under ledges and probing under rocks to find food and one amazing bit of footage where the mother grabs a cuttlefish and the pup gets very excited and she brings that up to the surface where they consume it," Professor Goldsworthy said.

"So we now have clear evidence that there is a social component to pups learning where to go to hunt and what habitats to feed in, so it's really opened up our understanding of the amazing ecology of the species."

A sea lion is captured giving this bronze whaler a bite on the tail.

(Supplied: SARDI/NESP Marine and Coastal Hub)

Sea lion cam also documented encounters with other wildlife.

"One female cruised through a group of dolphins feeding in the water column and they had a big ball of sardines all balled up and the sea lion just cruises through and you get a great view of that," Professor Goldsworthy said.


"There's some interesting encounters with sharks where the sea lion gave a big bronze whaler a nip on the tail."

Improving technology

The camera switches on at a certain depth and a computer records depth profile and position using a gimbaled compass, recording the animal's speed and whether it is going up or down or left or right.

"The combination of all these instruments, we get phenomenal detail on what the animal's doing while they're down there," Professor Goldsworthy said.

Australian sea lion pups photographed at Langton Island in SA's Spencer Gulf.(Supplied: Simon Goldsworthy, SARDI)

He said large cumbersome and unsuitable video cameras had been tried before with varying level of success but the new technology was far superior.

"You're … sitting on the back of the animal, getting an animal's perspective as it travels across the sea floor," Professor Goldsworthy said.

"[It records for] 12 hours where we might have several hundred dives.

"It's the best live TV you could watch. It's very entertaining."
A mother's view of her pup swimming over a low reef covered in sponges looking for food.(Supplied: SARDI/NESP Marine Coastal Hub)
Marathon feeding trips

Professor Goldsworthy said the sea lions were at sea for three or four days at a time, during which time they did not sleep and "every dive they're trying to nail fish or squid and cuttlefish".

"It would be like you or I running in an ultra-marathon for two or three days with no sleep and having to eat a banana every minute or two while you're doing it," he said.

"Their capacity to work and consume is just astounding and it's no wonder when they return to the breeding colonies where they nurse their pups they just absolutely flake out on the rocks."
Professor Goldsworthy [C] and Western Eyre Marine Park manager Dirk Holman with Yalata students.(Supplied)

Data has shown the species is still in decline, numbering between 15,000 and 10,000 on islands and at the bottom of the Great Australian Bight cliffs.

Its recovery has been hampered by an 18-month breeding cycle as opposed to the 12-month cycle of all other seal species.

The National Environmental Science Program-funded project is a collaboration between SARDI, the SA Department for Environment and Water, the University of Adelaide, and the Far West Coast Aboriginal Corporation.

The project was showcased with students at Ceduna and Yalata schools as part of NAIDOC celebrations last week.

Sea lions feature in cultural songlines for the Wirangu and Mirning people.

It’s time for buildings to stop using a third of US energy, some states say

Heavy smoke obscures the skyline on Sept. 12, 2020, in Portland, Oregon. 

- Nathan Howard/Getty Images North America/TNS

PORTLAND, Ore. — That building looming on the corner? With a few tweaks, it might help with climate change.

States with big commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are beginning to require that the owners of large buildings track how much energy they use and improve their efficiency. It’s part of a state, local and federal effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions from office buildings, big-box stores, hotels, apartments and other large commercial structures responsible for gulping down energy.

Buildings “just sit there,” said Colorado Democratic state Rep. Cathy Kipp, who helped write the state’s 2021 building performance law, scheduled to take effect later this year. “But you don’t think of them as giving off energy or consuming energy.”

Buildings are one of the five largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado, the state’s energy office estimates. And nationwide, commercial and residential buildings account for 13% of greenhouse gas emissions and 28% of energy consumption, according to federal energy estimates. Buildings rank not far behind the transportation sector, often considered the most obvious source of energy use and planet-heating emissions. In Washington, D.C., buildings account for an estimated 75% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Oregon just became the latest state to join Colorado, Maryland, Washington and the District of Columbia in approving what are known as building performance standards.

Other states, including California, Rhode Island, Minnesota and New York, are considering similar legislation, according to the Institute for Market Transformation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for building efficiency. Many cities, including Boston, New York and St. Louis, have already established their own performance standards for buildings, and have joined a White House-led coalition of cities and states committed to enacting such standards.

In some states, building owners who meet their energy targets early may be eligible for incentive payments.

“How we build is how we live,” Oregon Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber, a Democrat and one of the sponsors of the building performance standards measure, said in a statement. The provision is part of a climate package awaiting the governor’s signature.

In recent years, extreme heat domes, more intense wildfires, ice storms and power outages have made it clear that many of Oregon’s homes, workplaces and energy systems aren’t built to withstand the challenges of climate change, Lieber’s statement said.

Oregon’s proposed standards, passed in late June in the final days of the legislative session, were packaged with other environmental and climate change initiatives aimed at meeting the state’s commitment to greenhouse gas reductions. The package also sets energy efficiency standards for new construction and encourages more energy efficient public buildings.

The state’s new building performance standards would, if signed into law, apply to many commercial buildings larger than 35,000 square feet. In general, the standards call upon buildings to reduce their energy use and cut emissions in line with the state’s climate goals to achieve levels by 2050 that are at least 75% below 1990 levels. Like many states with emission targets, meeting them has proven elusive. Oregon fell short of its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction goals by 13%.

Lieber and other Democratic lawmakers said they hoped passing the building performance standards and other climate legislation would let Oregon tap hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Slow to catch on

In Oregon and beyond, most of the new statewide building performance standards require property owners to begin with an energy audit to benchmark how much energy the building consumes compared with similar structures, and measure emissions. Once big building owners know how much energy they’re using, they can find ways to reduce it, such as by adding insulation and installing more efficient windows, lighting, and heating and air-conditioning systems.

Building performance standards differ from LEED certification, a voluntary rating system demonstrating that a structure meets certain green building and maintenance — and energy efficiency — goals.

The performance standards have been slow to catch on outside of states with ambitious climate goals. In Oregon, the legislation passed largely along party lines, with few Republicans supporting the overall climate package. In Washington, D.C., some building and apartment owners supported the mayor’s proposal to slow enforcement of its new standards, in part because so many commercial building owners face high office vacancy rates.

The standards have broad support from green building groups, however. It’s fairly simple for buildings to meet climate and health standards, said Ashley Haight of the ZERO Coalition, an organization working in Oregon to decarbonize buildings. Solutions include better insulation and more efficient heating and cooling systems, more efficient lighting and windows, and software to control temperature fluctuations and to measure energy use.

“Investing in building energy efficiency is the most cost-efficient way to significantly reduce greenhouse gas pollution,” Haight said. “That’s something that we’re trying to teach everyone all the time, that energy efficiency is the cheapest way to meet our goals.”

Washington state, which passed its Clean Buildings Act in 2019, created performance standards for commercial buildings larger than 50,000 square feet. Mandatory compliance begins in 2026. Seattle recently announced plans to develop its own legislation for commercial and multifamily buildings larger than 20,000 square feet. It’s a standard that could reduce building emissions 27% by 2050 from a 2008 baseline, said Mayor Bruce Harrell.

In Colorado, the building performance standards apply to commercial, multifamily and public buildings larger than 50,000 square feet. The Colorado Energy Office estimates that the standards could help the state meet greenhouse gas reduction targets of 7% by 2026 and 20% by 2030 for the buildings covered in the program.

Maryland’s standards, which apply to buildings 35,000 square feet and larger, are aimed at a 20% reduction in net direct greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and net zero emissions by 2040 for covered buildings.

To imagine a 35,000-square-foot building, picture a 35-unit apartment complex with 1,000-square-foot units. A Walmart Supercenter, at an average of 178,000 square feet, would be five times as big. And a building nearly seven times in size would be the iconic pink U.S. Bancorp Tower in Portland, considered to be the biggest office building in Oregon, is 42 stories tall and 1.2 million square feet.

Oregon’s proposed building performance standards don’t cover agricultural or industrial structures, hospitals or residential buildings, including dorms and some historic buildings. However, many of those building types may still be required to measure and benchmark their energy efficiency as the law goes into effect. And many of the state’s buildings that range in size from 20,000 to 35,000 square feet must measure their efficiency and emissions based on how much electricity, gas, and other fuels a building consumes. Over time as more data becomes available, “smaller” big buildings may be required to fully comply too.

Also, Haight noted, smaller buildings can voluntarily monitor their efficiency and emissions to be eligible for some of the state incentives. The exact amount of the incentives in Oregon have not yet been determined. But in Washington state, for example, building owners that demonstrate early compliance with the state’s program are eligible for a one-time incentive payment of $0.85 per square foot of floor area. Washington has capped its incentive pool at $75 million.

The legislation in Oregon had overwhelming support from environmental groups and some sectors of the construction industry. Even those organizations with concerns were lukewarm in their objections — in part because the standards take effect over multiple years and don’t cover all building sectors, but also because the groups will have an opportunity to shape the rules as they’re written. Oregon’s Department of Energy will oversee the rulemaking that leads to finalized standards by the end of 2024.
A selling point

More efficient buildings can quickly make a difference on emissions, said Cliff Majersik, a senior adviser for policy and programs at the Institute for Market Transformation. They also are cheaper to run, because they have lower utility bills. And they often have better indoor air quality, a critical measure since most people spend 90% of their time inside a building.

Performance standards also can help make some commercial buildings more attractive to potential tenants at a time when there’s a glut of commercial property and empty office districts in many American cities. Many corporate tenants have their own greenhouse gas reduction commitments and “they want to be in buildings that are better for the climate,” Majersik said.

“It makes them more attractive to tenants for a variety of reasons, because the buildings become more comfortable, more productive places to work, better places to live, [with] lower vacancy rates.”

Many states also are developing penalties for buildings that fail to comply with the standards, although most programs allow property owners multiple years to make upgrades. In Oregon, many buildings wouldn’t have to comply until 2030. In Colorado, Kipp said that the state’s aim is to encourage voluntary compliance, not to be forced to fine building owners.

“Just changing the light bulbs out in a large building can have significant savings,” Kipp said. “Companies that do the investment in making these changes, and then get their payback in their energy savings down the road. So there are ways for this to happen that are less expensive, and I think a lot of times it’s just inertia and people not wanting to change.”

2023/07/10
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