Narcity

​Costco Canada Gave Staff A Permanent Pandemic Raise & Now Some Cashiers Make $60K A Year

 AND THAT'S A GOOD THING

Duration: 01:00 

While other stores offered short-term pay increases to frontline employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, Costco Canada has decided to make their pandemic pay raise permanent.

COSTCO IS UNIONIZED THE AGREEMENT WAS NEGOTIATED BETWEEN MANAGEMENT AND UFCW. THE OTHER GROCERS ARE EITHER WITH 

A FAKE UNION OR NON UNION

BONUSES ARE ONE TIME PAY A RAISE IS A RAISE

Race correction in medicine: A fight brewing in America's hospitals

By Jacque Smith and Cassie Spodak, CNN

 Video by Athena Jones, Jessi Esparza and Natalia V. Osipova, CNN
4/26/2021

When she first learned about race correction, Naomi Nkinsi was one of five Black medical students in her class at the University of Washington.

© CNN A web page on UKidney.com illustrates how the eGFR formula uses race to calculate kidney function.

Nkinsi remembers the professor talking about an equation doctors use to measure kidney function. The professor said eGFR equations adjust for several variables, including the patient's age, sex and race. When it comes to race, doctors have only two options: Black or "Other."

© Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

Nkinsi was dumbfounded.

"It was really shocking to me," says Nkinsi, now a third-year medical and masters of public health student, "to come into school and see that not only is there interpersonal racism between patients and physicians ... there's actually racism built into the very algorithms that we use."

© CNN Naomi Nkinsi is a third-year medical and masters of public health student at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has been advocating for the removal of race correction in medicine.

At the heart of a controversy brewing in America's hospitals is a simple belief, medical students say: Math shouldn't be racist. Patients like Nichole Jefferson agree:

The argument over race correction has raised questions about the scientific data doctors rely on to treat people of color. It's attracted the attention of Congress and led to a big lawsuit against the NFL.

What happens next could affect how millions of Americans are treated.


Medicine has never been immune to racism

Carolyn Roberts, a historian of medicine and science at Yale University, says slavery and the American medical system were in a codependent relationship for much of the 19th century and well into the 20th.

"They relied on one another to thrive," Roberts says.

© Getty Images

It was common to test experimental treatments first on Black people so they could be given to White people once proven safe. But when the goal was justifying slavery, doctors published articles alleging substantive physical differences between White and Black bodies — like Dr. Samuel Cartwright's claim in 1851 that Black people have weaker lungs, which is why grueling work in the fields was essential (his words) to their progress.

© Gabe Ramirez/CNN Dr. Neil Powe says by simply removing race from the eGFR equations, "You're taking the data on African Americans, and you're throwing it in the trash."

The effects of Cartwright's falsehood, and others like it, linger today.

In 2016, researchers asked White medical students and residents about 15 alleged differences between Black and White bodies. Forty percent of first-year medical students and 25% of residents said they believed Black people have thicker skin, and 7% of all students and residents surveyed said Black people have less sensitive nerve endings. The doctors-in-training who believed these myths — and they are myths — were less likely to prescribe adequate pain medication to Black patients.

© Richard Heathcote/Getty Images North America/Getty Images

To fight this kind of bias, hospitals urge doctors to rely on objective measures of health. Scientific equations tell physicians everything from how well your kidneys are working to whether or not you should have a natural birth after a C-section. They predict your risk of dying during heart surgery, evaluate brain damage and measure your lung capacity.

But what if these equations are also racially biased?

Race correction is the use of a patient's race in a scientific equation that can influence how they are treated. In other words, some diagnostic algorithms and risk predictor tools adjust or "correct" their results based on a person's race.

© Science & Society Picture Library/Getty Images Dr. Samuel Cartwright developed his own version of a tool called the spirometer. Doctors still use spirometers today, and most include a race correction for Black patients to account for their supposedly shallower breaths.

The New England Journal of Medicine article "Hidden in Plain Sight" includes a partial list of 13 medical equations that use race correction. Take the Vaginal Birth After Cesarean calculator, for example. Doctors use this calculator to predict the likelihood of a successful vaginal delivery after a prior C-section. If you are Black or Hispanic, your score is adjusted to show a lower chance of success. That means your doctor is more likely to encourage another C-section, which could put you at risk for blood loss, infection and a longer recovery period.


Cartwright, the racist doctor from the 1800s, also developed his own version of a tool called the spirometer to measure lung capacity. Doctors still use spirometers today, and most include a race correction for Black patients to account for their supposedly shallower breaths.

Turns out, second-year medical student Carina Seah wryly told CNN, math is as racist as the people who make it.


Race isn't based on biology

The biggest problem with using race in medicine? Race isn't a biological category. It's a social one.

"It's based on this idea that human beings are naturally divided into these big groups called races," says Dorothy Roberts, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who has made challenging race correction in medicine her life's work. "But that's not what race is. Race is a completely invented social category. The very idea that human beings are divided into races is a made-up idea."

Ancestry is biological. Where we come from — or more accurately, who we come from — impacts our DNA. But a patient's skin color isn't always an accurate reflection of their ancestry.

Look at Tiger Woods, Roberts says. Woods coined the term "Cablinasian" to describe his mix of Caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian ancestries. But to many Americans, he's Black.

"You can be half Black and half White in this country and you are Black," says Seah, who is getting her medical degree and a PhD in genetics and genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. "You can be a quarter Black in this country — if you have dark skin, you are Black."

So it can be misleading, Seah says, even dangerous, for doctors to judge a patient's ancestry by glancing at their skin. A patient with a White mother and Black father could have a genetic mutation that typically presents in patients of European ancestry, Seah says, but a doctor may not think to test for it if they only see Black skin.

Video: Can a formula be racist? She says one put her health at risk (CNN)

"You have to ask, how Black is Black enough?" Nkinsi asks. And there's another problem, she says, with using a social construct like race in medicine. "It also puts the blame on the patient, and it puts the blame on the race itself. Like being Black is inherently the cause of these diseases."

An overdue reckoning

After she learned about the eGFR equation in 2018, Nkinsi began asking questions about race correction. She wasn't alone — on social media she found other students struggling with the use of race in medicine. In the spring of 2020, following a first-year physiology lecture, Seah joined the conversation. But the medical profession is nothing if not hierarchical; Nkinsi and Seah say students are encouraged to defer to doctors who have been practicing for decades.

Then on May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis.

His death and the growing momentum around Black Lives Matter helped ignite what Dr. Darshali A. Vyas calls an "overdue reckoning" in the medical community around race and race correction. A few institutions had already taken steps to remove race from the eGFR equation. Students across the country demanded more, and hospitals began to listen.

Four days after Floyd's death, the University of Washington announced it was removing race correction from the eGFR equation. In June, the Boston-based hospital system Mass General Brigham where Vyas is a second-year Internal Medicine resident followed suit. Seah and a fellow student at Mount Sinai, Paloma Orozco Scott, started an online petition and collected over 1600 signatures asking their hospital to do the same.

Studies show removing race from the eGFR equation will change how patients at those hospitals are treated. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Penn Medicine estimated up to one in every three Black patients with kidney disease would have been reclassified if the race multiplier wasn't applied in earlier calculations, with a quarter going from stage 3 to stage 4 CKD (Chronic Kidney Disease).

That reclassification is good and bad, says Dr. Neil Powe, chief of medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Black patients newly diagnosed with kidney disease will be able to see specialists who can devise better treatment plans. And more patients will be placed on kidney transplant lists.

On the flip side, Powe says, more African Americans diagnosed with kidney disease means fewer who are eligible to donate kidneys, when there's already a shortage. And a kidney disease diagnosis can change everything from a patient's diabetes medication to their life insurance costs.

Powe worries simply eliminating race from these equations is a knee-jerk response — one that may exacerbate health disparities instead of solve them. For too long, Powe says, doctors had to fight for diversity in medical studies.

The most recent eGFR equation, known as the CKD-EPI equation, was developed using data pooled from 26 studies, which included almost 3,000 patients who self-identified as Black. Researchers found the equation they were developing was more accurate for Black patients when it was adjusted by a factor of about 1.2. They didn't determine exactly what was causing the difference in Black patients, but their conclusion is supported by other research that links Black race and African ancestry with higher levels of creatinine, a waste product filtered by the kidneys.

Put simply: In the eGFR equation, researchers used race as a substitute for an unknown factor because they think that factor is more common in people of African descent.

Last August, Vyas co-authored the "Hidden in Plain Sight" article about race correction. Vyas says most of the equations she wrote about were developed in a similar way to the eGFR formula: Researchers found Black people were more or less likely to have certain outcomes and decided race was worth including in the final equation, often without knowing the real cause of the link.

"When you go back to the original studies that validated (these equations), a lot of them did not provide any sort of rationale for why they include race, which I think is appalling." That's what's most concerning, Vyas says -- "how willing we are to believe that race is relevant in these ways."

Vyas is clear she isn't calling for race-blind medicine. Physicians cannot ignore structural racism, she says, and the impact it has on patients' health.

Powe has been studying the racial disparities in kidney disease for more than 30 years. He can spout the statistics easily: Black people are three times more likely to suffer from kidney failure, and make up more than 35% of patients on dialysis in the US. The eGFR equation, he says, did not cause these disparities — they existed long before the formula.

"We want to cure disparities, let's go after the things that really matter, some of which may be racist," he says. "But to put all our stock and think that the equation is causing this is just wrong because it didn't create those."

In discussions about removing race correction, Powe likes to pose a question: Instead of normalizing to the "Other" group in the eGFR equation, as many of these hospitals are doing, why don't we give everyone the value assigned to Black people? By ignoring the differences researchers saw, he says, "You're taking the data on African Americans, and you're throwing it in the trash."

Powe is co-chair of a joint task force set up by the National Kidney Foundation and the American Society of Nephrology to look at the use of race in eGFR equations. The leaders of both organizations have publicly stated race should not be included in equations used to estimate kidney function. On April 9, the task force released an interim report that outlined the challenges in identifying and implementing a new equation that's representative of all groups. The group is expected to issue its final recommendations for hospitals this summer.


The multi-million dollar lawsuit

Race correction is used to assess the kidneys and the lungs. What about the brain?

In 2013, the NFL settled a class-action lawsuit brought by thousands of former players and their families that accused the league of concealing what it knew about the dangers of concussions. The NFL agreed to pay $765 million, without admitting fault, to fund medical exams and compensate players for concussion-related health issues, among other things. Then in 2020, two retired players sued the NFL for allegedly discriminating against Black players who submitted claims in that settlement.

The players, Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry, said the NFL race-corrected their neurological exams, which prevented them from being compensated.

According to court documents, former NFL players being evaluated for neurocognitive impairment were assumed to have started with worse cognitive function if they were Black. So if a Black player and a White player received the exact same scores on a battery of thinking and memory tests, the Black player would appear to have suffered less impairment. And therefore, the lawsuit stated, would be less likely to qualify for a payout.

Race correction is common in neuropsychology using something called Heaton norms, says Katherine Possin, an associate professor at the University of California San Francisco. Heaton norms are essentially benchmark average scores on cognitive tests.

Here's how it works: To measure the impact of a concussion (or multiple concussions over time), doctors compare how well the patient's brain works now to how well it worked before.

"The best way to get that baseline was to test you 10 years ago, but that's not something we obviously have for many people," Possin says. So doctors estimate your "before" abilities using an average score from a group of healthy individuals, and adjust that score for demographic factors known to affect brain function, like your age.

Heaton norms adjust for race, Possin says, because race has been linked in studies to lower cognitive scores. To be clear, that's not because of any biological differences in Black and White brains, she says; it's because of social factors like education and poverty that can impact cognitive development. And this is where the big problem lies.

In early March, a judge in Pennsylvania dismissed the players' lawsuit and ordered a mediator to address concerns about how race correction was being used. In a statement to CNN, the NFL said there is no merit to the players' claim of discrimination, but it is committed to helping find alternative testing techniques that do not employ race-based norms.

The NFL case, Possin wrote in JAMA, has "exposed a major weakness in the field of neuropsychology: the use of race-adjusted norms as a crude proxy for lifelong social experience."

This happens in nearly every field of medicine. Race is not only used as a poor substitute for genetics and ancestry, it's used as a substitute for access to health care, or lifestyle factors like diet and exercise, socioeconomic status and education. It's no secret that racial disparities exist in all of these. But there's a danger in using race to talk about them, Yale historian Carolyn Roberts says.

We know, for example, that Black Americans have been disproportionally affected by Covid-19. But it's not because Black bodies respond differently to the virus. It's because, as Dr. Anthony Fauci has noted, a disproportionate number of Black people have jobs that put them at higher risk and have less access to quality health care. "What are we making scientific and biological when it actually isn't?" Roberts asks.

Vyas says using race as a proxy for these disparities in clinical algorithms can also create a vicious cycle.

"There's a risk there, we argue, of simply building these into the system and almost accepting them as fact instead of focusing on really addressing the root causes," Vyas says. "If we systematize these existing disparities ... we risk ensuring that these trends will simply continue."


Change on the horizon

Nearly everyone on both sides of the race correction controversy agrees that race isn't an accurate, biological measure. Yet doctors and researchers continue to use it as a substitute. Math shouldn't be racist, Nkinsi says, and it shouldn't be lazy.

"We're saying that we know that this race-based medicine is wrong, but we're going to keep doing it because we simply don't have the will or the imagination or the creativity to think of something better," Nkinsi says. "That is a slap in the face."

Shortly after Vyas' article published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the House Ways and Means Committee sent letters to several professional medical societies requesting information on the misuse of race in clinical algorithms. In response to the lawmakers' request, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is also gathering information on the use of race-based algorithms in medicine. Recently, a note appeared on the Maternal Fetal Medicine Units Network's website for the Vaginal Birth After Cesarean equation — a new calculator that doesn't include race and ethnicity is being developed.

Dorothy Roberts is excited to see change on the horizon. But she's also a bit frustrated. The harm caused by race correction is something she's been trying to tell doctors about for years.

"I've taught so many audiences about the meaning of race and the history of racism in America and the audiences I get the most resistance from are doctors," Roberts says. "They're offended that there would be any suggestion that what they do is racist."

Nkinsi and Seah both encountered opposition from colleagues in their fight to change the eGFR equation. Several doctors interviewed for this story argued the change in a race-corrected scores is so small, it wouldn't change clinical decisions.

If that's the case, Vyas wonders, why include race at all?

"It all comes from the desire for one to dominate another group and justify it," says Roberts. "In the past, it was slavery, but the same kinds of justifications work today to explain away all the continued racial inequality that we see in America... It is mass incarceration. It's huge gaps in health. It's huge differences in income and wealth."

It's easier, she says, to believe these are innate biological differences than to address the structural racism that caused them

Unsafe bedding still causes 3 out of 4 unexpected infant deaths, CDC finds

IN MEDIEVAL TIMES IT WAS THE SWADLING 

THAT SMOTHERED BABIES

Erika Edwards 19 hrs 

A majority of unexpected deaths among young babies still involve soft bedding, despite decades of safe-sleep messaging targeting new parents, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

© Provided by NBC News

The research, published Tuesday in the journal Pediatrics, finds that blankets, pillows, crib bumpers, stuffed animals and sleep surfaces other than cribs remain leading causes of accidental suffocation among babies 4 months old and younger.

The study analyzed data from 4,929 cases of sudden unexpected infant death, or SUID, from 2011 to 2017. Soft bedding was associated with 72 percent of the cases. Very young infants are unable to move away from suffocation hazards that impair their ability to breathe.

SUID is the sudden unexpected death of a baby under age 1. It includes SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, as well as accidental suffocation in sleep environments.

"We're also talking about infants being placed on surfaces other than a bassinet or crib — a couch, a recliner or an adult bed," said the study's author, Sharyn Parks, senior epidemiologist at the CDC's Division of Reproductive Health. "We're seeing babies who are dying in all of those circumstances."

Just 1 percent of the deaths analyzed were confirmed as having been unexplained without any soft bedding or other unsafe sleep surfaces. Factors for the other 27 percent couldn't be determined because of insufficient information.

If possible, keep the baby's crib in the caregiver's bedroom for at least six months, preferably until the baby is 1 year old.

SUID cases declined rapidly in the mid-1990s, thanks to a massive public health campaign called "Back to Sleep," which encouraged new parents to put newborns on their backs to sleep, rather than on their stomachs.

When the campaign began in 1994, nearly 4,700 babies had died of sudden unexpected death the previous year. By 2010, the number of such deaths had been cut in half, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Since then, the gains have stalled. The CDC now reports that up to 3,500 babies die of SUID every year in the U.S.

"We have not been able to engage our families effectively," said Dr. Sunah Hwang, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a neonatologist at Children's Hospital Colorado. Hwang was not part of the CDC study.

She suggested that the time to talk with parents about safe sleep practices should be before a baby is born. "We've got to be having this conversation early in the prenatal period. We have to start asking families: 'What is your sleep plan? What sort of cribs or pack-n-plays are you considering?'

"Too often, we think it's a conversation for after the baby's born," Hwang said. "At that time, it's too late."

What's more, the conversations may need to be tailored to certain groups with higher rates of SUID.

"We consistently see the highest rates among American Indian and Alaskan Native populations, followed fairly closely by the African American population," Parks said. "We definitely want to figure out ways to better reach those populations and provide support."

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants go to sleep on their backs on firm, flat surfaces that are free of any pillows, blankets, toys and crib bumpers, which are soft padding attachments to the perimeters of babies' beds.

Studies have also shown that the use of pacifiers can reduce the risk for sudden infant death. Pacifiers should not be attached to clothing or toys, experts say.

"Also, if possible, keep the baby's crib in the caregiver's bedroom for at least six months, preferably until the baby is 1 year old," Parks said.

Follow NBC HEALTH on Twitter & Facebook.

DC settles lawsuit over Trump inauguration mass arrests
Mychael Schnell
THE HILL

4/26/2021

The Washington, D.C., government settled two lawsuits on Monday over mass arrests made during former President Trump's inauguration in 2017.

© Greg Nash DC settles lawsuit over Trump inauguration mass arrests

D.C. and the organizations that brought the lawsuits filed court papers stating that the city government will pay $1.6 million to settle both cases, according to a press release from the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) D.C. chapter.

The two lawsuits claimed that more than 200 protesters, many of whom did not violate any laws, were rounded up and detained by officers after a small number of demonstrators vandalized and damaged property.


According to the ACLU of D.C., the individuals detained by police were held for up to 16 hours without access to food, water or restrooms. Police also deployed pepper spray, flash-bang grenades, concussion grenades and stingballs against the protesters.

The lawsuits charged that Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers violated the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments in addition to D.C. law.

One of the lawsuits was brought by the ACLU of D.C. on behalf of four demonstrators, including the 10-year-old son of a woman, a photojournalist and a legal observer. The case settled for $605,000.

The other suit was a class-action lawsuit filed by attorney Jeffrey Light on behalf of more than 100 demonstrators, which, subject to final approval by the court, settled for $995,000.

The Hill reached out to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser's office for comment.

According to The Washington Post, a total of 234 people were arrested in the 2017 Inauguration Day protests near Franklin Square at 12th and L streets NW. Of the group, only 21 pled guilty, which were the only convictions that resulted from the arrests.

The charges against the other individuals were ultimately dropped after prosecutors in initial trials could not connect the defendants to specific damage, the Post reported.

In additional to the financial settlement, as part of the ACLU of D.C.'s case, the MPD will issue a formal directive to modify the procedures for processing arrestees in an effort to avoid having them wait long periods for necessities such as restroom access and water.

"It speaks volumes that the District has chosen to settle rather than defend MPD's obviously unconstitutional actions in court," Light said in a statement.

"Today's settlements provide some measure of compensation for all the people who were unconstitutionally arrested and confined for exercising their rights on Inauguration Day four years ago," he added.

EU
Leaked AI regulation: What it means for the U.S.

Greg Nichols 

ZDNET 4/26/2021


Given the EU's leaked plans for AI regulation, which calls for a ban on specific types of AI systems, such as those that directly track individuals and create social credit scores, the topic of regulation in the U.S. has been on people's minds. AI is coming, so what can regulators do—and what should they absolutely not do—to protect citizens and consumers while also encouraging technological development?

© Provided by ZDNet

For insights I reached out to Haniyeh Mahmoudian, Ph.D., Global AI Ethicist at DataRobot, a Boston-based company that enables customers to create and validate machine learning models from their data. As an AI bias and ethics expert, Haniyeh is well-placed to speak about the new regulations and what they means for the U.S., as well as the risks inherent in unchecked AI and what actions should be taken by regulators going forward.


GN: What are the biggest takeaways from the EU's leaked plans for AI regulation? What surprised you?

Haniyeh Mahmoudian: Speaking on side of practitioners, one thing we really appreciate about leaked draft is the assistance in clearing up some ambiguity. In the absence of legislation, there's been a lot of ambiguity on defining use cases that will impact individuals' lives, or what we call high-risk use cases. Having those high risk use cases defined is really useful, and it's important to call out that they recognize it's an evolving list as technology continues to advance.

The auditing requirement of the regulation was unexpected but not surprising. Here at DataRobot we have implemented frameworks and processes around risk and impact assessment that is applied to the projects we are working on.

GN: Why is the EU getting so serious about regulation? What are the big concerns and the big goals, based on your understanding of the plan?

Haniyeh Mahmoudian: The EU has always been serious about tech regulations and protecting its citizens from data victimization, and already has a strong regulatory foundation in place with GDPR to expand upon into AI. The driving factor is one of protection for citizens, even at the expense of economic prosperity that could be enabled by some of these technologies.

GN: Where is the U.S. with regards to considering AI regulation? Can you briefly explain the range of opinions on the matter from various constituencies/stakeholders?

Haniyeh Mahmoudian: The U.S. is balancing multiple priorities and stakeholders while working towards legislation that ensures the technology is built with our democratic ideals in mind. The U.S. Congress has proposed legislation like the Algorithmic Accountability Act, which would move our current state more towards the EU's regulations—which may be the most robust in the world. There are also institutions like the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence that have stated that AI is needed as a security concern. Aside from government entities, we also know that organizations see AI as an economic catalyst—which means regulators need to strike the right balance between ensuring ethical, fair, and unbiased AI without stifling innovation.

GN: What should the U.S. take away from the EU plan? Anything U.S. regulators should do differently, in your opinion?

Haniyeh Mahmoudian: It's important that regulations focus on making sure the technology is built with certain societal ideals and ethics in mind, enabling organizations to leverage AI to the world's benefit in an equitable, ethical, and explainable manner. The EU's new regulations show great promise by instantiating a collaborative committee to evaluate the technology and define 'high-risk AI' uses as the technology evolves. As previously stated, the regulations also clear up some ambiguity around what is defined as high risk AI – something that would be very valuable in the U.S. Some may consider the EU regulations to be too prescriptive. Additionally, some of the requirements may hinder small businesses and start-ups. It's certainly a balance we have to strike.

GN: What's at stake if we don't regulate AI soon? What's a realistic timeline for regulation within the U.S.?

Haniyeh Mahmoudian: I do think we need to open our minds to some regulation in the space because of the humanistic impact of these systems. In a company, a biased hiring manager, while unethical, has a limited impact since it is a single person and a single company. However, an AI-enabled system used in the same hiring situation has the potential to really do harm to both the company and the applicants. The same is true for use cases in government or public safety – there's a risk that if we don't regulate, there could be real harm done to people. At the same time, we also have to remember that AI can be used to help with problems facing our very existence—such as food insecurity, climate change, and healthcare. It's certainly a balance to figure out how much regulation is too much or too little.

As mentioned before, the U.S. has already moved towards the regulations and there have been legislations proposed by Congress. We are moving in the right direction but it's important to ensure the technology is built based on our ideals.

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Washington becomes the first state to ensure tenants at risk of eviction have legal representation

asheffey@businessinsider.com (Ayelet Sheffey) 
4/2/2021

© Provided by Business Insider Cars display signs requesting to stop evictions as protesters supporting the rent freeze gather in Chinatown on August 10, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images

Washington became the first state to ensure evicted tenants receive a right to counsel.
Tenants with incomes 200% or below the federal poverty line are eligible to get free legal aid.

Biden extended the eviction ban through June 30, but some courts have overruled it, putting renters at risk.

President Joe Biden extended the ban on evictions through the end of June, but some states' courts have overruled it, and evictions are looming for many renters across the country

Washington just became the first state to ensure that if its residents do get evicted, they will have access to legal aid.

On Thursday, the Seattle Times reported that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed a right to counsel guarantee as part of a larger bill aimed at preventing evictions once the moratorium expires. The law ensures that tenants who receive public assistance or who have incomes 200% of the federal poverty level or below - $25,760 annually for individuals - will have free access to public attorneys when faced with eviction.

"In America, 5% or less of tenants have access to a lawyer in eviction proceedings, and that is what is making this whole situation such a problem," John Pollock, coordinator of the advocacy group National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, told Insider. "If every tenant had a lawyer, the landlords would not be trying to do half of the things they're doing."

An Inslee spokesperson told the Seattle Times that there are no plans to issue a new statewide eviction moratorium, and Biden has yet to comment on the matter.

According to the US Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, the pandemic has caused 160,000 Washington households to be behind on rent as of March, and 10 million people nationwide are behind on rent payments.

Insider reported on April 8 that since Biden extended the eviction ban, courts in Texas, Ohio, and Tennessee have ruled against it, putting a strain on the Treasury Department to deliver $50 billion in emergency housing aid before courts starting processing evictions again.

Several cities, including Seattle, have already passed right to counsel laws, and Philadelphia enacted a ruling at the end of March that said landlords are required to apply to the city's rental assistance program and enroll in the Eviction Diversion Program before they can file an eviction in court.

Lawmakers are also keeping an eye on evictions. Rep. Maxine Waters of California questioned Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen over the state-court rulings at a hearing in March, and said she wants the Treasury Department to look into how to "straighten out this confusion and to help stabilize this rental assistance."
Read the original article on Business Insider

Ottawa's move to regulate video posts on YouTube and social media called 'assault' on free speech

Anja Karadeglija 

POPSTMEDIA

4/26/2021

The Liberal-dominated House of Commons Heritage committee has cleared the way for the federal government to regulate video content on internet social media, such as YouTube, the same way it regulates national broadcasting, under a new amendment made to a bill updating the Broadcasting Act.

© Provided by National Post Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault.

Critics denounced the move to give the country’s broadcast regulator the ability to oversee user-generated content, and said it amounted to an attack on the free expression of Canadians, particularly in light of Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s recent plans to give Ottawa power to order take-downs of online content it deems objectionable.

“Granting a government agency authority over legal user generated content — particularly when backed up by the government’s musings about taking down websites — doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy,” said Peter Menzies, a former commissioner of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

“It’s difficult to contemplate the levels of moral hubris, incompetence or both that would lead people to believe such an infringement of rights is justifiable,” said Menzies.

Last Friday afternoon, MPs on the committee made changes to the government’s bill updating the Broadcasting Act. Bill C-10 was introduced by Guilbeault in November, to clarify the CRTC’s ability to regulate TV and movie streaming services, such as Netflix. The bill doesn’t include details of what that regulation will look like, but once the bill passes the government plans to instruct the CRTC to draft rules requiring online services to contribute to and promote Canadian content.

When the Liberal government introduced C-10, user-generated content, such as an individual Canadian posting a YouTube video or a TikTok clip, was originally exempted. But that exclusion for user content was removed by committee MPs on Friday.

CRTC will have nine months to force Netflix to start contributing to Canadian content

A spokesperson for Guilbeault said the government’s intent behind removing the clause was primarily to allow for better regulation of music streaming on social media platforms, such as playlists of songs posted online. Guilbeault’s press secretary, Camille Gagné-Raynauld, said C-10 “specifically targets professional series, films, and music,” and said there are safeguards in place, including that individual Canadians wouldn’t be considered broadcasters under the legislation.

University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist said even if the bill means Canadian users won’t have to report to the CRTC themselves, their online videos on platforms like TikTok or YouTube “would be treated as a program subject to Canada’s broadcast regulator.”

That is an infringement of Canadians’ rights, Geist said. “In a free, democratic society we don’t subject basic speech to regulation in this way. Of course there are limits to what people can say, but the idea that a broadcast regulator has any role to play in basic speech is, I think, anathema to free and democratic society where freedom of expression is viewed as one of the foundational freedoms.”

The bill is only one piece of a multi-pronged effort by the Liberal government to impose new rules on Big Tech and other online companies. Other Liberal initiatives include a separate bill targeting online hate content set to be introduced shortly. Guilbeault has said the government would consider blocking content as a last-resort option. The government has also proposed blocking websites hosting copyright-infringing content as part of another consultation on updating copyright law.

But critics say that if the government’s amendment to Bill C-10 is really meant to control the online posting of unlicensed music, TV and movies, a copyright approach would be the proper mechanism.

“That is a copyright law issue,” said Emily Laidlaw, Canada research chair in cybersecurity law at the University of Calgary. The way C-10 is worded is also overly broad, she said, because it captures any user-generated “programs.”

If the intent is to use the Broadcasting Act to protect copyrights owned by corporate studios, Geist said “it’s disappointing to see the government prioritize lobbying pressure from the music industry over the free-speech interests of millions of Canadians.”

Conservative MP and heritage critic Alain Rayes put out a statement Monday criticizing the amendment, saying his party would “continue to stand up for the freedoms of Canadians who post their content online and oppose C-10 at every stage of the legislative process.”

Even if the CRTC doesn’t follow through with its new powers and chooses not to implement any regulations covering user-generated content, the fact that the law would now enable the regulator to do so is problematic, said Menzies.

“They would still hold the hammer of legislative power over everyone’s head and that would intimidate free expression. Even without conditions, people would still be speaking with the CRTC’s permission,” Menzies said.

Cara Zwibel, director of the fundamental freedoms programs at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said that even if the CRTC isn’t currently interested in putting specific regulations on user-generated content in place, the legislation creates the potential for Ottawa to do so later.

“With legislation when you open up a regulatory door, even if you don’t step though it, you’ve opened up that door for any future governments to step through,” she said.

What It’s Actually Going To Take For Universal Child Care To Happen

Nora Loreto 

CHATELAINE THE CANADIAN JOURNAL FOR FEMINIST HOMEMAKERS

4/26/2021

© Provided by Chatelaine A group of preschool students is sitting with their legs crossed on the floor in their classroom. The mixed-race female teacher is sitting on the floor facing the children. The happy kids are smiling and following the teacher's instructions. They have their arms raised in the air.
(Photo: iStock)

I’ve never purchased a car, but when I registered my 10-month old twins for daycare, I got the rush that must come with buying one. I got out my chequebook, calculated what $90 per day for a year would equal and then divided it by months. It was the instalment plan, but for babies.

Because I live in Quebec, once a spot was available at a publicly-funded daycare, the price dropped from $45 per day per child to just $7.30. It took two years for two public spots to open up, though it usually takes less time to find a spot for a single toddler. But while my kids were in private care, I received several thousand dollars back at tax time thanks to Quebec’s child care tax refunds. Not ideal, but better than in most places in Canada.

Feminists and parents alike have long called for a public child care system in Canada and with Budget 2021, Canada is closer than it ever has been to having one. The Liberals have promised to create a $10 per day public daycare system, where half the cost would be paid for by each province.

The program wouldn’t start for at least five years. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland told CBC’s The Current that the federal government needs time to build a program with the provinces and territories. She’s right to expect that it will take time to convince the provinces to get on board with the Liberals’ plan. Provinces notoriously don’t like being told where to spend their money, even if it’s on a measure that’s as economically necessary and popular as childcare.

But creating a new social program as big as public child care cannot happen without the help of a social movement. It took both decades of organizing by feminists and the right feminist leader in government to build Quebec’s $5 per day (now $8.50 per day) daycare system. It would never have happened if feminists had not created the popular support for the system among Quebecers throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and if former Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois had not made it her mission to create the system, officially introduced on January 23, 1997 and passed into law later that year.

It’s clear to me that feminism has never been more popular in Canada, but the feminist movement is weak. There are few opportunities for feminists to get involved and push issues forward, and little common understanding about the role that social movement forces play in changing public policy. For Freeland’s child care plan to ever see the light of day, she is going to need a movement that pushes it in every province and territory. Freeland herself also needs to be pushed to go further, both through an oppositional approach alongside the NDP and Green Party, and by placing significant pressure on the Liberals to actually carry through with this promise.

This means, first and foremost, creating a united network of social support for this program, province by province—an undertaking nearly as immense as public child care itself. To do so requires events and demonstrations, letters to the editor and public education sessions. It also requires that local organizing committees understand their local context: what are average child care fees, how will this new program improve life for new parents, and what will this system look like when implemented? These groups will also need to push hard on provincial governments, to secure their commitment and cooperation to fund half the program. Without their support, this program cannot be implemented.

Then, there is the pressure that must be sustained on all political parties. The Conservatives and each of their provincial branches need to feel like if they don’t support this, they will lose the next election. The Liberals need to be forced to do what they promise and not kick this plan down the road, turning it into an election promise alone. And the NDP and Greens need to be pushed to promise to take this idea further. Rather than $10 per day, these parties need to call for free child care, in the same way that children aged four to 18 are educated for free.

This will require advocacy from a coalition that currently does not exist in Canada. Sure, there are organizations that have long fought for child care, but there needs to be a ‘rapport des forces,’ something that brings together groups and individuals who are ready to fight to make this program a reality.

I look to the migrant justice movement for an example of how to bring together groups doing similar work, all across Canada, as an example to coordinate collective action. Through the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, dozens of support groups, unions, collectives and migrant workers themselves come together to act in a united voice at the federal level. Each group continues to do the service and advocacy work that they have always done, while they are able to coordinate their demands to put concerted pressure on the federal government.

This coordination has made the migrant justice movement one of the most effective and organized in Canada. It is not a coincidence that of all the injustices experienced during this pandemic, it’s been migrant workers’ rights who have seen some of the biggest victories, like priority COVID testing for seasonal migrant workers and changes to permanent residence that will expand who is eligible to apply (and yes, there is far more still to do).

To pressure the Liberals to make this child care promise a reality, feminists should look to this model and organize under a federated structure with the specific goal of bringing the promise to life. Whether anchored by an organization like the Canadian Child Care Federation, or spearheaded by a group of child care leaders, it’s the only way it can happen. Without it, Freeland’s budget will go the way of all the other child care promises before: score some quick political points while in the long-run, families find themselves paying for a Honda Civic just to make sure that their kids have somewhere to go during the day.

Could the World Ever Run Entirely on Renewable Energy?

Daniel Kolitz 

4/26/2021


This week’s question—could the world ever run entirely on renewable energy?—is shadowed by a much larger one: Namely, will politicians and powerful forces of delay like Big Oil ever allow the world to run entirely on renewable energy? For the most part, we have put that larger question aside for this installment; the experts below are interested primarily in whether it’s feasible.

Could the World Ever Run Entirely on Renewable Energy?

To not switch to renewables in the very near future would, we know, summon a host of awful consequences. Unchecked carbon emissions would make vast swaths of the planet uninhabitable by century’s end; survivors of the heat-apocalypse would spend their days fortifying little hutments, or surgically excising mold from rotten squirrel meat. This is not the future we want—which is why planning for a renewable transition, and ensuring we bring it off, is so important. Hard as it might be, it’s worth setting aside your doomy visions of the future to consider, for a moment, what we can actually achieve. For this week’s Giz Asks, we’ve assembled a panel of experts to discuss whether the world could ever run entirely on renewable energy—and what it would take to get there.

Mark Z. Jacobson

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program, Stanford University, and the author of 100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything


My team and I have been studying whether the world can run entirely on clean renewable energy since about 2008, and we’ve concluded, in over a dozen studies, that it is absolutely possible. And when I say clean renewable energy, I mean just wind and water and solar power—onshore and offshore wind, solar panels on rooftops, concentrated solar power, geothermal power, etc. We don’t include biomass or bioenergy or any type of biofuel, because it’s not clean—you burn it, and it usually takes up large amounts of land. We also don’t include fossil fuels, or carbon capture, or direct air capture, or nuclear power, as we consider all of these things to have opportunity costs. We’ve done calculations in 143 countries representing 99.7% of all emissions worldwide, and we’ve found that it is possible to power all of these countries with just wind, water and solar, plus storage electricity, heat storage, cold storage and hydrogen storage. The idea, really, is to electrify everything, and to combine the electricity with wind, water and solar.

There are four major energy sectors: electricity, transportation, buildings, and industry. For transportation, we’d go with electrical vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. For buildings, all heating and cooling would be done with electric heat pumps; water heating would be done with electric heat pumps; stoves would be induction cooktops. It turns out that when you do this, you reduce power demand worldwide by about 57%, because of the efficiency of electricity over combustion. When you electrify everything, you reduce demand, but you’re also eliminating all of the energy that goes into mining, transporting, and refining fossil fuels and uranium, which make up 12% of all energy worldwide. You end up eliminating up to 7 million air pollution deaths per year that are linked to fossil fuel and biofuel combustion; you eliminate the emissions associated with global warming; and you provide energy security and stability. Because you’re using 57% less energy, your costs go down at least 57%, but in fact go down much more, because wind and solar, the cheapest forms of electricity today, are half the cost of gas. Cost per energy unit, accordingly, goes down by over 60%. And that’s not to mention money saved on health costs and climate costs. Factoring that in, expenditure goes down about 90% compared with business as usual, which is mostly fossil fuels.

The bottom line is that we’re confident that, with current technologies, we can transition the world to solve these problems. It does take political will, but it’s feasible pretty much everywhere and is already starting to happen—61 countries now have 100% renewable; energy laws; 13 states in the U.S. have laws or executive orders; 180 U.S. cities and 300 worldwide have laws. It’s a growing movement. A lot more needs to be done, but the public is behind it. We have popular support for costs coming down through renewables.

“...it is absolutely possible.”
Emily Grubert

Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering, Construction and Infrastructure Systems Engineering, and Sustainable Communities, Georgia Tech


I think the answer is yes, but we have to design the systems to make that possible. Right now, we don’t have a system that’s designed to be fully renewable energy, so we often see weaknesses in that system, because we haven’t had to assume that it’s purely renewable. But we can absolutely design systems that will allow us to run full renewable energy.

At some level, if you really think about human existence historically, we were running on renewable energy for a very long time. The question is: What do we want from our energy systems? Mostly, we have to think about how the supply and demand sides of an energy system fit together, and then we need to think carefully about some of the parameters we want our system to deliver. What should it look like in terms of reliability? What should it look like in terms of cost? What should it look like in terms of environmental characteristics? You probably can’t always get the lowest possible cost for the highest possible social/environmental standards, or the highest possible reliability standards, so there can be some tradeoffs—but that’s true of the fossil-based system as well.

I think we will eventually get there, and that we need to be very thoughtful about how we push ourselves in that direction. What we need is a shared social understanding of what our overall priorities are. Is that ‘we need to avoid climate change?’ Is it ‘we need to actually make sure that we’re providing safe energy systems to ourselves?’ But in terms of what happens on the ground, I think a lot of this comes down to regulators, national standards, international agreements, that sort of thing.

“At some level, if you really think about human existence historically, we were running on renewable energy for a very long time.”
Sarah Johnston

Assistant Professor, Agriculture and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research interests include industrial organization and energy and environmental economics


Yes, but we will still need some technological advancement to get there. We already have the technology to cost-effectively produce massive amounts of electricity from renewable resources. Yet, we currently do not have much ability to store this electricity for times when it is not sunny or windy. Current battery storage systems are improving, but can only provide electricity for hours, not days. So I think technological advancement in terms of storage will be key. Another option is to figure out how to economically transform electricity from renewables into other forms of energy that can be stored. We can use electrolysis to convert it into hydrogen, but this is still expensive, so that’s another margin on which technological progress could help. Looking at the progress in the last 20 years, I am optimistic that we will get there.

I think another interesting question is, should 100% be the goal? A key principle of economics is increasing marginal costs. In transitioning away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy, we will (hopefully) make the lowest cost changes first. Currently, this means transitioning electricity generation from fossil fuel sources to renewables. Next, it might mean replacing gas-powered vehicles with electric vehicles. As we are using fossil fuels less and less, the actions we must take to replace them with renewables will get more costly. For example, to replace natural gas heat with electric heat for homes in cold climates, we would have to pay to retrofit tens of millions of homes with electric heat pump systems that currently cost far more to purchase and install than a natural gas furnace. So while the impact on climate change of going from 99% renewable energy to 100% renewable energy may be similar to the impact of going from 50% to 51%, the incremental cost could be orders of magnitude greater. I think this logic makes it important not to get too fixated on 100% targets.

“Yes, but we will still need some technological advancement to get there.”
Steven Davis

Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine


Yes, it’s possible we’ll meet all our energy demands with renewable sources, but there are still some techno-economic challenges if the share of variable sources like wind and solar gets really high, like say >80%. That’s because those sources keep their own schedules that don’t always align with the timing of our demands, and we haven’t figured out a sufficiently cheap and scalable way of storing really large quantities of energy. Other renewable sources of energy like hydroelectricity, geothermal, or biomass may help, but often face their own, different challenges of sustainability. I therefore think making renewable fuels could be a key to affording an all-renewable energy system. For example, some of our recent work shows that even though current technologies for converting renewable electricity to fuel and back are expensive, they’d already make an otherwise-all-solar-and-wind electricity system cheaper.

Brian Kahn contributed reporting for this story.

Do you have a burning question for Giz Asks? Email us at tipbox@gizmodo.com.

Avoiding 'carbon colonialism': Developing nations can't pay the price for pollution

Laura J. Martin, opinion contributor 

4/26/2021

The Biden administration has pledged to put the country on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Last fall, China announced a carbon neutrality date of 2060. The U.S. and China are not alone.

© Getty Images Avoiding 'carbon colonialism': Developing nations can't pay the price for pollution

A recent survey found that 124 countries, 155 cities and 417 companies have made some form of commitment to net-zero emissions, including Amazon, American Airlines and Disney. Importantly, net-zero proposals are not the same as ending emissions. Rather, these proposals imagine that emissions generated in one location can be "offset" by removing GHGs from the atmosphere somewhere else, through tree-planting, say, or underground carbon storage. The concept rests on the idea that emissions are fungible: that as far as climate change is concerned, a ton of carbon dioxide is a ton of carbon dioxide regardless of where it is produced. The stakes are high; if emissions continue on their current trajectory, the global average temperature will rise 3 degrees Celsius this century; coastal cities will drown; and extreme weather events will become the norm.


Today, trees are one of the most common technologies of carbon offsetting. In 2019, forestry and land use offsets represented the greatest share of transactions in the voluntary offset market (56.4 percent), followed by renewable energy projects (21.3 percent) and household device projects (8.8 percent). Proponents of forestry-based carbon offsetting often describe these projects as "win-win-win": they combat climate change; protect forests; and offer development opportunities for local communities. But in reality, carbon offsetting projects can fail catastrophically and violently on all three counts.

The global carbon market incentivizes the privatization and commodification of land and forest resources in developing regions. Governments, organizations, corporations and individuals from developed countries purchase offsets, while developing countries usually supply the offsets. At present the greatest number of voluntary carbon credit buyers are the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland. The major offset producing countries include Peru, Brazil, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Indonesia and Cambodia. It is not difficult to see forest and land-use based carbon offsetting as a mode of appropriating land in the Global South for the alleged "universal" environmental end of solving climate change. In the emerging carbon economy, the Global North continues to pollute, while communities in the Global South lose land and sovereignty.

The establishment of carbon offsetting sites routinely involves the exclusion of local inhabitants from land and resources that were previously under public or shared jurisdiction. A 2011 study by Oxfam, for example, estimates that at least 22,500 people were evicted from their homes in the creation of timber plantations in Uganda that the UK-registered New Forests Company refashioned to generate carbon offsets. In some cases, experts have framed such displacement as an infringement on human rights. In a number of cases, offsetting projects have enabled a state or foreign company to seize control of land. Those purchasing carbon offsets are looking for guarantees that the carbon stock will remain stable into the future: an incentive for consolidated single-entity ownership.



Video: If fundamentals change, you can seriously impact CO2 levels: Expert (CNBC)

Carbon offsetting projects also stand to erode food and resource security. Sociologists found this to be the case when a private Norwegian company planted stands of pine and eucalyptus in the shrubland of the Kachung Forest Reserve in Uganda. Prior to the establishment of the plantation, community members had possessed long-standing access and use rights, including for animal grazing, fishing and the collection of water, firewood and medicinal herbs. With the establishment of the plantation, however, villagers were vilified and sometimes arrested as "illegal encroachers" and "trespassers" on license areas by both the government and the company's staff. Community members reported the destruction of crops, housing and trading centers alongside the arrival of the company's plantation activities by a collection of state, police and private sector actors. Such projects, conducted in the name of carbon sequestration and afforestation, result in something entirely different than the positive "community development" claimed by proponents of "win-win-win" offsetting. They are carbon colonialism.

Those who defend global markets argue that carbon is cheaper in the Global South - and therefore it is a global good to buy more of it from those places, rather than to invest in local offsetting projects, because it takes more GHG out of the atmosphere. But local offsetting projects offer two benefits that cannot be understated. First, they allow for localized oversight and accountability. Second, they maintain the geographic link between environmental harm and remediation. Carbon sequestration should be expensive, and something we are willing to pay for, if a higher price ensures that offsets do not involve land dispossession and other human rights violations.

Many Americans currently support domestic environmental policy that emphasizes "just transitions" - interventions to secure workers' rights and livelihoods when economies shift to sustainable production. Acknowledging that in the United States, communities of color and poor communities are disproportionately harmed by pollution, the Biden administration has promised to focus on domestic environmental justice. It is crucial that American environmentalists and policy makers apply a justice framework outside the borders of the country, rather than outsourcing harm. Environmentalists must ensure that carbon sequestration does not become a pathway or even a justification for social oppression.

Carbon offsetting may sound like a good thing, but it imperils particular places and communities in favor of global exchange value. It is a form of climate injustice under the guise of a climate solution.

Laura J. Martin, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Williams College who researches conservation and climate change. Follow her on Twitter @Laura_J_Martin.