Sen. Jon Ossoff set to introduce bill barring members of Congress from trading individual stocks: report



John L. Dorman
Sun, January 9, 2022, 

Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Sen. Ossoff is set to introduce a bill that would bar members of Congress from trading stocks, per The New York Post.

The proposal would apply to members that are currently serving in office, along with their families.

Insider released findings that revealed dozens of lawmakers had infringed on the STOCK Act.

Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia is set to introduce legislation that would bar members of Congress from holding or trading individual stocks while they're in elective office, according to The New York Post.

The ethics bill — which the 34-year-old freshman Democratic senator reportedly hopes to file once he has a Republican cosponsor — would tackle legislative conflicts of interest by banning members and their families from trading stocks, according to a source in Washington, DC, with knowledge of the matter.

In addition, the legislation would likely mandate that lawmakers place their financial assets in blind trusts — an action that Ossoff took himself after being elected to the Senate in a January 2021 runoff election.

The proposed bill would present a huge contrast to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who last month publicly defended the practice after Insider's Bryan Metzger asked if she would support a stock-trading ban for members at a press conference.

"We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that," the veteran California Democrat said at the time in response to the question.

When the speaker was asked about Conflicted Congress — Insider's comprehensive investigative project which revealed that 52 congressional lawmakers and 182 senior congressional staffers had infringed on the STOCK Act, an Obama-era law crafted to clamp down on insider trading — she indicated that she had not yet reviewed the body of work.

Pelosi then stated that it was imperative that members adhere to the terms of the law.

So far, no Senate Republicans have publicly voiced opposition against stock trading among members, but House Republicans including Reps. Michael Cloud and Chip Roy of Texas back legislation ending the practice.

And Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have held firm to their endorsement of stock-trading bans.

A proposed bill that would end trades among members — the Ban Conflicted Trading Act — was introduced in the Senate last year by four lawmakers, including Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Georgia's other freshman senator, Raphael Warnock. A House version is backed by Ocasio-Cortez and Cloud, along with additional members from both parties.

However, the bill would bar trades among members and senior staffers, while excluding congressional spouses and other family members.

According to Insider, Pelosi is one of the wealthiest members of Congress — with a minimum estimated net worth of $46 million and reported assets dispersed among mutual funds, property holdings, and stocks owned by her husband, Paul.

Pelosi's husband possesses holdings in a range of companies, from Alphabet and Netflix to Salesforce and Slack.

Ossoff's bill would close the spousal loophole, according to the earlier source who had knowledge of the proposal.

According to a December survey conducted by the conservative group Convention of States Action, 76 percent of voters give a thumbs down to lawmakers and their spouses trading stocks — with the opinion that those individuals have garnered an "unfair advantage" in the stock market — while only 5 percent of voters were fine with the practice.

California farmworkers now get overtime pay after 8 hours. Some growers say it’s a problem

Nadia Lopez

FRESNO BEE
Sun, January 9, 2022

For the past two decades during the harvest season, 58-year-old farmworker Lourdes Cárdenas would wake up at 3 a.m. to get dressed, say her daily prayers and prepare lunch before driving an hour south from her home in Calwa to a farm in Huron. She’d pick crops like cherries, nectarines, and peaches from daybreak until sundown — at least 10 hours a day, six days a week.

There would be days where she wouldn’t get home until 7 p.m or 8 p.m., depending on traffic, she said. For many of those years, she was paid minimum wage. There was no overtime pay.

“It’s a long work day,” she said in Spanish. “I’d get home very late, exhausted. It’s very hard work being in the fields.”

For years, hundreds of thousands of farmworkers toiling in California’s agricultural heartland weren’t entitled to overtime pay unless they worked more than 10 hours a day. But that has changed due to a 2016 state law that’s been gradually implemented over four years. As of Jan. 1, California law requires that employers with 26 or more employees pay overtime wages to farmworkers after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week.

That means many farmworkers like Cárdenas will now be compensated time-and-a-half for working more than eight hours. It’s a change advocates say is long overdue to provide the agricultural labor force with the same protections afforded to other hourly workers. But opponents argue that the law — though well-intentioned — strains farmers who already operate on thin margins and confront other financial challenges. Employers also say the new rules will disadvantage workers, as they’ll likely reduce hours in an attempt to cut increasing labor costs.

Under the law, which was authored by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, farmworkers began in 2019 to gradually receive the same overtime pay as employees in other industries. Farmworkers previously became eligible for overtime benefits after 10 hours, but the law has lowered the threshold for overtime pay by half an hour annually for the past three years, until reaching the standard eight hours this year.

In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Gonzalez said “none of my bills stole my heart more.”

The full implementation of the law for larger-scale growers marks the most recent win for labor advocates, who had been running a decades-long campaign to secure overtime pay for farmworkers. California is one of six states, alongside Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, New York and Washington, to provide overtime pay to agricultural workers. Many states, however, only provide overtime pay after the 60-hour threshold has been met.

Fresno growers concerned about farmworker overtime law

Eriberto Fernandez, the government affairs deputy director at the UFW Foundation, which sponsored the California bill, said the law secures a basic protection for a workforce that has long been exploited. He added that agricultural workers were excluded from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that gave most employees the right to minimum wage and overtime pay.

“It’s a very historic and momentous occasion for farmworkers that they now, for the first time in the history of agricultural labor, have the same rights as all other Californians do,” he said. “For the first time since the 1930s, equal overtime pay now also applies to farmworkers.”

Fernandez said the law will provide farmworkers with more quality time with their families. He also said farmworkers, many of whom work ten- to twelve-hour shifts during the peak harvest season, will be fairly compensated for their labor.

“This is about leveling the playing field for farmworkers,” he said. “We’re hoping that this new law now puts farmworkers on equal ground with all other industries in California.”

But many growers say the new law could do more damage than good.

Ryan Jacobsen, a farmer and Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO, said the law doesn’t address the needs of the farming industry, arguing that agriculture requires a unique set of rules because it is subject to changing weather and seasons. And unlike other businesses, the labor-intensive industry requires more flexibility on scheduling and working, especially during peak harvest times, he said.

“Most of these jobs in the industry are still seasonal in nature and there are times of the year where there’s more work than there is in other times of the year,” he said. “In the California ag industry, there was always — up until the passage of this bill — an understanding that these employees would be able to make up these hours during these shorter windows because there’s not as much availability of farm agricultural work (in other times of the year).”

Daniel Hartwig, a fourth generation grape farmer from Easton who also works as the procurement manager at Woolf Farming, agreed. He said that the law makes an already fickle industry even more complicated for growers.

Growers have been concerned about labor costs increasing, in part due to California regulations, Hartwig said. He said many growers are reducing their employees’ hours and transitioning to cultivating other crops that don’t require as much human labor. Instead of planting fruit trees, Hartwig has switched over to nuts like almonds and pistachios, he said.

“We can’t absorb those additional labor costs,” he said. “So we’ve just kind of refocused on making sure more of our crops are able to be mechanically harvested. Those are the choices we’re making. (The law) is hurting farmers, and it’s hurting the farm workers as well.”

Fresno County broke its own record for agricultural and livestock production in 2020, peaking at more than $7.98 billion, according to the crop report from county Agricultural Commissioner Melissa Cregan. Nuts were among the top earners. Almonds were the county’s top-grossing crop, earning $1.25 billion, while pistachios made up $761 million, the report found.

Fernandez, of the UFW Foundation, said it’s “unfortunate” that farmers are reducing hours for their employees given the county’s record-breaking years.

“These are the same arguments that we hear over and over again about how these laws are going to destroy agribusiness in California,” he said. “And if anything, we’ve seen the opposite — we’ve seen the California businesses thriving. For them, it’s a matter of economics and of profitability. They’re choosing to shorten worker hours to save money that they would otherwise have paid for overtime pay.”
California farmworker wages increasing

Farmworkers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S, according to a 2021 report from The Economic Policy Institute. On average, farmworkers in 2020 earned about $14.62 per hour, “far less than even some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. labor force,” the report found. Farmworkers at that wage rate earned below 60% compared to what workers outside of agriculture made, according to the report.

Lourdes Cardenas is shown waving a UFW flag with other demonstrators in front of the state building in 2017.

In some states though, wages are increasing. California’s minimum wage on Jan. 1 rose to $15 an hour for employers with 26 or more employees and increased to $14 an hour for employers with 25 or fewer employees.

Cárdenas is hopeful the new overtime protections and increased minimum wage will help her family in the long run. While she acknowledges that she may lose hours due to the new rules, she said the overtime law is “a huge relief” for farmworkers like her.

“We have been marginalized and mistreated,” she said. “But we are workers, just like any other worker. It’s sad they didn’t value us before. This is a big change.”

She said during the busy season farmers may not have a choice but to keep their employees working for longer periods of time, providing workers with a financial cushion they previously didn’t have. She hopes it will provide her with the ability to afford her car repairs, rent, food and other utility bills she had struggled to pay in the past.

“This is a great victory and a great triumph for us,” she added. “Sometimes, I couldn’t even afford food. But now we’ll have equal pay.”

KVPR’s Madi Bolaños contributed to this report.

Bernie Sanders says Democrats are failing: ‘The party has turned its back on the working class’


Steven Greenhouse

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, January 10, 2022

Senator Bernie Sanders has called on Democrats to make “a major course correction” that focuses on fighting for America’s working class and standing up to “powerful corporate interests” because the Democrats’ legislative agenda is stalled and their party faces tough prospects in this November’s elections.

The White House is likely to see his comments as a shot across the bow by the left wing of a party increasingly frustrated at how centrist Democrats have managed to scupper or delay huge chunks of Biden’s domestic policy plans.

In an interview with the Guardian, Sanders called on Joe Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to push to hold votes on individual bills that would be a boon to working families, citing extending the child tax credit, cutting prescription drug prices and raising the federal hourly minimum wage to $15.

Such votes would be good policy and good politics, the Vermont senator insisted, saying they would show the Democrats battling for the working class while highlighting Republican opposition to hugely popular policies.

“It is no great secret that the Republican party is winning more and more support from working people,” Sanders said. “It’s not because the Republican party has anything to say to them. It’s because in too many ways the Democratic party has turned its back on the working class.”

Sanders, who ran for the party’s nomination in both 2016 and 2020, losing out in fierce contests to Hillary Clinton and then Biden, is a popular figure on the left of the party. The democratic socialist from Vermont remains influential and has been supportive of Biden during his first year as the party tries to cope with the twin threats of the pandemic and a resurgent and increasingly extremist Republican party.

But his comments appear to reflect a growing discontent and concern with the Biden administration’s direction. “I think it’s absolutely important that we do a major course correction,” Sanders continued. “It’s important that we have the guts to take on the very powerful corporate interests that have an unbelievably powerful hold on the economy of this country.”

The individual bills that Sanders favors might not attract the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, and a defeat on them could embarrass the Democrats. But Sanders, chairman of the Senate budget committee and one of the nation’s most prominent progressive voices, said, “People can understand that you sometimes don’t have the votes. But they can’t understand why we haven’t brought up important legislation that 70 or 80% of the American people support.”

Sanders spoke to the Guardian on 6 January, the same day he issued a statement that the best way to safeguard our democracy is not just to enact legislation that protects voting rights, but to address the concerns of “the vast majority of Americans” for whom “there is a disconnect between the realities of their lives and what goes on in Washington”.

He said millions of Americans were concerned with such “painful realities” as “low wages, dead-end jobs, debt, homelessness, lack of healthcare”. In that statement, he said, many working-class Americans have grown disaffected with the political system because “nothing changes” for them “or, if it does, it’s usually for the worse”.

In the interview, Sanders repeatedly said that Democrats need to demonstrate vigorously and visibly that they’re fighting to improve the lives of working-class Americans. “The truth of the matter is people are going to work, and half of them are living paycheck to paycheck,” Sanders said. “People are struggling with healthcare, with prescription drugs. Young families can’t afford childcare. Older workers are worried to death about retirement.”

Americans want the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes

Bernie Sanders

Sanders has long been troubled by America’s increasing wealth and income inequality, but he made clear that he thinks it is time for Democrats to take on the ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations – a move he said vast numbers of Americans would support. “They want the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes,” he said. “They think it’s absurd that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t pay a nickel in federal taxes.”

He praised Biden for pushing for improved childcare and extending the child tax credit. But he said it would also be good to “show working people that you are willing to step up and take on the greed of the ruling class in America right now.” He pointed repeatedly to the high prices for prescription drugs as an example of “corporate greed”.

“There is no issue that people care more about than that we pay the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world,’’ he said, adding that the pharmaceutical industry has 1,500 lobbyists in Washington who “tried everything to make sure we don’t lower the cost of pharmaceuticals”.

The senator said: “I think the Democrats are going to have to clear the air and say to the drug companies – and say it loudly – we’re talking about the needs of the working class – and use the expression ‘working class’. The Democrats have to make clear that they’re on the side of the working class and ready to take on the wealthy and powerful. That is not only the right thing to do, but I think it will be the politically right thing to do.”

Last Wednesday evening, Sanders did a nationwide live stream in which he talked with the leaders of three long strikes: Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, Special Metals in West Virginia and the Rich Product Corporation’s Jon Donaire Desserts subsidiary in southern California. Noting that hedge funds or billionaires own large stakes in all three companies, he railed against those companies for offering modest raises or demanding that workers pay far more for health coverage even though the owners’ wealth has soared during the pandemic thanks to the booming stock market.

“These entities, where the people on top have done phenomenally well, are squeezing their workers and lowering the standard of living for workers who are striking,” Sanders said. “It’s unacceptable.”

Are we prepared to stand with working families and take on powerful corporate interests?

Bernie Sanders

In December, Sanders went to Battle Creek, Michigan, to support 1,400 Kellogg’s workers who were on strike at cereal factories in that city as well as in Memphis, Tennessee; Omaha, Nebraska; and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In the interview, Sanders said, “I think the Democratic party has to address the long-simmering debate, which is, Which side are you on? Are we prepared to stand with working families and take on powerful corporate interests?”

Sanders voiced frustration with the lack of progress on Biden’s Build Back Better legislation, which the Democrats sought to enact through budget reconciliation, a process that requires only a simple majority to pass. That effort was slowed by lengthy negotiations with the centrist senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – and then blocked when Manchin said he opposed the $2tn package, sparking leftwing fury and deep frustration in the White House.

“We have tried a strategy over the last several months, which has been mostly backdoor negotiations with a handful of senators,” Sanders said. “It hasn’t succeeded on Build Back Better or on voting rights. It has demoralized millions of Americans.”

He called for reviving a robust version of Build Back Better and also called for holding votes on individual parts of that legislation that would help working-class Americans. “We have to bring these things to the floor,” Sanders said. “The vast majority of people in the [Democratic] caucus are willing to fight for good policy.”

Sanders added: “If I were Senator Sinema and a vote came up to lower the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs, I’d think twice if I want to get re-elected in Arizona to vote against that. If I were Mr Manchin and I know that tens of thousands of struggling families in West Virginia benefited from the expansion of the child tax credit, I’d think long and hard before I voted against it.”

Sanders also called for legislation on another issue he has championed: having Medicare provide dental, vision and hearing benefits. “All these issues, they are just not Bernie Sanders standing up and saying this would be a great thing,” he said. “They are issues that are enormously popular, and on every one of them, the Republicans are in opposition. But a lot of people don’t know that because the Republicans haven’t been forced to vote on them.”

1990s diplomacy colors Russia's demands in U.S., NATO talks



Zachary Basu
Mon, January 10, 2022

Reproduced from Wall Street Journal; Map: Axios Visuals

Russian officials drew their talking points for Monday's meeting with U.S. officials in Geneva from a draft Kremlin treaty proposal that would force NATO to withdraw forces to its 1997 borders.

Why it matters: The question of whether NATO could expand to the east, which Russia has viewed as an existential threat, is at the heart of this week's security talks. Under the Russian request, the alliance would turn back the clock to 1997, before Poland, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic and other Eastern European countries joined it.

The U.S. and NATO view that as a complete non-starter.

A failure of diplomacy this week, though, could lead President Vladimir Putin to attempt to re-establish Russia's Cold War "sphere of influence" by force, beginning with an invasion of Ukraine.

Flashback: Putin's grievances are driven by a misrepresentation of history, beginning with his claim that the West promised during negotiations over the reunification of Germany in 1990 that NATO would expand "not one inch eastward."

It's true then-Secretary of State James A. Baker III used that language in early negotiations with Russia, but that provision never made it into the final treaty reunifying Germany, as Baker's biographer Peter Baker wrote in The New York Times.

In 1997, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act, effectively green-lighting enlargement on the basis the two sides "do not consider each other as adversaries" and would exercise military restraint.

Much has changed in the 25 years since: Russia accuses NATO of violating that treaty by deploying forces in post-1997 countries, while the West says Moscow brought these problems on itself by invading Georgia and Ukraine.

Driving the news: Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was categorical in her rejection of Russia's demands for NATO on Monday, telling reporters after more than 7 hours of talks in Geneva: "We will not allow anyone to slam close NATO's open-door policy, which has always been central to the NATO alliance."

Her Russian counterpart, Sergei Ryabkov, admitted that Moscow does not currently see any "political will" from the U.S. to act on "our top priority."

But the veteran diplomat held firm on the Kremlin's red lines, insisting that Russia needs "ironclad, waterproof, bulletproof, legally binding guarantees, not assurances," that Ukraine and Georgia will never join NATO.

What's next: Despite sharing a pessimistic outlook, both sides said no decisions would be made on the path forward until the conclusion of two more multilateral meetings this week — the NATO-Russia Council on Wednesday and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Thursday.

Voices: I know why the January 6th insurrectionists won’t be held to account

Eric Garcia
Mon, January 10, 2022, 

Last Thursday, when President Joe Biden delivered his address commemorating the violent assault on the US Capitol, he was accompanied by two vice presidents. One was his running mate, Kamala Harris, the first woman, the first Asian-American and first Black person to hold that office and whose election the would-be-insurrectionists wanted to block. 

The second was Alexander Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy — the last time Americans violently opposed the government — whom the state of Georgia chose to honor as one of two notable people from the Peach State, as all states do.

 Stephens is perhaps best known for his odious “Cornerstone” speech, wherein he said about the Confederacy that “its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”

Stephens was nothing short of a traitor to the United States and the Union imprisoned him after they drove old Dixie down. But then Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor as president, pardoned him and Georgia later elected him governor, an office in which he served until his death.

The Confederates deserve nothing but scorn and hatred. But after the end of Reconstruction, America moved on and let the seditionists who tried to destroy the Republic off the hook. And the veneration of the Confederacy — as well as other racists, enslavers and segregationists — is why talks about how history will harshly judge insurrectionists ring fairly hollow. Throughout history, Americans have chosen reconciliation rather than restitution and too often, it means whitewashing history in a way that venerates some of the worst people in our past.

One only needs to look at some of the other people honored in the Capitol.

The Capitol insurrection was not the first time forces of white nationalism and reactionary politics tried to overthrow a government. In 1898, a group of white Democrats in North Carolina successfully overthrew the fusion government in Wilmington, which had been possible because of an alliance between Black Republicans and white populists. The coup d’etat destroyed the offices of the Black newspaper in the town and successfully installed white members into the government of Wilmington. Not unlike the right-wing media machine that pushed the Big Lie, white-owned newspapers spread Democratic propaganda while Charles Brantley Aycock whipped up voters into a frenzy.

Instead of punishment, Aycock was handsomely rewarded with the governorship of the state. His likeness adorns the Capitol and for years he was remembered simply as the first “education governor” of the state, with his support for segregation waved off as a technicality. When I was a student at the University of North Carolina, a dorm hall was even named for him (it was only recently removed.) Aycock’s veneration after inciting a coup was a potent reminder for Yankees like myself: North Carolina belonged to whites and it should stay that way.

South Carolina isn’t much better. Anytime I am on the Senate side of the Capitol, I am greeted by John C. Calhoun’s portrait perpetually scowling, as if the presence of Latinos, Black people and women repulses one of the most loathsome men to ever serve in the Senate. Slavery had no better defender than Calhoun, who argued that “in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good.” On long days between votes, I count how many places in the Capitol bear his likeness (so far, I’ve found three).

The list of horrendous people who committed atrocities against their fellow Americans that are venerated in the halls of power in Washington are too numerous for me to list. There’s the enslaver president Andrew Jackson, whose genocide of Native Americans earned him Tennessee’s statue. Mississippi found Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, worthy of one of its own. But perhaps the one that reminds me most of America’s priorities is not one of a white supremacist, a slaveholder, a Klansman or another would-be murderer; it’s the one of Gerald Ford, the president who pardoned Richard Nixon for his crimes in Watergate. Michigan’s choice to honor Ford shows how America often values “moving on” from the crimes of elites in the name of unity, rather than holding those elites accountable in the pursuit of a more perfect union.

Ford was by all accounts a good man, which makes his valuing civility by pardoning someone who abused the presidency even more enraging. The refusal to hold Nixon accountable is the exact spirit that has allowed Republicans to let Donald Trump escape largely scot-free after he threatened the lives of Democrats and Republicans alike.

What is demoralizing about all of this is that there are plenty of great people from all of these states who do deserve veneration. North Carolina gave the world Nina Simone, Dean Smith and John Coltrane. South Carolina produced Mary McLeod Bethune; Fritz Hollings repented for his sins of segregation as governor and supported civil rights as a Senator. Georgia’s other statue honors that good in America: it features Martin Luther King. That America is worth saving.

But the choice to celebrate other Americans dims my confidence that there will be true justice for those who committed crimes, or that we will even know the extent of the plotting that led to that God-awful day of January 6. Rather, I see right-wing media commentators like Tucker Carlson make Senator Ted Cruz grovel after he (rightfully) called January 6 a “terrorist attack.” And I know that it’s done to whip the public up into a frenzy all over again.

I don’t plan on leaving the Capitol anytime soon — for one thing, I love my job, and for another, I see my presence as a middle finger to those who would seek to make America less free. But sadly, I suspect that if I stay there into old age, I might see a statue of some of the same insurrectionists who ransacked the Capitol under the Rotunda in 2021.

Sudha Bharadwaj: The prison life of India's best-known woman activist

Soutik Biswas

BBC  - India correspondent

Tue, January 11, 2022

After three years in prison, one of India's best-known activists is trying to set up home in a new city and find work.

Bail conditions prohibit Sudha Bharadwaj from leaving Mumbai until the end of a trial in which she is accused of a role in a 2018 incident of caste-based violence and alleged links with Maoists. She is also not allowed to talk about the case.

Since June 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP government has jailed 16 people in connection with the violence in Bhima Koregaon village in Maharashtra state. They include some of India's most respected scholars, lawyers, academics, activists and an ageing radical poet. (Tribal rights activist, Stan Swamy, died last year in hospital, aged 84.) They have all been repeatedly denied bail under a sweeping anti-terror law, which many observers believe is now being mainly used to crack down on dissent.

Ms Bharadwaj cannot return to her work as a professor of law at a leading university in the national capital, Delhi, or go home to Faridabad on the outskirts. She is unable to visit her daughter who's studying psychology in Bhilai, more than 1,000km (620 miles) away. (The two were reunited briefly after she was freed on 10 December.)

"From a smaller jail I am now living in a bigger jail, which is Mumbai," Sudha Bharadwaj, 60, told me on Monday in her first interview since being released.

"I have to find work, and a place I can afford," she said. Until then she is staying with a friend.

Born in Massachusetts, Ms Bharadwaj gave up her American passport after her parents returned to India. The mathematician-turned-lawyer would eventually become a committed activist and trade unionist steadfastly fighting for the rights of the dispossessed in the mineral-rich state of Chhattisgarh, where some of India's poorest and most exploited live.

Ms Bharadwaj was released in December after three years in prison

But it was her three-decade-long work providing legal aid to the poor that made her a shining beacon of hope for many in the fight for justice.

Yet, she says her time in prison, especially during the pandemic, was an eye-opener.

"Jail conditions are no longer medieval. But the loss of dignity that you suffer the moment you go in comes as a shock," she said.

Ms Bharadwaj was arrested on 28 October 2018 and her phone, laptops and some CDs taken away. She was denied bail on three occasions and spent time in two prisons before she was freed.

She spent half of that time at Pune's high-security Yerwada Central Jail, which largely houses convicted offenders, in a block of cells once reserved for death row prisoners.

A long corridor ran alongside the cells, where she could take walks in the morning and evening. But prisoners were allowed into the open yard overlooking the cell only for half an hour every day. Frequent water shortages meant that they had to carry buckets of water to the cell to bathe and drink.

Meals were made up of dal, two pieces of roti and vegetables. Inmates who could afford it could buy extra food from the jail canteen - their families were allowed to deposit a maximum of 4,500 rupees ($60) every month into their jail accounts. They rolled incense sticks, made mats and grew vegetables and paddy in a prison farm to earn some money.

There have been protests in India against the arrests of human rights activists

Byculla jail in Mumbai, where she was later shifted, was busier and more chaotic because of a high population of inmates awaiting trial. At some point, there were 75 inmates in her unit in the women's wing, originally built to accommodate 35, and they slept next to each other on the floor on a mat. Each was allotted a space the "size of a coffin", Ms Bharadwaj said.

"Overcrowding becomes a source of fights and tensions. There's a queue for everything - food, toilets."

Thirteen of the 55 women in her unit were infected with Covid-19 during a brutal second wave of the pandemic last summer. Ms Bharadwaj says she was sent to the jail hospital and then to a congested "quarantine barrack" after running a fever and having diarrhoea.

"The judiciary should consider decongesting our jails more seriously. Even during the pandemic most people did not get interim bail [bail granted for a brief period of time] to return to their families."

India's 1,306 prisons house some 490,000 inmates, 69% of them waiting for their trials to begin. Average occupancy rates can climb to 118%. In 2020, the Supreme Court asked states to free inmates at notoriously overcrowded prisons to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Why India needs to get rid of its sedition law

Is crackdown on India activists a 'witch hunt'?

In Byculla prison, Ms Bharadwaj spent a lot of her time writing dozens of legal aid applications for fellow women inmates seeking interim bail - many suffering from TB, HIV, asthma and others who were pregnant. "None of them got it, in part because there was nobody to argue for bail in the courts."

Most fellow inmates had been detained in cases of sex work, or trafficking in humans and drugs. Others were "wives, girlfriends and mothers" of fugitive gangsters, she says.

"The [second wave] was a really tough time for inmates. The courts had stopped work, family visits to prisoners were not allowed, the trials had come to a halt. It was a miserable time," Ms Bharadwaj recalled.

"The old and people suffering from co-morbidities must be given bail on personal bonds. Quarantining inside the already overcrowded jails makes no sense."

Sudha Bharadwaj (left) has worked with some of India's poorest people

Ms Bharadwaj said she was shocked by the shambolic state of legal aid for poor inmates on trial, who formed the bulk of the jail population.

"Many prisoners don't even know the names or have the phone numbers of their own lawyers until they meet them in court. The poorly paid lawyers don't even come to the prison to meet their clients. Prisoners feel there's no use in having a legal aid lawyer. And only a few can afford a private lawyer."

Ms Bharadwaj says she attended a meeting in the jail where she proposed that legal aid lawyers should visit once in three months, meet their clients and be paid properly.

"When you go to jail, you find so many people so much more miserable than you. I didn't find time to be miserable. I felt bad essentially because of separation from my daughter."

Ms Bharadwaj says she spent her time singing songs to children of women inmates, doing prison work, and reading "quite a lot", including books by Edward Snowden, William Dalrymple, and Naomi Klein. At the height of the pandemic, she found a well-thumbed copy of Albert Camus's The Plague in the prison library.

But one experience she will never forget is what happened when she heard the news that India would be locking down in March 2020 to to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

"Suddenly the jail was in ferment. Prisoners went on a hunger strike, skipping breakfast and lunch. They were saying, 'We don't want to die here. Let us go home and die there'."

They finally calmed down when the jail superintendent told them that nobody was really safe from the virus outside the prison either.

She said this showed how precarious their lives and existence were. "I have never seen the inmates more scared and wanting to be released."

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

California loses $200 million a year to recycling fraud, 5 or 10 cents at a time


Thomas Elias
The Desert Sun
Mon, January 10, 2022,

People recycle their cans and plastics at Apple Markett Recycling Center in Indio, August 13, 2019.

In California’s recycling program, nickel and dime deposits come to about $1.5 billion a year. But at least $200 million of that goes to criminals, according to a new report from the usually reliable Consumer Watchdog advocacy group.

The money piles high because more than 18 billion drink containers with California recycling value and are sold across the state each year. Buyers deposit five cents for each glass, plastic, or aluminum container holding less than 24 ounces and 10 cents for each one with 24 or more ounces of water, soda, beer, and other drinks (wine and hard liquor bottles are not included).

Roughly 30% of the cash raised every year stays in a special fund earmarked for future refunds because only about 68% of eligible bottles and cans get recycled.

Another 12% or more of the take — almost as much as last summer’s recall election cost — likely goes to crooks, despite the state Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) insisting that figure is high and “inaccurate.” The new Consumer Watchdog report titled “Cash for Trash” indicates the figure may be low. Its estimate of at least $200 million in yearly fraud stems largely from CalRecycle’s own investigations.

The state agency boasts of tough enforcement, citing 62,259 audits, investigations, and inspections over the past 10 years, recovering about $10.3 million a year, or a total of $103 million. That works out to $1,611 recovered per CalRecycle action — quite possibly much less than what the actions cost.

But recycling larceny is far more extensive than that, says Consumer Watchdog, whose prior reports on the gasoline, insurance, and utility industries have substantially proven out.

Recycling crimes appear easier to pull off than schemes that have defrauded the state Employment Development Department (EDD) of an admitted $20 billion-plus over the pandemic period. Recycling fraud likely accounts for almost as large a portion of recycling money as thefts ever did at the EDD.

It can work several ways. With no tracking when containers are turned in and paid for, they can be “ultra-recycled” over and over, fraudulent redeemers filing padded requests for state reimbursement. Criminals also bring containers from other states. California is committed only to redeeming its material, but buys plenty that originates elsewhere, says the new report.

Plus, trucks bearing cans and bottles can be stuffed with other things before being weighed and reimbursed.

So despite CalRecycle’s measures, it is likely being scammed continually.

This will not likely threaten Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reelection, just as the better-publicized EDD scandal did not hurt him in last September’s recall attempt.

Two factors here did not figure in the recall. For one, recall replacement candidates did not harp on the EDD. But if Newsom ever ran nationally, opponents would fully exploit the extensive fraud plaguing his administration. While the EDD affair involves more money, funds were paid mainly by employers, including many impersonal corporations. By contrast, recycling money comes from virtually every individual in the state, aged 4 to 104. The apparent theft from consumers is direct.

Meanwhile, Consumer Watchdog has some suggestions for cleaning up CalRecycle practices. One is to take matters at least partly out of human hands. Reverse vending machines could handle most beverage container returns with no fraud, as they do in several other states and some of Europe. These could most strategically be placed in or near supermarkets.

But market chains want little to do with recycling, one reason consumers often cannot find a place to recycle containers.

A current legislative proposal known as Senate Bill 38, sponsored by Democrat Bob Wieckowski of Fremont, would require the use of reverse vending machines, which could end many of today’s multiple reimbursements.

As it is run today, “the program is not fixable,” argues Liza Tucker, a Consumer Watchdog researcher who spent six months compiling the new report. “We say at least $200 million is stolen every year,” she said, adding that no one knows exactly how much theft there is “because CalReycle is a terrible enforcer and (today’s) honor system allows recyclers to (claim) anything they want for weight on which they are paid.”

All of which cries out for action, or at least quick passage of SB 38.

Intel Blasted on Social Media Over China

Intel gets slammed on social media after removing references to the Chinese region of Xinjiang from 

an open letter it sent to suppliers.

• ROB LENIHAN
• :
  JAN 10, 2022

Intel  (INTC) - Get Intel Corporation Report was being blasted on social media Monday for removing references to the Chinese region of Xinjiang from an open letter it sent to suppliers last month after the contents of the note sparked an uproar in China.

Intel last month published a letter to its global suppliers on its website calling on its business partners to avoid sourcing from the northwestern Chinese region, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Multiple governments have imposed restrictions on products sourced from the Xinjiang region," the letter said. "Therefore, Intel is required to ensure our supply chain does not use any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region."

Reuters has reported that United Nations experts and human-rights groups estimate that more than a million people are detained in camps in Xinjiang.

The detainees include Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, the news service reported.

Intel was denounced by Chinese social-media users and state-run media for cutting business dealings with the region, while one of its China brand ambassadors pulled out in protest. 

The company apologized on Dec. 23 on its Chinese social-media accounts, adding that the letter was written to comply with U.S. law and didn’t represent its position on Xinjiang. The reference to the region has been removed from the letter.

Several posters on Twitter reacted angrily to Intel's actions.

"Bow further, good dog," one poster tweeted.

"Not ok INTEL," another said. "Why do YOU support slaves and genocide in China?"

Another tweeted "some really thin skinned folks over there in China."

Opinion: What authoritarianism would look like in America

Jim Chrisinger

The Des Moines Register
Sun, January 9, 2022

Donald Trump and Republicans are shoving America toward authoritarianism. That’s why many of us are shouting about a threat to democracy.

Many Americans don’t fear a potential slide into authoritarianism because they have no basis for doing so. Our oceans and hegemony have coddled us; we take democracy for granted. But democracy and the rule of law are not the normal state of governments, certainly not historically.

Authoritarianism wouldn’t happen overnight, but authoritarian regimes have shown us a road map. Here’s a picture of what it would look like here.

If Trump and his enablers get their way, how you experience your life would depend on whether you identified — and were identified — as a Trump Republican.

Identified as a Trump Republican by your bumper sticker, you would be more likely to get a warning instead of speeding ticket. You would gain the inside track for government jobs, grants, and needed permits. Decisions about government benefits, like unemployment and disability, would be more likely to go your way. Your children would be more likely to win scholarships and admission to their chosen schools. You would get more favorable loan and mortgage treatment and better access to scarce goods, the best tickets.

More: Foreign correspondent: I smugly thought American democracy worked as it is supposed to

Regulations would be interpreted in your favor, or maybe just ignored. You could rely on the criminal justice and judicial systems to go easy on you, if not help you out.

If, instead, you were perceived as a Democrat, or just an insufficiently Trump Republican, you would experience the reverse of what’s above. Tax auditors would focus on you. You would be more likely to be hassled by police, even jailed if you were too troublesome. Nasty graffiti might appear on your business or home. You would be accused of being un-American, a traitor. You would learn to keep your head down and be careful about what you said to whom.

Former President Donald Trump, on Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021, at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa.

Science would be interpreted or even suppressed to suit Trump Republican needs. History would be whitewashed to celebrate the regime and its version of events. School curricula and texts would similarly conform.

LBGTQ folks would closet themselves again. Fewer women would lead in government, business, or society. People who want to marginalize and discriminate against people of color, non-Christians, and immigrants would find cover to do so. Abortion and birth control would be illegal. Public education would wither as religious schools claimed more and more public funding. Air and water quality would suffer. Climate change would go unaddressed. The military could be used to put down dissent.

Again, not all of this would happen instantly, and we can’t predict how far the Trump Republicans would go. But this is the path that they are on.

So if you are a Trump Republican, perhaps all this sounds great. Finally, justice for my many grievances. Maybe that’s the country in which you want to live.

I hope and pray that the great majority of Americans will reject it.

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He worked for both Republican and Democratic officials at multiple levels of government.

#ABOLISHELECTORALCOLLEGE

The Filibuster Is Made-Up and Stupid, and So Is the Made-Up, Stupid History to Justify It

Jack Holmes

ESQUIRE
Tue, January 11, 2022

Photo credit: Chip Somodevilla - Getty Images

The filibuster was created when Cain and Abel were locked in those fraternal spats about who'd made a better sacrifice to God. The filibuster dates back to Sumerian debates over how to regulate the trade of obsidian and lapis lazuli in the Fertile Crescent. The filibuster can be traced to the ancient Roman custom of filibusta, wherein the tribune of the plebs could block a Senate initiative he feared would add to inflation. The filibuster emerged during the Hundred Years' War as England and France each demanded any peace treaty receive the backing of a supermajority of noblemen in both countries. There are cave drawings at Lascaux that depict the very first use of the filibuster.

These backstories are only marginally less true than the one Senator Joe Manchin offered on Monday: The filibuster has been "the tradition of the Senate here in 232 years now," he told Chad Pergram of Fox News. "We need to be very cautious what we do...That's what we've always had for 232 years. That's what makes us different than any place else in the world."

No, the filibuster is not 232 years old. It is not as old as American democracy because the Founders did not write it into the Constitution. It emerged, essentially by accident, because they failed to outline a constitutional procedure for ending debate on a bill. They had no interest in governance by supermajority. Its first use was 50 years after the founding. Many of its uses after that were very bad. The Senate was already an undemocratic body that is now supercharged to enshrine the tyranny of a minority. And the filibuster has been changed many, many times. Recently, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell changed the filibuster to make it easier for them to get their Supreme Court nominees through. Even more recently—like, last month—the Senate made an exception to the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling.

Yet somehow, people routinely get away with casting the filibuster as an essential building block of American democracy that verges on an essential virtue in human nature. All of this is completely made up, along with all of the ridiculous procedural workarounds that have sprung up around the filibuster: reconciliation, the Parliamentarian, the Byrd rule. All of it is made up and stupid. It's a tool of obstruction, but it's also cover that allows lawmakers to avoid actually voting on policy proposals. If the bill never comes up for a vote because it's been blocked using the filibuster, you don't have a record of voting against shoring up voting rights. It's not unlike the eagerness that members of Congress have shown to fork over the legislature's war powers to the Executive Branch in order to avoid having to own any of our endless military interventions abroad. It is a device abused by cowards to avoid accountability in office. If you're against the voting-rights bill, or the Build Back Better act, then vote against those bills. Don't prevent the bills ever getting a vote.