A casualty of Trump’s immigration policy: Millions of trees

The decision to suspend seasonal visas is expected to hurt forestry firms as well as state and federal governments.


A U.S. Forest Service sign welcomes visitors to Clackamas Lake Historic Area.

By LIZ CRAMPTON
07/12/2020 

America needs millions of new trees each year for forests damaged by natural catastrophes, thinned by logging and developed to protect watersheds. But this year, many of the workers who do the planting are being barred from the U.S. by the Trump administration.

Seasonal temporary workers mainly from Mexico and South America perform most of the reforestation work in the U.S., entering the country in October each year for a six-month planting season.

But the White House last month suspended most seasonal temporary visas, known as H-2Bs, for the rest of the year in an effort to free up jobs for American workers as the country experiences record-high unemployment

Now an entire planting season could be lost, leaving the U.S. with millions of fewer trees, forestry industry representatives warn. That could include work on the U.S. Forest Service’s own programs, which rely on contract labor to maintain federal forested lands.

Typically, only a handful of U.S. workers respond to listings seeking forestry crews.

“Virtually all reforestation is done by H-2B workers,” said Dan Bremer, a Georgia-based contractor whose company, AgWorks, places about 6,000 H-2B workers in forestry jobs across the country. “So without that program, there just won’t be any trees planted.”

That could have devastating consequences not just for environmental protection but also for the timber industry and fire prevention.

To fix the situation, lobbyists for the timber industry are pushing for the White House to issue an exemption for the sector, a decision they hope to be announced any day.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The forestry industry has consistently depended on foreign workers because not enough U.S. residents apply for forestry jobs. In fiscal year 2019, the Department of Labor certified about 11,000 visas for forestry and conservation work. The entire program is capped at 66,000 workers across numerous occupations, mainly in landscaping and groundskeeping.

Last year, there were about 35,000 employees in the forestry and logging sector, doing work from falling trees to trucking timber harvests, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Before hiring from the H-2B pipeline, employers must first advertise for U.S. workers. But Bremer said that he rarely sees Americans willing to take the type of jobs he’s placed in the last 22 years seeking foreign guest workers.

Unemployment has been fairly low in recent years and most Americans are drawn to year-round work rather than seasonal forestry jobs, he said.

“They might be interested this year,” he said. “If they want the job, they get it. It's pretty simple.”

Still, reforestation is labor-intensive work. Planters have to carry a shovel and haul sacks of 100 seedlings around their waists while navigating rough terrain and brutal winter weather. They must methodically bend over to insert as many as three hundred trees a day into holes they dig themselves.

Yet their work is invaluable to maintaining healthy ecosystems critical for supporting wildlife habitats. The forests also help ensure clean water, reduce soil erosion, and fight climate change through carbon capture. The forest industry is also a major part of local economies in states like Alaska and along the West coast.

A labor shortage would be another blow to an industry that has suffered from the pandemic and was already bracing for fewer trees to be planted this year.

Kathy LeCompte, owner of Brooks Tree Farms in Brooks, Ore., said that her farm has seen mass cancellations of seedling orders from customers worried about the safety of allowing planters onto their property or exposure while working.

So far, customers have canceled orders for at least 40,000 trees. The nursery’s income is down over $300,000 from the prior year, she said. Forestry operations have also had to shoulder the cost of protecting workers by implementing public health measures mandated by state officials like installing hand-washing stations, she added.

“We aren’t whining — we are lucky,” LeCompte said. “We are fortunate to work on a farm where distance, gloves, rain gear and eye protection is already the norm."

She urged the government to be more accommodating to the forestry sector. "If we could get workers, and government would stop micromanaging, even in this environment, we’d be fine.”

Landowners are also worried that a labor shortage could make it difficult to meet state replanting requirements. State law determines that harvested timber lands must be replanted within a few years.

In Oregon, for example, rules require at least 100 to 200 hundred new trees per acre survive within two years of logging.

A forestry machine stacks logs on land cleared of trees at the site of a new factory (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

In order to be profitable, landowners plant many more trees, typically about 400 seedlings per acre. If landowners don’t comply with reforestation requirements, the Oregon Department of Forestry can charge a $5,000 penalty per offense.

It's not just private forestry companies that use H-2B labor. Even state and federal governments rely on crews of H-2B employees to maintain forests on public lands, such as Washington’s Department of Natural Resources, which contracts out much of its nursery and reforestation work.

No longer having foreign workers who also complete tasks like collecting cones, nurturing seedlings and controlling weeds “would be very problematic,” said Calvin Ohlson-Kiehn, assistant division manager for Washington’s State Lands Silviculture Program.
Washington state typically plants about five million seedlings a year on public lands and also supplies seedlings to landowners. Any disruption to the planting process, which begins years before a tree is placed into the ground, could mean that an expensive backlog would form. Seedlings typically run about 60 cents each, amounting to several million dollars annually for the department.

“You just can’t store seedlings for two years,” Ohlson-Kiehn said. “We would have to throw seedlings away you can’t plant.”

“There would be a whole bunch of compounding impacts — it would affect us as well as the rest of the forestry and agriculture industry," he said.

POLISH NATIONALIST CATHOLIC REACTION
4 takeaways from Duda’s reelection as Polish president
The toxic campaign took its toll on all sides and the tone towards Europe remains defiant.

President Andrzej Duda's narrow victory on Sunday gives him five more years as head of state, with the power to reject legislation that he doesn't like. | Czarek Sokolowski/AP Photo

By ZOSIA WANAT
07/13/2020

RZESZÓW, Poland — Andrzej Duda's reelection as Poland's president after a knife-edge runoff vote clears the way for the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) to push ahead with reforms that have put it on collision course with Brussels.

Duda's narrow victory on Sunday, with 51.21 percent versus 48.79 percent for Warsaw's centrist Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski of the Civic Platform (with 99.97 percent of polling stations reporting), gives him five more years as head of state, with the power to reject legislation that he doesn't like.

More significantly, it means the PiS — which backs Duda — has at least three more years, until the next general election, to push its radical reform program and cement its place as Poland's dominant political power. It has a majority in the lower chamber of parliament, while the opposition-controlled Senate doesn't have the power to stop bills proposed by the right-wing party.

Duda's supporters say his reelection ensures stability in challenging times, not least because of the coronavirus crisis. His opponents say the head of state will yet again lack the independence to provide checks and balances on Polish politics.

POLITICO took a look at the specific consequences for domestic politics and Poland's relationship with the European Union:

1) Continued hard line on media and society

Duda and high-level PiS politicians, including the party’s powerful leader Jarosław Kaczyński, used the campaign to set out some of their priorities for the next three years of almost untrammeled power.

High on the agenda will be their continued reform of media laws to consolidate government control, in a country where state-owned television functions as a mouthpiece for the ruling party in a manner reminiscent of Communist times.

Duda and other PiS politicians complained bitterly of foreign interference when news outlets in Poland owned by foreign media companies reported stories that were critical of the ruling party.

Regarding its wider agenda to create a conservative, Catholic society, Duda and the PiS also used the campaign to whip up anti-LGBTQ sentiment and propose a constitutional amendment that would bar same-sex couples from adopting children. Kaczyński said he hopes the Constitutional Court, which the PiS has brought under its control, will ban abortion in cases where the fetus has suffered irreparable damage in the womb.

The party will also continue with its two flagship infrastructure projects — a mega airport in central Poland and digging a canal through a Vistula Split — which Trzaskowski firmly opposed.

2) Defying Brussels on courts and climate

Law and Justice's ambitions for bringing wider society under centralized state control also spread to other public institutions, including local government and, crucially, the judiciary.

PiS's sweeping reforms of Poland's legal system over the past five years, largely with Duda's support, have been at the heart of the clashes between Warsaw and Brussels. The European Commission has launched four legal procedures over concerns about the rule of law in Poland, going so far as to trigger the so-called Article 7 disciplinary process on charges that Warsaw is breaching the EU's fundamental values. If that process went all the way, it could see Poland stripped of its voting rights in the EU.

The tone during the campaign remained defiant: Asked about priorities for the second term, the powerful Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said “finishing the judicial reform in the country is coming to the fore” in the ruling party's agenda.

POLAND'S NATIONAL EXPORT IS COAL

Other reforms that could prompt clashes with Brussels include the ruling party's opposition to the EU’s climate neutrality target, where Poland is the only member country not to commit to drastically limiting carbon emissions across the bloc by 2050.

During the campaign, however, Duda insisted he has "an absolutely positive" attitude toward the European Union and that Poland would not be leaving the bloc under his rule.

3) Opposition licks its wounds

The PiS and Duda promised that his reelection would mean three more years of political stability, but the noxious tone of the four-month campaign has taken its toll on many alliances and partnerships in Polish politics.

It's still unclear what will be the future of the ruling coalition, made up of PiS and smaller right-wing groups: One junior partner, Porozumienie, didn’t approve of the first planned date of the presidential election in May because of concerns about coronavirus, even though Duda was then on a clear path to a first-round victory. PiS needs a coalition party to maintain its majority in the parliament but might start looking elsewhere, such as the far-right Konfederacja or the conservative Polish People’s Party.

There are also many question marks over the future of Civic Platform, the biggest opposition party. This is the sixth consecutive election in which it has lost to the PiS, and recently it has been shedding supporters rather than gaining new ones. Trzaskowski — who joined the race late in mid-May as a substitute for Małgorzata Kidwa-Błońska, who was doing very poorly in the polls — was seen by many as the last resort to reverse Civic Platform's decline.

His defeat may prompt a reshuffle in the leadership and/or a shift in its focus. At the same time, Trzaskowski attracted almost 10 million votes on Sunday — a much higher number than any other opposition candidate has received in recent years. The party may decide it cannot waste that political capital.
4) Divided society

Political and social divisions in Polish society have become so deep that exit polls were too close to call in the lead-up to Sunday's second round of voting. They portrayed a country split down the middle between young and old, rural and urban, east and west. Duda attempted to address such divisions during the campaign, saying he “respects all Polish people regardless of their views.”
Beyond such words, however, the president did little to bury such differences in a campaign that politicians described as exceptionally brutal. Desperate to shore up conservative support, Duda launched an aggressive campaign against the LGBTQ community and urban elites, whose interests were defended by the Warsaw mayor.

PiS leader Kaczyński even attempted to appeal to latent anti-Semitic sentiment, using an interview with an ultra-Catholic broadcaster to accuse opposition candidate Trzaskowski of supporting the payment of restitution to Jews for property stolen during World War II.

Celebrating his apparent victory on Sunday night as the results came in, Duda made it clear that he "doesn't regret" any remarks made during the campaign.

SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/07/poles-split-over-govt-plan-to-exit.html
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/07/alarm-at-polands-plan-to-leave-treaty.html
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/07/poland-to-quit-treaty-on-violence.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/07/polish-nationalist-catholic-reaction-4.html

PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX USA
First federal execution in 17 years put on hold
A convicted killer was set to be executed Monday in Indiana.

An aerial view of the execution facility at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.

By JOSH GERSTEIN
07/13/2020

The federal government’s plan to conduct its first execution in more than 17 years was put on hold by a judge in Washington just hours before it was to take place Monday, prompting a scramble by Justice Department lawyers to get a higher court to lift the order and allow the execution to proceed.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan issued an injunction just before 10 a.m. Eastern time Monday, about six hours before Daniel Lee, 47, was scheduled to be executed at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.

Chutkan said there was a strong likelihood that the lethal injection protocol the federal Bureau of Prisons adopted last year calling for use of a single drug, pentobarbital, was unconstitutional because it put condemned inmates at risk of serious pain or suffering.

“The scientific evidence before the court overwhelmingly indicates that the 2019 Protocol is very likely to cause Plaintiffs extreme pain and needless suffering during their executions,” wrote Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

Justice Department lawyers filed an immediate appeal with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a bid to allow the execution to proceed as scheduled.

In her 22-page ruling Monday, Chutkan said testimony from medical experts and witnesses from prior executions led to the conclusion that inmates subject to the single-drug method often experience an acute fluid buildup in the lungs that induces panic and a sensation of drowning.

“Eyewitness accounts of executions using pentobarbital describe inmates repeatedly gasping for breath or showing other signs of respiratory distress, and indicate that flash pulmonary edema is common and extremely painful,” the judge wrote.

Chutkan said lawyers for inmates facing execution had shown two practical alternatives: administering a sedative or anti-anxiety drug before the deadly dose of pentobarbital, or carrying out the execution by firing squad.

Justice Department attorneys called the addition of another drug “untried and untested.” However, such a procedure involving use of a dose of fentanyl was followed for an execution in Nebraska last August.

Lawyers for the government dismissed the inmates’ proposal of a firing squad, calling that suggestion “insincere.”

Justice Department attorneys argued in court filings that last-minute orders seeking to interfere with executions are discouraged by legal precedents, but Chutkan said the government was to blame for the timing.

“The succession of last-minute rulings is the result of the Government’s decision to set short execution dates even as many claims, including those addressed here, were pending,” she wrote.

Chutkan’s latest ruling halting Lee’s execution came one day after a federal appeals court overturned a lower-court order blocking the event because family members of the victims did not want to travel amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously lifted the earlier injunction Sunday. The appeals judges called the victim’s family members’ suit “frivolous” and said they had no basis to file suit because — although they were invited to attend the execution — they had no right in law or regulations to attend.

Lee, 47, has been set to be executed at a federal penitentiary on Monday afternoon for the brutal 1996 murder of a family of three in Arkansas as part of a robbery aimed at raising funds for a white supremacist organization.

Last July, Attorney General William Barr announced plans to resume executions that had been on hiatus since 2003 due to legal challenges to lethal injection methods, as well as shortages of one drug often used in carrying out executions in recent decades.

However, in December, the Supreme Court unexpectedly halted that plan, ruling that several newly scheduled executions should remain on hold while a federal appeals court ruled on a legal case arguing that federal executions need to closely follow state execution procedures.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals largely rejected those arguments in April, and the Supreme Court issued an order late last month declining to take up the challenge. Two justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, indicated they would have heard the case.

In the ruling lifting the most recent stay of Lee’s execution, Judge Diane Sykes flatly rejected Indianapolis-based U.S. District Court Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson’s conclusion that the victim’s family members were entitled to attend because Arkansas law requires that victim’s family members be invited.

Citing a Supreme Court decision in May in an unrelated case, Sykes said it was improper for Magnus-Stinson even to consider that argument, because the family members had not advanced it. “The judge was wrong to insert it into this case,” Sykes wrote.

Sykes also said that while federal law does require that federal executions be conducted in the same “manner” as executions in the state where the inmate was convicted, that doesn’t require federal authorities to replicate “every aspect” of the state execution procedures.

Another execution, scheduled for Wednesday at the same Indiana prison, is on hold due to a stay issued by a separate, unanimous 7th Circuit panel on July 2. Wesley Purkey, 68, was convicted for the 1998 rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl in Missouri. Purkey also dismembered, burned, and dumped her body in a septic pond, according to evidence in the case.

The appeals court panel that halted Purkey’s execution cited his claims that his lawyers failed to raise key arguments at his trial and in a post-trial challenge.

The Justice Department filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court to lift the stay in Purkey’s case so that his execution can proceed as scheduled on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the victim's family members whom the appeals court ruled against on Sunday asked the Supreme Court Monday to step in on their behalf and reinstate the earlier decision putting off Lee’s execution.

Sykes and the other two judges who lifted the block on Lee’s execution Sunday are all GOP appointees. The three-judge panel who halted Purkey’s execution includes two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee.

A third execution is scheduled for Friday at Terre Haute and a fourth for late next month.

In a related development, Justice Department lawyers told federal judges Sunday that a new case of Covid-19 was recently identified at the Terre Haute prison complex where the executions were to take place.

An unidentified staff member who is assigned to the prison adjacent to the penitentiary containing the execution chamber and was involved in preparations for the executions left work and went into self-quarantine Wednesday after learning some people he spent time with on the previous weekend had tested positive, a court filing said.

The male staffer received the results of a positive COVID-19 test on Saturday, Bureau of Prisons official Rick Winter said.

As a result, prison officials are segregating those who had contact with the infected staff member from all insiders and outsiders involved with the execution, Winter said.

“Between the staff member’s potential exposure and his departure on July 8, he, among other things, attended the law enforcement meeting with outside law enforcement in preparation for the scheduled executions; attended a meeting regarding the handling of demonstrators at the scheduled executions; and attended to an issue at the [Secure Confinement Unit],” Winter wrote.

“Although the staff member did not wear a mask at all times during this period, he did not come into contact with the BOP execution protocol team, which arrived the afternoon of July 8 (i.e., after the staff member had departed), nor does he recall coming into contact with any members of the Crisis Support Team … who are involved in victim witness transportation and logistics,” the prison official added.

“For the duration of the execution or until a negative test is obtained, BOP will ensure that those staff members identified as having had contact with the infected staff member do not have contact with the inmates scheduled for execution, ministers of record, witnesses of the execution, attorneys, or press,” Winter added.

BREAKING 

Washington NFL team dropping ‘Redskins’ name after 87 years

The move came less than two weeks after owner Dan Snyder launched a 'thorough review' amid pressure from sponsors.

Mark Tenally/AP Photo

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
07/13/2020

The Washington NFL franchise announced Monday that it will drop the “Redskins” name and Indian head logo immediately, bowing to decades of criticism that they are offensive to Native Americans.

A new name must still be selected for one of the oldest and most storied teams in the National Football League, and it was unclear how soon that will happen. But for now, arguably the most polarizing name in North American professional sports is gone at a time of reckoning over racial injustice, iconography and racism in the U.S.

The move came less than two weeks after owner Dan Snyder, a boyhood fan of the team who once declared he would never get rid of the name, launched a “thorough review” amid pressure from sponsors. FedEx, Nike, Pepsi and Bank of America all lined up against the name, which was given to the franchise in 1933 when the team was still based in Boston.

The team said it is “retiring” the name and logo and that Snyder and coach Ron Rivera are working closely to develop a new name and design.

Native American advocates and experts have long criticized the name they call a “dictionary-defined racial slur.” Over a dozen Native leaders and organizations wrote to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell last week demanding an immediate end to Washington’s use of the name. Goodell, who has fielded questions on the topic for years, said he supported the review.

Protests against the name predate Snyder buying the team in 1999, and, until now, he had shown no willingness to consider a change. Strong words from sponsors — including a company run by a minority stakeholder of the team — changed the equation.

FedEx earlier this month became the first sponsor to announce it had asked the organization to change the name, particularly important because CEO Frederick Smith owns part of the team. FedEx also paid $205 million for the long-term naming rights to the team’s stadium in Landover, Maryland.

The lease at FedEx Field expires in 2027, and dropping the name keeps open various possibilities in Maryland, Virginia and Washington for the team’s new stadium and headquarters. District of Columbia mayor Muriel Bowser has said the name was an “obstacle” to Snyder building on the old RFK Stadium site, which is believed to be his preference.

Washington recently started cutting ties with racist founder George Preston Marshall, removing his name from the Ring of Fame and renaming the lower bowl at FedEx Field for the team’s first Black player, late Hall of Famer Bobby Mitchell. Marshall, who renamed the Boston Braves the Redskins in 1933 and moved it to D.C. four years later, was a segregationist and the last NFL owner to integrate their team. The current logo shows the profile of a red-faced Native American with feathers in his hair.

Long removed from the glory days of winning Super Bowl titles in the 1982, 1987 and 1991 seasons under coach Joe Gibbs, Washington has just five playoff appearances in 21 years and no postseason victories since 2005. The team has lacked a nationally marketable player since Robert Griffin III’s short-lived stardom, and the 2020 schedule features zero prime-time games for a franchise that used to be a draw.

Re-branding with a new name and logo — and perhaps the same burgundy and gold colors — coupled with turning football operations over to Rivera could be a boon for Snyder on and off the field. Even if a segment of the fan base opposes the change in the name of tradition, winning would more than make up for those losses.

Activists seek to decriminalize 'magic' mushrooms in D.C.IMAGINE IF YOU WILL THE CONGRESS AND SENATE STONED ON MUSHROOMS
Last week, activists presented more than 36,000 signatures to the Board of Elections.

A vendor bags psilocybin mushrooms at a pop-up cannabis market in Los Angeles. | Richard Vogel/AP Photo

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

07/13/2020 

WASHINGTON — The posters started blanketing light posts just a few weeks after the city entered what would be a monthslong stay-at-home order. Vividly colored and bearing a three-headed mushroom, they asked Washingtonians to “reform laws for plant and fungi medicines” by making natural psychedelics “the lowest level police enforcement priority.”

It was the start of an underdog campaign that just managed a truly improbable political feat: a successful grassroots petition drive conducted entirely under pandemic lockdown conditions.

Last week, activists presented more than 36,000 signatures to the Board of Elections. If the signatures hold up through the verification process, voters in the nation's capital will face a November ballot initiative that would decriminalize psilocybin “magic" mushrooms and other natural psychedelics like mescaline.

If passed, it would be the first of its kind for an Eastern city; Denver became the first U.S. city to pass such an initiative in May 2019, with the California cities of Oakland and Santa Cruz following suit. It would also likely face efforts in Congress to overturn or block its implementation.

Activists are deemphasizing the recreational aspects of the drugs, focusing on the therapeutic and medical benefits as treatment for depression, trauma and addiction.

“D.C. could really lead the way on this,” said campaign manager Melissa Lavasani. “You shouldn’t bear the repercussions of the drug war while you are healing yourself.”

Just getting on the ballot required an innovative change in normal grassroots signature-gathering tactics and an assist from the D.C. Council. Activists had planned to launch their campaign in March with traditional door-to-door canvassing and street-corner volunteers. But they decided to hold off as the coronavirus made inroads and the local infection numbers climbed. By April, it became clear the lockdown would last months and they decided to proceed anyway.

They briefly tried some door-to-door in the Capitol Hill neighborhood but found families under virus lockdown weren’t receptive to a stranger at the door with a clipboard. So they shifted tactics and appealed to the D.C. Council for help. The council, as part of a larger coronavirus relief package, approved a landmark set of changes allowing residents to download a copy of the petition, sign it and submit a picture of the signed paper.

Volunteers set up signature booths outside grocery stores, at polling stations on the day of Washington's primary election and even at the site of the city's ongoing protests over systemic racism and police brutality.

Organizers also mailed copies of the petition and detailed packages centering around Lavasani's family and her story to about 220,000 households. A D.C. government employee and a mother of two, she says she successfully treated post-partum depression that included suicidal thoughts with controlled doses of psilocybin mushrooms and another natural psychedelic called ayahuasca.

“I started micro-dosing with psilocybin and within a matter of days I felt like myself again,” she said. “It was really scary to know that if anybody found out I was doing this, I would lose everything.”

It's a message that Lavasani believes will resonate in a nation reeling under the psychological burdens of an ongoing pandemic, nationwide protests over racial injustice and what promises to be the most divisive presidential election in living memory.

“We're going to be in rough shape when we get through this, and we're going to need all the help we can get,” she said.

It's also a message that had gained a foothold within mainstream scientific circles. A growing body of work is looking at the effects of natural psychedelics to treat depression, trauma and addiction. Last year, Johns Hopkins University opened the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research with plans to study the effects of psychedelics on ailments including anorexia and Alzheimer’s disease.

In an article, center director Roland Griffiths called natural psychedelics “a fascinating class of compounds” that can “produce a unique and profound change of consciousness over the course of just several hours.”

The proposed D.C. ballot initiative would apply to psilocybin mushrooms, iboga, mescaline and ayuhuasca but not to peyote or to human-made psychedelics like LSD. It would instruct the Metropolitan Police Department to treat such substances as a low priority. If successful, Lavasani said she envisions patients being able to consume such substances in controlled circumstances and in consultation with doctors or therapists.

But even if it passes, Lavasani acknowledges it will probably be blocked by Congress, which retains the right to alter or even overturn D.C. laws. When a 2014 ballot initiative approved legalizing marijuana use, Congress stepped in and prohibited the district government from spending any funds or resources on developing a regulatory or taxation system for marijuana sales. The result has been a thriving “gift-economy” gray market where customers and dealers maintain the thin pretense they're buying something else like a T-shirt and receiving the marijuana as a gift.

Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris, who sponsored the budget rider that blocked the 2014 marijuana initiative, has indicated he plans to do the same if this new initiative passes. A spokesman for Harris declined to comment further on the issue. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington's nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives, has vowed to oppose any such effort.
“We will continue to fight any and all attempts to overturn D.C. laws, regardless of the policy, as D.C. has a right to self-government,” Norton, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Lavasani said she would rather not see such psychedelics simply added to that gray-market mix. She's hoping for an upcoming “blue wave” in November elections that would shift the Senate to Democratic hands and smooth the path of Washington's quest for statehood. The Democratic-controlled House approved a landmark D.C. statehood bill in June, but it faces insurmountable opposition in the Republican-held Senate.

For now, Lavasani said she plans a citywide educational initiative before the November vote. She's counting on the idea that ordinary voters, far from the psychedelic heyday of the 1960s, no longer regard natural psychedelics with the kind of stigma attached to marijuana and other drugs.

“There's more of a blank slate compared to cannabis,” she said. “A lot of people have a real issue with weed.”

How Trump Is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic

The secretive titan behind one of America’s largest poultry companies, who is also one of the President’s top donors, is ruthlessly leveraging the coronavirus crisis—and his vast fortune—to strip workers of protections. 

WHAT FEW PROTECTIONS THERE ARE FOR MEATPACKING PLANT WORKERS EVEN IF UNIONIZED BECAUSE THEY ARE EITHER MIGRANT WORKERS OR SO CALLED TEMP WORKERS WHO ARE ANYTHING BUT. CLOSE ALL MEATPACKING PLANTS GLOBALLY AS A MAJOR SOURCE OF THE VIRUS, PAY THE WORKERS A UNIVERSAL BENEFIT  AND LIVING WAGE WHILE OFF WORK.

TOTAL DISINFECTION OF ALL PLANTS!
By Jane Mayer July 13, 2020 THE NEW YORKER 

Ronald Cameron, the head of Mountaire, which critics call a “brutal” employer, is one of Trump’s top donors.Illustration by Cleon Peterson

On June 22nd, in the baking heat of a parking lot a few miles inland from Delaware’s beaches, several dozen poultry workers, many of them Black or Latino, gathered to decry the conditions at a local poultry plant owned by one of President Donald Trump’s biggest campaign contributors. “We’re here for a reason that is atrocious,” Nelson Hill, an official with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, told the small but boisterous crowd, which included top Democratic officials from the state, among them Senator Chris Coons. The union, part of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., represents some 1.3 million laborers in poultry-processing and meatpacking plants, as well as workers in grocery stores and retail establishments. Its members, many defined as “essential” workers—without the option of staying home—have been hit extraordinarily hard by the coronavirus. The union estimates that nearly thirty thousand of its workers in the food and health-care sectors have contracted covid-19, and that two hundred and thirty-eight of those have died.



For the previous forty-two years, a thousand or so laborers at the local processing plant, in Selbyville, had been represented by Local 27. Just two years earlier, the workers there had ratified a new five-year contract. But, Hill told the crowd, in the middle of the pandemic, as the number of infected workers soared, the plant’s owner, Mountaire Corporation—one of the country’s largest purveyors of chicken—conspired, along with Donald Trump, to “kick us out.”


Hill, who is Black and from a working-class family on the Delmarva Peninsula—a scrubby stretch of farmland that includes parts of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia—was used to the area’s heat and humidity. But, as he spoke to the crowd, behind dark glasses, his face glistened with anger. “It’s greed, that’s what it is,” he said. “It’s a damn shame.”

The jobs at Mountaire rank as among the most dangerous and worst paid in America. Government statistics indicate that poultry and meat-processing companies report more severe injuries than other industries commonly assumed to be more hazardous, including coal mining and sawmilling. Between 2015 and 2018, on average, a slaughterhouse worker lost a body part, or went to the hospital for in-patient treatment, about every other day. Unlike meatpackers, two-thirds of whom belong to unions, only about a third of poultry workers are represented by organized labor—and those who are unionized face mounting pressure. The industry, which is dominated by large multinational corporations such as Mountaire, has grown increasingly concentrated, expanding its political influence while replacing unionized employees with contract hires, often immigrants or refugees. These vulnerable workers are technically hired by temp agencies, relieving poultry plants of accountability if documentation is lacking. Trump has weakened federal oversight of the industry while accepting millions of dollars in political donations from some of its most powerful figures, including Ronald Cameron, Mountaire’s reclusive owner. In 2016, Cameron gave nearly three million dollars to organizations supporting Trump’s candidacy.

Founded in Little Rock, Arkansas, but incorporated in Delaware, Mountaire has operations in five states. It reportedly generated more than $2.3 billion in revenue last year. Because it is owned almost entirely by Cameron—and because it supplies poultry to other companies that put their own labels on the meat—the company’s public profile is virtually nonexistent. Cameron himself has received almost no media attention. “I’ve tried mightily over the years to bump into him, but he lays low,” Max Brantley, a longtime editor at the Arkansas Times, told me. According to trade journals, however, Mountaire has been spectacularly successful. Arkansas Business reported that the company’s sales in 2019 were a billion dollars higher than they were in 2010, nearly doubling the size of the business. Information on profits isn’t available, but as Mountaire’s revenues have risen wages for poultry workers have fallen even further behind. In 2002, workers were paid twenty-four per cent less than the national average for manufacturing jobs; today, they are paid forty-four per cent less. On average, poultry workers now earn less than fourteen dollars an hour.


By long-standing custom, labor contracts are binding for at least three years, giving a union time to prove its value to members. But in April a laborer at the Selbyville plant, Oscar Cruz Sosa, raised a legal objection to the contract, arguing that he’d been forced to join the union and pay dues against his will. He wanted a vote on whether to decertify the union. Mountaire maintains that it played no role in Cruz Sosa’s actions, and that the move to decertify the union was “entirely employee-driven.” But Cruz Sosa has had some outside help. His case was supported by lawyers from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the foremost anti-union advocacy group, which is funded by undisclosed tax-deductible donations. Meanwhile, a mysterious group calling itself the Oscar Cruz Committee for Employee Rights sent out mailings, in English, supporting Cruz Sosa’s complaint. (Cruz Sosa speaks only Spanish.) The return address was the Rehoboth Beach branch of MailBiz, which rents post-office boxes.

“Can I get my badge now?”

Cartoon by Brooke Bourgeois

Jonathan Williams, a spokesperson for the union, suspects that Cruz Sosa was a stalking horse. “It’s not hard to find one individual, who may get special privileges from management, and who maybe is offered a future position,” he told me. “It’s very, very rare, though, when an employee does the research, contacts the Department of Labor, and goes through all this effort. Usually, someone is being coached.” (Cruz Sosa didn’t respond to interview requests.)

When the union reached out to Cruz Sosa, his lawyers filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming harassment. The specific legal dispute is abstruse. Mark Mix, the president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, has called the contract’s language “illegal,” claiming that it didn’t make sufficiently clear that—as stipulated by law—new employees had thirty days to decide whether to join the union. The union argues that applications presented to new employees are unambiguous about the time frame, and says that the current contract has virtually the same boilerplate used in every contract with Mountaire since 1982.

After Cruz Sosa got thirty per cent of his co-workers to sign a petition, the National Labor Relations Board ordered an election at the Selbyville plant. When the union protested that this would violate the customary bar on overturning contracts before three years, the N.L.R.B. decided to broaden the case, reëxamining the entire concept of barring challenges to settled union contracts. The move has shocked labor-law experts. By statute, the N.L.R.B. has five members and is bipartisan, but the Trump Administration has filled only three seats, all with Republicans.

Given the pandemic, the union argued that there was no way an in-person election could be safely and fairly held in Sussex County, where Selbyville is situated. Delaware’s governor had declared a state of emergency on March 23rd, because of the surge in covid-19 cases, almost half of them in Sussex County, which has many poultry plants. The union asked for a stay, but on June 24th the N.L.R.B. moved to proceed with the election, by mail. The ballots that were sent out must be received by July 14th. Meanwhile, the board will weigh the larger question of whether such elections are legal, potentially overturning a precedent that dates back to the New Deal.

Howie Hawkins goes national 

GREEN PARTY POTUS CANDIDATE 
AUTHENTIC THIRD PARTY SPOILER

Howie Hawkins. | AP Photo/Hans Pennink

By BILL MAHONEY

07/12/2020

ALBANY — Syracuse resident Howie Hawkins has officially won the Green Party’s nomination for president, giving him a chance to take the relative success he’s found in New York to the rest of the country. The party designated him as its nominee during a virtual convention on Saturday.

Hawkins, the Green Party’s top vote-getter in his home state thanks to his showings against Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the past three gubernatorial campaigns, is now in a familiar spot. As was the case with his statewide races, he’ll try to persuade progressives to vote for a real socialist rather than a traditional liberal, in this case, Joe Biden.

"We’re getting a lot of [Bernie] Sanders people,” Hawkins said.

There’s a chance that Hawkins will become a household name in the coming months, at least to the degree that predecessors Ralph Nader and Jill Stein were. Fairly or not, much of the discussion of his candidacy — from the media as well as the types of voters he’s hoping to attract — will focus on whether he’s setting himself up to be a spoiler who could give President Donald Trump another term.

Hawkins, 67, has been a community organizer, logger, and for the 17 years preceding his 2018 retirement, a Teamster working the red-eye shift, unloading trucks for UPS in Central New York. His running mate, Angela Walker of South Carolina, has been a transit operator in Milwaukee.

“When’s the last time you had two truck drivers running [on a national ticket]?” Nader said in an interview. “You see how off the wall that sounds, even though there are millions of truck drivers. These are not professional politicians, they work with their hands … That’s a good combination, because people often try to pit labor against environmentalists.”

Hawkins is sociable, but he’s hardly a stereotypical back-slapping politician. He’s more like the owner of a used book store owner who’s eager to talk about any item on the shelves.

“Howie is one of the most well-read and well-rounded persons that I know when it comes to political thought and knowledge,” said Frank Cetera, the treasurer of the Onondaga County Greens. “You can’t bring up a topic that he can’t speak to.”

Hawkins has run for office 24 times in New York, batting 0-24. The campaigns have ranged from local contests where he’s been somewhat competitive (in 2011, he received 48 percent of the vote in a Syracuse district councilor race) to more-ambitious statewide races (in 2006, his vote total was not in the same ballpark, or even area code, as then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s).

But it was the 2010 gubernatorial campaign that made him a fixture in New York politics.

Facing a challenge from the proto-Trumpian Republican Carl Paladino, a developer from Western New York, Cuomo dusted off a page from his father’s playbook and welcomed every candidate on stage for the campaign’s only debate, minimizing Paladino’s screen time and ensuring that anti-Cuomo messaging would be seen as the stuff of lunatics.

And the stage was certainly filled with characters. There was a housing activist, Jimmy McMillian, who proclaimed that the rent was too damn high and pledged to let people marry shoes. And there was Kristin Davis, dubbed the “Manhattan Madam” by the tabloids, who explained how her career managing prostitutes was the ideal experience for working in Albany. (“The key difference between the MTA and my former escort agency is I operated one set of books and offered on-time and reliable service,” she said.)

The only quirk of Hawkins that stood out in the debate was his accent — it’s been compared to Foghorn Leghorn. He has said that’s the product of the diverse and polyglot community of San Mateo, California, in which he grew up.

Thanks to a brief tenure living in Polynesia, he’s also able to speak Tongan, though he says it’s a bit rusty. It’s a language that’s “more logical than Esperanto” in areas like tenses, but can be tricky due to the metaphors — “they use a lot of plants and flowers,” he said. He was unable to find a fellow speaker with a Ph.D. who could test his fluency when he attended Dartmouth, meaning he fell one foreign language requirement short of graduating.

But during that infamous gubernatorial debate dominated by unique figures, Hawkins did not come across as particularly eccentric. He was obviously far to Cuomo’s left, but was grounded enough to present a reasonable alternative to liberals disenchanted with the Democratic Party’s selection of a moderate standard bearer.

“We may not see the world the same or support the same solutions to our problems, but he’s as passionate a believer as they come,” said Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, the 2018 Republican gubernatorial nominee. “He was a gentleman and fun to debate. When it comes to his beliefs and supporters, he is the real deal.”

In his first gubernatorial race, Hawkins talked about issues — like free public college tuition, legal marijuana for recreational use, a ban on hydrofracking and single-payer health care — that were certainly not part of Cuomo’s agenda. Now, some of those policies, or at least versions of them, already have been implemented.

He also discussed at length a comprehensive plan to create jobs in an environmentally conscious way. He called it a “Green New Deal,” recalling the program implemented by the last upstate New Yorker before him to head a national ticket, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Under his plan, people who couldn’t find jobs in the private sector would be provided state-funded work in areas like clean energy.

Of course, Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and even Cuomo himself have since picked up on that phrase and concept. But the way they’ve approached it underscores the need to vote Green, Hawkins argues.

“They took the brand but diluted the content,” he said. “For example, a nationwide ban on fracking and new fossil fuel infrastructure — that’s the first step in a real climate action program, because if we build that infrastructure, we’re locked into fossil fuels for decades more and the planet is cooked. We called for cuts in military spending to fund the Green New Deal. They dropped that. And they extended the deadline for zero emissions from 2030 to 2050.”

Hawkins will presumably not win in November. And there’s certainly a risk that Democrats will label him a spoiler as they’ve done with Nader and Stein in recent presidential elections. Given the unprecedented degree of loathing for Trump on the left, it’s possible that some people will wind up classifying him as one of the greatest villains in American history for years to come if the president is re-elected in a close vote.

Greens defend themselves ferociously against accusations that they are spoilers. They'll argue that even in a situation where, say, a Democrat loses a swing state by 5,000 votes after a Green receives 10,000, it's wrong to simply assume those 10,000 votes would have gone to a Democrat if there were no Green in the race. Many might have simply stayed home.

“The reporters have to get over one thing in order to clarify their mission — the politically bigoted word ‘spoiler,'" said Nader. “That’s politically bigoted because it’s only applied to third parties, it’s not applied by one major party against another. And that’s [major parties’] way of trying to marginalize, not giving them a chance to grow from one election period to another and exposing them to malicious ballot access obstructions, litigation, and keeping them off the polls and basically telling reporters, ‘don’t bother, all they can do is be a spoiler.”

Still, it’s clear that there’s at least some segment of the progressive electorate more concerned than ever about the Greens playing a role in helping a Republican win.

“It’s usually the intellectuals, the professors, and all I can say is they can afford Joe Biden,” said Hawkins. “But working class people in this country, [their] life expectancies are in decline, they need some real relief economically, Medicare for all and a job guarantee and so forth. Biden’s for none of that. If you’re a professor, you’ll be all right, but if you’re struggling, particularly now with this coronavirus depression, you need something more than just the status quo.”

What does he hope to accomplish with his quixotic campaign?

For one, he envisions this race as an opportunity draw attention to his issues. He pointed to the 2014 gubernatorial contest, when he received 5 percent of the vote against Cuomo in the general election after liberal Zephyr Teachout received 34 percent in the primary as the “best model” to emulate.

“[Cuomo] was the social liberal, fiscal conservative, and after that he rebranded himself the programmatic progressive and we got the ban on fracking, we got the $15 minimum wage,” he said. “I think we moved the debate. The more votes we get, the less we can be taken for granted.”

He also needs to receive votes to keep the Green Party viable at the local level. He’s done that before.

New York has traditionally required parties to receive at least 50,000 votes in a gubernatorial contest in order to be categorized as “qualified” and enjoy perks such as easier ballot access for all the state’s offices for the next four years. The only Green to hit that threshold before 2010 was “Grandpa” Al Lewis. That was due in part to the unprecedented amount of press coverage his 1998 candidacy received because of his legal battle to appear on the ballot under the name of the character he played on “The Munsters,” a 1960s sitcom. Hawkins hit that mark in his first run and has blown by it in his past two races, ensuring the party of spots in the sorts of down-ballot contests they can occasionally win.

Now, he’ll have the opportunity to play a similar role at the national level.

“In 40 of the 51 states and DC, the presidential vote determines whether you have a ballot line for the next election cycle,” he said. “In most states, it’s 1, 2, or 3 percent, and that’s achievable. So with more ballot lines, you can run more candidates down ballot, and we’ve always said that’s how we’re going to build the Green Party into a major party, by electing thousands of people to local office and state legislatures and congress.”

Thanks to a recent change that seems to have originated from Cuomo’s feud with the progressive Working Families Party — which differs from the Greens by focusing its efforts in Democratic primaries rather than long-shot general election challenges — this year’s presidential contest is also key to the party’s continued viability in his home state.

Instead of the traditional 50,000 votes in gubernatorial contests, parties now need to meet higher thresholds each year. Under the changes Cuomo promoted, Hawkins will likely need to get at least 160,000 votes in New York this year or risk wiping out everything he’s accomplished in the state over the past decade.

“We’re fighting for our ballot line,” Hawkins said earlier this year. “The Democrats get on their high horses about the Russians, but in New York, who needs Russians when you’ve got the Democrats?”

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA ARM

Cuba broadcaster confronts budget calamity amid fight with lawmakers
DECONSTRUCTING GOVERNMENT
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting has become collateral damage in a struggle between Congress and its new boss.
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting in Miami, pictured in 2007, is responsible for beaming radio and television broadcasts into communist-run Cuba. | Alan Diaz/AP Photo

By DANIEL LIPPMAN

07/09/2020

The U.S. government’s Cuba broadcasting office is quickly running out of money and could be forced to furlough some of its employees and fire contractors, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The office, which is responsible for beaming radio and television broadcasts into communist-run Cuba, falls under the umbrella of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That agency is in turmoil over the recent arrival of Michael Pack, a Steve Bannon ally who pushed out the heads of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other outlets as he started as CEO of the taxpayer-funded media group.

The budget crisis is due to the uproar Pack’s moves provoked on Capitol Hill, where senators in both parties fear the Trump administration is seeking to lean on coverage that is meant to be independent. Lawmakers are upset that Pack has yet to schedule a time to testify on the matter and are holding up funds until he agrees to explain his actions.

The impasse is having its most immediate impact on the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which operates Radio and TV Martí. The Cuba office was already struggling to digest roughly $8 million in budget cuts in the most recent appropriations bill.

Officials at the media agency told Congress they couldn’t cut funding so quickly, and obtained a temporary reprieve: Lawmakers allowed them to reallocate up to $7 million from another of its accounts, sparing the Cuba office some unpalatable choices.

But Pack’s mass firing of top agency leaders, known internally as “the Wednesday night massacre,” has irritated powerful members of Congress, particularly within the Senate Appropriations Committee.

On June 18, staffers of Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the top members of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the State Department and related issues, placed a hold on the transfer of the Cuba funds. They were concerned about Pack’s actions, a staffer said, and wanted to hear from him directly, according to two people familiar with the exchange.


“The staffers and their bosses wanted to know: What’s happening? Why are you doing this and creating all of this turmoil?” said one of the people.

“Those funds are on hold until we have a better understanding of what Mr. Pack’s intentions are,” a Senate Democratic aide said. “We want these funds to be used, but Congress also has responsibility as overseer of the funds to know what is going on down there, given that every week there’s a new revelation of someone being fired or something being eliminated and we have no idea what the basis for it is.”

Pack, a veteran documentary filmmaker whose films have appeared on PBS, told the Washington Examiner that it was necessary to fire some of his new colleagues because it would better help him reform the organization to align more clearly with its original mission. He said he wanted to “clean house and start fresh. Far from being a witch hunt of Democrats, it is a very fair, let’s-start-over process.”

Pack’s problems with the Hill compounded on July 1, when a bipartisan group of seven U.S. senators, led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), wrote a letter informing him they were planning on doing a “thorough review” of the agency’s funding to ensure that its journalism wasn’t politicized and that the agency could carry out its core mission. It also said that the firings of the agency’s various components raised “serious questions” about the future of the agency under Pack’s leadership.

Notable among the ousted leaders was Jamie Fly, a Republican and respected former foreign policy aide to Rubio who headed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based in Prague.

In a reply this week, Pack said he was “eager to meet and work with you to discuss the strategic direction of the agency so that U.S. international broadcasting efforts advance human rights and the American national interest.” But he hasn’t agreed to any specific dates to testify.

With the agency projecting that the Cuba office is going to run out of cash in mid-July, officials there have to move money around next week to ensure that they have enough cash for their next payroll and to pay contractors, according to one of the people. If they don’t do that, they would have to lay off most or all of the agency’s 70-odd contractors, furlough some of the office’s roughly 100 federal employees or dramatically reduce or stop shortwave radio broadcasts to Cuba — or some combination of all three.

Loss of the contractors, many of whom have digital and social media skills the permanent employees lack, would hurt the office’s efforts to reach young audiences in Cuba, a person familiar with the matter said. It’s not just payroll that is at risk: the office also has to pay for costs like electricity for a radio transmitting station in Greenville, N.C. USAGM didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In a move that’s known among budget wonks in Washington as “blowing through the hold,” USAGM is planning to shuffle around $1.5 million to forestall such drastic steps, according to one of the people. But the agency is worried about provoking “wrath” on Capitol Hill by ignoring the hold, this person said — with a response that could include ratcheting up reporting requirements and “a lot of invasive things that would lower the effectiveness of the agency.”

The Cuba office is now led by Jeffrey Shapiro, another Bannon ally who spread conspiracy theories about the former director of the office being a secret agent for the Castro regime, according to The Daily Beast. Conservative critics of the editorial direction under the former director, Maria “Malule” Gonzalez, had complained that the coverage had veered too far from its traditional tone of strident anti-communism.

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Radio and TV Martí got into hot water after it aired what USAGM described in a statement as an “egregiously false and anti-Semitic story” about billionaire financier George Soros in 2018, an incident that led the agency to order a third-party independent review of its Cuba programs. An internal human resources investigation led to the agency firing or disciplining employees and contractors involved in the story, and USAGM said the reviews “highlight some urgent needs at OCB — particularly in shoring up journalistic principles and practices.”


The Cuba office isn’t the only wing of USAGM affected by budget issues: The Open Technology Fund, a grantee of USAGM, is still awaiting its July tranche of funding of about $1.5 million. Some of OTF’s money every year goes to support critical tools like encrypted messaging app Signal that help people around the world communicate securely. OTF’s Rapid Response fund has been used to help protesters in Hong Kong fend off digital attacks and surveillance.

OTF had sued Pack and USAGM late last month, arguing he was legally barred from replacing its staff, but on Tuesday, a federal court upheld the administration's right to revamp the leadership.

Earlier this week, Pack selected former South Carolina secretary of state James Miles to lead OTF in an acting capacity; the official announcement didn’t list any technological expertise for Miles, but Pack cited Miles’ “wealth of knowledge from extensive professional experience involving business, the law, management of non-profits, and major public office.”

“The new CEO has been starving lots of the broadcasting entities and grantees for funds,” the person said. “The ‘freeze’ he instituted largely continues.”