Veteran Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington announced today that he won't seek to retain his seat in the November election. 

Worthington, who was first elected to office in 1996, made the announcement at a news conference on the steps of City Hall at which he passed a baton to Rigel Robinson, a recent University of California Berkeley graduate who he is endorsing in the race to succeed him. 

In a brief phone interview, Worthington, 64, said one of the things he's proudest of is increasing the diversity of the people who work for the city and serve on its commissions. 

Worthington also said, "I've empowered a whole generation of young people" by appointing more than 400 students, including Robinson, to city commissions. 

He said Robinson has served on the Police Review Commission, the Zoning Board and the Planning Commission. 

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, who served as Worthington's appointee to the Housing Commission and worked as his legislative aide, said in a statement, "Kriss produced a prodigious proliferation of progressive public policy." 

Arreguin said thousands of ordinances, resolutions, proclamations and council items authored by Worthington addressed environmental, labor, tenant, consumer, affordable housing, student housing, disabled, senior and other issues. 

"Almost all won, and some were adopted by other cities or the state," Arreguin said. 

James Chang of the Berkeley Rent Stablization Board said, "In 1996, Kriss Worthington smashed stereotypes by becoming the first openly gay person elected to the Berkeley City Council." 

Chang said Worthington "led efforts to make Berkeley the first U.S. City Council to endorse marriage equality and the first city to train every police employee on LGBT sensitivity." 

Worthington is the second veteran Berkeley City Council member to announce this year that they won't seek re-election. 

Linda Maio, who has been in office for 25 years, said in March that she won't run again.

Two leading competitors in the Assembly District 15 primary race today endorsed Richmond City Council Member Jovanka Beckles’s campaign for the November 6 general election. Oakland City Council Member Dan Kalb and Berkeley School Board Member Judy Appel announced their support and emphasized their common aspirations for the District’s representation in Sacramento. 

Gladly receiving the endorsements of her two long-time progressive East Bay activist colleagues, Jovanka declared:  

The dual endorsement of my campaign by Dan Kalb and Judy Appel raises graciousness and concern for our democracy to a new level in East Bay politics. 

What Dan and Judy stand for, and have given their political lives to, is exceptionally moving for me. My two fellow candidates care deeply that we must restore government of the people, by the people and for the people to our state. I thank them for a most civil and informative primary campaign and I look forward to consulting with them about legislation to save our planet and our society. 

Dan has devoted much of his life to acting on his deep concern about our treatment of our planet. From 2003, when he began as California Policy Director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, he has led intelligent efforts to fight for environmental health and justice and to protect our precious San Francisco Bay. We are grateful for Dan’s efforts to stop the export of coal through the Oakland port. His signal – and continuing – work deserves all our support. 

I admire Dan’s service on the Jewish Community Relations Council board of directors and his co-leadership of the Isaiah Project to bring together young adults in the African American and Jewish communities to advance social justice and enhance cultural understanding. We need more of this kind of caring. 

Judy Appel’s passion for education makes me wish I could go back to school! Her deft service on the Berkeley School Board, now in her second term, is a model of her practical passion as California faces a higher education funding crisis and a related devaluation of K-12 schools. I am honored to receive her endorsement because of her profound expertise. I know she can help us all to restore our schools to their past glory. 

A co-founding board member of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Judy has also worked to change our criminal justice system. I admire and thank her for the loving work she has carried out in protecting the rights of our LGBTQ community, especially as it relates to families and children, and for her generous support for my candidacy. 

Dan Kalb declared:  

I am confident that Jovanka Beckles will be a strong advocate and policymaker in Sacramento to preserve, protect and enhance our East Bay environment and accelerate California’s transition to renewable and sustainable energy paths that will mitigate global climate change. I’m also thankful for her support of our shared commitment to stop coal in the East Bay and throughout our state, and to protect our natural environment for generations to come. I’m pleased to support her election to the California State Assembly. 

Judy Appel stated: 

The communities that make up the 15th AD are some of the most progressive in the state, in the nation. It is our responsibility, a responsibility that is more critical now than ever before, to send a progressive voice to Sacramento who will fight for California’s students, for our working families, for our deeply held commitment to equity. In this race, that person is Jovanka Beckles. I’m supporting Jovanka because, like me, she is unafraid to stand up to the powerful – whether that means corporate charter school interests, national anti-immigrant activists or oil corporations – so that everyone in our communities, regardless of gender orientation, race, religion, economic circumstance or immigration status must be able to avail themselves of the full rights to which they are entitled. 

Last week, El Cerrito Vice-Mayor Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto, who also ran in the primary, endorsed Jovanka. Together, Beckles, Kalb, Appel, and Pardue-Okimoto received 60,157 votes in the primary. The top vote-getter received 37,141.

Three victims were shot on eastbound Interstate Highway 80 near the Gilman exit in Berkeley around 3 a.m. today, the California Highway Patrol said. 

"Our investigators are trying to get more information from the victims," said CHP Officer Custodio Lopez. "So far, (the victims) are the only witnesses to the crime." 

Lopez said all three suffered gunshot wounds and were treated at the hospital, arriving through means other than an ambulance. More information was not available. 

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Several evenings a week I sit on my porch to watch the transition from daylight to twilight to evening. It is a beautiful and magnificent journey. I also notice a luminous object in the sky, often the only luminous object my eyes can see. Someone suggested that it may be a planet. I am hoping that one of you can get your mind off the planet earth for a while -- nowadays that should not be difficult --- and educate me about what I am seeing. 

Except for Mercury, which is too hot because of its proximity to the sun, I am planning on relocating to one of the planets. If the bright object I see up there is a planet, perhaps Venus, that would be ideal because I would be able to look down occasionally to see how things are going here. As you know looking down is much easier on the neck than looking up. Whoever else would like to join me, including your friends and family, are welcome regardless of race, ethnicity, and religion. Except for the planet Earth, affirmative action laws are completely unnecessary on the other planets. 

A friend of mine claims that there is a lot of evidence of intelligent life on the other planets. According to my friend, the irrefutable evidence of high intelligence on these planets is that their residents have never attempted to contact us.

In Part 1 of this evaluation of the report on Berkeley Police racial profiling issued by the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), we examined some of the considerations concerning racial profiling and racialization in the US that were absent from the report, either because of the CPE focus or because the data was withheld by the BPD. In particular, two categories of discussion were omitted in the report that seem important, statistics on arrests made by the police in the course of traffic stops, and the overall national situation with respect to police violence and race, in particular, the many uprisings and demonstrations that occurred across the countyr in 2014. Since that year occurs right in the middle of the period the report addresses, to leave it out decontextualizes what the report intends to study to a large degree. Part 1 of this evaluation can be found here []. And Part 3, if you wish to read ahead, can be found here].
 

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Racial categories and the police “recognition factor”

A summary of some of the data

Berkeley is a very diverse community, which means there are people of every appearance. One would think that racial disparities in traffic stops would depend on clear visual differentiations between people, because profiling drivers depends on categorizing appearance. Yet the racial categories used by the BPD are far from well-defined (if that is even possible).

Though five racial categories are deployed, there is one "racial" term that plays an interesting role in this catgegorization, and that is the term “Hispanic.” It is one of the five categories. But it is also used to define the others, namely, non-Hispanic blacks and non-Hispanic Asians. It even uses this terminology with respect to whites (non-Hispanic whites), though the data for white people is used as a main base of comparison in the report’s commentaries. The report actually admits: “Subjects in the Hispanic category could be of any race.” Nevertheless, the report (and the BPD) not only use the term "Hispanic" to define the other racial categories, they use it as one of their "racial" categories. 

 

In this evaluation, we will use the term Latino as more appropriate. "Hispanic" refers to language, and a driver’s language does not appear in a driver’s face (which is what an officer sees in making racially disparate traffic stops). "Hispanic" is also a generalization that eclipses the richness and differences in Latin American cultures (which include hundreds of indigenous languages). We should also not forget those who consider themselves "Chicano," namely the decendent residents of formerly Mexican territories absorbed into an expanding US during the 1840s. 

The Asian-American population of Berkeley (listed as non-Hispanic Asian), for instance; is it a race, or simply a recognition of the vast and ungeneralizable linguistic variations among Asian peoples? How, then, are Philippinos to be considered, for many of whom Spanish is a primary language? These questions have been raised many times, and will continue to be as long as "race" is considered as an object to be defined. We’ll try to get beyond that in Part 3 of this evaluation. 

What all this oddly suggests is not the undefinability of Latinos, but a blurring of the boundaries of recognition between all these groups. And that then poses the problem, given the vastness of the racial differentials that occur in police practices, of what the police are using as a means of recognizing people racially in order to produce those disparities. Indeed, it suggests that it is the police who are creating these groups by the overall manner in which they stop drivers, and it is their manner of recognizing that is what these racial categories represent. 

Nevertheless, the racial breakdown of Berkeley is of whites (56%), blacks (8%), Latinos (11%), Asians (19%), and a category of "Other" that comes to 7%. The category of "Other" is a melange of indigenous, Alaskans, Pacific Islanders, and those listing multiple racial identifications on the census forms. And that simply exemplifies the vast diversity of the Berkeley population. There are Latinos, Asians, and African Americans who are as light as whites. And there are people from Latin America amd Asia who are as dark as African Americans. If appearance is problematic, then how are these categories used, and what is their meaning for traffic stop disparities? Yet, the data concerning racial disparities in traffic stops depends somehow on appearances, and strong disparities along "racial" lines are reported in the data on how different racial groups were treated by the police. 

As if to complicate things, the report warns that not all traffic stops are of Berkeley residents, meaning care must be taken in relating the traffic stop data to population size. But what we have just said is cause to ignore that. The issue of police racial bias in their decisions to stop motorists occurs before learning of the driver’s residence. The officer can be assumed to be acting in terms of a consciousness of Berkeley’s resident population ratios in making those stops to the extent they result from racial profiling. 

But let’s take a look at some of the data. In police tabulation, the Latino population of Berkeley is one fifth the size of the white population, but they are stopped twice as often as whites (on a per capita basis). [fig. 9, page 27] Assuming equal driving patterns, this indicates a recognition of Latinos as not white. The excess of Latino driver stops over those of white stops (per capita, that is, per 1000 of that group’s population) represents the level of profiling of Latinos. But it has to be based on visual factors since the officer, in stopping a driver on a racially profiled basis, only sees the driver’s face before making the stop. Black people are 8% of Berkeley’s population, or one seventh the size of its white population. Yet black people are stopped on average 6.5 times more often than whites on a per capita basis. The excess of black stops over white stops represents the level of profiling of black people, which is an extraordinary level of excess. Asians are the only group whose per capita traffic stops are less than those of whites. And this variation in rates of stops indicates that the police are picking and choosing. 

It gets worse if we look at the actual numbers. The graph (fig. 9) states that, in 2016, white stops occurred at a rate of 51 per 1000 of white population, while black stops occurred at a rate of 330 per 1000 of black population. Hence, the 6.5 rate at which black drivers are more likely to be stopped than white drivers. The “per 1000” figure signifies that white stops represent 5% of the white population, while black stops represent 33% of the black population. (Latino stops, at 100 per 1000, represent 10% of the Latino population.) This figure indicates the extent to which drivers from each group are singled out (with duplications, of course, but there is no data in the report on multiple stops of particular individuals, so the figure remains representational). For black people, this is not new. It is satirized as “driving while black.” Despite the vast variety of appearnces of black people, somehow the police find enough of them to represent fully a third of the black population. 

Acting on racial bias is not a mechanical phenomenon. It is always intentional. That is, a decision is made on the basis of noticing and recognizing. Especially in the case of “implicit bias,” for instance, it is that implicit bias that then drives the decision (to stop) made in the wake of observation. And the degree of disparity in these figures suggest a high degree of decision to stop black drivers, even to the point of seeking them out from the vast variety of appearances that drivers present. That implies that there is a "search" component responsible for this degree of excess. And that makes the degree to which black drivers are stopped a deliberate project of the department. The police not only notice the race of the driver; they have to have been looking for drivers of that particular racial group to stop at the rate differential that actually occurs. 

Indeed, in Berkeley, with people of every appearance, the frequency of black stops is excessive not only with resepct to the group’s population size, but also with respect to their percentage of all stops of people of color. Black stops account for 50% (approximately) of all stops of people of color, while constituting 22% of the whole (POC). That additionally implies that, for the police, the appearance of racial difference is well-defined. Yet physically that cannot be the case. 

To search out members of a group is no longer "profiling." To profile means to impose by attribution a characteristic or value (such as a propensity to be violent) on a person upon encountering them, simply by association with how they comport themselves or how they look. But “to search” means to have that attribution in mind prior to encounter with the person on whom it will be imposed. It is the fact of imposition that constitutes the generalizations inhabiting racialization. To search for black drivers to stop represents an overall process of racializing them as black. 

To say that “this is not new” is not to make a glib observation. To not be "new" means there is a history at work here. It is a history that contextualizes the fact that Berkeley PD traffic stops represent 33% of the black population, or that every black driver has a 1 in 3 chance of being stopped. It recalls the fact, imminent in the mass incarceration of POC in the US, that black men between the ages of 20 and 40 have had a 1 in 3 chance of being thrown in prison at some point in their life. It is that campaign, politically known as the “war on drugs” (more appropriately identified as a “new Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander) that has made the US prison system the largest in the world. 

If traffic stop ratios result from searches rather than law enforcement encounters, then the police are not innocent in the results. The fact that the number increases from year to year takes on a different meaning. In 2012, black traffic stops represented 21% of the black population (213 stops per 1000 of population). It rose to 28% in 2013, and stood at 33.8% in 2014 (a little bit higher than for 2016). With respect to white drivers, whose traffic stop rate was 40 per 1000 in 2014 (or 4% of the population, up from 3.2% in 2012), black drivers had an 8.45 greater chance of being stopped than a white driver, still as only 8% of the Berkeley population. (For Latinos, the 2014 rate was 10%, up from 5.5% in 2012.) 

That steady increase parallels a different historical factor, that of the US police kill rate. In 2012, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement estimated that an unarmed black person was shot and killed in the US every 28 hours. That signifies the killing of 320 such people by the police that year. By 2014, that number was up over 800. And by 2015, it had climbed to more than 1100 unarmed black people killed by the police. That is more than 3 a day – a form of mass murder committed daily by the government. Berkeley police data are not innocent either. 

There is an odd twist in the BPD data, however, as we move from 2014 to 2015, a "dip" in incidence (mentioned earlier in this evaluation). While the number of black traffic stops increased linearly from 2012 to 2014, reaching a ratio of 8.45 to white stops, it fell to 6.1 in its ratio to white traffic stops in 2015, a decline of 28%. The yearly rate (per 1000) of white traffic stops continued to rise linearly from 2012 to 2016. There was, however, a dip in the rate of Latino traffic stops which dropped from 2.1 in 2014 to 1.75 in 2015, a decline of 19%. 

This "dip" in traffic stops appears quite markedly in figure 5 (page 23). It begins at the end of the summer, 2014, hits bottom in January, and rises to former hieghts in March 2015. 

Two questions (at least) emerge from this. Why did the ratio became so large in 2014, and what would explain the precipitous drop in January, 2015? After all, the driving capabilities of Berkeley residents had not changed from 2014 to 2015. 

Throughout the second half of 2014, there were uprisings against police violence and militarism in many parts of the US, significantly in Ferguson and in Baltimore. These uprisings were not spur-of-the-moment events. Police violence had been increasing for years. What pushed some communities of color past their breaking point were the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and Eric Garner in NY. And massive demonstrations erupted throughout the country in solidarity with and support for the many movements demanding justice for the victims of police killings, including Berkeley and Oakland. 

Did those demonstrations have an effect? Should we hypothesize that the Berkeley PD, on its own, responded to national events by curtailing its excessive treatment of black and Latino people? Did the police undergo a change of heart, and back off from singling them out for excessive traffic stops? Or did that dip in black and Latino traffic stops represent something else? 

Insofar as the increase in black traffic stops leading up to late 2014 paralleled a national trend of increasing violence, it would not be farfetched to assume that the dip in ordinary civilian policing was also in coordination with a national trend. And we know that policing in major cities, because of these uprisings, shifted to strategies focused on counteracting social unrest and strengthening crowd control logistics. That would imply, at least temporarily, a reduction in ordinary civilian patrolling. And the "dip" would suggest that Berkeley PD was put on similar alert – against social unrest. 

In short, it would probably be a mistake to interpret this dip in traffic stops as a decrease in police activity itself. Rather, because of its historical context, namely, the surge of movement activity across the nation around the issues of police violence, one could more reasonably speculate that it marks a shift in strategy from ordinary responsiveness to one prioritizing crowd control readiness. And this would suggest a more conceptual connection between the Berkeley police and the national situation. In the wake of the Berkeley demonstrations of December, 2014, when many civilian complaints of police excessive violence emerged, the BPD issued a report in 2015, evaluating their actions and responses. Though they suggest that they were perhaps overly zealous, their argument parallels that of the police elsewhere in the country that they were placed on the defensive by the demonstrations or uprisings, and that their violence was essentially defensive violence. Video evidence, however, clearly shows that the BPD initiated violence against the demonstrators. And this was clearly the case as well in Ferguson. 

In other words, rather than see the BPD acting autonomously, it would be more realistic to conclude that its strategies were linked to federal policy directives and coordination through US fusion centers – in Berkeley’s case, NCRIC (Northern California Regional Intelligence Center) – which would communicate advisories concerning such policy shifts nationwide. That would in fact explain the adamance with which the BPD argued for renewal of contracts with NCRIC in 2015 and 2017. Indeed, it was an adamance wholly out of character with what the BPD claimed they would receive. In pressing its requests, the BPD misrepresented its needs and misinformed the City Council about the benefits it sought (see the May 14 and June 20, 2017, hearings on the issue). In part, the police were untruthful in claiming they needed those connections for facilities that they already possessed, and for reasons that were for the most part irrelevant. In acceeding to BPD’s demands, the City Council ignored an enormous outpouring of popular sentiment against those contracts by the people of Berkeley. 

What this represents is a process of federalization of urban police departments, beyond the militarization that has been debated over the last 25 years (involving such programs as Urban Shield, for instance). Federalization would amount to external influence on local police strategies in the name of coordination. Supporters claim it will be a way of attenuating racial bias in policing, while critics suggest it will erode local civilian control of the police. 

 

 

The recognition factor

Let us turn to the fact that the police stop so many black drivers that it represents what amounts to stopping 33% of the black population of Berkeley in one year. The fact that Latinos are stopped twice as often as whites, and black drivers stopped 6.5 times as often as whites reflects something more profound than simple racial bias. In light of the wide variety of people of color who drive in Berkeley, what are the police using as a “recognition factor”? How are the police able to notice and stop those who are actually African American to the extent that they do? Many Latinos are dark, and many African Americans are light. What enables the police to pick out members of the smallest racial group for the highest number of stops? What do they look for in their search for drivers to stop? 

 

Indeed, the number of African Americans stopped is roughly equal to the number of all other POC stopped. In 2016, there were 13,469 white stops, 13,351 stops of non-black people of color, and 13,594 black stops (multiplying the “per 1000” rate for that year times the number of thousands in the group’s population). They are all within a few tenths of a percentage point of each other. Yet black people are only 8% of the population, while non-black POC are 36%. How are the police able to find black people fully a third of the time in order to stop them? What are the police looking for when they stop a driver they identify as black so often that it equals the rate at which all other POC are stopped? Hanging out in black neighborhoods is obviously one way. Are the police operating on some kind of quota system? Or is their "occupation" of black communities part of their campaign to criminalize those communities? Is this too part of a policy handed down to them by federalization of urban policing? 

However it is done, it can’t be easy, given the diversity of the city. Only people who “love their work” would be able to do it. Whatever kind of search function the BPD are using, it would have to be powered by an intentionality, a consciousness driven by a desire, a desire to recognize African Americans. To postulate such a desire goes beyond racial profiling, and the inequity of racial discrimination. It suggests instead a kind of obsession, though we would have to understand that term in relation to institutionality. That is, it is a political project. 

The fact that this high rate of searching out, recognizing, and stopping African Americans indicates that black people are not just another sector of POC, one among many. What this “recognition factor” indicates is that black people play a special role in this society, one which requires that they be subjected to special treatment. That will not be news to most black people. The important question is its importance for white people, and for the white institutions that do it. That goes beyond mere recognition, 

Are we back to some form of what had been (a century ago) called “scientific racism,” by which a special sense of presence was imposed on African Americans to immerse them in a prior dehumanization? Is this part of the ideology of the Berkeley police? Or is this an alternate form of objectification designed to deprive people of their sovereignty and autonomy as people? 

In the third section of this critique of the CPE report, we will look a little more deeply into this “recognition factor.” 

 

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Who receives more of the antibiotics consumed in the United States- people or livestock? Many people would be surprised to find out that more than 70% of the antibiotics purchased actually go to the meat industry to used on livestock in factory farming. The main reason for this high level of antibiotic overuse is because of how factory farms operate. Animals in factory farms that are fed antibiotics are rarely for the purpose of treating diseases. Antibiotics are used for promoting animal growth to keep up with rapid consumption rates. They can also be used to prevent diseases--when animals are living on top of each other, disease spreads quickly. If one animal gets sick, they all get sick, and none of them can be sent off and processed for consumption.  

Unfortunately, there is no quick and easy solution to drastically reducing the use of antibiotics in factory farming. But some of the biggest customers of factory farm meat treated with heavy antibiotics are large fast food chains. The top six selling fast food chains in the United States are McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, and Starbucks. While they have committed to serving customers chicken raised without routine antibiotic uses, other meats (beef and pork) do still receive routine antibiotic use. Calpirg’s goal is to convince these corporations to commit to phasing out beef and pork raised with routine antibiotic use and we need your help to show public support against antibiotic overuse in the meat industry. 

If large fast food corporations become more environmentally and ethically conscious about their purchases for the products they provide consumers, suppliers in the meat industry will be forced to adapt to meet what their suppliers want. And we as customers of fast food have the ability to influence their practices and voice our opinion on the quality of the food provided. If people choose to stop consuming fast food from companies that serve food heavily treated with antibiotics, they will be forced to change their practices. 

The easiest way is to call the company’s customer service line and request that your opinion be taken down. Let the company know that as a consumer of the chain, you want them to practice better consumption practices by committing to only supplying beef and pork that is not routinely treated with antibiotics. If you don’t eat at a place, call their customer service line and tell them why--include that you don’t approve of them serving meats heavily treated with antibiotics.

The corrupting power of money to influence elections is among the most repugnant features of our political system. Although we the people do the voting, it seems that the upper one percent does most of the electing. Moreover, this is not the only hurdle that progressives need to surmount. Our legislative system, which is dressed in democratic garb, poses a serious challenge to those who value democracy. 

As you know, our government since the birth of this nation has been made up of two houses - the House of Representatives and the Senate. This system has been around so long that we view it as natural and reasonable. So it is probably surprising to Americans who learn that in the majority of countries there is only one legislative body. Sweden is an outstanding example of how a nation with only one legislative body, whose legislation cannot be vetoed, has been very beneficial to its citizens. Among the problems that the founding fathers have given us is the considerably greater effort involved in persuading legislators in two houses rather than one to pass legislation, particularly progressive legislation.  

But that's not all. The Senate is an undemocratic institution. The principle of proportional representation, which is how the house elects legislators, made many of the leading colonists very nervous. They felt far more relaxed with a legislative body that has the same number of legislators in every state, regardless of the population size. As James Madison claimed, the Senate would proceed "with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch". George Washington and Thomas Jefferson shared the same suspicion of the democratically based House of Representatives. 

Unfortunately, their decision has haunted our political system ever since. Think a moment about the implications of allocating the same number of Senate seats to the smallest and largest states. As a result, the states with the largest populations are woefully unrepresented. This appreciably weakens their political clout because they are not receiving the appropriate number of representatives. 

The Senate has been more favorably treated than the House of Representatives by the founding fathers. Elected senators serve for six years compared to only two for those elected to the house. Particularly important, this undemocratic body enjoys the privilege of approving or rejecting a President's nominations to the Supreme Court. Also, major presidential appointments must be confirmed by the Senate. And although the President may negotiate treaties, they must be ratified by a Senate vote. Clearly, a tremendous amount of power has been allocated to the lesser democratic legislative body. 

After a bill is drafted the House or Senate leader must decide whether or not to assign the bill to a committee for review. If the party leader decides not to, the bill dies. When a bill that is sent to committee is not forwarded to Congress it meets the same fate. Also, since Congress is not casting a vote on these bills constituents do not know how their representatives would have voted if given the opportunity. 

When Congress considers a bill it needs a simple majority vote in both houses -- 50 Percent plus one -- to stay alive. If there are differences between the houses, the bill goes to a committee to reconcile the differences. If an agreement is not reached the bill would die. Obviously, this problem cannot occur in a one house system. 

If the bill is controversial and threatens private interests a simple majority would not be adequate. The bill is likely to be filibustered in the Senate to prevent a vote from being taken. To override a filibuster requires a vote of 60 percent. So even If the majority supports a bill it could still lose. 

When a bill is passed by both houses it is forwarded to the President. If vetoed, a two thirds majority is required to override the veto. Since the legislative membership tends to be diverse, obtaining a two-third vote is very difficult. This is another outrageous and anti-democratic feature of our legislative system.With regard to legislating progressive measures, the United State is backward compared to other developed nations. For example, thirty-two of the thirty-three developed countries enjoy universal health care. The United States is the only exception. 

Finally, any law that is enacted can be overturned or modified by the lifetime appointed federal judges, including the Supreme Court justices, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. These judges are appointed for life because writers of the Constitution wanted justices to be able to decide cases that are free from public pressure. This anti-democratic tradition is still very much alive. Certainly a major stumbling block to achieving a far more just society is the undemocratic decision making structure of the federal government. 

 

Donald Trump’s elusive tax returns might finally see the light of day if New York State Attorney General, Barbara Underwood has her way. On June 14 she filed a civil complaint against President Trump and his three oldest children accusing them of “persistently illegal conduct” using the Trump Foundation as their “checkbook for payments regardless of their purpose or legality.” 

She also believes there is abundant evidence to bring criminal charges. Accordingly, she sent letters to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission in Washington recommending “further investigation and legal action.” If violations of charity laws can be proved this could finally trigger an examination of Trump’s allusive tax returns. Mr. Trump has reportedly dipped into his foundation funds to settle legal claims and purchase large portraits of himself to hang in his properties. If he failed to declare these foundation expenditures as income he could be charged with tax fraud. 

Mr. Trump has been remarkably successful in cheating governments. When challenged by the City of New York Mr. Trump’s lawyers claimed a leaky water pipe destroyed the records and the ledger copies were no longer available. How convenient! Perhaps he used a similar excuse when he failed to submit his homework as a young boy claiming the dog ate his homework! In his 1984 tax returns he reported zero income but claimed $600,000 in deductions offering no receipts to validate his claim. It is time to reign in this tax cheat before he pilfers the US Treasury.

The full page ad paid for on Friday the 13th by an anonymous "Paid for by Fed Up Populace Campaign" tells the tale of someone consumed by the fear of what a nearby young man might do, claiming her quality of life was seriously compromised while having a sandwich at the Fresh Market Cafe' at Neiman Marcus on Geary Street while seeing someone "acting silent" and holding a pair of scissors. 

It ran on page three of the San Francisco Chronicle, guaranteeing the attention of the shrinking 20% of newspaper readers still living in the city. The sandwich eater claimed the young man was "homeless" and "strange", and that he had a pair of scissors, all of which threw the woman into a state of terror. She demanded that security be called, and the story stopped there. The ad goes on to blame "San Francisco city fathers" who should be held accountable for "catering to the lowest common denominator" instead of the "tax paying, responsible contributing members of society." 

I had recently met with a group of artists and activists working to coordinate art projects related to the housing crisis and its effects on people's lives, and some of us had expressed the thought that the word "homeless" had become almost hopelessly stigmatized. Some of us, myself included, are steering clear of the word and scrambling for alternatives to describe the economic refugees arriving on the street in wave after wave of evictions. 

You can't tell who's homeless. The scruffy guy absently clicking a pen or playing with scissors might be teaching at the nearby university, having a cup of coffee while inching toward an academic epiphany. One of my favorite civil rights lawyers spent most of his life barefoot, and would only grudgingly adjust to Birkenstocks for courtroom footwear or more formal occasions. Other friends of mine pop out of a tent looking like an Urban Outfitter model to hit their shift at the nearby deli and have more style than I'll put together in a lifetime. 

The young man described in the ad didn't make noise, didn't commit any theft, didn't break any law. We can be assured of this because no one takes out a $30,090.00 full page ad to tell a story of the horror of having to share public space with others and leaves out such detail if they really want to make their point. If the young man had hurt somebody with the scissors you better believe it would have been part of the ad. 

Anyone can take out such an ad- it's called an "advocacy" ad, and is approved by the publisher despite the inclusion of what the Chronicle admitted was a made-up campaign name associated with no website or group; an easy thing to check. The ad was placed by a private citizen who wanted, at the cost of $30,090.00, to remain anonymous. 

If we want to respond to her cry to the "city fathers" (?) to clear the streets of anybody "acting silent" we can buy an advocacy ad, too, according to the Chronicle ad team. All we need is the money. And perhaps the cold heart that isn't satisfied with the private spaces such money can acquire. Imagine if all poverty and need were forced into the shadows based on the perceptions of danger by imaginative wealthy people. We would have what we have now; housing built predominantly for the well-off, with such a small ratio preserved for the poor that the rest of us huddle under overpasses until the next sweep. 

I know why the woman who placed the ad wants to be anonymous. If we knew her name we would want to thank her for clarifying how fear, and a compliant press, drives policy. And invite her to the rocking barbecue under the overpass; it's one of the best tickets in town. 

 

Breast milk is God’s great gift to mankind. It is the perfect cocktail to nourish newborn babies. So why is Donald Trump trying to discourage women from breast feeding their children in the underdeveloped world? If we follow the money trail, the answer becomes self-evident. 

The United States delegates to the World Health Organization are using their economic and military muscle to undermine a simple resolution encouraging breast-feeding. This is another sick example of a powerful country badgering weaker countries to serve the interests of powerful business interests. Breast feeding is a direct threat to the baby formula industry which is worth $70 billion. Developed countries can easily deflect the Trump administration’s bullying tactics but developed countries are not so fortunate. 

Trump’s contention that women need access to formula defies both science and nutrition. Not only is breast milk the best option for newborns it also contains anti-bodies that protect against a host of diseases. 

A lot of US unethical arm twisting has contributed to an alarming decline in breast feeding in third world countries. Ecuador came close to buckling under intense US pressure but managed to resist. Colombia’s health officials alarmed at high pharmaceutical prices tried to cut prices but were “persuaded” from doing so by a host of US economic pressures. Both the Obama and Clinton administrations also sought to keep drug prices high in low-income countries to maximize profits for US drug companies. 

For more go to: http://callforsocialjustice.blogspot.com/

For someone with a schizophrenic diagnosis, a repeat episode of acute psychosis may begin much earlier than many people might think. Many might assume that it begins with the foolish idea of going off medication. And in some instances, that is probably so. 

However, before the decision takes place that we want to try "noncompliance," most likely, some amount of judgment and insight have eroded. This is because the illness has worsened while remaining on the same level of medication. Sometimes there are circumstances that lead to this. Some parts of one's support system could have been taken away. If we lack therapy, if a relationship isn't going well, of if there is a death, these are things that can lead to destabilization. 

Other than that, a person with schizophrenia can simply get worse while taking a consistent level of antipsychotic medication. It seems to me that the brain may gain a tolerance to the medication, and then moves more in the direction of being psychotic. My personal experience, over the past thirty-seven years of having this illness, is that over time I've needed to raise medication periodically. I currently take the "maximum" of two different antipsychotics, both of which are considered powerful. This is barely adequate to keep me stabilized. I must do a lot of insight-producing work in addition to this. 

When sleep becomes compromised, when things seem to be in a "crisis mode," or when it seems that the world is against us, these may be danger signals. It could be time to get more help. 

You could "pay now or pay later." Taking steps to avert a relapse could be inconvenient. It could involve being uncomfortable. Taking these steps may require effort, and focus. However, if you ignore and do not address increasing psychosis, the problem will be bigger, later. 

Does this apply to you? It may or it may not. A therapist or psychiatrist may have part of the answer. They seem to have methods for evaluating a person's symptoms and the severity of them. However, sometimes a psychotic person is clever enough to fool treatment professionals into thinking they are just fine. It is not necessarily hard to outsmart treatment professionals in the short term, and in the process you are short-circuiting necessary treatment. 

The mental health consumer should not take matters into one's own hands. Rather than, on our own, changing medications and/or dosages, we must run it past our psychiatrist. Otherwise, we are in the zone of misusing the medication. Also, increasing medication can bring about side effects. In extreme cases, misjudging how much medication to take can lead to permanent damage. 

There are measures that we can take on our own other than changing medications. One of them is to make sure that we are getting enough rest. Another is to do meditation. Also, we should be the nicest person we know how to be, since we may need the help of others at some point. 

There ought to be no shame in a recurrence of symptoms of a mental illness; it doesn't always indicate that we've done something wrong. Sometimes symptoms may get the better of us, no matter how cooperative we try to be with treatment, no matter how proactive we are in dealing with our condition, and no matter how good our intentions may be. 

When mental health practitioners presume we are in an infantile or less enlightened state because we have a mental health recurrence, this is wrong. Surgeons aren't condescending toward cancer patients. It should be the same way with mentally ill people. 

When we need help, we should not be afraid to ask for it, albeit with some precautions. The person you should contact for help must be either a trusted family member, or a helping professional with whom you are currently working, and with whom you are on good terms. 

If you try to ask someone for help whom you do not know very well, they may not understand you, and they may create serious problems for you. If symptoms are bad enough, the emergency department at your hospital is an option.

When people contemplate potential disasters ignited by the Trump administration’s foreign policy, places like the South China Sea, Central Asia, or the Korean Peninsula come first to mind. Certainly a dustup with Beijing, Teheran or Pyongyang is a scary thing to contemplate. But the thing that should also keep people up at night is Washington’s approach to international health organizations and the President’s stubborn refusal to address climate change.

Bad bugs are coming, and they are stronger and nastier than they have ever been. A few—like malaria and yellow fever—are ancient nemeses, but they’re increasingly immune to standard drugs and widening their reach behind a warming climate. Others—like Ebola, SARS, MERS and Zika—are new, exotic and fearsome. And antibiotic resistant bacteria threaten to turn the clock back to pre-penicillin days, when a cut could be a death sentence.

Trump’s disdain for international agencies and treaties, plus cuts in public health programs, and a relaxation of regulations on the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry could create a worldwide medical catastrophe. 

The President recently asked Congress to cut over $15 billion from health care, especially in the area of overseas response. On the very day that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an emergency over the latest Ebola outbreak, National Security Advisor John Bolton eliminated the National Security Agency’s program for epidemic prevention. 

As Laurie Garrett—winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her writings on health care—notes, Bolton’s move “leaves the United States with no clear line of authority for responding to any outbreak of disease, whether naturally arising or as an act of bioterrorism,” adding “the U.S. government is increasingly withdrawing from global health efforts.” 

The cost of that retreat may be dear. 

The 2014-16 Ebola epidemic killed 11,300 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and infected health workers brought it back to Europe and the U.S.. While the disease was eventually corralled, it continues to flare up. 

WHO found that the key to stopping Ebola’s spread is an immediate response that combines vaccination with isolation and hospitalization, a strategy that stopped a 2018 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in its tracks. But the Trump budget cuts all Ebola spending and reduces emergency funds for the State Department. A post-epidemic analysis found that an extra 300 hospital beds would have stopped the disease’s spread in 2014. 

Diseases like Ebola get media attention, in part because Ebola kills more than 80 percent of its victims in a particularly grotesque manner: death by massive hemorrhaging. 

But the more familiar diseases like malaria do the most damage. The malaria plasmodium infects 216 million people a year and kills 450,000, many of them children. And after decades of retreat, the disease is roaring back with varieties that are increasingly hard to treat. One by one, the barriers that once kept the disease at bay have fallen. Having overcome chloroquine, and then fansidar, now malaria has begun to breach the latest cure, artenisinin. 

Public health experts predict that if the drug-resistant malaria strain ever reaches Africa, its impact will be catastrophic. 

Yellow fever, once a major killer but largely tamed by mosquito control and vaccinations, is also making a comeback. Dengue, or “break-bone fever, which infects 400 million worldwide and kills over 25,000 people a year, has spread from nine countries in 1970 to over 100 today. 

The fact that diseases overcome defenses is nothing new. Natural selection will generally find a way to outflank whatever chemicals humans come up with to defend themselves. Penicillin was discovered in 1939, and by 1941 doctor discovered Staphylococcus bacteria that were immune to the drug. 

But bad policies and bad pathogens go hand in hand. The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords will certainly accelerate climate change in a way that encourages the spread of disease. Earlier Springs and later Falls mean longer life spans for disease vectors like ticks and mosquitoes, which translates into greater infection rates. Researchers in Scandinavia and Massachusetts suspect that an increase in Lyme’s disease is due to climate change, and malaria is moving up the Andes as the higher altitudes warm. 

Other diseases, like chagis—which kills 50,000 people a year—is already moving north as its vector, the assassin bug, migrates out of its base in Latin America. Diseases like West Nile is now part of the standard disease loads of Europe and the U.S. 

Again, pathogen mobility is hardly new. Malaria, yellow fever, measles and small pox were all introduced to the New World by travelers, conquerors and African slaves. But disease is even less a local phenomenon today than it was in the 15^th century. As Dr. Don Francis, who played a key role in identifying the HIV virus and was on the first medical team to confront Ebola, points out how disease spreads: “Just sit in an airport and watch all the costumes walk by.” 

Trump is famously resistant to science. He doesn’t yet have a White House science advisor and is relying, instead, on Michael Kratsios, a 31-year old political science major who studied Hellenic Greece. Kratsios was the former chief of staff of California billionaire Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, who advocates rolling back Food and Drug Administration regulations. 

Those regulations cover the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry. Chickens, cattle and pigs account for 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S. The animals are not ill, just packed into pens and cages that would sicken them if they were not juiced with Bambermycin, Salinomycin or Bacitracin. Antibiotics also increase the animals’ weight. 

But animals jammed into rarely cleaned cages and pens are the perfect Petri dish for generating drug resistant germs. According to the Environmental Working Group, nearly 80 percent of U.S. supermarket meat is infected with antibiotic resistant germs. Studies of meats in the U.S. show that up to 70 percent are laced with germs immune to antibiotics. 

When the European Union banned non-therapeutic antibiotics on animals, drug resistant germ levels declined dramatically. 

Eventually those pathogens move from animal pens to hospitals and gyms and airports. What you do in an Iowa pig farm does not stay in Iowa. 

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that 23,000 Americans die each year from drug resistant germs, and a British study predicted that, unless something is done about the crisis, antibiotic resistant bacteria could kill 10 million people a year by 2050. The WHO says “superbugs” pose one of the most serous threats that humanity faces, and the medical magazine Lancet called drug resistant pathogens “The biggest global health threat in the 21^st Century.”. 

The White House’s hostility to the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act could also have major consequences, not only for Americans, but the world. In 1918, a mild Spanish flu mutated—probably in Kansas—into a fearsome virus that killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide.  

The 1918-19 pandemic almost certainly started in the digestive tracts of Chinese pigs, then passed to birds, and from birds to people. Those Chinese pigs are still out there, and lethal varieties of bird flu are currently circulating in China and Southeast Asia. So far, most can only be passed by direct contact with infected animals, but sooner or later there will be a mutation that will make a virus far more communicable. A deadly worldwide pandemic is a “when,” not an “if.” 

And when that pandemic hits, Americans will find that there are not enough hospital beds—so-called “surge capacity” is non-existent—or robust public health programs to cope with it. China has also cut back on public health care programs and, as a result, was initially unable to deal with the 2003 SARS crisis that sickened 8,000 people and killed 800. 

Europeans, with their national health services, are better prepared, but even their public health systems have been hollowed out by years of austerity-driven economic policies. But there is a worldwide shortage of medical workers, particularly nurses. 

In his “Second Coming,” the Irish writer William Butler Yeats seems to have foreseen the future: “Some rough beast, its time come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem, waiting to be born.” 

The beasts are out there, and they will be born. The Trump administration’s denial of climate change, hostility to international institutions, and laissez faire approach to governance at home will make those beasts far more dangerous than they have to be. 

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Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The more things change, the more they stay the same." Recently, some Democrats have been pondering, "What are liberal values?" Preparing a response, I remembered a values column I wrote seven years ago,"One, Two, Three, What are Liberals Fighting for?" (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-burnett/one-two-three-what-are-li_b_925245.html ) With a few changes, the column could have been written today.

The first paragraph sets the tone: "These are hard times. The weather’s bad and the economy awful. Obama has lost his mojo... Many Liberals are discouraged and fearful about the 2012 election. But there’s plenty of time to re-energize, so long as Liberals remember who we are and what we are fighting for." 

For whatever reason, Democrats periodically lose track of our core values. In 2007, I wrote "One, Two, Three, What are Liberals Fighting for?" because of our disillusionment with Barack Obama. In 2018 we've lost track of our core values because of our collective anger at Donald Trump and, no doubt, our deep dismay that so many Americans support him. It's an understandable reaction; we're gobsmacked. Nonetheless, we need to take a collective deep breath and go back to basics. We need to recall what we stand for. 

1. Honesty. Donald Trump has not only coarsened the nature of American politics, he's established a norm of chronic lying. (On May 1st, The Washington Post reported that Trump had told 3001 lies in 466 days in office (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/01/president-trump-has-made-3001-false-or-misleading-claims-so-far/? ).) Liberals have to make an emphatic statement; "We do not support politics as usual; We tell the truth." 

2. Empathy. Recently, discussing his family-separation policy, Trump remarked, "If you're strong [on immigration], then you're accused of not having any heart." He quipped, "I'd rather be strong." Meaning that in dealing with immigrants Trump would prefer to come down on the side of "strength" rather than the side of compassion. 

It's a false dichotomy. It's possible to be strong and also be compassionate. Remember Martin Luther King Jr. (And the founders of this country.) 

Liberals believe it's possible to be strong and also be compassionate. We believe in empathy. We believe in deep understanding of others; putting ourselves in their shoes. 

3. Responsibility. Barack Obama reminded us of the biblical teaching, "I am my brother's keeper and my sister's keeper." This goes beyond Jesus' golden rule: "Do to others what you want them to do to you." It implies that we have an active responsibility to care for the less fortunate in our country: children, the elderly, the disabled, the disadvantaged... 

4. Diversity. Liberals believe America’s strength is its diversity: E Pluribus Unum, “Out of many, one.” We believe in justice and fair treatment for all Americans, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual preference, or religious affiliation. 

5. Human Rights. Liberals believe that all of are endowed with basic rights, such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Among these rights is the right to vote and the right to work to fulfill our individual dreams on a level playing field. (By the way: we value human rights over property rights.) 

Underlying these core liberal values is a sense of optimism; a belief that Americans can work together to form a more perfect union. Conservatives don't share this optimism. 

It's important to recognize that liberals are psychologically more open than conservatives. A 2012 Scientific American article (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/ ) reviewed the psychological studies on liberals and conservatives and noted: "Psychologists have found that conservatives are fundamentally more anxious than liberals, which may be why they typically desire stability, structure and clear answers even to complicated questions." 

One way to understand the difference in liberal and conservative worldviews -- one open and optimistic, the other closed and fearful -- is to consider the underlying mythic structures. In his classic 2005 essay, "The Lost Art of Democratic Narrative," (http://valuesmessage.org/info/Lost%20Art%20of%20Democratic%20Narrative-Reich.pdf ) Robert Reich observed that liberals and conservatives hold onto different myths of community. Conservatives share a fearful narrative: "The Mob at the Gates. In this story, the United States is a beacon light of virtue in a world of darkness, uniquely blessed but continuously endangered by foreign menaces... The underlying lesson: We must maintain vigilance, lest diabolical forces overwhelm us." 

In contrast, Reich said, liberals tell a more hopeful narrative: "The Benevolent Community. This is the story of neighbors and friends who roll up their sleeves and pitch in for the common good...The story is captured in the iconic New England town meeting, in frontier settlers erecting one another's barns, in neighbors volunteering as firefighters and librarians..." 

Because liberals and conservatives have differing notions of community, we have different responses when our communities are threatened. As part of their belief in responsibility, liberals believe "we're in this together." ("I am my brother's keeper and my sister's keeper.") Liberals believe we should work together -- through government -- to deal with the threat. In contrast, when threatened, conservatives believe "you're on your own" and look to outside agencies for comfort: the army, the President, the church, the corporation... 

The polarization in American politics is due to the fact that liberals and conservatives operate from a dramatically different values ethos. They have different mythic narratives, values, and concepts of community. 

Trump instinctively plays to this. His fundamental message is fearful: "The mob is at the gates and only I can protect you." That's why his goto issue is immigration. 

Conservatives see immigrants as a threat; the proverbial "mob at the gates." In his June 2015 speech, Trump declared: "The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems... When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists..." Conservatives fear immigrants. (In contrast, liberals see immigrants as human beings that have legitimate reasons to seek asylum in the United States.) 

Trump has increased political polarization by playing to the conservative values ethos. Realistically, the only way to respond to this is for liberals to be clear about their own values and beliefs. And to organize. 

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Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net