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‘We want them infected.’ ‘There is no other way.’

Paul Rosenberg
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‘We want them infected.’ ‘There is no other way.’

Private emails pushed public apathetic COVID-19 response

“There is no other way,” then-White House science adviser Paul Alexander wrote in emails obtained by a House watchdog, published by Politico on Dec. 16. 

“We need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups to expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,” Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo and other top officials.

“Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk,” he falsely wrote, “so we use them to develop herd … we want them infected.”

Politico reported other emails, showing the spread of Alexander’s influence and for context quoted Kyle McGowan, the Donald Trump-appointed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief of staff who resigned mid-August. 

“It was understood that he [Alexander] spoke for Michael Caputo, who spoke for the White House,” McGowan said. “That’s how they wanted it to be perceived.” 

But, muddying the story, Politico also noted that “Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that herd immunity … was under consideration or shaped the White House’s approach to the pandemic.”

A clarifying outside view was offered by Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, on MSNBC the next day. Pushing herd immunity was only one aspect of a broader anti-science agenda, he explained.

“I put together a brief document, I called it my October One Plan, by which we can bring things back down to containment and prevent this horrible fall surge,” recalled Hotez, in late July. “And, instead what they did was they made this tragic pivot, which was to create and launch a disinformation campaign. This was a deliberate disinformation campaign led by the president’s advisors, where they tried to make the case that the COVID deaths were not really due to COVID, [they were] due to other causes they downplayed the severity of the epidemic, they discredited masks, they created this fake concept of herd immunity, saying it occurs around 20-22%.”

This figure — cited by GOP Sen. Rand Paul, as one example — is less than a third of the generally-accepted level. 

“[The result] was deadly,” Hotez said. “The White House declared a war on science, and we fought back.” 

So, they made attempts to push back on the Alexander private emails story, denying their impact and ignoring how consistent they were with what the Trump administration and its allies publicly did. 

What’s more, Alexander’s very existence is evidence of anti-science sabotage. As noted above, he was appointed the science advisor to the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs. But a public affairs officer for an agency full of scientists has no need for a personal science advisor. His job is to facilitate the communication of those scientists — not to second-guess or obstruct them.

In the Time of Pandemic Junk Food News

Terelle Jerricks
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In the Time of Pandemic Junk Food News

New Project Censored release offers a prescription for keeping the faith for better journalism

The release of Project Censored year after year is predicated upon the belief that quality news is a needed public good whether or not there’s a hunger for it in the information marketplace dominated by the mainstream, corporate-owned press. The journalists, analysts, media professors and student interns who put together Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2021 continue to do the work that they do in hope that mainstream media outlets will cut back on “junk food news” and instead devote that space to stories in which information translates into a citizenry that is more aware, better informed and increasingly empowered.

In 1983, Project Censored founder Carl Jensen coined the term “junk food news” to describe the headline-grabbing, sensationalist news stories produced by corporate media profiteers at the expense of traditional investigative journalism. 

Izzy Snow and Susan Rahman open the Junk Food News chapter in State of the Free Press 2021 with Kitty O’Meara’s poem, In the Time of Pandemic. It envisions the lockdown response to COVID-19 as a reset button to the worst impulses of capitalism, consumerism and nihilism. Snow and Rahman compare it to the aftermath of 9/11, when political leaders told constituents that the most-effective way to defeat terrorism and expand freedom was to go shopping — and buy American. Not in recent memory has this planet experienced a pandemic let alone a moment like this one, where our television screens were filled with reports of empty store shelves of toilet paper, water and canned goods and fights breaking out over essential goods in crowded store aisles. 

This buy-back-your-freedom model has arisen again, now out of the desperation of the coronavirus pandemic, in which the lower and middle classes, most affected by the tragedies of the crisis, are the most pressured to reopen and re-conform to the economic systems that oppress them. While buying American was once promoted as the way to defeat the terrorists, in the time of COVID-19, toilet paper seems to be the new favored commodity in wiping out the bad guys. Witness as the corporate media dare to ask the truly hard-hitting questions: If we hoard the Charmin, does that make us good or bad Americans?

With the snark of a Mean Girls cast of protagonists, the Junk Food News chapter authors explore the question of “Who is considered important and worthy of coverage during this pandemic?” Snow, Rahman and crew documented the weeks and months following the first reports and identification of the coronavirus until about May when most Americans were coping with lock-down measures keeping them captive and anesthetized with Netflix, TikTok videos and Instagram feeds of celebrities living in spacious normality that isn’t really the norm to most Americans. 

While celebrities spread messages that “we’re all getting through this together” and that these are “uncertain times,” their only uncertainties lie in whether their local Whole Foods will be restocked with vegan toilet paper. In the meantime, Americans reckon with how quarantine has impacted their careers, home lives, and finances. The corporate media is actively and consistently choosing to focus on the famed icons who are still able to share their lived perfection even during times of hardship.

The authors do note the few stories that highlighted the real struggles of everyday Americans, but that sort of reporting was too few and far between with little exploration.

The authors of this chapter take note of how coverage of the death of NBA Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant sucked the air out of the media market in the months following his helicopter crash in January 2020. 

One major news story on Bryant’s death offered distraction from the gratuitous drone strike that killed 10 people, including the intended target, Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani. In the days following the strike, Iran retaliated by attacking two American bases in Iraq. Donald Trump and his administration, as this chapter’s authors noted, never offered a rational explanation for the strike. But coverage of the aftermath of Iran’s retaliation was relatively muted. 

Though there were no American deaths following the Iran’s missile strike, there was little follow-up on the fallout of that strike, which included widespread cases of brain injury and long-term health issues suffered by the American military personnel who were attacked. Instead, Americans were wrapped in a prolonged mourning ritual of a sports hero with a history complicated by sexual assault allegations — a past muted by Bryant’s celebrity.

The Junk Food News chapter authors remarked upon the hyper-focus on the death toll numbers on a daily basis during a moment in which the Trump administration was actively refusing to provide national guidance and coordination. In their view, this lack of leadership by the Trump administration led to the proliferation of fake cures and scams being peddled by modern day snake oil salesmen and hucksters. The other issue, the authors pointed out, is that despite all the reporting on death tolls, the reporting by corporate owned media still managed to overlook the toll the coronavirus and federal inaction is having on the most vulnerable in the United States — the indigenous communities. 

Poverty, limited access to healthcare, densely populated households, and comorbid conditions all place this community at greater risk than the vast majority of the US populace. Experts say that entire tribes could be wiped out due to the pandemic, as households in close proximity to one another create an opportune environment for the virus to spread quickly.

Underlying the authors’ parallel analysis and critiques of the corporate media’s reporting on the pandemic is the belief that the market-based model of news production is toxic to a democracy and toxic to a healthy body politic. Indeed the conclusion one is left with after reading the rest of Project Censored is that the market-based model of news production and consumption renders a body-politic incapable of fighting off the infectious diseases called “fake news” and “truth decay.”

Fortunately, the writers of State of the Free  Press 2021 don’t just lay out the problem without possible solutions. State of the Free Press 2021 editors Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff set the tone in the sixth chapter, “Media Democracy in Action,” by quoting Timothy Snyder from his book, On Tyranny:

It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds.

In this chapter, Roth and Huff preface the ways Project Censored contributors demonstrate how to build capacity of a people to discern facts and build a more civil society. 

In the pages that followed, space was made for reporting on the emergence of new platforms and protections for whistleblowers who risk their reputations and livelihoods to call out abuses of power and educational settings in which young people can question the politics of media representations and develop their identities as conscientious community members and global citizens.

After publishing for nearly 45 years, it’s a wonder that the editors of Project Censored have not become cynical about the work in which they are engaged. It’s not as if the problems have gotten more visible and easier to deal with or as if this world’s power elite has become less greedy and less corrupt. Random Lengths News asked the editing duo, why is it that after 45 years Project Censored has not lost hope and has continued this work.

The answers they provided are two-fold when boiled down to their essence: the first reason is the fact that there’s still quality work being produced even now despite the rise of modern day authoritarianism and the increase in censorship because of it.  

“Cynicism, while deserved, needs to be put in context and even put aside if we are to work toward making a more democratic, transparent and diverse free press,” Huff explained. “While Project Censored calls out propaganda and censorship in the corporate press, we also highlight the important work of intrepid independent journalists in our Top 25 list each year.

“What we hope people take away from our efforts is to be critical observers of all media while expanding news media diets, that a free press does matter, and it already exists. However, we need to grow and support more of it in the public interest while promoting critical media literacy education. It’s in this education of the next generations that gives me the most hope.” 

It should be noted that Project Censored along with the Action Coalition for Media Education founded the Global Critical Media Literacy Project to teach digital media literacy and critical thinking skills. 

The second reason is that unless humanity and civilization as we know it come to an end, then the battle for the future is Project Censored’s raison d’être.

Roth said he remains inspired by the courageous work of the independent journalists, who break these important but underreported stories, and by the project’s student researchers, who flex their critical media literacy muscles to help ensure that those stories reach a wider public audience. 

“Both groups give us good reasons to be hopeful rather than cynical,” Roth said.

Editor’s note: In 1976, Dr. Carl Jensen founded Project Censored at Sonoma State University as a media research program with a focus on student development of media literacy and critical thinking skills as applied to the news media censorship in the US.  Professor Mickey Huff of Diablo Valley College became director in 2010. Working with associate director Dr. Andy Lee Roth, he has extended the Project’s educational reach beyond Sonoma State University, expanding the Campus  Affiliates Program launched in 2009. The Campus Affiliates Program now connects hundreds of faculty and students at colleges and universities across the U.S. and around the world in the collective effort of identifying and researching each year’s top Censored news stories.   In addition to the campus affiliates program, Project Censored continues to foster relations with numerous independent media groups and free speech organizations.

French Laundry Christmas

Arturo Garcia-Ayala
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French Laundry Christmas

Local merchants and residents passively resist lock-down orders

This coronavirus pandemic and the recurring lockdown measures to control the virus’ spread hasn’t been easy for anyone. That’s particularly true for local restaurants that have been limited to outside patio, delivery and take away dining.

 Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant put a limit on the extent of the county-level ban on outdoor dining in a Dec. 8 ruling. A state-imposed ban on outdoor dining, which supersedes any county order, was not changed by the judge’s ruling.

The county ban on service remained in place until Dec. 16, but it could not be extended as the ban was after that date. 

The on-premises table service ban extended from Nov. 25 to Dec. 16. That order, which is stricter than the state’s minimum requirements for Purple Tier counties, was met with resistance and lawsuits, including one submitted by a downtown Los Angeles restaurant, Engine Co. No. 28, and one filed by the California Restaurant Association, a large industry trade group representing restaurant owners.

The Board of Supervisors were not united on the closures. Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn co-authored a motion with Supervisor Kathryn Barger to allow outdoor dining to continue at 50% capacity. The motion failed in a 2-3 vote, with Hahn and Barger in the minority. Hahn  released a statement Nov. 24 expressing her opposition to the board’s decision: 

I did not support the ban on outdoor dining at restaurants that takes effect tonight. 

The situation we face is dire, but I don’t think we have the data to prove outdoor dining is driving the current surge, or to rationalize the number of people who will lose their jobs. I also worry it will drive more people to indoor gatherings in homes — which we know are more dangerous. 

Unfortunately, the board voted 2-3 against a motion that I co-authored with Supervisor Barger to allow outdoor dining to continue at 50% capacity. The outdoor dining ban will go into effect Nov. 25, after 10 p.m. 

In light of this, I have asked the LA County Development Authority to expand the eligibility for the Business Revitalization Grant to make $6 million available for restaurants that need help. It is not enough, but I am going to do everything I can to help these businesses and their workers. 

Citizens opposed to the new lockdown orders have been staging silent protests at local restaurants. One of the more recent protests was staged at the Omelette Waffle shop by people calling themselves the Lawn Chair Restaurant Supporters. The seven restaurant patrons brought their own tables and chairs to the corner of 11th and Gaffey streets on Dec. 9 at 10 a.m. They set up six feet apart, then went inside one by one to order. When they received their food, instead of leaving the area they sat down and enjoyed it along the outside wall of the restaurant on the public sidewalk. 

Though they were defying the outdoor shutdown order without permission or consent from the restaurant owner, they all had their specific reasons for their demonstration.

“I am here supporting local businesses should be open because everyone needs to work and the job is essential,” said restaurant supporter George Matthews.

“I am here to have breakfast and I wanted to enjoy it with some friends,” Scott Carter said.

Others wanted to express the other human cost of the shutdown. 

“When the pandemic started we were given 15 days to slow the spread,” Tasha Montelongo said. “Fifteen days [is] now going [on] 9 months. A lot of good people are suffering — business owners and the workers that work with these businesses.” 

For their part, the owners of the Omelette & Waffle Shop, Leslie Jones and Mona Sutton released the following statement: 

Although we respect the opinion of the portion of the community that came out this morning to protest the closure of all outside dining, Leslie and I firmly believe that it’s our responsibility to completely support the current mandatory closure as all sit-down restaurants in all communities should. We stand firmly in our belief that the sooner we all unite to do everything in our power to stop the spread of COVID-19 the sooner we will be able to move on in a safe fashion for the future. We also believe this is not about choosing sides, it is about doing what is right.

As the lunch hour ended, the Lawn Chair Restaurant Supporters came as they went. They left with their signs, tables and chairs and with fuller bellies — satisfied in their civil disobedience over a sit-down breakfast.

Pacific Diner probably held the first such protest on Dec. 2. Notice of the demonstration was spread via Facebook. On the day on which the act of defiance was to take place, the restaurant’s parking lot was open with nearly every slot filled. Nearly every table in the restaurant’s back patio was filled with customers eating lunch.

But this turned out to be only the beginning.

During the weekend of Dec. 13, the South Shores shopping center on 25th Street and Western Avenue in San Pedro was the site of a carnival complete with a kid’s jumper, a petting zoo, food trucks and vendor booths but without many of its attendees wearing face masks or following social distancing rules. The event was also a protest against the current lockdown orders and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who authorized those restrictions yet attended a friend’s birthday party in Napa Valley, Calif. that didn’t observe any of the COVID-19 protocols he’d ordered.   

Santa Claus served as the event’s master of ceremonies with his megaphone, at least whenever children weren’t making Christmas present demands of him. In the first hour, more than two dozen people with their families trickled in, attracted by the music playing through loudspeakers and more arrived throughout the afternoon. 

The event was organized by Dr. Van Volkenburgh, owner of the Peninsula Pet Clinic, who opposes business restrictions imposed by the city, county and state governments since March. 

The event was called The French Laundry Christmas after the Napa Valley restaurant where Newsom attended the birthday party. 

“If the Governor is not abiding by his own guidelines, then why should we?” Diana Martinez, a veterinary nurse at the Peninsula Pet Clinic, rhetorically asked.  

Several small businesses sold products and signatures were gathered on a petition to recall Newsom from office.

Despite the shutdown orders and the enforcement of social distancing practices statewide, the majority of those in attendance did not wear face masks but were not encouraged to wear them, either. Amongst the attendees, the consensus was that COVID-19 was not a hoax, but should not impose any further restrictions on businesses or citizens.

City Council to Consider Proposed Long Beach Zoning Code Amendment at January 5, 2021 Meeting

Reporters Desk
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City Council to Consider Proposed Long Beach Zoning Code Amendment at January 5, 2021 Meeting

At its January 5, 2021 meeting, the Long Beach City Council will consider a proposed amendment to the Long Beach Zoning Code to establish an amnesty program that would create a process for allowing the legalization of certain existing, unpermitted dwelling units, subject to requirements to ensure units are brought up to current fire, life and safety standards through the legalization process.

The goal of this amendment is to increase housing quality and safety in Long Beach while also preserving needed housing units. A minimum 10-year affordability covenant would be required for a unit to be eligible for the amnesty program, in order to preserve units as affordable income-restricted units.

The City Council meeting will be held via Teleconference.

Details: City of Long Beach – Calendar

Taking Back the Flag from False Patriots

James Preston Allen
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Taking Back the Flag from False Patriots

Sedition and betrayal — the grift that keeps grifting

I’ve simply had enough of the false patriot, neo-Nazi, Proud Boy militias, their enablers and fellow travelers misusing the American flag. A particular irritant is their strange commingling of national and appropriated symbols of fascism to aid Donald J. Trump’s grift of gullible supporters. The American left needs to take back America’s symbols and remind citizens of the reason why this union of states was formed: It was formed to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

While the American flag has been used to justify crimes against humanity and other core American beliefs since our nation’s founding, only four conflicts in our nation’s history actually stand out as upholding our national creed — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War and World War II — all could be argued as having defended our republic and our collective freedoms. 

This past Nov. 3, our current not-so-civil conflict of a national election saw more than 74.4 million patriots cast ballots to overthrow a tyrant. Seven million more than Mr. Trump received and he’s still pouting about it after the election “being stolen.” There is zero evidence of this still. His campaign was lost and Mr. Joseph Biden is the President-elect.

What I am suggesting here is that the next time Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA, progressive Berniecrats or others line up for a demonstration, I urge them to take back the symbolism of the American flag and turn it into the promise of freedom, liberty and justice.  Wave it as a reminder to the police, sheriffs and politicians under these colors of authority that their jobs are to “protect and to serve” us all — not just the thin blue line.

I ask the obvious question: Do we want to march for justice and peace or a battle with armed militias supporting an oligarchy bent on destroying democracy?

I have been impressed as of late by the courage of many county clerks, district judges and a few government employees who have risked their personal safety, careers or reputations in defending the national vote and thus, our core democratic principles against the attacks of a narcissist tyrant and his surrogates. These Americans deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom and our collective respect. 

On the other hand, the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton and 17 other state attorneys general and 126 Republican congressional representatives, who supported the Texas lawsuit to throw out the certifications of the vote in the four battleground states, need to be prosecuted for sedition along with the aforementioned militias.           

Attempting to subvert or suppress the vote is an act against our republic. Acting to intimidate poll workers, threatening violence against county officials in charge of overseeing elections or showing up with guns at polls or state houses where electors vote is a crime against our republic. It is repugnant to our sense of civil self-governance and should be treated as a crime.

That the disgraced and recently pardoned Gen. Michael Flynn went on the news last week suggesting Trump institute martial law to overthrow the election is evidence of his traitorous disposition. 

Flynn told the right-wing pro-Trump Newsmax channel that the president should consider martial law to remain in power. “He could order [this], within the swing states, if he wanted to. He could take military capabilities and he could place those in states and basically rerun an election,” Flynn actually said. This is the very definition of seditious speech.

This is, of course, the kind of sedition one would expect in some Third World nation where strong man autocrats rule with impunity supported by corrupt generals.  Could this ever happen here? One might believe not. But here is what Trump’s former legal “fixer” Michael Cohen told Vanity Fair recently:

I need you to think of what Trump is doing as no different than if you were watching The Apprentice. This is all a reality show. He knows he lost the election. He knows it. But the problem is he has an incredibly fragile ego and his fragile ego will not allow him to acknowledge that he is a loser, that he lost the election to Joe Biden. “I’m Donald Fucking Trump. I can’t lose the election to Joe Biden.” 

This is a cash grab. When you finish a job, you’re always thinking about how to reinvent yourself. That’s what Donald Trump is doing right now. He knows that his next saga of his story is really going to be predicated around a Trump news network. 

It’s why he’s fighting with Fox every day. He’s looking to steal their base. Because with his social media platform of 90 million followers, he knows that of that 90 million, 20 million are die-hard Trump fans. 

He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would be behind him 100%. From them, he just wants $4.99 a month. And for that $4.99 a month, you get to listen to all the bullshit and all the far-right-wing conspiracies that Donald Trump can dream up. That’s what he’s going to sell you. That’s $100 million a month, $1.2 billion a year. That’s going to pay for the gas in his 757.

And as Paul Rosenberg writes in this issue, “the post election grift of Trump just continues on.” Clearly something more than the American flag should be taken away from this false patriot and his followers.

Home Depot Donates Money to Local Charity

Reporters Desk
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Home Depot Donates Money to Local Charity

On Dec. 16, Jonathan Guthman on behalf of the management of the Home Depot San Pedro store #1005 presented an oversized $1,000 check to Mike Walker, the head of San Pedro Packages for Patriots, a non-profit charity that assembles care packages for U.S. service-members serving overseas. The care packages are filled with essentials like shaving kits, toiletries, notebooks, treats and other items depending on the time of year. Around the holidays, Mike Walker along with a group of volunteers fill the parcels with more Christmas cards, additional candy, small decorations and other comforts the service-member may not be able to have in a foreign country.

Buscaino Adresses the State of the District Amidst Surge in COVID-19, Homelessness

Hunter Chase
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Buscaino Adresses the State of the District Amidst Surge in COVID-19, Homelessness

On Dec. 12, District 15 Councilman Joe Buscaino hosted his annual State of the District address virtually on Facebook. He spoke of a pressing issue: the spread of COVID-19.

“No one expected that our lives would still be upended this far into the year and that we would lose over 300,000 Americans,” Buscaino said. 

He said that the pandemic has created problems that require multiple solutions. The two biggest problems, aside from the spread of COVID-19, are people going hungry and small businesses at risk of closing. 

To help feed people, Buscaino highlighted the creation of a $1 million hardship relief fund. It was used to create a meal delivery program for seniors with a design in mind to solve two problems at once — support local restaurants while addressing food insecurity amongst this district’s most vulnerable. Buscaino’s office also gave $750,000 in Vons gift cards to families and $32,000 to nonprofits.

He commended the San Pedro & Peninsula YMCA for serving 160,000 meals to the community since March, with the help of more than 120 volunteers. 

For small businesses, Buscaino said the city gave loans and relief funds to them. In total, the Small Business Administration loaned or gave $2.5 million to small businesses. 

Buscaino also touched on homelessness in his district. Because of a federal lawsuit, the city and county came to an agreement where the city will create 67 new beds for homeless people, but the county will pay for the social services to help those who use them. 

“My district will open two additional safe parking sites, a pallet shelter site, and a Project Homekey that will serve as interim housing, and then transition to permanent supportive housing after three years,” Buscaino said. 

These will bring the 15th Council District’s number of temporary beds to 963, and 1,183 units of supportive housing.

“In Council District 15, we’re leading with solutions and an attitude that we must try all of the above when considering solutions,” Buscaino said.

He said he supports clean and accessible sidewalks for everyone — in other words, he is supportive of CARE+ cleanups, which provide services to homeless people, but also throw away their belongings if they do not move them in time. Such cleanups were stopped in March because of the pandemic, but Buscaino has successfully introduced two motions since then to have them resume in specific areas. The CARE+ cleanups also has had the perverse effect of pushing the spread of encampments into other neighborhoods.

Buscaino  mentioned the opening of A Bridge Home shelters in San Pedro and Watts, both of which have 100 beds. In addition, the shelter in Watts, opened in 2019, has placed 30 individuals into permanent supportive housing, and 30 are employed. He also said that his office created a navigation center for homeless people to store their belongings, which is used by 160 people.

Buscaino also said that Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore reported that the newly reopened Harbor Division jail will likely close again without major federal funding or cutting other things from the city’s budget, and entire stations could close as well. 

This would be the second time the jail has closed after operating for about a year. It originally opened in 2009, but closed after only nine months of operation. It re-opened in February 2020.

“If we decrease our police force, we will continue to see an increase in crime beyond what the pandemic has unveiled,” Buscaino said.

He pointed out that he was one of only two Los Angeles City Council members, out of 15 total, who voted against cutting the budget of the Los Angeles Police Department by $150 million.

“I support additional investment into public safety, not less,” Buscaino said. “I support the expansion of the community safety partnership, a community policing model that we piloted in Watts, which has proven to dramatically reduce violent crime while building harmony between residents and officers.”

He argued that the community safety partnership and senior lead officer programs reduce violence, and build trust between the community and police. He said that there should be more investment into these models.

Buscaino, who is a former police officer, did not mention the reasons why there have been calls to defund the police. He did not talk about the widespread criticism and nationwide protests against police violence that were sparked by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor earlier this year. He also neglected to mention that even with the cuts to its budget, the LAPD will receive roughly $3 billion this fiscal year, about 51% of the city’s discretionary funding. Before the public outcry, the LAPD’s budget was going to increase from the previous year, even though most other city services were going to be cut.

Buscaino also had positive things to say about George Matthews and his group of volunteers, called San Pedro CPR, which stands for caring, proactive residents.

“[They] have continued their tireless efforts to keep our streets and sidewalks clean of trash and debris, using their own time and resources,” Buscaino said.

He briefly touched upon the upgrading of the water system in the San Pedro Community Garden, which finished this year. Buscaino said that it benefits more than 200 gardeners, making it the largest community garden in the city. However, he failed to mention the controversy surrounding the decision to upgrade the water system in 2019. Initially, the city was going to shut down the garden in April 2019 to install new pipes and would not reopen until 2020. The gardeners convinced the city to wait until August 2019, so that summer fruits could be harvested. 

Buscaino said that the San Pedro Business District launched the city’s first permanent sidewalk dining pilot this year. It took the business district years of planning with his office prior to the pandemic. He said it will last even after the pandemic is over and he would like to see it expanded to every community in the city.

However, he did not mention that using this was currently illegal, as Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a stay-at-home order on Dec. 3, banning outdoor dining for at least three weeks.

ILWU 23rd Annual Toy Drive in Wilmington

Reporters Desk
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ILWU 23rd Annual Toy Drive in Wilmington

On Dec. 21, ILWU Locals 13, 94, 63 and 26 launched the Port of Los Angeles union’s 23rd annual toy drive and gave away more than 3,000 presents. 

The give away went on from 11 am to 5 pm, families waited for up to 3 hours as the line wrapped around the block. Attendees practicing social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic wore face masks and maintained a distance of 6 feet from each other. Once an attendee reached the reception desk, they were escorted by a volunteer or Santa himself so each child could select for themselves a toy they wanted among hundreds of different types from which to choose.

It’s a Grift! It’s a Coup! It’s BOTH!

Paul Rosenberg
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It’s a Grift! It’s a Coup! It’s BOTH!

At 2:26 p.m. on Dec. 14, California Assembly-woman Shirley Weber announced that Joe Biden had won all 55 of California’s votes in the Electoral College, thereby giving him an Electoral College majority of 302 votes — 32 more than necessary — formally assuring his election. 

It was a clear turning point: First, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Biden — more than a month after most other world leaders, and then, Senate Majority Leader “Moscow” Mitch McConnell offered his congratulations as well. It was the first admission by GOP leadership that Biden had been elected president, more than a month after Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania secured the outcome.

Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election — seen as a grift by some (raising more than $200 million in three weeks), and a coup attempt by others — clearly suffered a major blow. But grift or coup, there’s little chance he’ll stop anytime soon. There’s too much money, too much limelight and too much power at stake.

The Grift

On the grift side, Trump had responded to initial signs of his loss with a flood of more than 130 fundraising emails in the first three weeks. 

“The blatant voter fraud throughout corrupt Democrat-run cities is unprecedented,” a typical email read. 

Yet, in the more than 50 court cases Trump’s lawyers have filed, they’ve never produced any evidence of such fraud. 

“When they come after ME, they’re really coming after YOU and everything YOU stand for,” an email went on to say.

“This Election isn’t over yet.  We still have a long way to go and I need to know that I can count on you,” it continued. “I’m putting together an Election Defense Task Force that will be made up of my STRONGEST defenders.” 

The email goes on to ask for an immediate $5 contribution to join the task force and “increase your impact by 1000%” — though exactly how is never explained.

In fact, the Washington Post accurately described it as “a nonexistent fundraising account.” The first flood of emails linked to a page where, election law expert Rick Hasen noted, “half of that money will go towards retiring his campaign debt instead.” 

But there were also emails that linked to a donation page for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” committee. Initially, it said that 60% of donations would go toward retiring campaign debt and the other 40% would go to the Republican National Committee.

By mid-November, fundraising requests were coming from the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising effort splitting its proceeds between the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, and Save America, a new Trump leadership PAC, which initially got 60%, then 75% of each contribution. Leadership PACs cannot retire campaign debt but are otherwise lightly regulated. They can be used to pay for events at Trump’s properties or to finance his travel or personal expenses. In short, they’re almost like personal piggy-banks. “There’s not really a legal mechanism that would prevent somebody from enriching themselves with the contributions that they receive into their leadership PAC in the same way that personal-use restrictions would prohibit that for a campaign committee,” campaign finance legal expert Kate Belinski told  the Post on Dec. 1.

On Dec. 3, the Trump campaign announced that, along with the RNC, it had raised $495 million between Oct. 15 and Nov. 23, including $207.5 million in the 20 days after Election Day. That same day, the Post reported that the Trump campaign had spent only $8.8 million contesting election results — a small fraction of the money raised within that time. 

Then, on Dec. 18, Business Insider reported that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had set up a campaign shell company, American Made Media Consultants, that secretly paid the president’s family members and spent nearly half of the Trump campaign’s $1.26 billion war chest — a total of $617 million. There is a relatively innocent explanation — Mitt Romney used a similar entity, named “American Rambler,” to make major TV ad buys, and lawyers at Jones Day, a top GOP law firm, suggested the Trump campaign do the same.

But that doesn’t account for what happened after the shell company (American Made Media Consultants) was created, especially the secretive way it was run, the disproportionate amount of money it handled and the Trump family hands in the cookie jar, all of which are reminiscent of how Trump and his siblings used a similar shady entity, “All County Building Supply & Maintenance,” to help evade inheritance taxes of nearly half a billion dollars, according to a 2018 New York Times investigation. As The Times explained, that entity “was ostensibly a purchasing agent for Fred Trump’s buildings,” but that’s not actually what it did:

Instead All County siphoned millions of dollars from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners — Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin. Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants.

American Made Media Consultants has only just now been brought to light, so we have no idea if it was used in any similar sort of illegal or unethical manner. But the Trump family clearly knows how to do it, if they had wished. As one clean government expert — Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center — told Business Insider, the payments to American Made Media Consultants were a “scheme to evade telling voters even the basics on where its money is really going” and a “shield to disguise the ultimate recipients of its spending.” 

The Coup

There’s no doubt that Trump is conning his small donor base, the only question is “How much?” and “How much else is he doing as well?” The latter question leads into the subject of staging a coup, or more precisely, an autogolpe — a “self-coup,” which takes place when a democratically elected leader uses the position to dissolve or disarm the national legislature and the courts, putting the leader above the law. While many observers have resisted such talk, it’s important to realize that a failed coup is a coup nonetheless, even a comically inept one. What’s more, even a comically inept coup can sometimes succeed.

That’s why Dec. 14 was such an important day. Before that, there was genuine uncertainty about whether Trump’s coup might succeed. Trump and his closest allies kept coming up with harebrained schemes about how he could hold onto power and only a small handful of Republican officials offered any sort of solid resistance.

Perhaps the last such scheme before Dec. 14 was a Texas lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, seeking to overturn their election results. It was initiated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — under FBI investigation for criminal activity, and no doubt interested in a possible Trump pardon — and then joined by 17 other Republican attorneys general, and supported by a 60%-plus majority of Republican House members, 126 of them, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The idea that one state could sue another in federal court to invalidate its elections flies directly in the face of everything conservatives supposedly believe about federalism and states rights, but a 5-4 conservative majority of Supreme Court justices ignored their own principles in handing the 2000 election to George Bush, so it arguably wasn’t that harebrained … until it turned out that it was. Only two justices agreed to even hear the case — and none said they’d support it.

Then, on Dec. 14 itself, “alternative delegations” of Republican electors to the Electoral College met in seven states that Trump lost — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — on the far-fetched theory that their illegitimate status could somehow be magically reversed. These seven cosplay delegations hadn’t been endorsed by their state legislatures, as originally envisioned in Trumpian “constitutional” fantasies. But at least they were the electors that would have been elected if Trump had won their states instead of Biden. So at least they had the right players, even if everything else was bogus. Sure, it was another harebrained notion, but harebrained notions have had quite a run these past four years.

The Longer View

Here in California, Weber had a different thought. 

“We continue to validate that this democracy — this experiment in treating everyone equal and making sure that every vote counts — is truly, truly successful,” Weber said, after the vote.

This time, at least, she was right. But for how long? That’s the question.

Trump’s effort to overturn the election had clearly suffered a major blow, soon to be compounded by Putin and McConnell, as organized Republican opposition appeared to crumble. But the damage Trump has done to American democracy could prove far worse in four years. Weber was only right by a hair: Biden won the national popular vote by over seven million votes, but a shift of fewer than 43,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin would have produced an Electoral College tie, and Trump would have won the tie-breaking election in the House of Representatives, which would have voted under a one-state-one-vote rule.

That scenario underscores a crucial fact: however anomalous, atypical and quixotic Trump’s attack on our democracy might be, it is echoed by a framework of constitutional structures that are inherently hostile to the one-person/one-vote spirit of democracy we nowadays take to be fundamental to our democracy. What’s more, between these two extremes — the atypical Trump and the foundational constitutional structures — there lies an extensive middle ground in which democracy must battle for its very life. We’re quite mistaken if we think the only danger that we face is a Trumpian coup. Trump was never going to turn into Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. Full-blown authoritarian rule isn’t what serious students of world politics have feared. Instead, they worry about what Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way called “Competitive Authoritarianism” in their 2010 book on the subject. “Modern democratic regimes all meet four minimum criteria,” they explain:

1) Executives and legislatures are chosen through elections that are open, free, and fair; 2) virtually all adults possess the right to vote; 3) political rights and civil liberties, including freedom of the press, freedom of association, and freedom to criticize the government without reprisal, are broadly protected; and 4) elected authorities possess real authority to govern, in that they are not subject to the tutelary authority of military or clerical leaders.

That’s not to say there are no violations, but “such violations are not broad or systemic enough to seriously impede democratic challenges to incumbent governments. In other words, they do not fundamentally alter the playing field between government and opposition.”

So then, how does America stand up? Mark Copelovitch is a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who’s been tweeting observations for some time through the lens of “Today in life under competitive authoritarianism.” He recently observed, “Arguably, the US has basically not fully met the 1st 2 of Levitsky & Way’s democratic criteria since the failure of Reconstruction. Trump-era backsliding is mostly on criterion 3. But the problem now is additive. EC + increases in gerrymandering & malapportionment + Trump.”

This can — and should be — cause for serious concern. All the Republicans scrambling to make Trump’s harebrained schemes pay off should surely worry us — a lot. But Copelovitch sees a silver lining: 

“I actually do think this is what we are starting to realize & why the Court/Senate/statehood reforms have gained traction,” he wrote. “The immediate authoritarian threat of Trump since 2017 has shined light on the enduring undemocratic nature of our political institutions. Both are threats.”

The silver lining is that people are waking up.

COVID-19 Vaccine News

Reporters Desk
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COVID-19 Vaccine News

On Dec. 20, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP released their recommendations on the prioritization of vaccine distribution after long-term care patients and frontline health care workers.

Here is the breakdown of the two groups as recommended by ACIP:

  • Phase 1b Group (49 million people). This group includes police, firefighters, teachers and school personnel; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing workers; corrections workers; U.S. Postal Service workers; public transit and grocery store workers. This group also includes 19 million seniors 75 years old or older.
  • Phase 1c Group (129 million people).  This group includes the remaining seniors, 65-74 (28 million people), and other “essential workers” (20 million people) in Transportation and Logistics, Food Service, Shelter & Housing (including construction), Finance, IT & Communication, Energy, Media Legal, Public Safety (Engineers), Water & Wastewater.   This group also includes people between the ages of 16-64 with high-risk conditions (81 million people).

The ACIP panel recommendations are non binding. State governments have the flexibility to prioritize decisions locally — but they have so far followed the ACIP recommendations

Details: ACIP COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendations

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