August 27, 2024 ❧ Biden’s phony fossil-fuel numbers, Kentucky prisoners hack their tablets, and a “right to disconnect”

Plus: Rent control in Mexico City, Israel destroys a historic mosque, and armadillos always have EXACTLY four babies

News springs eternal

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What's going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)

❧ The Biden administration claims to have made a “once in a generation investment” in America’s “clean energy future” with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But as Peter Gelderloos writes for In These Times, “Two years and close to $300 billion later, what we’re seeing is that increased renewable energy investment goes hand in hand with increased fossil fuel production.”

The U.S. claims to have reduced fossil fuel consumption by three percent during the first year of the IRA. But, as Gelderloos explains, that already inadequate number is essentially phony: 

This miserable reduction wasn’t even the result of robust government intervention: 85% of it can be attributed to power companies burning more gas and less coal as gas prices fall. In fact, what was supposed to be a banner year for green energy actually saw a slight decrease in electricity generation from renewable sources in the U.S. — a failure that belies the supposed magic wand of government intervention.

What’s worse, the 3% reduction isn’t even real. Countries like the U.S. can claim a victory only thanks to the ​“carbon accounting” practices approved by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and central to the Paris Agreement framework. This carbon accounting is done country by country (as if ecological catastrophe respected borders) and a country’s footprint is measured by the greenhouse gas emissions of what they consume, not what they produce.

The U.S. actually broke records in crude oil production last year, but it is still technically able to make the ridiculous claim that it is making strides to fight the climate crisis. And this is not unique to the United States. Gelderloos points to many other developed countries, like Sweden, Norway, Chile, and the U.K., which have expanded domestic green infrastructure that benefits their own citizens, but still export large amounts of fossil fuels and other climate-destroying products abroad. “In short,” he concludes, “when we look at the countries that are held up as success stories, we find that the green energy transition is being paid for by fossil fuel production.”

(Graph: U.S. Energy Information Administration)

This is, of course, a sorry indictment of our system of global accountability for climate change. The IPCC is essentially complicit in a shell game that is allowing some of the largest contributors to the problem to claim to be on the cutting edge of progress. Of course, in the case of the U.S., even the progress being claimed is totally inadequate to begin with. Scientists estimate that in order to actually stand a chance of warding off the worst effects of climate change, emissions will need to drop by half as soon as 2030. Even if it were real, a 3 percent reduction in the IRA’s first year would put us well behind schedule. But the reality is that we are actually losing ground with each passing year. And unless countries around the world immediately begin the process of permanently ending fossil fuel drilling, it will soon be too late.

Despite the hype, Biden is nowhere near getting rid of these things.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In other news…

• Special prosecutor Jack Smith issued another indictment against Donald Trump today for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The indictment has been revised in response to the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this summer, which explicitly gave the former president immunity for his efforts to strong-arm members of his Justice Department. (New York Times)
  
  
• Trump has been promising a huge crackdown on free speech this past week: 
  
  
  • He reaffirmed calls to jail protesters who burn the American flag—unquestionably an act of First Amendment-protected speech—“for one year.” Trump added, “They say, ‘sir, that's unconstitutional.’ We’ll make it constitutional.” 
    
    
  • He also called for those who criticize his appointed judges to face criminal punishment: “I really think it’s illegal what they do, with judges and justices. They’re playing the ref… Remember the term. Playing the ref with our judges and justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that.” Of course, he publicly complains about Democrat-appointed judges all the time, so presumably it would only be against the law to criticize his appointees.

• White Fragility author and corporate diversity trainer Robin DiAngelo has been accused of plagiarizing non-white colleagues in a formal complaint to the University of Washington, where she received her PhD. The irony here is especially grand given that DiAngelo often makes the point that we must “always cite and give credit to the work of BIPOC people who have informed your thinking.” (Washington Free Beacon)
  
  
• And with yet another prominent scholar accused of academic dishonesty, we figure it’s also a good time to link you to Yasmin Nair’s terrific series of articles “On Plagiarism.”

PAST AFFAIRS

In 2021, near the height of the book’s popularity among progressives and liberals, Nathan J. Robinson wrote a critique of White Fragility:

“DiAngelo’s error is that she focuses excessively on interpersonal interactions between white people and people of color, and therefore sees fixing racism as more about perfecting those interactions rather than eliminating large-scale racial inequities like the Black-white wealth gap, the racial gap in school quality/healthcare, and mass incarceration. White Fragility is not especially interested in structural problems, or at least not in structural solutions to those problems: the source of American racial inequality, as far as DiAngelo seems to be concerned, is the psychology of white people.”

• Democrats are once again suing to keep the Green Party off the ballot, this time in a Montana Senate race. (Montana Free Press)
  
  
• In an interview with Meet the Press, J.D. Vance claimed that Donald Trump would veto a nationwide ban on abortion if he gets elected in November. This contradicts Trump’s past rhetoric about abortion, in which he’s bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade and said there “has to be some form of punishment” for women who end a pregnancy, so it’s safe to say Vance might not be completely honest here. (NBC)

CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS

Editor-in-Chief Nathan J. Robinson recently went on Ben Burgis’s YouTube show Give them an Argument to discuss everything from the Kamala Harris campaign to J.D. Vance’s phony “populism.” Check it out here: 

AROUND THE STATES

❧ Kentucky prisoners found a way to hack the for-profit tablets that were extorting them. As John Cheves writes for the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Kentucky Department of Corrections has a longstanding contract with a company called Securus Technologies, which handles inmates’ communications and media access in prisons around the state. Owned by a huge private equity firm called Platinum Equity, Securus is known mostly for providing “ruggedized” tablets—like iPads, but thicker and more limited in their functions—to prisons. These can be used to access educational resources, send emails and make video calls to loved ones, and play various kinds of entertainment. 

A healthy civilization does not produce objects like this one. 

(Image: Securus Technologies)

Securus and its tablets are also known for ruthlessly price-gouging the cost of their services. In Texas, for instance, they charge 47 cents for every email a prisoner sends, using an “e-stamp” system that mimics the prices in the U.S. Postal Service. For phone calls, they charge 6 cents a minute; for music, around $1.99 a song. These prices might sound low, but not for things that are typically free outside the confines of prison, like sending an email or playing a song. It’s indefensible to charge people money for the simple act of speaking to their families, especially when they don’t have a choice in the matter—and it gets worse when you remember that in many states, prisoners make only a few cents an hour for their labor. In Kentucky, they make anywhere from 13 to 33 cents. In Texas, incarcerated workers aren’t paid at all, as slavery is still legal under the U.S. constitution if it’s inflicted “as a punishment for crime.” In Michigan, Securus was even sued earlier this year for what plaintiffs called a “quid pro quo kickback scheme,” in which county jails banned in-person visitation to maximize the profits from phone and video calls. 

But in Kentucky, Securus got a little too greedy for its own good. As Cheves reports, the company added a new app to its tablets in December 2022: a digital commissary system, intended to “help… cash flow more smoothly” from prisoners to the company. But a prisoner named LaDaniel Brown soon learned the app had a critical flaw: 

[Brown] discovered that if he put a minus sign in front of a dollar figure as he transferred money from his commissary account, he would actually add that much money to both his commissary account and his Securus account. Typing in “-$500” suddenly credited $500 to both of Brown’s accounts, money that didn’t really exist.

News of the hack spread, and according to Department of Corrections records, at least 366 inmates—most of them at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex—collectively racked up more than $1 million in Securus funds before the guards figured out what was going on. “Some inmates spent hundreds of fake dollars stocking up on email stamps so they could write home for free,” Cheves writes. The scam only came to an end when one prisoner tried to spend $735 on snacks in the physical Luther Luckett commissary. (Let this be a lesson, folks: never get too ambitious and ruin a good thing for everyone else.)

The Luther Luckett Correctional Complex from above. Doesn’t it look dismal? 

(Image: Prison Insight via Flickr)

There’s only one possible reaction here, if you have a soul: good for the hackers! The whole U.S. prison system is horrific, but for-profit companies like Securus Technologies that squeeze their fortunes from a literal captive audience are the worst. The real crime is that such a system exists, not that a few prisoners managed to “steal” services like emails and phone calls that should have been free anyway. For-profit incarceration in any form needs to be eliminated—but until that day comes, stories of creative resistance and subversion like this one are encouraging little spots of hope. 

In other news…

• Also in Kentucky, a U.S. District Judge has dismissed felony charges against the two cops who lied to obtain the “no-knock” search warrant in the Breonna Taylor case, which led directly to Taylor’s death. Judge Charles Simpson, a Reagan appointee, determined that Taylor’s boyfriend—who assumed the cops were burglars and fired a single shot at them—was responsible for the killing, rather than the cops who actually committed it, in what journalist Samantha Michaels is calling a “major blow” to the pursuit of justice. (Mother Jones)

A memorial for Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

• Kristina Karamo, the election-denying former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, was unceremoniously thrown out of this weekend’s GOP convention in Flint. (Detroit Free Press)
  
  
• The Oklahoma education board has revoked an English teacher’s license after she shared the QR code for the Brooklyn Public Library’s banned books resource with her students. Responding to the outrageous censorship and intimidation, Summer Boismer said that “I will not apologize for sharing publicly available information about library access with my students... My livelihood will never be as important as someone’s life or right to read what they want.” (Associated Press)
  
  
• The Department of Justice is suing the software developers behind a website called RealPage, alleging that the site helped landlords fix rent prices in eight different states. (KOIN)
  
  
• Oregon is once again considering raising taxes on corporations to directly redistribute them to people across the state. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, the proposed “Oregon Rebate” would…

Levy a 3% tax on any business’s Oregon sales above $25 million, then divvy up the money raised among Oregon’s more than 4 million residents, no matter their age. A recent analysis by state revenue officials suggested the policy would reap more than $6.5 billion a year in additional corporate taxes, and send around $1,600 a year to every resident of the state beginning in 2026 — either via tax credits or direct payments.

• Even other Republicans hate Ron DeSantis’s latest scheme! The Florida governor has proposed putting golf courses and pickleball courts in nine state parks, and offered only a single one-hour meeting—at 3PM on a Tuesday—for public input. In response, 15 elected officials including Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott signed a letter to DeSantis calling the lack of accountability “absolutely ridiculous.” (Tampa Bay Times)

• South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem turned down $70 million in federal funds that would have helped make her state more energy efficient. The program would have given South Dakotans rebates if they made changes to their home that reduced energy consumption and purchased low-energy appliances (Both things that, in addition to reducing emissions, would have saved people money on energy). This is not the first time Noem has turned down literal free money to help people in her state. She also passed up $7.5 million that would have fed low-income kids, federal grants for solar energy and cybersecurity. She also declined unemployment money given to South Dakota during the COVID-19 pandemic. (South Dakota Searchlight)
  
  
• California just passed a new law to “crack down” on shoplifting. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill following backlash to Proposition 47, which made shoplifting items under $950 a misdemeanor rather than a felony. Republicans have successfully misled the public on the effects of this 2014 law, claiming, without evidence, that shoplifting is effectively legal in California and that the state is facing an epidemic of theft. In reality, property crime has actually declined in the state since the law was passed. But Newsom’s new legislation allows offenses to be aggregated into a felony offense, which will lead to more incarcerations for petty theft. (Popular Information)

PAST AFFAIRS

Earlier this year, Alex Skopic wrote that “The Shoplifting ‘Epidemic’ is a Lie”:

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ Australia is giving workers the right to ignore phone calls and emails from their bosses during non-work hours. As remote work has become increasingly common, the lines between home and work have become blurred, and bosses have often taken advantage of that fact to pester their employees during hours when they are not expected to be on the clock. Australia’s new law, passed in February and going into effect this week, does not completely outlaw off-hours communications. However, it will recognize employees’ right to “refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact outside their working hours, unless their refusal is unreasonable.” 

What is considered “reasonable” is largely decided on a case-by-case basis. Senator Murray Watt, Australia's minister for employment and workplace relations, says that employees should still respond in an “emergency situation,” but that “run-of-the-mill thing[s]” should wait until the next day, “so that people can actually enjoy their private lives, enjoy time with their family and their friends, play sport or whatever they want to do after hours, without feeling like they're chained to the desk at a time when they're not actually being paid, because that's just not fair.”

Workplaces that violate the rules have the potential to be fined as much as 93,900 Australian dollars ($63,805 USD) by the country’s Fair Work Commission tribunal. The law goes into effect this week for large and mid-sized companies, and will take effect next year for those with fewer than 15 full-time employees.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese laid out the logic behind the new law pretty plainly: “What we are simply saying is that someone who isn’t being paid 24 hours a day shouldn’t be penalized if they’re not online and available 24 hours a day.” This should, of course, be common sense. Several other countries, including Italy, Belgium, Spain, Argentina, and Canada, have already put laws in place recognizing the “right to disconnect.” No such rules have been adopted in the United States, however—although California became the first state to introduce such a bill earlier this year and received a predictable backlash from employers.

The “right to disconnect” around the world. (Map by IUS Laboris)

Human beings are not meant to be in work mode at all hours of the day. In fact, it is physically detrimental: “Work-related stress can disrupt sleep, digestion and cognition and leads over time to inflammation in the body and chronic illness like cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure,” writes Brigid Schulte for CNN. But beyond that, expecting workers to labor beyond what they are compensated for is pure wage theft, and it should be illegal. 

The official Current Affairs “Hope Koala,” who signifies

that something good has happened in Australia.

(Art from Issue 5 of Current Affairs Magazine, Jan/Feb 2017)

In other news…

• Pavel Durov, the co-founder and CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, has been arrested in France over allegations his platform is used for drug trafficking, terrorism, and other dangerous or illegal communications. (Le Monde)
  
  
• Mexico City has instituted strict new rent control laws, requiring landlords to register all rental contracts with the city and limiting rent increases to the rate of inflation. (Associated Press)
  
  
• Videos have emerged of the Israeli military blowing up the Grand Mosque in Khan Younis, one of the oldest places of worship in Gaza. Israeli soldiers also published a video of themselves burning and desecrating Qurans. Since October 7, Israel has completely destroyed 610 mosques in Gaza and partially destroyed another 214. (Anadolu Agency)

CONTENT WARNING: DISTURBING AND OFFENSIVE

• The Taliban just passed several new horribly oppressive “vice and virtue” laws designed to prevent women from “tempting” men. What is considered “tempting”? Basically being a woman and existing. In addition to new laws requiring women to remain covered from head to toe at all times, they are also now banned from speaking, reading, or singing in public and may not even look at men other than their husbands. (The Guardian)

• Separatist groups in the Balochistan region of Pakistan carried out a series of attacks this weekend that killed at least 70 people, many of whom were civilians who work in the bordering region of Punjab. It’s yet another escalation of violence in the impoverished region from militants, who have attempted to resist the government’s exploitation of the region’s natural resources. (Al Jazeera)
  
  
• In a setback for reproductive rights in Eastern Europe, Donald Tusk—the Prime Minister of Poland—says his party doesn’t have enough votes to fulfill its promise of legalizing abortion this parliamentary term. (Notes from Poland)

Tusk looks disappointed, but then he always looks like that.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

• According to a new estimate from the nonprofit Working Group for Missing Persons in El Salvador, at least one person goes missing every day under the police state being run by President Nayib Bukele, with 366 total “disappeared” persons from May 2023 to May 2024. (NBC)
  
  
• After coming out in full force against the genocide in Gaza earlier this year, the rapper Macklemore is now refusing to perform in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE—an American ally—has been providing weapons to the militias carrying out genocidal atrocities in the Sudanese civil war, hence the boycott. (Associated Press)

ARMADILLO FACT OF THE WEEK

Nine-banded armadillos give birth to exactly four identical babies—no more, no less.

Four identical babies or your money back: That’s the armadillo guarantee! 

(Photo: Wildlife Center of Texas)

“A female produces a single egg that, once fertilized, splits into four genetically identical embryos that share one placenta,” according to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Armadillos are the only vertibrates in the animal kingdom to do this. And there’s a good reason why: Genetic diversity is a good thing because it makes it more likely that at least one offspring will survive in a changing environment. Why are armadillos built different? The Carnegie Museum says that “How and why this unique pattern evolved and continues to be maintained is a mystery.”