Friday, August 11, 2023 ❧ A raise for construction workers, "ghost guns," Hawaii wildfires, and Mississippi police brutality
Plus India's green energy miracle, Ohio referendum update, Shakespeare, Armenia, and more...
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STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION BRINGS BACK CONSTRUCTION WAGE RULE SCRAPPED BY REAGAN
The Biden administration just introduced a new rule that will increase wages for construction workers on federal projects. The Department of Labor will restore a definition of the “prevailing wage,” which is the average hourly wage paid to similarly employed workers. Under the new rule, employers will be required to pay construction workers the equivalent of wages made by at least 30 percent of workers in a given trade and locality. This brings back a standard codified under the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which was in place for more than 50 years. It was then scrapped in 1983 as part of Ronald Reagan’s crackdown on organized labor. Since then, it has been required that 50 percent of workers earn a specific wage for it to be considered prevailing. The Biden administration’s new rule also includes new anti-retaliation provisions and greater enforcement powers for the Labor Department to hold employers accountable for wage theft. According to The American Prospect, the construction industry interest group will likely file a lawsuit to try to stop its passage as soon as this week.
But if the return to the New Deal-era Davis-Bacon standard holds, millions of construction workers are expected to benefit. Proponents hope that it will shrink the wage gap between Northern states, which tend to have better workplace protections, and Southern ones, which have less than half the North’s union density and overall lower standards for wages and work conditions. Incidentally, this has led many employers to move their construction projects South to hire cheaper (read: more easily exploited) labor.
It is also critically important as the Biden administration undertakes billions in new infrastructure spending under the Inflation Reduction Act. His support from organized labor has been complicated by, among many other shortcomings, the fact that much of the federal funds poured into the project have gone to de-unionized Republican states. According to Jeff Stein and Lauren Kaori Gurley in The Washington Post,
Unease among some unions has threatened to cloud a boom in clean energy investment and production: Funding from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has poured disproportionately into red states, with private developers of renewable energy projects seeking lower labor costs in parts of the country with nonunion workforces. The United Auto Workers, for instance, has sounded the alarm over relatively low pay for workers at one new battery factory, pushing to ensure union workers still benefit in the electric vehicle era. The new rule, which updates the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, is intended to ensure that labor unions are at the forefront of the projects resulting from the federal spending blitz.
SUPREME COURT SIDES WITH BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ON “GHOST GUNS”
In a somewhat surprising development, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts sided with the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices to uphold a Biden administration regulation on ghost guns. Despite what it may sound like, this is not a rule preventing ghosts from owning guns, nor does it prevent common citizens from owning the Proton Pack from Ghostbusters (though such regulations certainly should be put in place to tame the scourge of ghost-human violence).
What this rule actually does is allow the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to broaden the definition of “firearms” to include weapon parts kits that can be used to assemble a firearm, which are commonly purchased online. Because they are not classified as guns, the government is unable to track their sale, leaving them to float around untracked like spooky specters. The new rule will require their manufacturers to obtain licenses, mark the weapons’ kits with serial numbers, conduct background checks, and maintain records of sale.
Ghost guns are quite a prolific driver of America’s gun violence epidemic. And their use as part of gun crime is growing. As the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety writes,
They are becoming a weapon of choice for violent criminals, gun traffickers, and other legally prohibited persons.
Recent statistics bear this out. According to the Justice Department, law enforcement agencies found 19,300 homemade weapons at crime scenes in 2021, which is about a fivefold increase from 2018. And in California, ghost guns accounted for 25 to 50 percent of the firearms recovered at crime scenes during an 18-month period in 2020 and 2021. While curbing ghost guns alone will not solve the dramatic increase in gun deaths since the turn of the century, any measure that puts gun purchases under tighter scrutiny is likely to have some impact.
BIG STORY
UNCONSCIONABLE, RACIST POLICE VIOLENCE IN MISSISSIPPI
[CONTENT WARNING: police brutality, racism, torture, and sexual assault]
Six White former law enforcement officers in Mississippi have pleaded guilty to several federal felonies after committing and covering up vile acts of premeditated brutality and torture against two entirely innocent Black men—Eddie Terrell Parker and Michael Corey Jenkins—in January. According to the Associated Press,
“The officers planted drugs. They stole surveillance footage from the house. They tried to dispose of other evidence. They agreed on a set of lies that would further upend their victims’ lives. And that was just the cover-up. Careful to avoid security cameras at the house, they burst in without a warrant, starting the physical, sexual and psychological abuse. They handcuffed Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. They forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess. They mocked the victims with racial slurs. They shocked them with stun guns…The officers had meant to torture the men without leaving physical scars. But one shot Jenkins in the mouth. Miraculously, Jenkins survived.
What could possibly have been their reason for this? According to the AP, the officers were dispatched after…
A white neighbor phoned Rankin County Deputy Brett McAlpin and complained that two Black men were staying with a white woman inside a Braxton home. McAlpin told Deputy Christian Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies so willing to use excessive force they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”
“Are y’all available for a mission?” Dedmon asked. They were.
The AP called it “a racist call for extrajudicial violence that felt like it was from a bygone era.”
But while the explicit racism here is more extreme than usual, such wanton cruelty by cops, disproportionately against people of color, is still ever present, as recent reports on the Minneapolis PD and others have made evident (there are also numerous cases of American police officers simultaneously being members of white supremacist hate groups).
This case in Mississippi was so heinous that it would be impossible for any judge who was not an utter sociopath to turn a blind eye. But the prosecution of these cops is an exception that proves the rule. It’s extremely rare that cops who brutalize and kill people actually face accountability. While we don’t have data on non-fatal police brutality, according to Mapping Police Violence (a database that catalogs police killings), police killed 1,201 people in 2022, but only 12 of those cases (1 percent) led to criminal charges, and fewer than a third of cases that make it to trial lead to convictions. While it may be tempting to assume that these shootings were justified, the majority of killings began with police responding to a nonviolent offense.
Police officers are extremely reluctant to speak up and report misconduct. As USA Today has found through its investigative series “The Blue Wall of Silence,” those who do are often met with retaliation from other officers—including police chiefs and sheriffs. As Gina Barton, Brett Murphy, and Daphne Duret write:
To many in law enforcement, snitching against another cop is a betrayal that can’t go unpunished. Those who enforce this code – the blue wall of silence - have stuffed dead rats and feces into fellow officers’ lockers. They’ve issued death threats, ignored requests for backup, threatened family members and planted drugs on the officers who reported wrong[doing]. Department leaders often condone these reprisals or pile on by launching internal investigations to discredit those who expose misconduct. Whistleblowers have been fired, jailed and, in at least one case, forcibly admitted to a psychiatric ward.
The cops who pleaded guilty in Mississippi this week were known for their history of violence. They called themselves a “goon squad” and were known to act like one: their members have been linked to at least four other violent encounters with Black men since 2019, which killed two and left another with severe injuries. Despite this, they remained on the force. Even officers with histories of misconduct often keep their jobs. In cases where cops are fired, it is often very easy for them to be employed in other precincts. According to a 2022 analysis by Reuters,
Records from 37 of the largest police forces in the country showed they hired nearly 91,000 officers in 2017, and had fired 1,881 over the previous decade, the Washington Post reported in August 2017. At least 451 of those fired officers appealed and were reinstated. The available research also shows that arbitrators commonly overturn discipline, including studies in Chicago, Houston, Cincinnati, and Portland dating back to the 1990s, according to a 2016 law review article by attorney Tyler Adams. In recent years, Philadelphia and Oklahoma City have seen nearly every discharged police officer reinstated through arbitration,” Adams wrote.
With this in mind, it’s not surprising that these officers assumed that they could get away with anything. They had every reason to believe that the system would protect them.
Here is an interview from Democracy Now! in which Amy Goodman speaks with the victims of this assault, Eddie Terrell Parker and Michael Corey Jenkins:
AROUND THE STATES
By a 14-point margin, Ohio voters rejected a proposal that would make it harder to amend the state’s constitution, a critical victory as abortion rights activists hope to enshrine “the right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” into the state’s constitution this November. If the proposal, known as Issue 1, had passed, it would have required any changes to the state constitution to receive approval from 60 percent of the public rather than a simple majority. Despite publicly denying that this referendum had anything to do with the upcoming abortion vote, one Republican state representative essentially gave the game away in a private letter to fellow House Republicans, in which he described this proposal as a way to keep Ohio “a pro-life state.” According to a 2022 poll, 59 percent of Ohioans support protecting abortion rights come November, which means that rejecting Issue 1 and keeping the simple majority threshold could make all the difference. Congratulations, Ohio, on doing something right for once!
At least 55 people are dead (with the death toll likely to keep rising) after wildfires ravaged the island of Maui in Hawaii. Governor Josh Green has called it “likely the largest natural disaster” in the state’s history. Dozens more have been injured from smoke inhalation and severe burns. The town of Lahaina, which has stood since the 1700s and is home to religious sites of deep significance to many Hawaiians, has been turned into a cinder. More than 1,000 structures have been destroyed, tens of thousands have lost power, and many people have been forced to jump into the ocean to flee the flames. Thousands have been forced to evacuate the island, with thousands more stranded on West Maui by road closures. Evacuations from the Big Island are underway as well. Hawaii Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke says these fires are “unprecedented” for Hawaii. The state has been enduring a period of abnormally dry vegetation, low humidity, and heavy winds, which make wildfires more common and easily spread. While we don’t know the exact cause of the wildfires, all of these changes are known effects of human-caused climate change. As the global temperature has warmed, wildfires have gotten dramatically worse across North America, where they are consuming three times as much forest each year as they did in the 1980s. Unless politicians take swift action, we can expect to see more fires like this in places that have previously never dealt with them. Remember: we need more climate activists right now if we are going to stop the burning of fossil fuels and prevent much more suffering like this from happening!
Some Florida schools are now banning Shakespeare to comply with Ron DeSantis’ expanded “Don’t Say Gay” law, which requires schools to remove any educational materials containing “sexual content.” Hillsborough County was the first to do so, telling teachers that they could only assign excerpts from plays like Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet to high schoolers but must not assign the full texts to avoid their supposed “raunchiness.” (God forbid children are exposed to such R-rated material as “Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie” and “It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge,” which are undoubtedly far more risqué than anything a child will hear on the playground.) By extension, the law effectively makes students unable to be assigned works that are part of the College Board’s Advanced Placement Literature exam as well—for instance, sexual conduct and discussion occur in Madame Bovary, Brave New World, 1984, The Sun Also Rises, and Dracula (which contains some very steamy blood-sucking). The DeSantis administration has clarified that Shakespeare is allowed in classrooms and that banning it was not their intention. But by the letter of the law, which requires schools to trash works containing “sexual conduct”, his works should be banned. If the concern is keeping high schoolers shielded from the reality of human sexuality forever, why should the Bard be exempt? Likewise, DeSantis and his kin are super into promoting Biblical education in schools, but the Bible is also full of sexual debauchery (including Ezekiel 23:20, which discusses “a prostitute in Egypt” who “lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.”). Some parents have tried to use Florida’s law to get the Bible banned from schools in an attempt to challenge the law’s absurdity. We don’t support banning books with sexual themes at all. But if you are going to do it, you have to be consistent! If Shakespeare and the Bible are allowed, then The Bluest Eye, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Gender Queer should be too!
A CAT FROM THE PAST WHOM YOU REALLY OUGHT TO SEE
From the Library of Congress: “Probably no dance band ever has played to so many empty tables consistently as the Sam Donahue ork during the recent double booking with Lionel Hampton at the Aquarium. The operators decreed that Sam should play afternoons, and the place isn't open in the afternoon! A single customer, John Sorenson, who just got off a boat from Denmark, wandered in by mistake one day and was served by the entire skeleton staff of three waiters, a cashier, head waiter, cook and busboy. In one of these staff photos by got, Sam and the band are seen playing to an attentive audience, consisting of one cat, Hep. In the other Stan Kenton keeps lonely Sam company, while Nick Callonus, a waiter, stands ready to bring another drink.”
LONG READ: Speaking of schools, we should really make sure that children can breathe safely inside of them (At Current Affairs, we take the strong editorial line that breathing is very important for children). But according to an article by Zeynep Tufekci in The New York Times, only 34 percent of schools used a cent of pandemic funding to improve their ventilation systems:
In March 2021, Congress allocated $122 billion for schools to cope with the Covid pandemic and its aftermath — to hire tutors, retain teachers or improve their facilities. Public health and clean air advocates hoped that this would lead to widespread improvements in classroom ventilation and air quality, to help ward off future pathogenic threats and reduce problems like dust, allergens and wildfire smoke. But only about 34 percent of school districts said they used any of the money to upgrade their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, according to a recent survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 28 percent more installed in-room air cleaners, 8 percent said they installed ultraviolet lights — a more expensive and complicated method — and the rest reported no changes that would substantially improve air quality. Moreover, once the federal spending was approved, aggressive salespeople descended on school officials who were struggling to open. School officials often were persuaded to spend more for products that many scientists believe aren’t substantially more effective than cheaper alternatives that have been thoroughly studied. Some of the products could even be dangerous.
AROUND THE GLOBE
India has reduced its carbon emissions by 33 percent in 14 years, according to two officials who viewed a recent report to the U.N. and presented it to Reuters. The report says India is well on its way to meeting its commitment to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change to reduce emissions intensity by 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Despite India having the largest population in the world, they have managed the globe’s fastest transition away from fossil fuels through massive government investments in constructing solar panels, wind energy, and planting more trees, which act as carbon sinks (and despite the opinions of doomsayers who suggest a green transition will destroy the economy, India’s economic growth has also been among the highest in the world over the last two decades). As of now, around 37 percent of the country’s power grid is made up of renewable energy, and the country has cleaner air as a result. If a country as populous as India can manage such a titanic shift in just a few decades, there is no excuse for other, wealthier countries not to get their acts together.
The U.S. exerted diplomatic pressure to remove the prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, from the government last year, according to a cable obtained by The Intercept. According to the transcript of a meeting between State Department officials and a Pakistani ambassador, Khan’s “aggressively neutral position” in Ukraine—to quote State Dept. official Donald Lu—was the primary driver for the U.S. to support his ouster last April. The vote of no confidence that removed him from office was followed by his conviction on corruption charges and the country’s increasing takeover by the military. Since Khan’s removal, the military has cracked down on free expression and jailed thousands of members of Khan’s party, the Pakistan Movement for Justice. Khan has long cried foul about American involvement in his removal (which CNN dismissed as a “conspiracy” with “no evidence” behind it). Now we have direct proof that he was correct all along. According to The Intercept,
The cable, known internally as a “cypher,” reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Khan, promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.
Shortly after the conversation, Khan publicly reversed his position on the Ukraine war (He had previously responded to European calls for him to support Ukraine by asking, “Are we your slaves?”). But the State Department had already put the wheels in motion to have him removed from office. Lu bluntly told the ambassador,
I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington…Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.
Despite U.S. denials, it’s clear that the State Department threatened the Pakistani government (although it’s vague exactly how the threats would be carried out) to meddle in Pakistan’s democratic process to overthrow its leader. And like so many U.S.-backed coups in the past, it has led to military repression.
LONG READ: A century after the Armenian Genocide, Armenia’s people are once again facing an extermination threat. Armenia is being inundated with bombs and gunfire from its eastern neighbor, Azerbaijan, which has sought to colonize the territory. But while decrying Russia’s military aggression, the U.S. and its allies have been quietly supporting Azerbaijan as it has attempted a similar war of conquest. Aidan Simardone writes in Jacobin:
The West is indifferent to Azeri aggression in Armenia because Azerbaijan’s strategic significance makes it an essential partner for Western energy security, leaving democratic Armenia with limited support in its time of need…With Western and Israeli support, Azerbaijan is cleansing Armenians from its territory and slicing up Armenia until nothing is left... In December 2022, Azerbaijan blocked all food, medicine, electricity, and water to the region. Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev stated that Armenians in Artsakh “will come with their heads bowed” or “will have to look for another place to live.” This was not an idle threat — Azerbaijan has previously bombed civilian areas in Artsakh to clear its inhabitants… Despite Azerbaijan’s aggressive colonialism, the West tends to downplay the severity of the conflict, framing it as a mere misunderstanding between two countries. Instead of imposing divestments and sanctions on Azerbaijan, the West has actually increased economic and military cooperation with the country…While the West strictly upholds international law in the context of Russia, it shows only mild concern regarding Azerbaijan’s actions. When Azerbaijan began bombing Armenia, the United States noted “increased tensions” at the border... Just as Israeli attacks against Palestine elicit little response from the West, so too is the West apathetic when Azerbaijan attacks Armenia. Azerbaijan is a key partner for Europe’s energy security and for the West and Israel’s military alliance against Iran. In contrast, Armenia has no fossil fuel reserves and is one of only ten countries hosting a Russian military base. For the West, it would be better if Armenia was gone.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with electoral politics?”)
Trump will likely go on trial early next year for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. According to The Washington Post,
The looming courtroom showdown is poised to push his insistence that election fraud occurred in 2020 toward the center of the 2024 presidential campaign…
This means you’re probably about to be inundated once again with a bunch of incomprehensible stories about voting machines being hacked by the ghost of Hugo Chavez, Trump ballots being found in dumpsters, and dead people voting by the millions. It was impossible to keep track of the absolute firehose of bullshit coming from Trump and the “Stop the Steal” brigade in 2020. But three years later, we’ve had a bit more time to muddle through all of their claims (it also helps that Trump officials have just outright admitted that he was lying). Nevertheless, more than 60 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents still think the election was rigged, though an increasing number now simultaneously say there is “no evidence” of this being the case and that they are going based on “suspicion alone” (Make it make sense!).
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single resource to refer to when arguing with your Trump-loving friends and family members? Well, it turns out such a document exists! In the aftermath of the election, a group of Republican lawyers, judges, and Congressmen put together a 72-page report titled “Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election,” which goes state-by-state painstakingly debunking every single failed election fraud claim made by Team Trump in court.
LIZARD FACT OF THE WEEK
Jesus is back! But there is one small complication: he is a lizard—a Basilisk Lizard, to be exact. Thanks to special fringes on his lizard toes, he can walk on water, just like he did when he was a human!
Writing and research by Stephen Prager. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here. Current Affairs is 100% reader supported and depends on your subscriptions and donations.