Politics Plus

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I would bet cash money that TomCat already knows every word I will write this week (although he won’t have seen it in Truthout, since he doesn’t go there. I do; I just don’t read the opinion articles most of the time.) But from his volunteer work and some other life experiences, he will know.

 When Taylor Lytle began fainting every morning when she stood up, she had to make a decision: Should she seek medical care or should she save her hard-earned wages to buy soap, shampoo, deodorant and feminine hygiene products?

Victoria Law

Taylor was incarcerated. Technically, she had a constitutionally guaranteed right (under the Eighth Amendment) to health care – this was litigated in Estelle v Gamble, which was decided in the Supreme court in 1976. But that doesn’t mean the prison can’t require a “co-pay,” and in 41 states, they do. Victoria Law, the author of my primary source, researched around, and found co-pays as low as $3.00 and as high as $8.00. Taylor Lytle was in California, which required a $5.00 co-pay. She had a job in the prison kitchen, which paid $0.08 per hour. You can do the math. I come up with more than a week and a half, even assuming she had an eight-hour work day, which I doubt.

Taylor might have been better off if she didn’t have a job.

 [In California, t]he fee is waived for people who are considered indigent, or who have $1 or less in their prison account for 30 consecutive days. If the person received funds — say, money from a family member or loved one — within the following 30 days, the $5 co-pay would automatically be deducted. (In 2018, the amount for indigent status was raised to $25. That exemption now affects nearly 61,000 of the state’s 131,000 prisoners.)

There aren’t enough prison jobs to go around, for one thing, and some that there are require some skills and/or mental abilities, while others require physical abilities. Not everyone is qualified to do a prison job. But, if you don’t have either a job or family and friends sending you money (or both), then you have nothing – no money, and nothing to barter with (of course there’s always contraband, but I really don’t want to go there, and in any case it wouldn’t pay co-pays.)

California is not the worst state in which to have a medical issue while in prison. Seven states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas – have jobs for inmates, but they pay nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. And, yes, that is Constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment as it stands, since it contains an exception for prison labor. And Texas –

 In 2012, Texas lawmakers changed the prison co-pay system from $2 per visit to a flat yearly fee of $100. The new law allows exceptions for emergencies, chronic care or follow-up services for an initial treatment. But the initial treatment still requires that $100 co-pay. Those who do not seek medical care can avoid that cost altogether — and it seems like that’s what they’ve been doing. In 2014, two years after the co-pay system changed, only 15,000 of the more than 150,000 state prisoners paid the $100 fee. 

Another former prisoner whom Law spoke with is Romarilyn Ralston, whose experience brings up additional issues. She was first incarcerated in 1988, before there were co-pays.

But that didn’t mean that people had ready access to health care or their concerns were taken seriously. Ralston recalls long medical lines, frequent misdiagnoses and many stories of people’s complaints not being taken seriously by medical staff. 

When prisoners put off seeking medical care for any reason, there are consequences.

For Ralston, the co-pay meant putting off medical care, which led to disastrous consequences. For months, she endured a tickle in her throat, which grew into a cough. “I probably should have gone months before,” she reflected, but each month she was faced with the choice of spending her paltry prison wages on hygiene items or a doctor visit. When she finally did seek medical attention, the doctor ordered a chest x-ray. The x-ray revealed spots on her lungs. Ralston was taken to the hospital where she underwent a lung biopsy, which revealed that she had sarcoidosis, a growth of inflammatory cells on her lungs. Untreated, sarcoidosis can lead to pulmonary fibrosis (permanent scarring of the lungs) and problems in other organs…. [H]aving sarcoidosis led to inflammation not only in her lungs, but also in her eyes. She contracted a cataract and later, had a small stroke. “Could they have caught it sooner? Probably yes,” she said. But she would have had to visit the doctor months earlier, which would have meant forgoing buying soap and deodorant or other needed items. 

In fact, co-pays – and, to be fair, other issues with health care in prisons – constitute a serious public health issue.

These co-pays not only deter people from seeking medical care for illnesses and injuries, but, in several instances, they have contributed to a mass outbreak that could have been prevented had jails and prisons not instituted this costly barrier. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control identified co-pays as one of the factors that contributed to mass outbreaks of MRSA [Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus] in Georgia and Texas prisons, as well as the Los Angeles county jails. 

Ralston is an organizer with the California Coalition for Wome Prisoners, and has worked on serveral legislative goals involving prisoners (of all genders). She is now working on a measure called “AB 45” which if passed will eliminate co-pays legislatively. Lytle is also now an organizer for the group, and testified in committee on AB 45. She was understandably upset with, and rebutted in her testimony, a statement from the Riverside Sheriffs Association:

 [W]hile the association supports efforts to help people in custody remain healthy, “our members also recognize that if any inmate at any time can request medical attention for any reason, there would never be enough staff to handle the inmate transfers from cell to medical.” 

(If there was smoke coming out of her ears when she read that, I wouldn’t be surprised. I know there was out of mine when I did.) But she kept her cool and merely said:

 “We’ve seen in California and across the country what happens when incarcerated people are denied medical help because of this stigma. People die. Please do not allow this false idea about incarcerated people to direct your policy choices. AB 45 will save lives.”

Well, the Public Safety Committee agreed and sent the bill to the Appropriations Committee, where it is now. So there will be more testimony ahead for advocates. They will need to convince this committee that it can do without (or somehow replace)

QQ up to $1.68 million each year from co-pays. In fiscal year 2017-2018, it received approximately $460,178 in co-pays for medical and dental visits. QQ

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, after last week, this one is simple (I did not say easy, just simple.) You need to convince the Appropriations Committee of the California legislature that the benefits of this measure outweigh the revenue loss … and then convince the full Assembly of the same. Best of luck. At least there are some dedicated volunteers out there who will help.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

On March 4, the Project on Government Oversight released a report called “Facing the Future of Surveillance,” dealing with the state of the art, the direction of progress being made, and th implications of usage of facial recognition software. It is, if you download it, a 54-page document (though you won’t see page numbers at my link), 14 pages of which are end notes leading to sources.

The report was prepared by the Task Force on Facial Recognition Surveillance, a part of The Constitution Project, and author Jake Laperruque. POGO sort of came in as a publisher, to help give the work wide exposure, in “its role as the people’s watchdog.” Because

Local, state, and federal governments are amassing databases containing our fingerprints, DNA, retinal images, and photos of our faces on an unprecedented scale. New facial recognition technology could allow the government to use these databases to effortlessly determine the identity of everyone at a gathering or even throughout a city…. The law, however, has been slow to keep pace with the digital revolution and the perils it presents to fundamental rights and freedoms. 

So – what is facial recognition?

Facial recognition is a method of using computer software to identify individuals based on the features of their face. These systems use facial “nodal points”—such as the location of eyes in relation to the face as a whole—from a pre-identified photo or set of photos to create a unique “face print” for an individual.1 This face print acts as a baseline for an individual’s identification, and is used as a cross-check for identification against other photos or video footage. Facial recognition systems convert existing photos and photo databases into databases of face prints, and can use the prints in those databases to identify a large number of individuals.

There are differences between facial recognition and two other technologies, face matching and face clustering, both of which are less threatening to privacy and civil liberties than facial recognition. The differences are subtle and you can read them by clicking through. I want to move on to a rather shocking statement: “Roughly half of all adults in the United States have pre-identified photos in databases used for law enforcement facial recognition searches.”

That did take me by surprise – surely not half of all of us have had mug shots taken. I know I haven’t. But – I do have a driver’s license. Hmmm. And I used to have a military ID. And I have had various college IDs in my lifetime. All with photos. And then, there’s social media. At this point, I started thinking half might be a gross underestimate.

So who is using this technology? The FBI of course – but also ICE and the Border Patrol, two agencies which IMO are highly skilled at MISusung just about anything. (Amazon in particular is trying very hard to sell its version to ICE.) And then, there’s state and local law enforcement. And they don’t need to have their own equipment. Agencies that do have it are only too happy to share it. Probably at least a quarter of state and local agencies have the capacity now – if not in their own right, then through a partnering agency.

I don’t want to make China a bogeyman, at least not in isolation, because we are headed the same direction – but, in a recent test, China’s facial recognition dragnet was able to find a BBC reporter in seven minutes – in a city of 4.3 million people.

Obviously there are Constitutional – Fourth Amendment primarily – implications in this kind of technology and its use. It has been addressed by the Supreme Court in two cases – United States v Jones in 2912, and Carpenter v United States in 2018. On the former, in a concurring opinion, Justice Sotomayor warned that

permitting unrestricted use of innovative digital technologies that are “available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.” 

The Carpenter decision was important for more than one reason, but this is one of them:

Traditionally information that the government could freely see was by nature not private, and not entitled to Fourth Amendment protections. But by saying that some surveillance power is simply too powerful to exist unchecked in a democracy, the Court upended this idea.

Did you read about this decision? In June? Quite frankly, I missed it entirely. Unfortunately, the court opted for a narrow rather than a broad ruling, which dilutes the principle somewhat. Also, I note, this decision was pre-Kavanaugh.

In a linked article, there’s an imagined “Day without the Fourth Amendment,” demonstrated what can be learned about people through technology we actually have, if the government were allowed to use it indiscriminately:

Brad Rayburn wakes up at 6:45 a.m. The government knows he woke up because he told his home assistant to turn off his alarm and start playing the news, and a few minutes later asked it about the day’s weather…. At 7:14, Brad Rayburn feeds his cat after taking a shower. The government knows this because the microphones on his phone, computer, and home assistant record the noises of a shower from 7:03 to 7:19, and then the cat meowing for several minutes until 7:15…. Brad leaves the office at 6:25 and walks home, jaywalking on two occasions. He purchases a six-pack of beer at a liquor store three blocks from his apartment. After he arrives at home at 7:13, his log indicates based on meowing recorded on the microphone of his phone that he immediately feeds his cat…. 

I do recommend clicking through to this link. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode – for those of us old enough to remember.

So far we’ve only talked about when surveillance techniques are accurate. But they aren’t always. And the report points out that they are less accurate for people of color and for women of all colors. Not surprising, but there it is. A link is also provided to a discussion including what, besides the Fourth Amendment, could be endangered if face recognition technology gets completely out of hand. (And, incidentally, I learned through this link that my driver’s license photo is not in the searchable databases, because no state in which I have ever held one is among the 16 states who allow theirs to be searched. That’s a relief. It’s a terrible photo.)

There are, of course, ways to jam facial recognition software, and I’ve shown a couple. Although, if you wear one of those looks to a protest or a march, I would not be surprised to hear afterwards that you had been stopped and interrogated specifically on that account.

The report closes with multiple recommendations – which, of course, most likely need to be included in a comprehensive package of criminal justice reform. I have thought on numerous occasions that Republican malfeasance, besides directly ruining life for ordinary people, has a side effect of keeping our best politicians so focused on such immediate needs as climate change and public health as to prevent them from tackling other things – like criminal justice reform. Are they smart enough to have figured that out and be doing it deliberately? Maybe, maybe not; but it’s still a feature rather than a bug for them.

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, there is so much food for thought here that I really don’t even know what direction to point you in.  However, you have been doing your jobs for enough milennia that you probably have a pretty good idea yourselves.  Go for it!

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

Not for the first time, I want to make an email the foundation of my case today. The email is from Common Dreams, an organization which does some good work of investigative journalism, and also of analysis. (Bill Moyers is one person who supports it and its model.) It works to treat facts as facts and to analyze through a lens of progressive values. Like Politics Plus, it's been looking into the politics of disinformation. Like Politics Plus, it wants everyone aware of the disinformation campaigns already in place.

We've seen it before. Sinister forces—recognizing the jig is up—fall back on one of the great strategies used throughout history to maintain power and privilege.

Reporting on Common Dreams today reveals that already, with the presidential primary season in the U.S. still over a year way, there is a coordinated "divide and conquer" effort underway with the explicit goal of turning progressives against one another in hopes of diminishing their collective power.

One of the analysts who studied the online phenomenon—mostly taking place on social media—dubbed it 'Operation Divide the Left.' It almost makes it sound silly, but with so much at stake, such efforts are anything but funny.

And it's not just on social media. Powerful interests—with the corporate media outlets they control, the think tanks they fund, and the lawmakers they have bought and paid for—have long been able to set the parameters of acceptable debate and moved swiftly to pit one struggling group against another. 

Politico reviewed data from Twitter "and other platforms" extensively, and then interviewed a number of data scientists and digital campaign strategists, and came up with an apparent dual purpose for the activity: 1) undermine all potential Democratic Presidential candidates, and 2) sow discord and chaos within the huge creaky disjointed machine which is the Democratic Presidential primary process.

A certain number of accounts were identified, turning out to be the same core group which anchored a wide-scale influence campaign in 2018. Gee. Who could have guessed.

Click through to find out which candidates are being targeted the most, if you wish.  (Spoiler:  all the ones pictured on this page.)

Moving on, also like Politics Plus, Common Dreams wants to bring people, not just progressives, together, to focus on what we have in common, to prevent division among us – division which, though it may originate from outside, can get in between us and turn us into splinters.

From those clamoring for a Green New Deal that centers racial and economic justice to those declaring without reservation that healthcare is a human right, we know these are unifying demands. Those calling for an end to endless war stand on the right side of history as do those who say no child should be torn from a parent's arms, no eligible voter should be kept from the ballot box, no worker denied the dignity of a living wage, and no woman told what to with her own body.

These values—and of course much more—are what unite progressives and they even unite people who don't identify as such. These are human values…. 

Well, that's easy to say. It's less easy to do.

However, one of the candidates (is it a coincidence she is also THE single most targeted candidate over at least the past month?) has just provided a model which can and should be used, not only by all Democratic candidates, not only by all Democratic politicians, but also by all Democrats and all progressive voters who see voting Democratic as the way to cleaning up Republican messes and, hopefully, moving forward.

Here's an excerpt from another email, this one from Senator Kamala Harris, which speaks for itself:

Earlier this week, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he is running for president. I want to let you know: I am excited to welcome my friend and colleague to the growing field of incredible Democrats who have entered this race.

I also very much look forward to the coming months when each candidate will share their ideas for the future of our country and make their case directly to the American people. Because, at the end of the day, that is what this is all about: the people.

Wow. It actually chokes me up.

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, please help spread this attitude far and wide among progressives, be they elected officials, candidates, or voters. If the attitude doesn't take, frankly, the appearance of it would do. If we all have to fake sincerity, then help us all learn to fake sincerity convincingly! Because anything less will weaken us, and could destroy us.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Last week I featured a racism incident, which I haven’t done for a while. However, February being Black History Month, I’m doing it again today, times two. I would love for there not to be any of these, but I don’t see that happening in my lifetime, alas.

This incident happened late in 2018, in Raleigh, NC. This week it was presented to the City Council of Raleigh, along with demands to hold the Raleigh Police Department accountable.

It started out reasonably – or at least not unreasonably. An AT&T store had been robbed; phones were stolen. I would say “pricey phones,” but, these days, that’s a tautology. The police recovered a cardboard box left behind by one of the suspects. The box had on it the address of a Raleigh home. On this basis, the police obtained a search warrant for the home. So far, no insanity.

The home was the residence of LaDonna Clark, her elderly parents, and her six-year-old son Ayden. The suspect was named Brian Clark. Brian is in fact a relative of LsDonna (it’s not been published what the relationship is), but was not living in the home at the time.

Brian Clark has a record, including for breaking and entering and second-degree burglary. I would guess he was on probation at this point, because, at some point previous to the issuance of the warrant, police had come to LaDonna’s home for a “check-in” and learned he did not reside there at that time.

Probation officers are police officers, but I would expect – especially in a city the size of Raleigh – they would work out of a different location from detective officers, and would not routinely talk to each other. And, the warrant having been executed at night, no probation officers may have been on duty. Based on their evidence it doesn’t seem unreasonable for the detectives to expect Brian to be at that address. In any case, armed officers arrived at LaDonna’s home with the warrant in mid-November, on a 35-degree, rainy night. (As an aside, no, that is not “normal” weather for Raleigh in November.)

It was after the warrant was served and LaDonna explained Brian didn’t live there and was not there, that things started to get out of hand.

During the search, LaDonna Clark said officers forced her son, who’s autistic and suffers from cerebral palsy, out of the home “on a 35-degree and rainy night” and pointed loaded military rifles at his head.

He was “made to sit on the cold, wet ground for well over an hour by [the police] SWAT [team],” she told council members of the incident. “If you’re not offended by the thought of a 6-year-old being forced to look down the barrel of an assault rifle or if you have become desensitized to the mistreatment of blacks in the city of Raleigh, [then] you don’t deserve to continue to sit where you are sitting.”

LaDonna’s parents were also aimed at with rifles.

It was only after repeated failures to get any kind of satisfactory response from the Police Department that LaDonna Clark requested and received a hearing by the City Council. She – and others – called (and have been calling) for

a police oversight committee with subpoena power to begin holding officers accountable. The move would require approval from the General Assembly.

Speaking of freezing weather, there has also been freezing weather in Hagerstown, Maryland, although that’s more to be expected than in Raleigh.

A fourteen year old student there, Tymier Tazewell, was on the school bus on January 28, when he realized his sister was crying. He asked her what had happened, and she told him some bullies had called her things she did not want to repeat.

Tymier confronted them, and they next day was called in to the office of the principal of E. Russell Hicks Middle School and told that he had referrals prohibiting him from riding the school bus from Jan. 30 to Feb. 1.

Tymier’s parents do not live together, and my guess is that neither Tymier nor his sister wanted to create a burden for his father, because neither told him about the “bus suspension.”

On Thursday, Jan. 31, the school called [Rasheem] Tazewell [Tymier’s father] to report Tymier didn’t show up for morning classes.

“I thought he was cutting class, but when I called back to get more information, I was told he arrived,” Tazewell said. “The school had a late start that day, so it made sense he was late.”

That day Tymier’s mother, who does not live with Rasheem, wound up calling Tymier’s father when she discovered their son wasn’t riding the bus.

It took until Friday, Feb. 1, for Tymier’s father to drive up the school regarding the boy’s three-day suspension, during which time the student had been trekking about 40 minutes to school in 4 degree weather. Sometimes, Tymier would be joined by friends as he cut through the woods to gt to school. They’d also stop inside the local CVS to warm up.

The assistant principal claimed not to have a current phone number for Tymier’s father (yet the school managed to reach him on Thursday?) as an excuse for not notifying him of the bus suspension (or following through with the rest of the appropriate procedures.)

Tazewell and his son’s mother met with the principal of E. Russell Hicks on Monday, but they feel the issue is being brushed off with no resolution.

Washington County Public Schools released a statement saying it is “currently looking into this incident and it would be premature to provide a response at this time.”

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, Please pursue justice both in North Carolina and in Maryland. Thank you.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.