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Saturday, April 30, 2022

Opinion: We’re not back to ‘normal.’ COVID fight must continue - The Mercury News

A pharmacy technician loads a syringe with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine on March 2 at a mass vaccination site at the Portland Expo in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A pharmacy technician loads a syringe with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine on March 2 at a mass vaccination site at the Portland Expo in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Right now, we are at a manageable point in the COVID-19 pandemic. The rate of new U.S. cases has significantly slowed since the first omicron surge. Although omicron’s BA.2 variants have increased cases, particularly in the Northeast, hospitalizations and deaths have declined or leveled off. Vaccination and prior infection by the earlier omicron surge seem to be protecting most Americans against severe illness.

As a result, some public health pundits are urging Americans to go back to “normal.” But in fact, we should focus broadly on prevention against future variants and airborne illness. Not battling hospital surges right now gives us space to think long term. This approach is all the more urgent because we cannot rely on individuals to test or isolate constantly and masking is decreasingly enforced, especially since federal officials are battling over the travel mask mandate.

We know future waves will threaten us all again. To prepare, we need to improve ventilation to make environments lower risk for COVID-19 and improve case tracking so we can detect surges early enough to stop them.

Experts have been calling for better ventilation and air filtration standards as far back as early 2020. Superspreading outbreaks — at choirs, weddings, gym classes and restaurants — have made clear that transmission can happen at a distance of more than 6 feet, and infectious particles exhaled by a sick person can hang in the air for more than 15 minutes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and other major agencies acknowledged the role of airborne transmission last year. But in the U.S., we’re not acting sufficiently with that knowledge.

To limit the spread of airborne illness, hospital isolation rooms are required by the CDC to cycle through new air at least 12 times per hour. Given that people are typically most contagious with COVID-19 when still out in the community early during infection, state and federal government should require equally strict filtration standards wherever possible in shared, crowded places.

And the public should be notified of the air quality in buildings and public transit before entering, as well as of its potential health effects such as COVID-19 risk. (Translating air changes per hour and CO2 levels, which reflect crowding and pollutants, into a grading system is one place to start.) Just as restaurants have health inspection reports with letter grades in their windows, shared indoor spaces should display their air quality ratings. These ratings can help people adjust their behavior appropriately: For instance, people may choose to wear high-quality masks to attend an event that is important to them but has poor air quality.

In March, the White House released a plan for cleaning air to reduce COVID-19 spread. But this document lacks specifics around ventilation and filtration and is largely a list of suggestions. While the White House announcement emphasizes that the American Rescue Plan allocates $122 billion for schools and $350 billion for state, local and tribal governments to pursue clean indoor air, it is unclear how recipients will distribute this money in the absence of federal standards.

That puts the onus on states and public health departments to set clear goals and transparently track progress. In California, the public health department recommends four to six air changes per hour (ACH) of air filtration in indoor public spaces with low ventilation. Yet last year, San Francisco’s BART transit system installed virus-trapping filters that replace the air more than 50 times per hour.

The state should eliminate inconsistencies across public spaces and support public health by recommending a minimum of 12 ACH to match the hospital isolation room standard.

Ventilation measures can help minimize further harm to those who have consistently borne the greatest toll of the pandemic: low-income communities and communities of color. Many such families live in crowded, multigenerational households, with family members working front-line jobs that increase their exposure to infection and the likelihood they will transmit the virus to older or other high-risk relatives. They may also lack the space to isolate safely in their homes.

In addition to pandemic basics such as protective masks and rapid tests, the government should provide these households with portable home air purifiers to help reduce household spread if one person gets infected.

The other key step for COVID-19 outbreak prevention is earlier and more accurate case detection than we have now. Rapid at-home test kits have made it harder for state health departments to keep accurate infection counts, since most people aren’t sending their results to labs or the government. And many samples are not sent in for analysis, including genomic sequencing that helps detect new variants.

By focusing on ventilation and testing, states can better prepare for an uncertain COVID-19 future. Pretending the pandemic is behind us doesn’t mean it is. Let’s not become complacent when we need to do the opposite.

Abraar Karan is an infectious disease doctor and researcher at Stanford University. Devabhaktuni Srikrishna is an electrical engineer and the founder of www.patientknowhow.com. Ranu Dhillon is an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. ©2022 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

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Adler directors offer to quit after auditor declines to give opinion on financial statements - Reuters

April 30 (Reuters) - German real estate group Adler Group SA (ADJ.DE) said on Saturday all members of its board of directors had offered to resign with immediate effect, after an auditor declined to give an opinion on the company's financial statements.

Adler has been embroiled in an accounting investigation follows allegations made against it last October by short seller Fraser Perring's Viceroy Research. read more

Auditor KPMG recently said it did not have enough evidence to disprove all of the claims made against the company.

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On Saturday, Adler said that the resignations of board members Thilo Schmid, Thomas Zinnöcker and joint-CEO Thierry Beaudemoulin were accepted on the understanding that they will stay on until the company's annual general meeting on 29 June and then stand for re-election.

Until June the board will therefore consist of chairman A. Stefan Kirsten, Beaudemoulin, Schmid and Zinnöcker.

The company reported its annual results on Saturday.

Adler said on Friday that the company had received notice from auditor KPMG that it would issue a "disclaimer of opinion" on the consolidated financial statements and annual accounts for 2021.

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Reporting by Sabahatjahan Contractor in Bengaluru; Editing by Hugh Lawson

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Opinion: DeSantis is trying to out-Trump Trump - CNN

Michael D'Antonio is the author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" and co-author, with Peter Eisner, of the book "High Crimes: The Corruption, Impunity, and Impeachment of Donald Trump." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)Despite his defeat in 2020, former President Donald Trump's incendiary style of politics is threatening to become the dominant strain in the GOP. For proof, look no further than the rise of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is shaping up to be one of Trump's potential GOP challengers in 2024.

DeSantis, whose White House ambitions are well-known, seems to be trying to out-Trump Trump by mimicking his brash rhetoric while stoking a culture war that trades on fear and animus.
So far this year, DeSantis has launched campaigns against Florida's LGBTQ community and perpetuated the cooked-up problem that children are being taught critical race theory in schools. Aided by a rubber stamp state legislature, DeSantis has pushed through laws that limit how race, gender identity and sexual orientation are discussed in schools. These policies-in-search-of-a-problem are key to the current version of the GOP culture war and may signal what's to come in the 2024 election and beyond.
While Trump's election in 2016 was once thought to be a fluke, today, DeSantis seems to be proving that the Trump way is the norm. The money pouring into the Florida governor's political operation, along with echoes from other Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz, prove the point. And if Trump's style of politics is now embedded in the GOP, it poses a greater threat to democracy than one man ever did.
Style -- think JFK's glamor or Reagan's optimism -- has long been a feature of American politics, but with Trumpism came the exaggeration, defiance and bullying that overshadowed any real substance. In November, DeSantis flashed his rendering of the Trump playbook as he opposed Covid-19 vaccine mandates in what he called "the strongest piece of legislation that's been enacted anywhere in the country in this regard."
Then in March, he publicly admonished students for wearing face masks before a press conference, defying the science as he said, "Please take them off. Honestly, it's not doing anything. We've got to stop with this Covid theater."
A further example of the Florida governor's next-generation Trumpism came as he identified specific groups that could be cast as enemies of the people. While Trump targeted journalists and immigrants, for example, DeSantis went after LGBTQ Americans.
The state even revoked Disney's special tax status after the company's CEO criticized the "don't say gay" bill that bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten to third grade classrooms.
DeSantis has also relied on tried and true fearmongering among parents, citing "pernicious ideologies" in schools and saying, "We believe in education, not indoctrination" when it comes to discussions of race and racism in classrooms.
The state went so far as to reject dozens of math textbook submissions, citing reasons including references to critical race theory and the "unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning in mathematics."
Schools, which are an obvious touch point for parents, have become a focus for many Republicans, especially during the pandemic, which led to school closures and safety measures. DeSantis has taken up the banner of "parent's rights" that has galvanized conservatives across the country, many of whom have joined activist groups, including Moms for Liberty, which has helped get "20- and 30-year-old females involved with the Republican Party," according the vice chairman of the Florida GOP.
Not to be outdone, Cruz made headlines this week by suggesting that Disney might include programming that shows "Mickey and Pluto going at it." The distortion of the company as some dark force trying to corrupt children shows that Republicans are happy to say just about anything to stoke fear and gain attention.
In aping a man he once regarded as a "sniveling coward," Cruz demonstrated a craven reversal from Trump critic to imitator. He's not alone. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had considered advising Trump to resign in the days after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol -- a move he tried to deny last week before the New York Times published audio recordings that proved otherwise. Weeks after he told Republicans, "I've had it with this guy," McCarthy visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago in an apparent attempt to reinforce his ties to the former President.
Of course, Trump's insistence that the 2020 election was stolen from him may be his most lasting legacy. More than two years after he started spouting lies about widespread election fraud, Michigan's candidates for attorney general and secretary of state have centered their campaigns around the big lie. They're not the only ones -- Republican candidates have taken up the lie in an attempt to win Trump's endorsement and the support of his followers.
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According to the political website fivethirtyeight, 70 percent of those who have won Trump's backing have indicated they agree with his false, anti-democratic claim that the 2020 election was rigged. And DeSantis was once again at the forefront this week by signing a voting overhaul bill that establishes a new election police force to focus on election fraud -- an exceedingly rare problem.
With DeSantis leading the way, Trumpism 2.0 has its foot soldiers and candidates at every level of American politics. Across the country, GOP candidates are following his lead. With one of the nation's two major parties apparently captured by this authoritarian-style movement, the scary elements of what Trump unleashed may be with us long after the man himself has ceased to be a candidate for any office.

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Opinion: We’re not back to ‘normal.’ COVID fight must continue - The Mercury News

A pharmacy technician loads a syringe with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine on March 2 at a mass vaccination site at the Portland Expo in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A pharmacy technician loads a syringe with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine on March 2 at a mass vaccination site at the Portland Expo in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Right now, we are at a manageable point in the COVID-19 pandemic. The rate of new U.S. cases has significantly slowed since the first omicron surge. Although omicron’s BA.2 variants have increased cases, particularly in the Northeast, hospitalizations and deaths have declined or leveled off. Vaccination and prior infection by the earlier omicron surge seem to be protecting most Americans against severe illness.

As a result, some public health pundits are urging Americans to go back to “normal.” But in fact, we should focus broadly on prevention against future variants and airborne illness. Not battling hospital surges right now gives us space to think long term. This approach is all the more urgent because we cannot rely on individuals to test or isolate constantly and masking is decreasingly enforced, especially since federal officials are battling over the travel mask mandate.

We know future waves will threaten us all again. To prepare, we need to improve ventilation to make environments lower risk for COVID-19 and improve case tracking so we can detect surges early enough to stop them.

Experts have been calling for better ventilation and air filtration standards as far back as early 2020. Superspreading outbreaks — at choirs, weddings, gym classes and restaurants — have made clear that transmission can happen at a distance of more than 6 feet, and infectious particles exhaled by a sick person can hang in the air for more than 15 minutes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and other major agencies acknowledged the role of airborne transmission last year. But in the U.S., we’re not acting sufficiently with that knowledge.

To limit the spread of airborne illness, hospital isolation rooms are required by the CDC to cycle through new air at least 12 times per hour. Given that people are typically most contagious with COVID-19 when still out in the community early during infection, state and federal government should require equally strict filtration standards wherever possible in shared, crowded places.

And the public should be notified of the air quality in buildings and public transit before entering, as well as of its potential health effects such as COVID-19 risk. (Translating air changes per hour and CO2 levels, which reflect crowding and pollutants, into a grading system is one place to start.) Just as restaurants have health inspection reports with letter grades in their windows, shared indoor spaces should display their air quality ratings. These ratings can help people adjust their behavior appropriately: For instance, people may choose to wear high-quality masks to attend an event that is important to them but has poor air quality.

In March, the White House released a plan for cleaning air to reduce COVID-19 spread. But this document lacks specifics around ventilation and filtration and is largely a list of suggestions. While the White House announcement emphasizes that the American Rescue Plan allocates $122 billion for schools and $350 billion for state, local and tribal governments to pursue clean indoor air, it is unclear how recipients will distribute this money in the absence of federal standards.

That puts the onus on states and public health departments to set clear goals and transparently track progress. In California, the public health department recommends four to six air changes per hour (ACH) of air filtration in indoor public spaces with low ventilation. Yet last year, San Francisco’s BART transit system installed virus-trapping filters that replace the air more than 50 times per hour.

The state should eliminate inconsistencies across public spaces and support public health by recommending a minimum of 12 ACH to match the hospital isolation room standard.

Ventilation measures can help minimize further harm to those who have consistently borne the greatest toll of the pandemic: low-income communities and communities of color. Many such families live in crowded, multigenerational households, with family members working front-line jobs that increase their exposure to infection and the likelihood they will transmit the virus to older or other high-risk relatives. They may also lack the space to isolate safely in their homes.

In addition to pandemic basics such as protective masks and rapid tests, the government should provide these households with portable home air purifiers to help reduce household spread if one person gets infected.

The other key step for COVID-19 outbreak prevention is earlier and more accurate case detection than we have now. Rapid at-home test kits have made it harder for state health departments to keep accurate infection counts, since most people aren’t sending their results to labs or the government. And many samples are not sent in for analysis, including genomic sequencing that helps detect new variants.

By focusing on ventilation and testing, states can better prepare for an uncertain COVID-19 future. Pretending the pandemic is behind us doesn’t mean it is. Let’s not become complacent when we need to do the opposite.

Abraar Karan is an infectious disease doctor and researcher at Stanford University. Devabhaktuni Srikrishna is an electrical engineer and the founder of www.patientknowhow.com. Ranu Dhillon is an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. ©2022 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

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Rick Magee (opinion): The siren song of empty pages - Danbury News Times

My friend Peter is moving, and, as he was clearing out things he doesn’t want to keep, he came across an interesting blank book and asked me if my son would like to have it. The book has a weirdly ornate leather cover with heavy stitching and a large brass hasp to keep it closed. There are also a couple of rings sewn into the cover that look like you could attach a strap if you needed to sling your notebook over your shoulder for some reason. It is definitely the kind of peculiar and cool sort of thing my son would like, so I happily took it.

Every artist and writer I have ever known harbors an obsession with interesting notebooks. I myself have a large and varied collection ranging from a small green leather book with Celtic designs on the cover to simple softcover books I carry with me all the time. My current favorite is the grand old Moleskine classic. One of my student poets has talked in loving terms about a lovely leather notebook she has. Her problem, though, is a common one among notebook admirers: finding the words that are worthy of appearing in such a wonderful blank book. Many of us get paralyzed by the siren song of empty pages and the fear that our writing won’t quite do the fancy cover justice.

My son has no such compunctions. When I presented him with the new notebook, he thanked me and immediately started thinking about what it should be for. He finally decided that it should be a combination spell book and poetry book. I told him that was a good idea.

“I know,” he told me patiently, “that’s why this is a spell book and a poetry book.”

He had none of the fears of the blank page or any sense that his writing would be inferior to the book it was written in, and he started to work filling the pages right away. He proudly read me the first couple of poem spells, and they were very good, though I am sure they were helped a lot by his dramatic reading style.

His complete composure and fearlessness in the face of hundreds of threatening blank pages is not unusual. Earlier in April, I visited his school, Johnson Elementary in Bethel, to lead assemblies about poetry for each grade, and the students responded in extremely enthusiastically. They showed none of the trepidation that adults often exhibit when they are asked to think about poetry, and the kids loudly reminded me that poetry is something vital and energetic, and fun.

I took a crew of Sacred Heart students with me to help me out. We were all a little nervous about performing in front of hundreds of third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders, but the kids put as at ease pretty quickly with their interest and excitement. A group of fifth-grade boys decided right away that Andy, one of my students, was the coolest guy they’d ever seen, and their bumptious energy helped us get going.

Once I got into the presentation, I got swept away by the creative freedom the kids exhibited. I asked them to define what a poem is, and they came up with amazing answers that were not locked into old, stale ways of thinking about things. They did almost effortlessly what the best poets have to work at.

The kids have a lesson that many of us grown-ups should learn about breaking down the barriers that keep us from expressing ourselves clearly. Don’t be afraid of the blank pages in the fancy books.

Rick Magee is a Bethel resident and an English professor at a Connecticut university. Contact him at r.m.magee.writer@gmail.com.

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Opinion: Village Matters - Laguna Beach Local News - Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper

Time is Money—But How Much?

ann christoph

How much time and how much money does it take to get permission to do a building project in Laguna Beach?

In 1939, the architect for the Laguna Beach Water District headquarters and many other favorite buildings in town, Aubrey St. Clair, designed the Tudor style commercial building at Third Avenue and Coast Highway. The client was A. Marney, a steam fitter from Buena Park who also had a home nearby in South Laguna. We know from newspaper articles that the contractor Arthur C. Wilson started construction in April 1939 and finished the building in August—just four months later. And with just three sheets of plans. And they did get permits—we found the electrical sign-off inside the original electrical panel. How could it possibly be finished so quickly? It was the end of the Great Depression and laborers were eager. There must have been no waiting around for skilled workers to show up. And the crews must have been familiar with St. Clair’s designs, the detailing and the expected quality. They could see from the elevations what was needed and their craftsmanship was devotedly applied. But four months to construct a three-story building with half timbering, brick and stone detailing, ornamental interior trusswork, and real plaster walls. That must have been amazing even then.

Now I’m told that just for a bedroom addition it can take take 20 sheets and two years to complete. City requirements are refined and made more elaborate—and for good reason. For example, when I was a councilmember in the early 1990s the council was agonizing with staff about requiring a site survey. Do we really want to require that? What about the added expense to the homeowner? Couldn’t they just use the plot plan in the city files? The answer was, “no”. In the city files there are back-of-envelope sketched out plans that were used for permits in former days, but they won’t pass muster now. There are just too many possible problems that can come from being vague about locations and elevations. The city decided to require surveys but for years they allowed them with a disclaimer saying that the boundaries were not recorded. So how do you measure setbacks or establish fence locations if you’re not sure where the property line is? These are just some examples of items that applicants have to address that were not required before. The necessity for these detailed requirements is rooted in the fact that most of Laguna Beach has not been developed in the manner prevalent in other communities where the development companies grade the land, establish the lot lines, build the streets and generally standardize the homesites. As inconvenient as that lack of standardization may be, it is key to the variety and character that we love about Laguna Beach.

Still there must be ways to make the processes at the planning and building counter more efficient.

Community Development Director Marc Wiener has been working on this since being hired in 2019.

Last October, he held a meeting to brief designers about his progress. Wiener said when he started he had hoped to turn the department around in a year, now he thinks it will take four-five years to get the ship righted. A streamlining program has been approved and we are starting to see more projects go to administrative design review instead of full board hearings. But the booming real estate market has increased the volume of permit requests, even as the pandemic made communication and normal workflow more difficult. He reported that some planners had a caseload of 80 applications. Staff resignations have exacerbated workload impacts. General Fund revenues from planning and building fees went from $716,000 in 2019-20 to $1,283,000 in 2021-22. All this has led to slow response to applications and repeated partial plan checks as staff struggles to keep up.

Staff’s proposal to update (increase) fees and add planning and building staff was deferred from last Tuesday’s city council meeting and now won’t be considered until the May 24 budget workshop. This gives time to consider key questions. For example, some proposed fees seem punitive rather than justified.

The present $748 fee for design review appeals to council is proposed to increase to $2,853 if appealing a 5-0 decision, $2,283 for a 4-1 decision, and $1,712 for a 3-2 decision. Does it really take over $1,000 more in staff time to respond to an appeal of a 5-0 decision compared to a 3-2 decision? In this case the proposed fees are set up to discourage appeals, not necessarily to recover cost of service.

Was the consultant’s fee study adequate considering the unusual impact of the pandemic on staff’s ability to respond? How can an efficiency evaluation be accomplished if there are no time and task records? For example, the consultant’s recommendation is that the city charge $4,075 for plan checking for Design Review, up from the $1,884 the city is charging now. The staff recommendation is to charge $2,553 as a compromise.

There is no real basis for evaluating these fee increases. There are no records of how many hours are spent on each reviewed project, by which planner, and doing what tasks. The consultant’s recommendation is based on costs involved in paying staff in general, including overhead costs and assigning them to the department “to ensure that the total service cost could be recovered through the fees.” Without time and task information it is not possible to understand if there are inefficiencies that should be corrected. Are there some tasks staffers are doing that are general in nature that we should not expect to be recovered by fees?

Staff simply dismisses the time and task evaluation tool as “challenging to track and administer,” when it is common professional practice. Law firms and design professionals base their invoices on hours recorded on time sheets or in the computer. Without that tool they couldn’t bill their clients. The city’s clients are community members and applicants for permits. If the city Is charging for services there should be back up information to justify those charges.

It’s good the city is considering all these issues and now is the time for public discussion. Village Laguna is offering an opportunity for the public to hear professionals’ thoughts on the permit process at its meeting at 6:30 p.m. on May 3 at the Community and Susi Q Senior Center. Architect Morris Skenderian and designer James Henry will be sharing experiences and suggestions. Having city hall working smoothly and efficiently benefits all. Let’s participate and contribute toward making that happen.

Ann is a landscape architect and former Laguna Beach mayor. She is also a long-time board member of Village Laguna, Inc.

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Opinion: What the January 6 committee's eight hearings could accomplish - CNN

Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and author of the forthcoming book "The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment." Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)The House select committee investigating January 6 announced that it will hold eight hearings in June -- but will they manage to change public opinion, spur a criminal referral and pressure the Department of Justice to pursue its own investigation?

These hearings, which committee chairman Bennie Thompson promised to be a "mixture of some prime time and some regular," are sure to produce some shocking information. Rep. Jamie Raskin gave a preview on Twitter, saying, "We now have evidence to support the story of the worst presidential political offense against the Union in American history" and pledging the hearings would "expose every facet of the assault against our democracy and Constitution on 1/6."
In the nearly 16 months since the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, a series of revelations have emerged from news reports as well as from the committee's investigation. A forthcoming book by New York Times reporters Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin has also opened a disturbing window into just how deep the planning was for the campaign to overturn the 2020 election. And a series of text messages, submitted to the committee by Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump's chief of staff, shows the frustration and shock even the most ardent Republicans felt with Trump's effort to push the "big lie." In the days after January 6, Fox New host Sean Hannity said he did not want Trump to speak about the 2020 election ever again, while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy considered advising Trump to resign.
But do congressional hearings even matter anymore? Is it possible for major hearings to have the kind of impact that we saw in the summer of 1973, when the select committee investigating Watergate helped shift public opinion and nudge political leaders to support impeaching President Richard Nixon?
It's fair to say: probably not. If we have learned anything from the Trump presidency, it's that the forces of political polarization have ossified, making it difficult to move public opinion, even in the face of shocking scandals.
Let's not forget, Trump was impeached twice. Both times, the Senate failed to convict him, even though there was evidence he abused his power to try to obtain dirt on a political opponent's family, and later pushed a conspiracy theory that fueled the violence on January 6, 2021.
Over time, Republicans fell in line and downplayed Trump's actions. Those like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming who dared to take a stand were ostracized. Polls have also shown that an overwhelming majority of self-identified Republicans believe there was "widespread fraud in the 2020 election." And beyond the GOP, many Democrats and independents seem to have moved on to other issues. As a result, January 6 is being treated like yet another story in our overcrowded news cycle rather than the fundamental constitutional crisis it is.
The Watergate hearings, chaired by North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin, seemed to offer a different model. The hearings, which included 51 days of televised coverage, produced damaging information that played an important role in burying Nixon's presidency. Most important was the discovery that Nixon had taped White House conversations, recordings which would eventually reveal -- after protracted legal proceedings -- that he had attempted to obstruct justice. The hearings also helped the public see the levels of corruption and abuse of power that had come to define the Oval Office under Nixon's tenure.
To be sure, there is a certain level of nostalgia now surrounding those hearings. There were many other factors that ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974, ranging from the dogged journalists who kept following the money trail to Judge John Sirica, whose case against the Watergate burglars opened the doors to the broader corrupt campaign.
It's also important to note that many lawmakers didn't break with the President for months. And according to a Gallup poll conducted in February 1974, only 38% of the electorate favored impeachment. It wasn't until after the Supreme Court ruled that the administration had to release the White House tapes in July 1974 that the tides turned and there were enough votes to not only impeach Nixon but remove him from office. The famous cabal of Republican senators including Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott and John Rhodes finally met with the President in August and told him that he had little support, even among his own party.
It's difficult to imagine that the January 6 hearings will produce a similarly dramatic groundswell of opposition against Trump. Given that the campaign against the 2020 election was conducted in broad daylight, we already know that Trump repeated lies about election fraud, launched a flimsy legal campaign and told people that "if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore." None of this was enough to shake his partisan support.
Even if the committee somehow produced a tape of Trump explicitly planning an insurrection, it's hard to imagine that it would make much difference.
But moving public opinion is not the House select committee's main responsibility. The purpose of the hearings is to produce an official account of what happened and compel members of Congress to go on the record about where they stand in light of that information. The intent behind the Watergate hearings was not to force Nixon's resignation, but to offer a thorough record of the way that he had abused his authority as President. The rest was up to others to decide.
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That is the main goal for the January 6 committee in 2022. Whether or not they are able to shock the nation is a different question. They need to focus on the vital congressional role of oversight. If nothing changes, but we have a much more through understanding of how the anti-democratic efforts of 2020 and 2021 unfolded, our nation will still be better off for it. Accountability starts with accurate information. This element of accountability is what congressional committees have been able to do at their best.

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Friday, April 29, 2022

Opinion: Finding Meaning - Laguna Beach Local News - Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper

A Child’s Prayer

A reptile show was the highlight of a child’s birthday party at a local park last Saturday. The kids loved it, but after the show, when the birthday cake was being enjoyed, the reptile lady discovered a rare lizard missing. The alarm was raised and soon several dozen children were searching the bushes for the reptile. Except one child.

Later, the Beautiful Wife and I happened by on a sunset stroll and saw the anxious reptile lady and a helpful neighbor still searching. We joined in for a bit but it seemed better to return the next day when the warm sun might draw the lizard out. It became a good news story with two happy endings. The first concerned the lizard, who was later found hidden in a corner of the cage. The reptile lady had been stressed, so a joyful discovery for her.
The other good outcome concerned the child who hadn’t joined the search. When questioned by a parent, the child explained that she (or he, I didn’t get that detail) had slipped away to a quiet corner and was praying for the reptile. The faith of a child. The story made me want to meet the parents.

I mention the child’s prayer because Thursday, May 5, is National Day of Prayer. Laguna’s Interfaith Council has traditionally observed this with a breakfast hosted by Mission Hospital. This year, to attract more youth, the service will be held at 4 p.m., after school, at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 428 Park Ave., just down from the high school. The theme is “The World Is Our Family” and the program will feature local youth. All are invited.

The practice of community prayer is as old as our nation, first recorded in 1768 by Colonial cities protesting British rule. We know how that turned out. People tend to forget about prayer when the good times are rolling but remember it in times of need. Reminds me of the cowboy who was bucked off his horse and slid down a high cliff to certain death. He prayed with uncommon vigor for the good Lord’s help, promising to give up a menu of bad habits. Just then his belt providently caught on a root and he saw an escape. “Never mind Lord,” he called out, “I took care of it myself. Hah.

Hymns are a form of prayer and it’s a tradition to close the National Day of Prayer service by singing, “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” The song was first sung at a youth gathering in the Sierra mountains and spread around the world. It closes with the vow, “And let it begin with me.” We’ll sing it again this year.

I’ve been thinking about that child, who rather than rush off to search first stopped to pray. Can you think of anything in your life might have turned out better by following the example of that child? Brings to mind the promise, “A child shall lead them.” There’s meaning in that.

Skip fell in love with Laguna on a ‘50s surfing trip. He’s a student of Laguna history and the author of “Loving Laguna: A Local’s Guide to Laguna Beach”. Email: [email protected]

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Opinion | Will We Give the Subway a Second Chance? - The New York Times

This article also appears in the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it in your inbox each weekday and Saturday morning.

Amid a pandemic and a series of high-profile violent attacks, many on Asian Americans, New Yorkers have yet to fully embrace returning to the subway. Yet for many, the subway is a place of community, bringing together people from various walks of life. You can find a slice of the city in any of its 472 subway stations.

We spoke to Qian Julie Wang, who wrote a guest essay this week on the powerful and fraught relationship New Yorkers have with the subway. The coronavirus caused a crisis for public transit around the world, so we wanted to give readers a chance to hear more from Wang on the topic. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: A lot of people feel uneasy about returning to public transportation right now. You talk about the subway as a hub for community, a place where people of different incomes and backgrounds can coexist. Have you been able to find the same sense of community among strangers anywhere else?

The closest thing I can think of is the public library. When I was growing up in New York, the library — and particularly the Chatham Square branch in Chinatown — was another place that gave me an early sense of community. And it felt like home in a very similar way: Many people, despite vast differences, coming together to embrace books in hopes of pursuing a brighter, more meaningful life.

Q: In your essay, you write about how, as an undocumented immigrant growing up in New York City in the ’90s, you “always felt a little safer in a subway car” — but that’s changed recently after several high-profile assaults. What do you think it would take, on an individual and political level, for people to regain trust in the subway as a safe space?

I suspect people feel safest when they feel connected to the people and environment around them. On the individual level, it means seeing enough fellow passengers in the same cars and on the same platforms carrying a sense of respect for one another and for the subway and city.

On the political level, it means building policies that foster connection and humanity rather than criminalization and dehumanization — offering shelter and mental health support to those who would otherwise be lost. It means funding grass-roots initiatives that center community, whether by providing chaperones/buddy systems, restoring foot traffic and boosting morale or incentivizing more musicians and artists to bring their art back to the subway, which was once a showcase for the diversity of the creative energy that fuels New York.

Q: You write that just as traumatic experiences from childhood can persist into adulthood, “the emotional ramifications of the pandemic promise to linger long after physical threats fade.” What is your biggest fear for what could happen to the subway, and to the city by extension?

When I refrained from entering stations in 2020, I found that the longer I went without the subway, the more it carried associations of fear for me. It was so easy for recent negativity to overshadow all the older, fond memories I had accrued underground. When I finally pushed myself to go back, I was shocked at how quickly those positive associations came rushing back.

I worry that not enough people will give the subway that second chance. I worry that passengers with higher incomes, especially, will continue avoiding the subway. And I worry that low ridership will perpetuate itself because some New Yorkers associate empty platforms or cars with more vulnerability and danger.

Q: You did a callout on Twitter asking about people’s favorite subway memories. Were there any that stood out that you couldn’t include in your essay?

My favorite tweet came from N. Jamiyla Chisholm, who shared a video of a dance party in the Times Square station. With the hashtag #undergroundjoy, she wrote that just two days after the recent shooting in Sunset Park, an amateur group started playing Journey’s hopeful song “Don’t Stop Believing,” and that turned the station into a jubilant mini concert hall. The video embodies the quintessential New York spirit — through the hardest of times, this city refuses to be cowed.

Q: You’ve shared other peoples’ favorite subway memories. What’s yours? 

The first few times I took the subway, I was astonished by how many kinds of people existed. I had spent the first seven years of my life in a very homogeneous part of northern China and had no idea so many skin tones, eye colors and hair types were possible. I remember being particularly scared of blue and green eyes because they looked like the glass eyes in my dolls.

As is often the case with children, being around so much that was unfamiliar made me anxious around strangers. During one of my first subway rides, my mom and I boarded a very crowded rush hour car. As the train pulled out of the station, I grabbed what I thought was my mom’s hand to steady myself. When the hand squeezed back gently, I looked down and saw that it had a completely different skin tone than mine — I wasn’t holding my mom’s hand at all!

I dropped the stranger’s hand in fear, but when I looked up, my face hot with embarrassment, the woman gave me the kindest, warmest smile. I stopped being as afraid of my fellow passengers after that.

Read the full essay here and sign up here to get Opinion Today in your inbox every Monday through Saturday.

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Thursday, April 28, 2022

Opinion: NYC Must Commit To Zero Waste. Universal Composting is How We Get There - City Limits

“By refusing to send our trash to the communities adjacent to waste transfer stations, landfills, and incinerators—predominantly low-income communities of color—our city will be taking concrete steps to stand in solidarity with the struggles of environmental justice communities fighting to protect their land, air, and health.”

Adi Talwar

Composting at a community garden located in the East Village section of Manhattan.

In 2015, New York City set a bold goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2030. That means we have just eight years to transform the largest municipal waste operation in the country and dramatically reduce our city’s carbon footprint. We’ve made progress, but one area we’re desperately behind in is composting.

Organic waste currently makes up a third of what our City sends to landfills, resulting in  hundreds of thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year. Food waste and organic matter releases methane as it decomposes—a greenhouse gas that is over 80 times more destructive to our environment than carbon dioxide.

While cities with comparable populations, like Seoul, are leading the effort on composting by recycling 95 percent of their food waste, it’s estimated that less than 10 percent of New York City homes that are offered residential composting take part. Beyond expanding this program to meet the needs of all five boroughs, we need a serious investment in educating our city about how important composting is to reduce our carbon footprint. That’s why we’re proud to introduce legislation to bring universal and mandatory residential composting to New York City.

Zero waste policies like universal composting will create hundreds of good green union jobs. To meet the increased demand, New York City will need hundreds of workers to collect and process the millions of tons of organic waste now being put to better use. On the other end, we will generate millions of pounds of compost from food scraps to enrich our city soils, support urban agriculture, enhance our urban forest, absorb stormwater, and increase resilience to flooding.

Zero waste and universal composting will bring down the $450 million price tag to ship our waste to distant communities for landfills and incineration. Achieving zero waste and universal composting in New York City will not only improve the lives of New Yorkers but will send a message that we are serious about tackling the climate crisis, building sustainable waste systems, and enhancing our urban ecology.

By refusing to send our trash to the communities adjacent to waste transfer stations, landfills, and incinerators—predominantly low-income communities of color—our city will be taking concrete steps to stand in solidarity with the struggles of environmental justice communities fighting to protect their land, air, and health.

What’s even more inspiring is that we are not alone on this issue. Dozens of other councilmembers and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers across every neighborhood are joining us. Working-class communities in the outer boroughs have been waiting for New York City to stop enacting environmental policies that exclude people of color and finally give them access to curbside organics collections and composting. Additionally, without universal composting, our city will continue the environmentally racist practice of sending millions of pounds of trash to decompose near communities of color hundreds of miles away. We refuse to allow this unjust cycle to continue any longer.

As feminists and environmental justice activists, and two new councilmembers who have a deep love for New York City, we ran for office because we refuse to lose our city to the climate crisis. We reject complacency and inaction and are working towards a resilient, flourishing, green city. We imagine a city where zero waste systems are integrated into every aspect of our lives—where it becomes second nature to us all. We see a city where every household, every commercial street, and every community has access to composting.

The time to pass universal composting is now. We have the most progressive City Council that New York City has ever seen. Let’s commit ourselves to the livable future we all deserve.

Shahana Hanif is a member of the New York City Council representing the 39th district in Brooklyn. Sandy Nurse is a councilmember representing Brooklyn’s 37th district and chair of the Council’s sanitation committee.

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Opinion: OK, no indoctrination in public schools … wait, unless it's pro-Christian? - Des Moines Register

Who will be next? | Opinion - NJ.com

By Melissa Alexander

“Enough is enough, when is it going to stop.” This is the cry of minorities when one of us is shot and gunned down in an under-served community in America. The truth is that the victims are far too many to count. State resolutions on guns and other weapons are not effective and, obviously, not the answer.

There seems to be no way out for Black and Brown people in most of the underfunded communities, especially because the community is up against community barriers. It’s like being on a deserted island and waiting for someone to come for us to be rescued.

But no one is coming.

Moreover, there are not many or very few programs that are geared toward reaching out to individuals like us, who feel that this world has no hope and empathy.

I still remember that in 2011, my nephew was gunned down on the block where I lived. He was shot in the head during a drive-by. His story was featured on the news, but to date, there are still over 25 Black males, particularly young Black men, gunned down on the same city streets. Sadly, the authorities are not presenting any resolution, which is very disappointing. It really shows the disparities in the social system of races and classes. What’s funny is that police are placed on different corners of the street, especially in the toughest neighborhoods, where the gun violence is high but gunshots still ring out even in their presence. So you can put 100 police on the street, that will not reduce the violence in the county.

Police are only there to react. Money has to be put in prevention. If you want to talk about violence, you have to talk about economics. The police themselves cannot deter gun violence.

Other than gun violence, we’ve seen the unequal and negative treatment of Black and Brown Americans in society. For example, in 2021, 18-year old Kyle Rittenhouse, a white male, murdered two people and was acquitted and viewed as a hero. While in 2016 Philando Castile, a legally armed Black male, was pulled over for a routine traffic stop, complied with the procedure, but was murdered by a police officer, and his death was viewed as justified. There is really a disparity in every aspect when it involves people of color.

The call of action is always the same. Someone will pass a bill regarding tougher gun laws, but these laws are only a Band-aid solution to the issues. I do not have the power to stop the actual violence but I know what needs to be done. I suggest the legislative branch of the government must address and end the social and economic inequalities that are the primary root causes of gun violence that impacted communities of people of color. Opportunities and hope must be given to them, with these steps the communities will become more progressive. Otherwise you will continue generation after generation filled with hopelessness, nothing out here to live for. On this very day of April 13, 2022, on Forest Street and Martin Luther King Drive in Jersey City, yet another young man was shot multiple times and for what, I ask.

This is also the reason why I founded the John Randy Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides supportive services to the homeless, at-risk youth, and those in need in under-served communities. Together with our supportive partners, we will never stop helping these groups. Our community deserves better and working together we can do it.

Melissa Alexander of Bayonne is the founder of the John Randy Foundation of Jersey City. For information, go to johnrandy.com.

Send letters to the editor and guest columns for The Jersey Journal to jjletters@jjournal.com.

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Discourse of Justice: Part I - Inkstick - Inkstick

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This analysis was featured in Critical State, a weekly newsletter from Inkstick Media and The

The durable end of an armed conflict comes first through the negotiation of a ceasefire, and second, through the ways in which the government in power handles that peace. Civil war is violence, experienced, and the former fighters in a conflict may be willing to pick up arms again if they see the worst of their enemies walking free afterward. Transitional justice can address this, by allowing post-war regimes to reconcile the harms of the past, but it can fail if the victorious side after war instead reneges on its promises.

When that happens, aggrieved parties can take action in the name of human rights, changing the politics of the country and demanding more durable change. Human rights discourse is politics by other means.

In Colombia, human rights discourse is contesting the political space by demanding a multiethnic polity under the protection of the law.

Such is one conclusion from “The Popular Appeal of Human Rights Activism: Reimagining Transitional Justice as a Political Struggle,” an upcoming paper by Frank Richard Georgi. Georgi looks to human rights discourse as a way for marginalized groups to do politics, and bend a bad status quo toward a more workable future.

Georgi contents that “human rights defenders imagine transitional justice in terms of a larger political struggle that exceeds justice for past atrocities,” and that this struggle can be seen in three tropes: “truth as the frontier of political confrontation with right-wing elites, the ‘rights-defending victim’ as a form of popular subjectivity and political underdog, and liberal overhaul of corrupted democratic institutions.”

This makes human rights discourse a complicating factor in conversations around populism, as the universal language of human rights is used to call for and contest rights on a popular basis. It is also an argument against populism as solely a term to describe movements among the political right, which claim popular appeal to attack elites and also narrow the scope of who gets counted and benefits from being a citizen. If marginalized people adopt universal language of inclusion to assert their right in a political space, that is not an elite-driven phenomena but rather a genuine and inclusive understanding of populism.

Georgi’s study is focused on Latin America broadly and Colombia narrowly, where resistance to governments of the right have been a staple of multi-ethnic coalitions for years. While right-populism focuses on the obligation of the state to a select portion of the population, with boundaries tightly policed, Georgi sees human rights discourse as contesting the space by demanding a multiethnic polity under the protection of law.

“[T]he political struggle of Human Rights Discourses] does not defy pluralism and liberal institutions — as postulated in prevalent populism research — but, quite the contrary, defines legality and basic rights as the horizon of their struggle against unbounded, authoritarian rule,” Georgi writes.

The idea is explained even more concisely by Martin, a lifelong activist, who answers Georgi’s question about the goal of transitional justice as ““¡Democracia!” Or, as Georgi puts it, marginalized groups using the language of human rights to demand change are calling for a “‘different democracy,’ where people can disagree without being stigmatized or killed, where the rights of indigenous people and afro-descendent communities are as respected as the land claims of small peasants and workers’ rights.”

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Wednesday, April 27, 2022

President Barron shares message on importance of informed, respectful discourse - Pennsylvania State University

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In a message to the University community, Penn State President Eric J. Barron underscored the importance of informed discourse and mutual respect following a series of demonstrations and distribution of a concerning petition. 

“We simply must agree that even if a member of our community chooses to advance their own perspective about an issue in a provocative and offensive way, there can be no place in response for threats to their safety,” Barron wrote. “It is my wish that all members of our community exercise their expressive rights thoughtfully and in an informed manner. But even when the intent is to offend, there is no room for rhetoric and tactics in response that intentionally threaten the welfare of any member of our community. We can all better ourselves and our University by rejecting intimidation and incivility, and instead doing all we can to cultivate a community of respect.” 

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Monday, April 25, 2022

Opinion | Macron may have won comfortably. But this is no time to let down our guard. - The Washington Post

In the end, it was not even that close.

French President Emmanuel Macron defeated right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen with about 59 percent of the vote to Le Pen’s 41 percent. He outpaced polls, moving steadily into a commanding lead after the first round of voting. While Le Pen improved on her showing in the 2017 election by seven points, Macron’s victory remains impressive.

The Post reports:

“The result is very disappointing for [Le Pen],” said Vincent Martigny, a political scientist at the University of Nice. “She ended up very far from power.”
Especially while a war rages in Ukraine that has united European leaders to an unusual degree, a Le Pen win would have sent a shock wave through NATO and imperiled the flow of French weaponry that has quietly flowed to Kyiv. . . .
On the streets of Paris, many on Sunday night appeared relieved that a far-right victory had been averted.

Macron was able to consolidate voters who picked other candidates in the first round of voting, demonstrating that a center-left to center-right coalition can be more than enough to halt a far-right candidate whose appeal is limited to more rural and religious voters (in particular those who responded to Le Pen’s anti-Muslim rhetoric).

It is easy for skeptics to proclaim Le Pen “won” simply by increasing her share of the vote. Certainly, they might also point out that a deeply discontented faction of the country is apparently not all that distressed by Le Pen’s past affection for Russian dictator and war criminal Vladimir Putin. But that fails to appreciate the challenge all Western democratic leaders — including Macron — must overcome to govern.

A center-left leader can be a champion of tolerance, a force to fight climate change and an advocate for an agenda that a majority of voters favor. But they must do so while facing deep divisions between urban and rural populations, between religious and secular voters and between the well-educated and less-educated. That makes it virtually impossible for competent, well-intentioned leaders to fend off constant criticism from a 24/7 media or to withstand fierce opposing factions and cynical voters.

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Rokhaya Diallo

counterpointMarine Le Pen is now part of France’s mainstream. That should scare us all.

An American president who won with 59 percent of the vote, which few think is possible given our own toxic politics, would be a political colossus. That result in France contains several lessons for U.S. media and politicians.

First, a politician who considers it their job to solve problems, as opposed to channeling anger and fanning cultural resentment, will rarely receive credit for achieving half or even three-quarters of a loaf. No matter how well the president helps the country recover from the recession, how many jobs are created on their watch or how effective an international leader they become, anything less than perfect will be met with unforgiving criticism. The temptation to paint a president as a loser is overwhelming for allies who are disappointed with the results. This is made worse in a media environment that thrives on conflict and a political environment in which the opposition party is unwilling to give credit for any achievement. Therefore, one can expect few, if any constructive problem-solvers on the center left enjoying high approval ratings.

Nevertheless, center-left leaders can still be successful. A politician who polls in the low 40s, as Macron and President Biden do, might pull together a commanding victory if the alternative is a right-wing, unhinged, grievance-mongering opponent. The French are not particularly enamored with Macron, but given the binary choice between him and Le Pen, it was an easy call for most French voters.

Lastly, while hard-left party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not endorse Macron outright, Macron easily lined up center-right, green and socialist parties immediately after the first round. If democratic governments are going to hold off the onslaught from authoritarian, nationalist challengers, they must enlist the widest coalition possible.

That means those factions must curb their disappointment and form a national front against the far right. In the United States, a left-wing figure such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) does the cause of democracy no favors by suggesting he would run for president if Biden, who has said he will seek reelection, bows out. Self-promotion is inconsistent with the sort of cross-ideological and cross-party alliance democracy needs to survive.

In sum, the key to winning for center-left problem-solvers is to make elections about a choice between democracy and authoritarianism; between free markets and crony capitalism (or revenge capitalism); and between freedom and Christian nationalism. If Biden — like Macron — is going to hold the right-wing, reactionary and delusional GOP at bay, he must do a much better job explaining what the voters’ options are. They must understand what they stand to lose by ceding power to right-wing nationalists who deplore pluralism and remain intolerant of dissent.

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