Politics

I Went to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This Is What I Saw.

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49907">Alli Maloney, Teen Vogue</a>

Monday, 07 January 2019 14:21

Maloney writes: "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), a site of marine debris considered to be twice the size of Texas, is perhaps the foremost expression of the impact of plastic waste on our world and the role of humans in environmental degradation."

A Greenpeace campaigner collects plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 2018. (photo: Tabor Wordelman/Teen Vogue)

I Went to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This Is What I Saw.

By Alli Maloney, Teen Vogue

07 January 19

he Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), a site of marine debris considered to be twice the size of Texas, is perhaps the foremost expression of the impact of plastic waste on our world and the role of humans in environmental degradation.

The GPGP has been popularized through media coverage as the world turns its focus to plastic pollution, but misrepresented by misattributed photos that show matted, flat surface debris in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is incorrectly believed to be visible from space and described as the �world�s biggest landfill�; a so-called trash vortex where plastic is �piling up.�

But it�s not that simple. The GPGP is just one manifestation of the many ways man-made environmental destruction has taken phenomenal hold of our natural world. Its alleged dramatic aesthetics fail to fully address the impact of the waste � and the root of the global plastics problem. So, to understand the mythology behind the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and get to the bottom of what it really means for the planet, I went to see it for myself.

It takes over one thousand miles from shore to get to the GPGP. You depart from the West Coast and head straight into the Pacific. Land fades from sight and the world around the ship becomes only water and sky. I set out on the journey from Ensenada, Mexico with a photographer to bear witness as a guest of Greenpeace, the decades-old non-governmental environmental organization whose oceans campaign team conducted research from aboard their icebreaker, the Arctic Sunrise. The 21-day-long expedition at sea shed light on and debunked many prevalent ideas � mainly that the ocean, in any part, can be "cleaned up" from the mess humans have made.

***

We set off from Ensenada this past September and traveled directly toward the gyre, stopping only once for the engineers to make midnight repairs to the ship. Upon arrival, which took days, I expected to see trash everywhere, piled up as I heard it would be. Instead, what I saw was different, and certainly no island. As Greenpeacers described to me, and as I witnessed, the GPGP is more of a "soupy mixture," with its most buoyant pieces of large, tough plastic joined by fishing debris at the very top of the water's surface and countless microplastics immediately � indefinitely � below. There was no oversized plastic heap like I was expecting. There was no matted debris � just vast sea, a few seabirds, and a touch of marine life amid a noticeably high concentration of plastic waste.

It�s home to a severe problem and is a visible manifestation of �throwaway� culture � wherein much of our economy and daily lives rely on plastics, most of which are thrown out after one use � but it�s nothing like what we�ve been told.

The GPGP was discovered in 1997 by marine researcher Charles Moore and named by oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer. It became known as �Trash Isles,� thanks to a pair of advertisers who appealed to the United Nations to have the area become the world's 196th country on World Oceans Day in 2017. The campaign was marketed well, and public understanding of the GPGP was generally founded on the notion that an �island� of trash had been discovered. That misconception took off, installing the impression that the impact of plastic pollution would be visible to the eye.

The GPGP is in the largest and perhaps most well-known one of the world�s five ocean gyres, or systems of circulating ocean currents. It is one of three major �garbage patches� found within these gyres where, over time, plastic debris has coalesced. The GPGP is in the North Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, 1,200 nautical miles offshore, where very few have ventured to bear witness, so widespread misconceptions persist.

The mass of trash hits its peak in the center of the GPGP�s most concentrated area, which change all of the time based on current conditions. Ships can enter this area easily, but even in its outermost zones, floating plastic debris appeared with great frequency.

With the ship slowed down from its usual nine knots, the Greenpeace team spent an hour each day with a special trawl net lowered into the water. We�d sift the plastic pieces that were caught and picked them out of a tray and onto a gridded sheet to be counted and examined, one by one, using tweezers. (The process, which feels endless, was oddly satisfying.) Greenpeace then documented and packaged up the day�s tiny finds to be sent to partner scientists to study and ideally trace back to a particular product or brand. In one trawl � one hour of one day � they captured and cataloged 1,119 pieces.

To better visualize what that looks like below the surface, they also needed to send divers. Tavish Campbell was one of two aboard the Sunrise and tasked with filming underwater. Before the trip, like so many others, he�d seen �images in the media which made [the GPGP] look like a massive island you could walk on,� he tells Teen Vogue. �I had prepared myself to see vast tidelines of plastic floating on the surface, complete with entangled sea creatures, but what we actually found was a far different story.�

Instead, he encountered a seascape that he describes as �sinister�: a vast expanse of pristine-looking ocean found to be �awash in trillions of micro-fragments of plastic� below the water.

�Every time I ducked under the surface into the bottomless blue, I could see tiny pieces of plastic drifting around me, some smaller than sesame seeds and hardly identifiable, but always present,� Campbell says. �I have dove along shorelines thick with plastic garbage in the western Pacific and have witnessed the careless dumping of garbage closer to home in the eastern Pacific, but seeing the GPGP really linked it all together for me and offered a startling realization: There is no �away� when something drifts away. It just heads toward the closest ocean gyre.�

The majority of the plastic in the ocean eventually sinks. What floats is at the top, and often small. The fragmented plastics problem is pervasive in water around the world, Greenpeace senior oceans campaigner David Pinsky tells Teen Vogue. So much so, he says, that �the Environmental Protection Agency�s water samples, [from] water on site, had microplastics in it.�

Microplastics � which, as they sound, are miniature pieces of plastic less than five millimeters long � have been found in human feces, as we unknowingly eat them in fish and most table salts (especially salts from parts of the world with high plastic pollution). While uniform systems of measurement have not yet been established to unify the world�s research, in the GPGP, microplastics have been found to make up 94% of the pieces of plastic in the patch.

Free-roaming man-made plastic matter can devastate the earth. It can lodge itself onto or into sea life not meant to carry or eat it, which can get stuck inside their bodies or cause choking. Microplastics are consumed by wildlife at high rates, with a recorded impact on at least 800 species, including half of the world�s sea turtles and an estimated 60% of all seabird species � a figure predicted to reach 99% by 2050. Plastic ruins soil, leaching contaminants into the ground and waterways, and encourages pathogen growth, which can destroy reefs. When plastics large or small decompose in the sun, they release greenhouse gases that further advance climate change.

When we weren�t trawling, we�d keep watch for plastic from the side of the ship during the day or hit the sea in smaller boats to pull bigger pieces that were potentially branded or stamped and could lead to corporate accountability � a major part of Greenpeace�s current mission, which asks the world to consider what �thrown away� actually looks like. Water samples were also taken in search of microfibers three to five times a day.

Microfibers are a major part of the plastics crisis, but only recently discussed. These microscopic particles, which shed from textiles and are not visible to the human eye, pollute a majority of the world�s tap water and is commonly found in bottled water (in the U.S., 94% of tap water samples in one study included the fibers). They come from both natural materials (like cotton) and synthetic (like spandex) and are �smaller than a human cell,� Pinsky says. The impact of synthetic fibers on human health is still unknown but being investigated, though it�s already clear that the chemicals that make plastic are �endocrine disrupting compounds,� which can mess with human hormones, manipulate the functions of organs, and are said to even influence the presence of ADHD in children.

While fragmented microplastics and miniscule microfibers are still being researched, we already know that the sheer volume of pollution they represent is disrupting the planet. It�s why many reject the notion that the ocean can be �cleaned up� by simply scooping up the plastic and carrying it back to shore. (A highly publicized, extremely expensive �cleanup� effort has even been set into motion by The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch nonprofit, to little-reported success thus far.) There is simply too much plastic and most of it too small to capture.

***

Not all plastic in the water is micro; there still is material you can see with your eyes, which adds up in the GPGP and can�t be missed on beach shores around the world. We kept track from the side of the ship during most daylight hours. Talking at sunset one day with engagement coordinator Dan Cannon about his career with Greenpeace, which started when the young organizer was a student, conversation was frequently interrupted to keep count � �another one,� �there�s two more� � of the plastic we�d speed past.

Life aboard a ship is equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. Living on the Sunrise gave me abs � as an icebreaker, it both pitches and rocks side to side, so much so that the crew calls it �the washing machine,� and I was constantly holding on or gripping to stay steady. Each day, we�d get a 7:30 a.m. wakeup call in our bunk beds from Myriam or Robin, two millennial Americans who worked night watch while we slept. Chores were at eight, lunch at noon, and dinner at six, with all meals prepared by Daniel, a talented chef from Mexico City, with help from Amanda, a Hawaiian punk who runs a kayak shop in Seattle, or Pablo, a deckhand from Argentina.

The sea belongs to no country � it�s an international rule � and the Greenpeace team embodied the notion that our environmental efforts should not either. Our radio operator, Rosy, hailed from Brazil, and Cat, the Italian medic, speaks six languages. The first, second, and third mates were from Finland, South Korea, and South Africa. Other crew and campaigners onboard represented Chile, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Canada, Belgium, Great Britain, and France.

In the GPGP�s most concentrated zones, we�d venture out at least once a day in the smaller vessels that the Sunrise housed, lowered into the water by crane with a driver already inside (passengers would get into them through a door on the side of the ship, where we�d hold onto a rope ladder and jump in backward). I found myself with my hands in the sea, pulling out toilet brush handles, bleach bottles, laundry baskets, and the plastic insert for a hard hat. There was a disposable razor handle, hydrogen peroxide container, top of a toolbox, luggage wheel, buckets, a VHS cassette box (with a fish inside of it), an unopened bottle of carbonated water, a piece of Astroturf, a flower pot, and a water cooler lid. White objects were the easiest to spot, but it came in all colors and shapes, fully intact, visibly torn.

The team recovered countless buoys, some as big as a beach ball, others small and compact. These were markers of the fishing industry�s impact on the ocean, which weighs heavily. According to Ocean Cleanup, nearly 50% of the patch�s total plastics tonnage is largely accounted for by fishing gear like plastic-lined nets that have been dumped in or drifted out to sea, with much gear floating toward the area after Japan�s 2011 tsunami. The Sunrise�s motorized crane lifted these �ghostnets� when we chose to stop and pull one from the water (an impressive, if depressing, sight). Fish were to be pulled from the piles and thrown back. Crabs � of which there were many different species, riding on nearly every piece of plastic we pulled from the water � scuttled off, sealing their own fate.

It was hard to not feel the monumental weight of human failure as I spent day after day in the GPGP. Early on in the trip, U.S. actions director for Greenpeace Katie Flynn-Jambeck warned that �we might all cry� when we got to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and she was right. I did. I felt hopeless standing Starboard-side on the Sunrise, counting my 97th piece of large plastic spotted in two hours on watch. Counting and organizing hundreds upon thousands of microplastics, tiny fragments that came bleached white, hot pink, and robin�s egg blue alongside tiny bits of broken-down rope, I found myself thinking about the caps of pens, lids of yogurt, Barbie cars � plastic, everywhere, across the landscape of my life.

This realization was painfully reinforced when I was off the ship and hyper-aware of each product I saw in for sale back home in New York City, where throwaway culture is key. While there have been proposals of banning plastic bags statewide and plastic straws in NYC, the continued manufacturing and use of these products by so many people will continue to pose economic and environmental issues for this other island of trash, where non-recycled plastic is either buried or shipped to landfills in other states.

The solution, many experts now say, is to drastically slow down its production and consumption.

Plastics in the form of reusables like bottles and containers came into prominence among consumer goods after World War II as industries saw dollar signs and used chemicals to introduce new, cheap alternatives to other man-made products, which took skilled labor and natural materials to create. Today, we create 300 million tons of plastic every year, half of which is for single use. We use it every day in packaging for food and beverages; in classroom, office, and cleaning supplies; to wrap and ship products by mail; and even in the clothes we wear.

Long before it makes its way into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, plastic causes problems: The creation of plastic products and its chemicals relies on fossil fuels � most of which are extracted from the earth in a process known as fracking � and is transformed through refinement for use (which contributes to global warming through leaks). It travels by way of pipelines, which are implanted into predominantly poor communities that are often exposed to pollutants because of leaks. Plastic production itself is carbon-heavy and releases toxins into the environment. These facilities are built along waterways, which can flood in extreme weather and cause additional damage.

From start to never-end, plastic is dangerous, and its demand for land to extract resources from, to house production facilities, and to store waste has violent implications for indigenous, marginalized, and impoverished communities.

As the problem of plastic-related pollution intensifies, the most commonly proposed solutions are outdated. Recycling is important, but it is not enough to negate the impact of manufactured plastics on the environment: Only 9% of all plastic ever created has been. (Plastic packaging, which makes up for about a quarter of the total volume of plastics used, is harder to recycle, as are colored plastics. Biodegradable plastics often need to be processed in facilities, too.) In the extremely frequent instance that a plastic material can�t be recycled � an incineration process that requires energy and emits pollutants into the surrounding community and beyond � it�s dumped into landfills, drawing out pollution of that space to last more than 1,000 years, or shipped from wealthy countries to others with less economic stability or political influence, where people pay the price of litter, pollution, and poisoning. Take for example, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka: these are among the top countries considered �responsible� for marine debris, but are also some of the countries that receive much of the world�s trash (and are then blamed for �mismanagement� of the overwhelming volume).

The politics of plastic are nuanced, and to deter the global crisis means to look beyond the recycling bin and toward �the corporations that got us into this mess,� Pinsky says. �Companies have gotten [used to] a certain way of doing business and actually are pushing the cost off onto us, onto the commons, to our environment, into public health.�

The plastics industry reportedly knew it was polluting the oceans back in the 1950s, but only increased production, keeping consumers in the dark, Pinsky says. It has had great influence over government regulations, been on the receiving end of subsidies, and long-held, widespread lobbying power and deep government ties. Just like the plastics industry, the U.S. government appears to deny that the synthetics are related to health problems.

Up until this year, the U.S. sold its recyclable trash to China � in 2016 alone, it exported 16 million tons. President Donald Trump failed to acknowledge that decades-long relationship (which also has economic ties) when blaming China for the ocean�s plastic crisis while signing legislation in October, pledging a commitment for the U.S. to do its part to �clean up� the world�s oceans. �As president, I will continue to do everything I can to stop other nations from making our oceans into their landfills,� he said.

But, also this year, the United States and Japan were the only two nations that refused to join the G7 Ocean Plastics Charter, a pledge to work toward 100% recyclable, reusable, and recoverable plastics and increase recycling by 50% by 2030. The Trump administration has shown no signs of slowing down the source of the crisis: the plastics industry. In fact, it has displayed quite a bit of support, from its move to reallow plastic bottles in national parks to environmental rollbacks that mark a committed partnership with the fossil fuel industry.

***

The industry is made up of everyday brands that are responsible for manufacturing billions of plastics and plastic packaging each year, largely single-use, but have little to no transparency as to exactly how much they create or distribute. An audit of plastic debris collected from six continents by the Break Free From Plastic movement, a group of over 1,400 organizations, found the world�s biggest polluters to be a who's-who of consumer culture. While in the GPGP, we pulled out still-branded, fully-intact plastic products identical to ones that I�ve enjoyed. (Some of these brands spoke with Teen Vogue about their plans to combat the plastics problem in an additional story for this series, expressing �ambitious goals� to use reused plastic content or biodegradable products, but no plans to create less overall.)

It often feels hard to avoid using plastic when, say, buying food at the grocery store, but Pinsky explains that the store itself and the brands it stocks can avoid plastic products in packaging and offer alternatives. Greenpeace has asked major grocery store chains to consider a full audit of all plastic products in their stores � a daunting, �almost impossible� task that gets them really thinking about the overall issue, according to Pinsky (who encourages those interested in combating plastics to hold their local chains accountable, too).

Grocery stores have adapted before, Pinsky notes. He worked on Greenpeace�s 2018 Carting Away the Oceans report, which has audited major chains for their seafood sustainability since 2008. The campaign has seen major changes happen over time, largely thanks to consumers and activists holding corporations responsible. All retailers in the first report received failing grades, and by this year, 20 out of 22 passed, though at time of its publication, not one of the profiled retailers had �major, comprehensive commitments to reduce and ultimately phase out their reliance on single-use plastics.� However, change could be on its way: Just after the report was released in August, Kroger Co. (which operates multiple store banners such as Kroger, Ralphs, and Harris Teeter) promised to ditch plastic bags in all of its stores by 2025 and plans to "divert 90% of [its] waste from the landfill� by 2020. Pinsky says that to show true commitment, a comprehensive plan to reduce single-use plastic must be released, too.

But as for the companies producing those products on the shelves themselves, few attempts have been reportedly made to develop major innovative solutions, despite the well-documented problem. Pinsky says that if the grocery stores they�ve worked with are any indicator, it�s in their best interest for leaders of every industry to start working on a fix to move away from fossil-fuel based plastics, and soon � their competitors may already be doing so, because it�s what this new generation of consumers demands. Meanwhile, their products, either plastic or packaged in plastic, are sold to consumers as safe to use despite varied risks � major and minor � that are associated with its use.

Some companies are starting to look at recycled ocean-bound plastic as a source material, however, because it�s smart for their business�s bottom line. HP and IKEA, for example, are both part of NextWave Plastics, a global business consortium focused on keeping plastics �in the economy and out of the ocean,� which also includes Dell and General Motors. (IKEA has also promised to phase out all single-use plastics by 2020.) Beauty brands are starting to do the same. Food and fashion are both beginning to get creative to avoid contributing further to the epidemic as well.

Major changes at the production level like these are necessary to do anything about plastics, but individuals still have their role to play even beyond being conscious of their own plastic usage. Consumers have been putting the pressure on, and the younger generation is embracing the challenge to keep that momentum going. �The brands that young people care about, those brands care about them and are trying to deliver products [�] and be hip and socially responsible as well, because they know that young people care about this,� Pinsky says. �Younger generations can say, �enough is enough.��

Teen activists have made big changes in their communities by demanding alternatives to plastics in schools and local businesses, and they can call out corporations at any time by tagging them on social media when they see branded plastic in a waterway or natural space, Pinsky says. Lawmakers are starting to get smart to the idea that the crisis needs solving now, with the recent proposal of a Green New Deal. And in addition to bearing witness to the problem up close, organizations like Greenpeace are putting the pressure on corporations in a myriad of ways, including a petition that [asks major companies like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and PepsiCo to �invest in alternatives and phase out single-use plastic.�

It�s time for protests and bans, Pinsky says � and it�s on us, a world of people who�ve been conditioned to rely on plastics, to stand up in our own defense.

***

What you won�t hear about the GPGP is that it�s also remarkably beautiful. That far out at sea � no distinct matted island in sight � the water is almost purple at its stillest, with neon ice-white-and-blue curls when crashing. It was refreshing to stand on the deck and imagine all the Pacific Ocean travelers before us; I found it romantic, as nature should be. But I was snapped out of my daydreams each day in the Patch and faced again and again with the environmental crisis that modern humans have caused.

Plastic is unnatural and upsetting, and felt so there, as it does when seen in streambeds and in forests. It�s simply more concentrated, therefore dramatic, in this part of the sea. Facing the world�s crisis in its farthest-reaching corner forced me to remember our place and time in history. I could not walk across an �island,� but I saw enough devastation in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to feel deep shame. Plastics were everywhere and are more destructive and detrimental than we could have ever imagined.

Without any immediate and drastic change to the way we produce and consume plastics, by 2050, production is expected to have quadrupled. This will exacerbate an already-bleak climate change outlook, as average global warming since pre-industrial levels could be about twice what it is now by then, too. Substantial change will take mass participation from individuals, governments, and industries who will need to join forces to reimagine our planet. The damage and impact of plastic pollution is clear, but re-envisioning the future of consumption is an uncharted path. To activists like those in Greenpeace, it means seeing plastic as trash before it hits the Great Pacific Garbage Patch � while it�s still on shelves, in every new beverage bottle or trinket we buy � and rejecting what�s become normalized for something new: a plastic-free world.

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FOCUS: The Truth About Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49904">Eliza Relman, Insider</a>

Monday, 07 January 2019 12:01

Relman writes: "She's proved to be the most disruptive new Democrat in decades, striking fear in both Republicans and Democrats."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proved to be the most disruptive new Democrat in decades, striking fear in both Republicans and Democrats. (photo: Hollis Johnson/Business Insider)

The Truth About Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

By Eliza Relman, Insider

07 January 19

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a bartender when she pulled together a scrappy populist campaign for US Congress and stunned the political world by unseating a powerful incumbent Democrat. Her combination of charisma and radical politics has triggered the right wing and is striking fear into the Democratic Party establishment, with whom she's already pledged to do battle. "We're literally writing a whole new playbook," she told INSIDER in a recent interview. On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez will begin her first full week as a congresswoman. This is the story of how she got where she is and what she'll do next.

cott Starrett was craving tacos.

The 32-year-old had recently moved to New York City from Austin, Texas. So when a tiny taqueria called Flats Fix opened up around the corner from his Manhattan office, he soon became a regular with his graphic design-firm colleagues.

Because it was 2016, lunch conversation would frequently turn to the presidential race. One friendly bartender would often join in. Her name was Sandy.

"Everyone just loved Sandy," Starrett said. "She had an infectious kindness, an infectious presence."

The 26-year-old Bronx native would talk about her time interning in Sen. Ted Kennedy's office in college. Starrett would bring up his work for local candidates in Texas. Sandy started volunteering for Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign.

Then Donald Trump was elected.

Soon after, the bartender and political organizer raised some money and road-tripped out to North Dakota, where Native Americans were leading protests against the Dakota Access Oil pipeline. Starrett had lent her a camera to document the trip.

When she got back, she had a new idea. She might run for office. Starrett and his design firm got to work on branding.

They created a campaign poster inspired by the United Farm Workers of the 1960s. It could've been mistaken for a Netflix show ad.

In blaring-blue and yellow block type alongside an image of Sandy, it read ?Ocasio!

Sandy, now better known as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was running for the US House of Representatives.

Eighteen months later, she became the youngest woman to be elected to Congress.

Along the way, she beat a popular and powerful 20-year incumbent in her own party. And she's proved to be the most disruptive new Democrat in decades, striking fear in both Republicans and Democrats.

This is the story of how her climb began, and where it's going next. It's based on conversations with people who have known Ocasio-Cortez throughout her life and a recent interview conducted with the new lawmaker at INSIDER.

'Sandy for president'

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took a breath and ascended the stage. It was January 17, 2011, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Ocasio-Cortez was about to speak to her fellow Boston University students.

Onstage, the dean of students, Kenneth Elmore, asked her: "Can this be the generation that's great, Sandy?"

It was a question inspired by King.

"Let's see," Ocasio-Cortez said. She pushed a long bang behind her ear. Then she began her speech, delivering it with a preacher's cadence and an activist's confidence.

"Greatness has never been a result of circumstance or fortune," she said. "It is not an inherited trait or a function of destiny. Greatness is reserved for the delinquents, the combatants of the status quo."

Ocasio-Cortez had natural confidence when speaking to crowds. When she traveled to Niger for a junior-year semester abroad, she didn't know any French. At the end of the four months, she delivered a speech in French to the faculty.

Most every Friday afternoon on campus, she helped lead student discussions, called Coffee and Conversations. She'd listen to her peers debate the meaning of love and the Affordable Care Act, and then she'd conclude the two hours with her own thoughts.

She didn't play it safe.

"It was always a little bit edgy � she wasn't afraid to take us to the next level," Bruna Maia, a BU classmate, said.

Ocasio-Cortez also led BU's Alianza Latina and held meetings with college students across the city to discuss student debt and economic inequality. Yet she didn't think of herself as an activist.

"I didn't understand why people called me an activist," she told INSIDER. "I felt like I was just saying things that were very common sense. I would just say, 'Hey, kids in the Bronx should have a good education.' And they'd be, like, 'Oh, she's an activist.'"

"And I was, like, why is it when I say these things I'm an activist, but when this person says these things they're just a responsible parent or auntie or whatever?"

Maybe people said it because they were inspired. Maia says that when it came to Ocasio-Cortez, their friends joked about her aspirations.

"We would say 'Sandy for president' because we were, like, 'Yes, you're speaking my truth right now.'"

A scrappy army

Ocasio-Cortez's father died of lung cancer when she was a sophomore in college. He was 48. Her Puerto Rican mother cleaned houses to support her two kids. But the money wasn't enough, and she had to fight off foreclosure.

After Ocasio-Cortez graduated from college, she wanted to help, so she moved home to the Bronx and supplemented her nonprofit jobs by waiting tables and mixing drinks at night.

She made the most of the service-industry work, befriending customers and building a support network of colleagues.

"I got really, really, really good at listening to people, and I got really good at understanding people's needs, beyond just food and drink," she said. But she also had to grow a "really thick skin" to deal with rude customers and harassment.

"You get used to people putting themselves above you all the time," she went on. "You really start to realize that a person who's treating you badly is really just expressing a problem with themselves."

Soon after Election Day in 2016, Ocasio-Cortez's younger brother, Gabriel, sent her name to Brand New Congress, a Bernie Sanders-inspired group recruiting candidates for the House and Senate.

When she got home from her North Dakota trip, a leader of BNC called her out of the blue with an ask: Will you run for US Congress in New York's 14th district?

BNC cofounder Saikat Chakrabarti said the group wasn't looking for anyone to challenge the district's 10-term Democratic incumbent when they reached out to the 27-year-old.

But after a few calls and a meeting with Ocasio-Cortez, Chakrabarti thought, "Holy crap: You're an incredible candidate."

It took a few months of convincing, but Ocasio-Cortez, still moved by what she saw at Standing Rock, said yes.

The congressional campaign began with a handful of volunteers, living-room stump speeches, and a coalition of local progressive support.

They proposed big ideas: a universal jobs guarantee, abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, and tuition-free public college.

Justice Democrats, another Sanders-inspired group that Chakrabarti founded, gave Ocasio-Cortez media and policy training. Volunteers led an aggressive canvassing operation.

Ocasio-Cortez quit Flats Fix in mid-February 2018. Chakrabarti moved home to New York in early 2018 to cochair the campaign. Ocasio-Cortez's press secretary, Corbin Trent, left his wife, kids, and food-truck business in Tennessee to sleep on Chakrabarti's couch. Alexandra Rojas, now the 23-year-old executive director of Justice Democrats, led the last six weeks of the campaign's text- and phone-banking effort.

The crew was unconventional and politically inexperienced.

Then a pair of 20-something socialist filmmakers from Detroit produced a polished, low-budget ad that framed Ocasio-Cortez as a courageous working-class underdog.

The two-minute spot went viral. Donations jumped, hundreds of new volunteers turned out to the field offices, and Vogue published a glowing profile.

The ad's central message: Economic inequality is the issue of our time.

The video caught the attention of another young woman of color running an insurgent Democratic primary bid. Ayanna Pressley remembers watching it several times in a row and saying aloud to herself, "Hell yes."

"I was struck by her rawness, her conviction � she'll hate me saying this � her beauty," said Pressley, now Massachusetts' first black congresswoman.

Two weeks before the election, Rep. Ro Khanna became the only member of Congress to endorse Ocasio-Cortez.

He made the decision at 2 a.m. It was particularly tortured because he'd already endorsed her opponent, Rep. Joe Crowley.

But the progressive Democrat thought to himself: "This is the type of person who deserves to have a shot to serve. She's doing it for all the right reasons."

'Socialists are sexy': overnight celebrity

No one was prepared for Ocasio-Cortez to beat Crowley in the Democratic primary. Or, even stranger, for her to become a star and the next right-wing boogeywoman.

"No way, shape, or form could I think that any of us saw that coming," said Vigie Ramos Rios, Ocasio-Cortez's co-campaign manager. "I've had moments where I've described it like getting hit by a tsunami, a wildfire, and an earthquake all at once."

But on June 26, Ocasio-Cortez shocked the American political world. The difference was just over 4,000 voters in the Bronx and Queens. In a deep blue district, she was virtually assured a seat in the 116th Congress.

Crowley declined to comment for this story.

Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Valerie Jarrett called. About 1,000 media outlets requested interviews over the next three days. After tweeting about her preferred lipstick (Stila Stay All Day Liquid in Beso), it sold out the day after the primary.

In a political moment that rewards celebrity, she's already more famous than most other members of Congress and many likely 2020 presidential contenders.

Ocasio-Cortez credits social media with powering her rise. Since the first days of her campaign, she's used it to develop a relationship with her followers, sharpen her message, and control the media narrative.

When she launched her bid, in May 2017, she had fewer than 300 Twitter followers. Her Facebook livestreams got a few dozen likes. But by primary day, she'd grown her Twitter following to 60,000 � more than many sitting House members.

She argues that her online presence allowed her to bypass a media largely uninterested in her race and communicate directly with voters.

"It was literally just through tweeting and getting that feedback and learning through commentary and testing messages," she said. "Because every time you tweet something how it performs is basically like an A/B test."

Ocasio-Cortez hit 2 million Twitter followers on Saturday, far more than the other 60 freshman House Democrats combined. And she has a shiny new handle to go with it, @AOC.

She uses social media like a lifestyle blogger or a celebrity influencer. She talks like a normal person. She details the challenges and gives advice. Thousands of people tune in to watch her talk politics and make Instant Pot mac and cheese on Instagram Live.

"She's willing to let people see her fears, and she's willing to let people see her hesitancies, and she's willing to let people see a process that normally is shadowed," Trent said.

Ocasio-Cortez has always written her own tweets.

"It's funny because a lot of people don't think I do," she said. "I was sitting next to a public official here in New York and I had pulled up my Twitter feed and I was drafting a tweet, and she was, like, 'You write those?' And I was, like, 'Yeah.'"

And as many have pointed out, she's skilled at creating viral moments � often when clapping back at her critics.

Much like millennial conservative influencers Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk, who've built their personas around "owning the libs," Ocasio-Cortez seems to relish defending herself and lampooning the right wing.

She regularly calls online critics sexist, racist, and ageist. She turns attacks on her clothes, childhood home, and high-school yearbook photos into Twitter memes and frequently ridicules Fox News and its relentless coverage of her.

In almost Trumpian fashion, Ocasio-Cortez slammed the president's son on Twitter just hours after Trent told The Washington Post she had no comment on Don Jr.'s meme suggesting democratic-socialist rule would mean Americans will have to eat dogs.

Her missives are beginning to rival the president's in engagement.

Perhaps unlike the president, she doesn't hit send on every angry tweet she drafts.

"There are so many tweets that do not see the light of day � there are so many," she said, laughing. "In my house we joke: We call it "emptying the cart." It's like when you go online shopping and then you're, like, 'Oh no, never mind,' and you leave the website."

Does she run her most controversial missives by her staff? "Once in a blue moon."

Buffoonish right-wing attacks on her regularly inspire a legion of memes parodying them before she even has a chance to respond. The cheap shots only further endear her to her supporters.

But critics, including Democrats, have also put forward substantive criticism of the political newcomer. They argue her policy proposals are too costly, impracticable, or ill-informed.

Fact-checkers have taken issue with inaccurate or sweeping claims she's made about the cost of programs she supports, like Medicare for All, and her claims about the unemployment rate.

Ocasio-Cortez calls constant questions about how she'll pay for her proposals "very disingenuous." She argues there are myriad ways to fund free college, Medicare for All, and a federal jobs guarantee. She subscribes to modern monetary theory, a burgeoning theory among some economists positing that the federal debt is not an economic restraint for the US.

"You can pay for it by saving costs on expenditures that we're already doing," she said. "We can do it by saving money on military spending. We can pay for it by raising taxes on the very rich. We can pay for it with a transaction tax. We can pay for it with deficit spending."

She said modern monetary theory, which holds that the government doesn't need to balance the budget and that budget surpluses actually hurt the economy, "absolutely ... needs to be a larger part of our conversation."

Ocasio-Cortez staked out a more concrete position this week when she told "60 Minutes" that she supports taxing the super rich � those who make above $10 million � at 70% rate to help pay for programs like the Green New Deal.

The voice of a new generation

Ocasio-Cortez was 11 when the Twin Towers came down and 18 when the Great Recession struck. She watched President Barack Obama bail out the banks, Occupy Wall Street fail to extract concrete wins, and college debt soar.

That series of events, she said, has defined her generation.

"Our whole adolescence was shaped by war, was shaped by the increased erosion of our civil liberties and privacy rights, and then was shaped as soon as we got into college by a ground-shaking recession that has haunted our economic outcomes ever since," she said. "We have never seen an America where the fruits of capitalism have actually been good for an entire generation of millennials."

The Democratic Party suffered widespread losses at the local level under the Obama administration. Like many, Ocasio-Cortez found inspiration in Sanders' strident argument that wealth and income inequality represent "the great moral issue of our time."

Right now young voters, particularly women, are more left-leaning than they've been in decades.

Nearly 60% of voters between 18 and 25 identify as Democrats or lean left. And those under 30 went for Democrats by 31 points in the 2018 midterms.

By virtue of her identity, her message, and her online medium, Ocasio-Cortez is speaking directly to young people, immigrants, and people of color, the nontraditional voters Democrats must energize. She won 80% of the votes cast in precincts in which the average voter was under 40, according to the progressive think tank Data for Progress.

Some Democrats argue that the success of candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Beto O'Rourke in Texas, and Andrew Gillum in Florida can be attributed partly to their appeal as attractive young people.

"It turns out the actual solution to gaining progressive power is running young hot people in low-turnout primaries," said Sean McElwee, a progressive activist and cofounder of Data for Progress.

McElwee first met Ocasio-Cortez in mid-2017. He DM'd her on Twitter, inviting her to the weekly happy hour he hosts at a dive bar Manhattan's East Village where politicians like New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson sometimes drop by. He predicted Ocasio-Cortez would win her primary seven weeks before she did.

Naomi Burton, one half of the team that produced Ocasio-Cortez's campaign ad, said youthful appeal was a theme among the progressives she worked with last cycle.

"Socialists are sexy because they're young people, they're people of color," Burton said. "They are young, beautiful people who also have great politics and an ability to talk about that."

Moving away from socialism?

Ocasio-Cortez hasn't always called herself a socialist. She was "honestly questioning" whether to support Sanders or Clinton as the 2016 primary heated up, said Shah, the former classmate.

But soon after she launched her campaign, a college acquaintance reached out suggesting she look into the Democratic Socialists of America.

So she went to a DSA meeting in a Washington Heights church basement. The theme was labor. The group brought in several undocumented Hispanic immigrants who described their experiences being exploited in the workplace.

There was a translator, but Ocasio-Cortez speaks Spanish, so she listened to what the immigrants had to say without any filter.

"They were talking about how they were working in these factories with no windows, and they were being made to operate heavy machinery with no training, and that they were being paid far, far below anything that resembles a living wage," she said.

She was moved by their stories, and by the solidarity in the room.

"I had never experienced something like that before," Ocasio-Cortez said. "You know, you read about these things, but it's not the same as being in the same room as that."

DSA was not immediately sold on her.

When she met with the group again during the summer of 2017, they "were not impressed," said Aaron Taube, a leader of the Queens DSA branch.

Taube wasn't at the gathering but said the then 27-year-old was "still learning and growing as a candidate."

The group reconsidered its support in early 2018 when the campaign reached back out.

Annie Shields, a DSA member and Nation magazine editor, said Ocasio-Cortez impressed her at a series of endorsement meetings in which she showed a rare ability to command the room and appeal to an ideologically diverse and often warring coalition.

"It's a charisma, and then you couple that with real radical politics," Shields said. "That's a combination I had never seen before."

DSA endorsed the insurgent campaign in late April after extensive vetting. Their 103 canvassers knocked on 13,000 doors and led an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort over the next two months.

With Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid, Trump's election, and Ocasio-Cortez's rise, DSA has seen a resurgence in national prominence.

Between 2015 and 2017, a period encompassing the span of Sanders's campaign, the group grew from 8,000 dues-paying members to 25,000. During that time the average age of the group's members dropped from 64 to 30. Its membership surged the day after Trump was elected and again the day after Ocasio-Cortez won her primary. Today, it's 55,000 members strong (but still an insignificant force on the national political stage).

With newly-elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, DSA now has two lawmakers in Congress.

But the vast majority of Democrats are allergic to the group and any mention of socialism.

Khanna, a leader of the House Progressive Caucus whose district encompasses Silicon Valley, dismisses democratic socialism as bad policy and bad politics.

"I philosophically disagree with it � not for political reasons but for substantive reasons," he said. "If you believe literally, as it's defined, than you would say that government could take over Apple. Let me tell you, that's a horrible idea. I'm very glad that Tim Cook is running Apple."

The former economics professor wants to reform our "crony capitalist system," but believes in free enterprise.

Ocasio-Cortez and her team seem to understand this. After defining democratic socialism in vague terms, Ocasio-Cortez hasn't discussed it much in recent months.

"I'm not here to fight for or defend this 'ism' or label, which is why you always just see me talk about policy," she said, adding that there are other people who are more qualified to talk about DSA's ideology. "I just don't think it's my role."

These days, the new congresswoman is reluctant to align herself fully with any one group or thinker. She says she's seeking policy advice from a variety of progressive organizations and experts. (DSA leaders, including Taube and national director Maria Svart, have a weekly call on Fridays to discuss policy issues with Ocasio-Cortez's legislative adviser, Randy Abreu.)

Ocasio-Cortez is also critical of the establishment advice-givers. She argues that many of them have a "bias towards maximization of corporate profit" � a point she made when she criticized a Harvard orientation for freshman lawmakers stacked with CEOs and lobbyists.

So she's looking elsewhere � to a different breed of academics, activists, issue experts, and journalists.

"We're literally writing a whole new playbook, which means we can use some of the books and we can use some of the institutions and we can use some of the knowledge that's been produced up to this point, but we have to do a lot of building our own institutions as well," she said.

"What we're really doing right now is saying, 'What perspectives are not being heard right now? Let's bring those to the table.'"

An early overreach?

Ocasio-Cortez is new to Congress, and that means she doesn't have much power there, in the traditional sense.

So what does she do now?

With her knack for igniting conversations and grabbing the spotlight, she has a handful of levers of power in Washington: grassroots fundraising, media attention, and outside organizing.

If she's willing to make a few enemies, she could help insurgent candidates mount primary challenges against Democratic incumbents.

And Ocasio-Cortez is willing to make a few enemies. With the help of Justice Democrats, the group that helped spot and empower her, she plans to push the party to the left by focusing on replacing incumbents in safe blue seats.

Progressive groups have already trained targets on Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Kathleen Rice of New York, and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts. They're planning to run more progressive and diverse challengers.

"Democratic incumbents are kind of f---ed next cycle because there's a lot of young women of color who are all much more interesting and exciting and have more interesting policy ideas than all the white guys in Congress," says McElwee, the progressive organizer.

Chakrabarti, now Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, said it isn't an explicit effort to push out incumbents, but rather a movement to encourage new kinds of candidates to run.

"It just so happens that a lot of people of color, a lot of women � they are going to be [running] in safe Democratic seats," he said.

The push has scared party leaders, who counter that the left's full focus in 2020 should be on winning back the White House, flipping the Senate, and protecting the Democratic House majority.

"I would like to see our focus on turning Texas blue, winning states in the Midwest, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, making sure we expand our majority," Khanna said. He said his endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez was a rare "exception" to his rule of supporting his Democratic colleagues.

Many veteran DC strategists agree with Khanna, and see the bold challenge as a cocky overreading of the left's mandate. They argue that groups like Justice Democrats have little evidence that their strategy would be successful across the country.

"Do I think this is the best use of our resources, the best use of our star power, the best use of our brain power, going into what very well may be the most important election of our lifetimes? I would say that no, this is not it," said Rodell Mollineau, a DC-based consultant and former congressional staffer.

Making the Democratic Party great again

Ocasio-Cortez's number one policy priority is the Green New Deal.

The name invokes FDR's Depression-era "New Deal" public programs and deliberately frames the proposal as a reincarnation of a Democratic Party of the past.

It proposes sweeping public investments in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure. The goal is to fight both climate change and inequality, to move the US to 100% renewable energy within 10 years and institute a federal jobs guarantee.

It's the kind of aggressive, economically-focused idea that got Ocasio-Cortez elected. It polls well. (A recent Yale survey found a large majority of Americans support it, including a majority of Republicans).

"What else is there? If we don't save the planet what else is there to worry about?" Trent said. "We either believe that the scientists are right and we have 12 years to avoid cataclysmic failure of our climate system, or we don't."

The left hopes to hash out the details of an actionable plan by 2020 � and make the issue a litmus test for Democratic presidential candidates in the meantime.

But the proposal is facing fierce resistance from powerful Democrats in Washington � including newly-elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

This conflict came to life when, on the second day of congressional freshman orientation, Ocasio-Cortez led young environmental activists in a protest outside Pelosi's office � a very unusual move for any Democrat, let alone one not yet sworn in.

Trent said Ocasio-Cortez knew the move could backfire.

"That took courage. She's no fool, she knew that could go wrong. But she thought that was the right thing to do, so she did it," he said.

But footage of the protest � and with it, the concept of a Green New Deal � went viral. Pelosi said she was "inspired by the energy" of the demonstrators.

The disagreement between Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi is purportedly over � what else in Washington? � the establishment of a committee. Specifically, Ocasio-Cortez and her allies want the House Committee on Climate Change to commit to drafting the Green New Deal.

Pelosi and the rest of Democratic leadership have refused to give the committee such a sweeping mandate. They've denied it subpoena power and chosen a chair who hasn't voiced support for the Green New Deal.

Chakrabarti said no one in Congress has come to him with substantive objections to the Green New Deal. He calls their concerns "all politics." Unless things change dramatically, the committee will be "dead on arrival," he said.

"Literally nobody in Congress is thinking about this in terms of what we need to do to solve the problem," Chakrabarti said. "This is why people hate their government. This is why people hate Congress."

Other priorities, like abolishing ICE, are taking a backseat for the moment.

"We've got to talk a bit more about that one internally," Chakrabarti said of the proposal to eliminate the federal agency. He said the team will likely sign on to a new effort led by progressives to reframe the immigration debate around the economic demand for foreign workers.

'You can't punch all the time'

It hasn't yet been a year since Ocasio-Cortez quit working behind a bar in Manhattan.

There's a fair amount of concern among the Democratic establishment in Washington that Ocasio-Cortez will throw bombs rather than make friends.

But her allies argue that without seniority in Congress, playing an outside game is the most effective route for a freshman lawmaker with the mandate and star power Ocasio-Cortez has.

Many believe she's already picked that path.

"You don't announce that you might declare war on your colleagues and then expect to roll up your sleeves with them and do the hard work of passing legislation," said one Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Establishment Democrats are urging the new lawmaker to make friends. They hope her natural charm will make her a unifier.

"She seems quite charming, she seems quite open and accessible and likable, and I think some people will be surprised at how much they like her," the strategist said. "What she does with that and how she uses it to advance her goals, that will show whether she is savvy."

But there's also concern on the left that Ocasio-Cortez's team of outsiders lacks the political smarts to know which fights to pick.

"The left is going to tell you to punch all the time, and you can't punch all the time," McElwee said. "As long as she's not listening to the leftist of the left of the leftists now, she'll end up being fine."

Many say she should enlist some insiders. But that could be tricky for anyone uninterested in endangering their relationships in Washington.

"If you're somebody who's made a career on the Hill and you join our office, you might be ending that career," Chakrabarti said. The office is sifting through thousands of r�sum�s to build their team.

It doesn't seem like Ocasio-Cortez is worried.

The day after her swearing-in, a right-wing Twitter account mocked her for an old video of her dancing with friends in college, recreating a scene from the iconic 1980s film "Breakfast Club" � a movie about a group of kids who realize the burdens of the world would soon befall them, but that they could handle them if they stuck together.

"Here is America's favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is," they wrote.

Ocasio-Cortez posted a new video the next day.

She's outside her new office, with a plaque reading "Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez" on the wall behind her. She points right at the camera as she starts dancing to "War" by Edwin Starr.

The post has a caption: "If Republicans thought women dancing in college is scandalous, wait till they find out women dance in Congress, too!"

The message got more likes than any she's ever sent.

I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous.

Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too!

Have a great weekend everyone :) pic.twitter.com/9y6ALOw4F6
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 4, 2019

21 comments

FOCUS: President Bolton Overrules Feckless Trump Tweet on Syria Withdrawal

Monday, 07 January 2019 11:31

Cole writes: "The Last Two Neoconservatives in the Trump administration, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have swung into action to repeal Trump's troop withdrawal from Syria."

John Bolton. (photo: Darren McCollester/Getty Images/JTA)

President Bolton Overrules Feckless Trump Tweet on Syria Withdrawal

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

07 January 19

he Last Two Neoconservatives in the Trump administration, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have swung into action to repeal Trump�s troop withdrawal from Syria.

Bolton visited Israel to reassure prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the US will look after the interests of allies as it withdraws.

Israel doesn�t actually have any security interest in the US presence in northeastern Syria. It is dominated by leftist Kurds who are not interested in Israel and who just militarily defeated ISIL (Daesh or the so-called Islamic State group), which also never showed any particular interest in confronting Israel. Israel borders the Baathist government of Bashar al-Assad, which has reestablished a fragile control over some 70 percent of the country. The only security issue for Israel is Hizbullah, which curbs its ability to act unilaterally in neighboring countries, but the US never did anything about Hizbullah because it is allied with Russia and Washington doesn�t want a confrontation with Moscow in Syria.

Despite the irrelevance of it all, Netanyahu took advantage of the US withdrawal to beg for a bakhsheesh, for all the world like a Cairo street urchin, asking that the US recognize Israel�s illegal attempt to annex the Golan Heights from Syria. There is not a good reason for the US to join in this piece of international lawlessness.

Bolton also pledged that the US would not withdraw until it was assured that the Turkish military would not crush America�s Kurdish allies.

The US probably can�t stop the Turks from trying to overthrow the YPG leftist militia, and certainly not after it withdraws from Syria. If the task were to protect the YPG from Erdogan, the US could never leave.

The Washington Establishment is deeply divided on Trump. They love his hawkishness toward Iran and China and the Palestinians and Muslim extremism, and his tax cuts for the super-wealthy and his early-Obama-sized Pentagon budgets. But they are driven crazy by his isolationist tendencies, his bromance with Russian president Vladimir Putin and his shooting from the hip.

After Trump�s December 16 Tweet on getting out of Syria tout de suite, a feeling of dread thus gripped the inside-the-Beltway archipelago of government bureaucracies and Think Tanks where careers are made in promoting war and US military presence abroad and the expenditure of munitions (requiring the buying of new munitions and new versions of weapons. Weaponry in the time of war is the ultimate in planned obsolescence, thus making it an ideal hybrid of socialism and consumer capitalism).

The Washington Blob has swung into action to try to slow-roll Trump on the Syria withdrawal. Trump on the other hand is starting to think about 2020 and he needs to bring some accomplishment home to his base. Defeating ISIL and getting out of at least some of the Middle East strikes him as likely to appeal to his rally crowds. He had wanted to have Republicans run on it in the midterms, but former secretary of defense James Mattis and others managed to put the breaks on last summer and fall.

Staying in Syria may be Bolton�s preference, but he is not president and if he goes on countermanding Trump he may not even be in office much longer.

19 comments

We Gave These Clowns Way Too Much Leash for Far Too Long

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104">Charles Pierce, Esquire</a>

Monday, 07 January 2019 09:42

Pierce writes: "Late Friday afternoon, there was a potentially ominous announcement from the Supreme Court of the United States."

Secretary Wilkie. (photo: Getty Images)

We Gave These Clowns Way Too Much Leash for Far Too Long

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

07 January 19

The Trump administration hires an awful lot of Civil War enthusiasts.

ate Friday afternoon, there was a potentially ominous announcement from the Supreme Court of the United States. From the Washington Post:

The Supreme Court once again will take up unresolved constitutional questions about partisan gerrymandering, agreeing Friday to consider rulings from two lower courts that found congressional maps in North Carolina and Maryland so extreme that they violated the rights of voters. The North Carolina map was drawn by Republicans, the Maryland districts by the state�s dominant Democrats...

The Supreme Court has never found a state�s redistricting map so infected with politics that it violates the Constitution. It passed up the chance last term to settle the issue of whether courts have a role in policing partisan gerrymandering, sending back on technical rulings challenges to a Republican-drawn plan in Wisconsin, and the challenged Maryland map.

So, what's so ominous, you may ask. Well, among other things, that old running buddy of PJ and Squi is on the court now.

But there will be a new set of justices considering the issue. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who had held out the belief that some gerrymandering could be so political as to be unconstitutional, has been replaced with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who may have a more conservative view on the issue.

Kavanaugh has no judicial record on the subject, so who knows what he may do, but I feel fairly certain that he will not be even as open as Kennedy was.

Back during the previous term, the Court ducked the issue, but several justices made it plain that the Wisconsin map in particular was so egregious that the Court might have to step in. Now, though, we have one Republican and one Democratic map, and, if you believe that, through the Kavanaugh nomination, the Court is utterly politicized, you can't feel comfortable dismissing the possibility that, somehow, the Republican North Carolina map would be found to be constitutional while the Democratic map from Maryland would not.

Remember that the court that threw out the North Carolina map did so because it found that the state legislators had targeted African American voters "with almost surgical precision." Remember, also, that Chief Justice Roberts already has declared the Day of Jubilee. Remember those things in March, when the Supreme Court looks into this again.

***

The other day, the president* took to the electric Twitter machine to boast that he had won "the greatest election ever." Now, a narrow electoral college win in an election where three million other citizens voted the other way may not qualify as the Greatest Ever by your standards, but we all have our crochets. But it does open the question of what actually was the greatest election ever.

Limiting it to this country, and to presidential elections, I think you have to go with Abraham Lincoln's having been re-elected in 1864, in the middle of the Civil War. As late as midsummer of that year, even Lincoln thought his cause was doomed. One of his own Cabinet officials, Salmon B. Chase, was intriguing to hijack the Republican nomination. But successes on the battlefield, and the support of the soldiers in the Union Army who went home to vote, pushed him to another term, and made possible the greatest speech ever given by an American president. He also won both the electoral and popular vote.

Speaking of the Civil War, how does this administration find so many re-enactors? From CNN:

CNN's KFile reported in December that [Robert] Wilkie, who was confirmed by the Senate as VA secretary in July 2018, gave a speech to a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 2009 and, in 1995, praised Confederate President Jefferson Davis in a speech at the US Capitol. Wilkie was also at one point a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, The Washington Post previously reported...

Wilkie attended events honoring the legacy of Robert E. Lee and service of Confederate veterans as recently as 2009. In a section on public statements, Wilkie was asked for "any speeches or talks delivered by you, including commencement speeches, remarks, lectures, panel discussions, conferences, political speeches, and question-and answer sessions. Include the dates and places where such speeches or talks were given."

Wilkie provided general answers, writing, "Multiple remarks, panel discussions and speeches as a congressional staffer and as Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel & Readiness." He did not give details of any of his specific speeches. Wilkie delivered two speeches on Robert E. Lee in 2009, one to a branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in the DC area and one at Arlington National Cemetery.

His speech on Davis took place in the US Capitol in 1995.

Oh, OK. Now I know. We gave these clowns too much leash for much too long.

7 comments

2018 Wasn't a Completely Horrible Year for the Environment

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49903">Jeff Turrentine, The Natural Resources Defense Council</a>

Monday, 07 January 2019 09:32

Turrentine writes: "The people and the planet can claim more than a few victories - and 2019 is looking better already."

Ryan Zinke. (photo: Melina Mara/WP/Getty Images)

2018 Wasn't a Completely Horrible Year for the Environment

By Jeff Turrentine, The Natural Resources Defense Council

07 January 19

The people and the planet can claim more than a few victories�and 2019 is looking better already.

as 2018 a tough year for the environment? Absolutely. But were there bright spots and victories among the attacks on biodiversity, climate, and public health? Of course there were. Here are just a few, in case you�re feeling blue about the state of our only planet.

The Ousters of Pruitt and Zinke

The first few weeks of 2018 saw Scott Pruitt, then administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, trying to deflect attention from several corruption scandals by publicly declaring his intention to halve the agency�s workforce and slash its operating budget by 30 percent, all toward his stated goal of �protecting taxpayer dollars.� Meanwhile, over at the Department of the Interior, then-Secretary Ryan Zinke was announcing his plan to get rid of 4,000 employees as a part of the largest reorganization in Interior�s history�one that would accommodate President Trump�s proposal, supported by Zinke, to cut the department�s budget by $1.6 billion.

By that point in their now mercifully truncated careers, both men had made clear their willingness to abuse their substantial power in order to reward cronies and supporters from the fossil fuel industry. This article is too short to list all of their various crimes against the environment and public lands and health, but they include the rollback of air and water protections, the opening up of U.S. coastal waters to offshore drilling, the shrinkage and pillaging of our national monuments, and the cynical rejection of climate science.

Their boss, President Trump, admired his two hires� dedication to destruction. But he came to hate the near-daily cavalcade of news stories detailing their shady dealings, which reinforced his administration�s reputation as an incubator of graft. Pruitt�s departure in July and Zinke�s resignation last week were met with cheers by practically every American who�s not currently employed in the oil, gas, or chemical industries�though their respective replacements, Andrew Wheeler and likely David Bernhardt, are every bit as dangerous (if not every bit as sleazy).

Keystone XL, Now on Ice

President Trump had been in office for only four days when, in one of his very first official acts, he signed an executive order advancing the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project that President Obama had blocked in 2015, signaling the brand-new administration�s old-fashioned obeisance to the fossil fuel industry. His signature (accompanied by the comment that he hoped his reversal of Obama�s decision would help �get that pipeline built�) was meant to fast-track the construction of a 1,179-mile tube designed to carry 830,000 barrels a day of filthy, toxic tar-sands oil from Alberta to Nebraska.

If Trump�s environmental policy was a race to the bottom, this act was the starting gun�alerting everyone (but especially oil and gas companies) that concerns about the climate and the environment were no longer germane to our national conversation about energy. Although Obama had managed to slow the pipeline�s progress substantially, KXL seemed to be coming back from the dead . . . until last month, when a federal judge in Montana temporarily blocked the construction of Keystone XL, ruling that Trump�s State Department hadn�t provided sufficient justification for its approval.

The judge, Brian Morris, furthermore criticized the administration for neglecting to factor in the risk of ruptures and spills, asserting that the State Department�s analysis of the project�s environmental impact �fell short of a �hard look.� � While this latest delay isn�t the death knell that many have been hoping for, every day that passes without �that pipeline built� adds to the sense of uncertainty about KXL�s ultimate fate.

A Congress Going Green?

When the 116th Congress convenes in a few weeks, it will contain more women and people of color than ever before. It will also be, collectively, one of the youngest groups ever to be sworn in: 25 members of the new class are 40 years of age or younger, and the average age of new members is 10 years younger than the average age of the 115th Congress.

With youth and diversity comes a greater climate consciousness, and there is already much buzz around a Green New Deal. The 116th Congress just may be the one to usher in a paradigm-shifting economic and legislative package that creates thousands of new jobs in an expanded clean-energy sector designed to generate 100 percent of America�s electricity from clean sources, and puts the country on a path to net-zero carbon pollution by 2050. Just a few years ago, such an endeavor was little more than a progressive pipe dream. Now it�s got real momentum to match its real popularity among Americans of all political stripes. A recent poll of registered voters showed that 92 percent of Democrats, 88 percent of independents, and 64 percent of Republicans support a Green New Deal.

Numbers like that strongly suggest that we�re beyond talking about whether some ambitious effort to curb U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will pass; instead it�s a matter of when. Politicians who were once afraid to talk about climate change on the floor of the House or the Senate�calling it a �divisive� issue�are soon going to be afraid of avoiding the topic.

Year of the Elephant

Last December 31, China finally put an end to its legal, government-sanctioned ivory trade. That ban is already yielding results: According to a recent study, the number of people in China who say they intend to buy ivory has dropped by almost half this year, and 9 out of 10 Chinese citizens asked about the ban say that they support it. In a happy inversion of the laws of economics, demand seems to be falling even as supply dwindles.

Now, almost exactly a year later, the United Kingdom has announced an incoming ivory ban of its own, imposing stringent new rules on the trade that are being touted as some of the toughest in the world. That announcement follows news that the Dutch intend to ban all sales of raw ivory in their country beginning in March. A similar ban proposed by Singapore�s government is currently undergoing public debate.

Much more needs to be done, of course, to put an end to the killing of elephants for ivory. There are still way too many loopholes that help elephant poachers and ivory traffickers stay in business, and too many countries that have yet to stop their domestic ivory trades. (We�re looking at you, E.U. and Japan.) And under President Trump, the United States�which instituted a near-total ban on African ivory in 2016�recently relaxed its rules that forbade the importing of elephant trophy parts, a setback for our country and a horrible message to send to the rest of the world. But overall, the global momentum is shifting on this issue, and it�s moving in the right direction.

The new year will be full of challenges, the biggest of which will be getting the nations of the world (including our own) to agree on a means of curbing carbon pollution and combating climate change. But the climate isn�t all that�s changing. The mood appears to be changing, too�and for the better.

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